Watching the news stories of people celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision to override certain elements of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which in effect legalizes gay marriage, I can’t escape the analogy of watching people celebrate as the Trojan horse is wheeled through the gates of Troy. While this ruling will be perceived as a great victory by some people because it validates their desires, there is a host of evils hiding within that, once they are out, I guarantee you people will regret tremendously, and will begin to rue the day the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds and had the audacity to redefine what constitutes a marriage. Same sex marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. What is waiting in the wings is terrifying. Observe the following:

1. A lawsuit being referred to as the “Sister Wives” lawsuit because the persons involved with the lawsuit are the ones who are in the TLC reality show of the same name, is being filed in Utah. Kody Brown and his four wives believe the bigamy law in Utah – which does not allow a man to have more than one wife – is unconstitutional.
2. A woman who calls herself “Ashara Love” defending polyamory and pushing for the right to marry, explains: “We are the next generation after the gay and transgender communities.”  She belongs to a small group that believes people have the right to form their own complex relationships with multiple partners. The most vocal want the right to marry as a cluster. “We have rights to love any way we want unless we are harming other people,” said Love. “Like the air we breathe, we have a right to be and do and say whatever is our full expression, and this to me is a civil right.”
3. On Nov. 16, 30-year-old office worker Chen Wei-yih married the love of her life — herself. The Taipei City-based woman, who is no longer single by her own admission, wanted to show other ladies who have hit their thirties without a manifested prince charming that they are not failures. “You must learn to love yourself before you can love others,” said Chen, who also embarked on a solo honeymoon to Australia. Chen explained that when a woman in Taiwan enters her thirties, getting married and having children becomes the main focal point among concerned family, relatives and friends, making a single, independent woman feel like a failure if she has none of those things. Chen explained that “although many people freely express their love for others through flowers, chocolates and expensive dinners, they are less inclined to pamper and shower the same love on themselves. By the same token, expressing your love for a man through marriage and a huge wedding banquet should be something you’re willing to do for yourself. Self-marriage seemed like the logical solution”, she concluded. Making it clear that she has had several boyfriends and relationships, some of which almost led to the altar, Chen described herself as neither unmarriageable nor against marriage to another person. She also considers this marriage non-binding, meaning she is free to marry someone else, but if that opportunity does not arise, at least she made the commitment to forever love herself.
4. A blog entitled “Full Marriage Equality”, which defines itself as “Advocating for the right of consenting adults to share and enjoy love, sex, residence, and marriage without limits on the gender, number, or relation of participants” and states that “full marriage equality is a basic human right” makes a forceful argument to legalize consensual incest: “In the twenty first century family, we have made progress in leaps and bounds. Interracial couples are accepted, gay rights are improving and ‘acceptance’ is the catch-cry of our generation. But it seems strange that while we have come so far in breaking down these social barriers, we have built other walls. Incest, which was common amongst Ancient Egyptians and monarchs up until a few hundred years ago, is now a social taboo…the thing that really stands out though is that no matter the situation, two or more convictions for incest puts you on the Sex Offenders Register for the rest of your life. ‘Consent’ is not a valid defense. The love of your life can be standing in a witness box, telling the court he loves you, and that it was consensual, but it doesn’t matter…Incest is mainly illegal because there’s a law saying it is. It’s not exactly harmful to participants or their children. You just have to remember that incest and abuse are not synonyms.”
5. Animal sex advocate Malcolm Brenner is republishing a memoir he wrote about a nine-month sexual relationship with a theme park dolphin. Brenner asks, “What is repulsive about a relationship where both partners feel and express love for each other? I know what I’m talking about here because after we made love, the dolphin put her snout on my shoulder, embraced me with her flippers and we stared into each others’ eyes for about a minute.” Activist Cody Beck compares talking about his attraction to dogs and horses to a gay teenager coming out. Harboring a crush on a Dachshund is “like being gay in the 1950s. You feel like you have to hide, that if you say it out loud, people will look at you like a freak.” Beck says that he and a network of zoophile or “zoos” are the logical extension of the sexual rights movement.

Of course, some people will scoff at the idea that any of these perverse acts will ever be legalized. But the reality is that, given the language used to argue same sex marriage rights – “my civil rights”, “the right to love whomever I choose”, “as long as it’s not harming anyone else” – what foundation is left to prohibit these actions? It is completely eroded away, and it is only a matter of time before the tide of public opinion becomes less hostile to people with these desires and more compassionate and understanding of their “needs” and fights for their rights to marry their sister or their dog. Pandora’s Box has been opened wide!

What I find most interesting (or appalling) in all of this is what has happened to the definition of marriage. If we put all this together, what is society proposing as the new definition of marriage? It would appear to be something like this: “Marriage is a bond of love between one, two or more persons of either sex or with a non-human that may or may not be expressed sexually, that can be permanent if you want it to be or temporary – whichever you prefer. It may be a pledge of fidelity to another person, unless you don’t want mutual exclusivity, in which case you are free to love as many people as you wish.” In other words, “create whatever relationship you’d like and call it a marriage.”

Contrast this with the Christian understanding of marriage that has been the foundation of Western society. That view is that God created Woman from the side of Man to show that the two come from one flesh: This one “at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…that is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body” (Gen. 2:23-24). Add to that the Catholic understanding that in marriage, a man and woman who give themselves to each other sexually are uniting their love with the very love of God, who through them may bring a new life into the world, thereby drawing them into union with the very essence and nature of God and by that act receiving tremendous grace and leading their souls to heaven.

If this new contemporary definition of marriage is allowed to grow and mature, what will we have achieved? There are many legitimate needs that some people face in a society where they cannot enter into marriage with a member of the opposite sex, but they can be met in various other ways without loosely defining any relationship we wish as a marriage. My question is this: is the contemporary ambiguous redefinition of marriage worth throwing away the Christian view of marriage that we have held until now? Where is the improvement? Perhaps we need to discuss the very real possibility that God knew what He was doing when He instituted marriage as a sacred covenant between one man and one woman, and that any attempt on our part to address the legitimate needs of anyone who doesn’t fit this model, no matter how compassionate and understanding we are, will not be solved by redefining marriage to meet their personal desires.

The only hope we have left is for enough people to open their eyes to the reality of the direction in which we are headed and start to acknowledge once again that marriage must only be between one man and one woman. It’s time we lose the egos that have dared to tell God he’s wrong and that we’re going to correct his error. Perhaps we can still round up the evils and put them back in Pandora’s Box before it’s too late. God help us if we don’t!

Either marriage is heterosexual and monogamous or it is totally meaningless. We cannot have it both ways. Which do you prefer?