The ACLU of Nebraska (American Civil Liberties Union) has filed another federal lawsuit against Nebraska’s Constitutional prohibition on same-sex “marriage.” The Constitutional Amendment was approved by an overwhelming majority of Nebraska voters in 2000.
The ACLU’s first attempt to get the Amendment invalidated came in 2003. A federal district judge in Omaha agreed with the ACLU and struck down the Amendment in 2005. That judge’s ruling was subsequently overturned by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld the Amendment.
Over the last few years, state prohibitions of same-sex “marriage” (SSM) have been overturned at a breathtaking pace. Currently, 33 states recognize SSM. Twenty-two of these states were forced to do so by Courts; eight states have legalized it by legislative votes and three by popular vote.
Many people (especially proponents of SSM) say it is inevitable that every state ban on SSM will fall, either by lower courts or by the U.S. Supreme Court. And those who oppose such efforts are impugned with accusations of bigotry and hate-mongering which, sadly, intimidates most into silence.
To be certain, the institution of marriage started down a path of decline long before SSM posed another serious threat to its meaning and dignity. Articles on marriage in recent Respect Life Programs produced by the U.S. Bishops lay out the sobering reality:
“Increasingly frequent… are stories or studies purporting to show the ‘death of marriage’ on the grounds that a sexually-active single life or cohabitation are essentially superior, or that women would do better to enjoy their newly elevated incomes alone, or that fidelity is well nigh impossible (and maybe not even desirable)” (Helen Alvare).
“Today more than 50 percent of births to women under 30 occur outside marriage. According to sociologists, the increased numbers of children in poverty, in fatherless homes, and who experience abuse and neglect all relate to changing attitudes about marriage. The phenomenon of the breakdown of marriage has spread rapidly into the segment known as Middle America and is now touching nearly every extended family” (William B. May).
The breathtaking pace at which our society and its laws are embracing SSM is yet another critical reason for the Church to embark on an unprecedented campaign to explain the meaning and sacred dignity of marriage. To start with, here is a glimpse of what our Catholic faith teaches (from the Catechism of the Catholic Church):
“‘The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage.’ The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.
“Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. ‘The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.’” (CCC #1603)
“Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’ The woman, ‘flesh of his flesh,’ his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a ‘helpmate’; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. ‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.’ The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been ‘in the beginning’: ‘So they are no longer two, but one flesh.’” (CCC #1605)
Is our nation facing another Roe v. Wade type moment, this time with the Supreme Court purporting to “settle” the conflict over same-sex “marriage”? Whether this is the case or not, we cannot wait another moment to begin a great campaign to proclaim and promote the true meaning and sacred dignity of marriage. God is clearly knocking on our door. Will we answer it?
