Marriage is the specifically defined legal, social, economic and spiritual union of a man and a woman. The two sexes (one man and one woman) must be present for it to be a marriage. If that definition is radically altered then the sky is the limit. There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry, or for gutting other requirements, such as minimum age, blood relative status or even the limitation of the relationship to human beings. Those who are trying to radically redefine marriage for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the rest of the population. Ordinary people did not pick this fight. They are not the aggressors. They are merely defending the basic morality that has sustained the culture for everyone against a radical attack.

When homosexual couples seek state approval and all the benefits that the state reserves for married couples, they impose the law on everyone. According non-marital relationships the same status as marriage would mean that millions of people would be disenfranchised by their own governments. The state would be telling them that their beliefs are no longer valid, and would turn the civil rights laws into a battering ram against them.

Law is not a suggestion, as George Washington observed, "it is force". An official state sanction of same-sex relationships as "marriage" would bring the full apparatus of the state against those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. CFMC vies this as outlawing traditional morality.

Eliminating one entire sex from an institution defined as the union of the two sexes is a quantum leap from eliminating racial discrimination, which did not alter the fundamental character of marriage. Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that failed to channel sex into marriage soon lost what he called "expansive energy," which might best be summarized as a societal will to make things better for the next generation. In fact, no society that has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage has survived. Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued.

When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. One can no more expand the definition of marriage than one can expand the definition of a yardstick and still use it as reliable measure. If the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point for continuing the assault on marriage.

If feelings are the key requirement, then why not let three people marry, or two adults and a child, or consenting blood relatives of legal age? The New York Times Magazine recently profiled a group of people who pride themselves on "group marriage" with multiple sexual partners. Some of them even had wedding cakes with six figurines. Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability an continuity. A man is far more apt to sacrifice himself to help a bona fide son-in-law than some unrelated man (or woman) who lives with his daughter. Kinship imparts family names, heritage, and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the community.

Over the years, there have been attempts to remove from marriage the restriction that it be limited to one man and one woman. In the mid 1800s, polygamists were soundly rebuffed. In fact, the US Supreme Court declared in 1885 that any prospective state had to have law resting on "the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.''

When homosexual activist talk about marriage and monogamy, they mean something different from what folks usually mean. Overwhelming evidence is suggest that few gay couples are stable, and those that are long-term have an understanding to have outside sexual contacts. Andrew Sullivan, the homosexual editor of The New Republic, concedes in his book Virtually Normal that homosexual relationships are quite different. He contends that many homosexual households reflect "greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman."

The state should never be in the business of encouraging unhealthy behavior by granting special benefits for it. A homosexual life does not offer the richness of the complementary relationship that men and women find in marriage and family life. People should not be written off as if they can do no better than be mired in an unhealthy, unnatural behavior. The more that homosexuality is encouraged, the more damage will be wreaked among individuals, families and society. This is not compassion but its opposite: a ruthless social Darwinism that devalues people as impulse-driven incorrigibles. Each human soul is of inestimable worth, and homosexuals are no different from anyone else. They deserve the truth, not an officially sanctioned lie.