Family Life and Friendship Network

I've been asked by a few friends why I don't support same gender marriage. I'll give a few reasons here in my blog. It has nothing to do with equal rights. It has everything to do with what is right for our country, and for children everywhere. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a Christian, and as a scientist, I must say marriage is for a man and a woman.

God follows a pattern. He calls witnesses. We call these witnesses prophets. Amos 3:7 says "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets". These witnesses, or prophets testify of truth. They testify in the same two ways anyone else does: by speaking orally, or by writing it down. The written word has become scripture. The oral word comes from modern prophets. In order for us to know that one who speaks God's word is a prophet, there's one more step. The Holy Ghost gives us knowledge and testifies the truth to our hearts and to our minds. A modern prophet has testified that marriage is between a man and a woman. The Holy Ghost has testified to me that he is a prophet. The church is not a democracy. We don't tell the prophet what to do, God does. God speaks. His prophet speaks. The Holy Ghost tells me he's a prophet. I listen.

That was the Mormon perspective. Mormon's don't stand alone on this issue. Most Christian faiths believe the same on this issue. The general Christian is similar, minus a modern prophet. God created Adam and Eve. Adam was a man. Eve was a woman. God married them, and set up the family blue-print. Matthew 19:5 says: "...For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?". Mark 10: 7 says: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife". Paul also wrote this to the Ephesians in Ephesians 5:31: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."

God condemns the taking of life. The powers that create life are equally guarded. Two men cannot create life. Two women cannot create life. A man and a woman can. The life created by a union between a man and a woman should have a father and a mother, equally committed to that child's care. That's why we have marriage. Marriage is a formal recognition before God, a government, and between the man and woman making the commitment that the partners will support each other and their children. We guard this life-creating unit we call marriage with care because that unit, and that unit alone can create life. Misusing the power to create life is perhaps as bad as taking life. Not all marriages turn out well. Some are even abusive, but creating a new definition for marriage will not resolve this problem. It will only make it worse. This holds true for anyone who believes in a Supreme Being. Whoever you call God, He (or or even She) created men and women so that only male-female relationships can create life. He obviously intended it that way.

Some will argue that this is a religious issue, and has nothing to do with law. In fact, law evolves from social folkways, to mores, to laws. Take murder for an extreme example. People don't like their relatives getting killed (folkways). They polarize against it (mores). They make laws against it. Murder is a moral issue, and a religious one. It's also a civil one because of that natural evolution into law. Marriage has always been understood as a union between a man and a woman. We didn't choose the legal arena for a battle about what marriage is. People (certain judges come to mind) decided to try and change the definition of marriage. Now we must step forward and defend what has held true for thousands of years and defend against an unproven idea that will not work.

Here's one excellent news press release from the LDS faith on same-gender marriage:

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/same-gender-attraction