Focus on the Family has been intimately involved in the fight against the radical redefinition of marriage by same-sex advocates for decades. Our efforts started in the early 1990s, and opponents constantly told us – and we mean constantly – that redefining marriage to no longer be about male and female would never impact anyone who objected to it. Ever.
“No need to be concerned people. Go back to what were you doing.”
Gay marriage – or “marriage equality” as it was slickly and dishonestly refashioned for messaging purposes – was simply about nice people “falling in love” and building their own private lives together. Their lives didn’t concern, and never would impact, anyone else.
In fact, Senator Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) famously gave the whole movement its most powerful and persuasive talking point when he dismissively asked, “How will my same-sex marriage ever harm your marriage?” In his official testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2004, Senator Frank affirmatively stated that legalizing gay marriage “will clearly have no effect whatsoever on heterosexual people who are completely uninterested in marrying people of their own sex.”
The complicit mainstream media made sure that catchy line played far and wide across the fruited plains to quell any concern from middle America. And it is no exaggeration to say that every other advocate for marriage redefinition after him dutifully parroted the same false assurance for the next few decades. It essentially promised, “What we gays are doing to marriage over here will never impact what you straights are doing over there. So chill.”
It was their drum beat.
And here we are on the other side of this debate, after the U.S. Supreme Court manufactured a constitutional right to neutered, genderless marriage and the Senate this week advanced a bill to codify that radical idea into federal law. This process, and the major components of the debate around the deceptively named “Respect for Marriage Act” dramatically reveals the stunning duplicity of those pushing this profoundly consequential social and family revolution.
How so?
Well, those pushing the Respect for Marriage Act shrewdly incorporated a few extremely weak and wholly inadequate religious protections into the bill to attract the support of important religious bodies like the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), which represents over 140 Christ-centered institutions of higher education in the United States, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Seventh-day Adventists, along with others like the Mormon Church, the Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, the Center for Public Justice, the 1st Amendment Partnership, and the AND Campaign. This is documented in the Congressional Record. These are all organizations with strong, clear positions on marriage as a unique and irreplaceable institution that ties men and women together into an essential cooperative bond that creates humanity and society.
But each of these faith-based and conservative organizations felt compelled to support woefully insufficient religious freedom language in a bill that is in direct conflict with their strong faith-based beliefs on marriage, sexuality and the family, and codifies those rejected beliefs into federal law.
Their support for the provisions garnered enough votes from Senators for the measure to be moved forward.
The irony of this should not be missed by anyone.
The public was deliberately sold on supporting a radical de-gendering of marriage with the empty promise it would never impact them negatively in any way. The story then shifted.
It was soon charged by these same advocates that religious objections to same-sex marriage were masquerading as religious bigotry and rank hatred.
Religion was the problem and had to bow the knee to the new gender orthodoxy.
Then out of the other side of their mouths, these same advocates said, “Please support our new effort to write same-sex marriage and other family redefinitions into federal law and we will give you a few religious protections tomorrow that we assured you yesterday you will never, ever need.”
Bait and switch.
Organizations that we should be able to rely on to protect and defend the integrity of marriage and family were unfortunately persuaded by this trickery. That is what we saw happen this week, and the blame should be laid at the feet of the same-sex marriage advocates who clearly said one thing in their initial sales pitch and did precisely another after they got what they wanted. And then ran the same con again this week.
All people of faith and good will should not miss this latest demonstration of the bald duplicity by the “marriage equality” crowd.
It is long past time to stop falling for it.
Additional Resources
Christian Groups Clash Over Religious Freedom Provisions in the ‘Respect for Marriage Act’
Breaking: Senate Ends Debate on ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ – Moving Measure to a Final Vote
House Passes Dangerous Bill Enshrining Same-Sex Marriage as Election-Year Tactic
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