Sweet Video on Expressions of Love in Marriage

A classmate shared this video, and I loved it so much I wanted to share it also. :)

Same-Sex Marriage- Why It Shouldn't Have Been Legalized by the Supreme Court

This week’s blog post is about the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Reading the summary of the Supreme Court decision, I was struck by how logical the majority made the decision sound. They made a good case for the reasons why same sex couples should be given the same opportunity to marry as opposite sex couples. Unfortunately, logical arguments often don’t align with God’s way of thinking. Marriage was instituted by God. It is meant to provide the best possible opportunities for men and women to grow as a couple, and for children to thrive. This in turn benefits our society by making sure children are provided for, educated, and taught to be contributing citizens.

Looking at the statistics for child welfare, it is clear that children do best when raised by a father and mother who are married. This has been the foundational unit in society for millennia. To seek to redefine marriage to include same-sex parents is to go against what is best for children and for society as a whole.

My belief is this, “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.” (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). This belief doesn’t mean that I don’t sympathize with same-sex couples who want to enjoy the same legal commitment that heterosexual couples enjoy.

I believe that they should be given many of the same rights as heterosexual married couples, such as inheritance and property rights, privilege in the law of evidence, hospital access, medical decision making authority, and parenting rights (Supreme Court of the United States 22). Regardless of my personal or religious beliefs about marriage, my overarching belief is that all humans should be treated with love and dignity. Doing so doesn’t require me to agree with everything others do, though. Nor does it mean I have to support their efforts to change the definition of marriage. 

Unfortunately, by legalizing same-sex marriage the way they did, the Supreme Court overstepped their bounds. There was no constitutional right for them to disregard the rights of the people (who had voted for man-woman marriage in 32 of the 35 states who put the question to the people) and decide something that is a state issue. Regardless of whether you support same-sex marriage, you should be alarmed by the behavior of the Court. Our constitution was set up clearly delineating the roles of the three branches of government. It was crafted that way to safeguard our liberties. When any of the branches overreaches and takes powers that belong to another, it is an attack on our freedom.

Surely, there had to be better ways for same-sex couples to receive the rights and privileges they desired without redefining the entire institution of marriage. I’m curious whether those with more knowledge on this issue could come up with an alternative to marriage that would give same sex couples the legal protections and rights they seek.  

My final thoughts on this are directed solely at those who advocate for heterosexual marriage. What is striking to me is that so many who oppose same-sex marriage are not actively advocating for the preservation of traditional marriage. Where is the outcry over half of marriages ending in divorce? Where is the concern for the children who are missing a parent through divorce or single parenting? Why is there nothing being said about couples cohabiting and having children outside of marriage? If marriage is so fundamental to our society, why aren’t there lively debates and demonstrations at our Nation’s Capital? If heterosexual couples want to fight to keep marriage as between a man and a woman, they need to do more to keep their own marriages intact, teach their children the value of marriage, speak out in defense of marriage and against no-fault divorce, cohabitation, and unwed parenting. Marriage is under attack by far more than just same-sex couples who desire the same recognition of their relationships. It’s under attack by the very people who want to preserve it.  

Works Cited

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "The Family: A Proclamation to the World." 23 September 1995. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. <https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&old=true>.

Supreme Court of the United States. "Opinion of the Court: OBERGEFELL ET AL. v. HODGES, DIRECTOR, OHIO." 2014.

Changing Marriage Trends

     I find it hard to believe that marriage trends have changed so drastically in only 25 years. When I met my husband 26 years ago, having a baby outside marriage was still considered taboo. It was becoming slightly more acceptable (I knew of one girl who got pregnant during high school, whose parents allowed her to live at home and helped her with raising them) but for the most part, if a girl got pregnant before she was married, she was expected to marry the father or give the baby up for adoption. I should know, since I got pregnant at 16. My father’s reaction was to try to find an unwed mother’s home to send me to. He was unsuccessful so I stayed at home during the pregnancy but was told that I would not be allowed to live at home and would receive no help if I kept the child. That made adoption the only viable option, and was a much more common solution at that time. In our current culture, there is little to no stigma to having a child out of wedlock. Society used to recognize that a child born to a single mother (or unmarried parents) was at a disadvantage. As our culture has devalued marriage and families, cohabitation and single parenting have become acceptable offshoots.

     Nowadays, over 50% of children are born to unwed mothers. (The National Marriage Project and The Institute for American Values, 2012, p. 2) Many of these children will never know the security of a family with married biological parents. Because cohabiting relationships involving children break up at twice the rate of married couples, this is a concerning statistic for the stability of families.

     Another trend that has changed is the age at which people get married. Most of my peers (who wanted to get married) were married by the time they were 20-24, but now the ages for marriage average 27 for women and 29 for men. Couples seem to wait until they have graduated college and have a steady career going before committing to marriage. They no longer go through the traditional struggle of being poor, married college students. In my opinion, they miss out on a lot of growth opportunities by delaying marriage until everything in their lives is in place. For those who don’t attend college, it is far more common to live together than to get married, and those who do get married do so after years of cohabiting, pushing the marriage age back for those in this group also.

     The higher marriage age also contributes to the lower fertility rate in the United States. As of 2011, this rate is 1.89, which is below the replacement level of 2.1. (The National Marriage Project and The Institute for American Values, p. 84) I’ve seen the difference this makes in the areas that I’ve lived. In Cincinnati, they had to consolidate elementary schools because attendance was too low for the individual schools to remain open. The lack of children was also evident in our neighborhoods- there weren’t many children in our immediate neighborhood for our daughter to play with. This is in stark contrast to the number of children that lived near me when I was growing up. As a child, I was able to walk down the street to a friend’s house, or get a group of friends together within a couple of blocks, but now it’s almost always necessary to drive a child to their friends’ houses because they don’t live close by.

     Apparently I lived through the heyday of divorce (the early 1980s) but wasn’t aware of it. I knew of a few people who had been divorced, but the majority of my family and friends had parents who were still married. As a teenager I was aware of a changing attitude toward divorce. It was no longer the last option for a miserable marriage, but seemed to be viewed instead as an escape hatch in case anything went wrong.

Another trend is for middle class couples to eschew marriage in favor or cohabitation. More and more high school educated couples opt for the less permanent arrangement of living together rather than committing to marriage, even though research has concluded that children born to unwed or cohabiting parents are more likely to live in poverty.

     As “The Family: A Proclamation” states, “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.” (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1995) Marriage isn’t meant to be one of multiple options for couples and families. It is the only institution designated by God as the way to raise His children. Moreover, “the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” We are already seeing the negative effects of divorce, cohabitation, disregard for children, and unwed pregnancies on our nation and its families.

Works Cited

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (1995, September 23). The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Retrieved from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&old=true

The National Marriage Project and The Institute for American Values. (2012). The State of Our Unions. Charlottesville.