WHAT TO DO ABOUT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

Someone messaged me the other day and asked if I was going to "do anything" about same-sex marriage.

The person is probably asking me because of the role I played a few years ago engaging the same-sex union bill back in 2009.

My answer is yes. And here it is.

I am going to do something about same-sex marriage by living out the sacrament of my own life-bearing marriage ever more deeply and ever more consciously each and every day that is left me.

I am going to do this because we have arrived at this civilizational precipice not because of some gay agenda but because we married people have neglected and abused the Sacrament of Marriage all on our own.

We have abused it by granting ourselves easy divorce and claiming dominion over our fertility instead of accepting children "willingly and lovingly from God" as we sacramentally promised on the altar.

Same-sex marriage is nothing more than the inevitable development of the corruption of God's original design for marriage which was to image the Trinitarian God in the service of life: "in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply." (Gen 1:27-28) 

And that corruption was our own doing long before the idea of same-sex marriage entered the arena of possibilities.

How so?

We threw marriage under the bus when we rejected Humanae Vitae 47 years ago. Priests who may now be persecuted for not performing same-sex marriages can thank each and every one of their forebears, who after and despite Humanae Vitae, counseled married couples to artificially manage their fertility according to their own consciences.

On Guam, for over 20 years, and until 2006, Guam, and with no objection from the Catholic Church, became famous as the divorce capital of the world:

For over twenty years, anyone in the world could obtain a mail order divorce from the Guam courts without ever stepping foot on the island. Despite its diminutive size, from 2005 to 2010, Guam's divorce rates were up to three times higher than that of any other country in the world.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1021901

In fact, if you google the words "divorce mill", Guam immediately comes up. The Wikipedia entry says this:

Prior to January 1, 2006, Guam allowed for an uncontested divorce without either spouse visiting the territory at all - one of the few places if not the only that allowed this.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_mill 

In 1997, we put our mail-order divorce business on steroids when, again, with no objection from the Catholic Church, a mostly Catholic legislature and governor passed a no-fault divorce bill into law, and by 2005, Guam courts were granting an average of 9.25 divorces per working day!

Guam Statistical Yearbook 2001 Table PO17, 2005 Table 11-97, 2008 Table 11-05, 2010 Table 12-09, published by Bureau of Statistics and Plans, Office of the Governor

In 2006, after getting pressured from mainland jurisdictions for granting questionable divorces, the legislature passed a law mandating that at least one spouse visit Guam for at least 7 days in order to obtain the divorce. A few morally astute legislators actually sought a minimum of 90 days, but they were a minority and received no support from the Catholic Church.

The seven day stay didn't help. In 2010, Guam remained number one in the world for its divorce rate at 4.7 divorces per 1000 population with Russia running second at 4.5, creating quite a business for Guam lawyers including William Pesch, one of the attorneys currently challenging Guam's marriage law. On his website Pesch advertises:

"For most people pursuing a Guam divorce, this has proven to be an enjoyable experience."

With the explosion in the divorce rate, the suffering of Guam's children increased as well. 

In 2012, Guam Child Protective Services received 4,434 referrals of child maltreatment. According to the 2010 Census, Guam has a child population of 57,727. Notwithstanding the variance in population between 2010 and 2012, Guam's child maltreatment rate as of 2012 is 76.81 per 1,000 children. By comparison, the national average is 41.2.

So, no, it's not the "gays" who are destroying marriage and the traditional family. We did it all by ourselves with the help of a silent Catholic leadership.

But we do not need a "Catholic leadership" to start a counter-revolution of living out a full, sacramental, fruitful marriage. We only need what we already have: the Sacrament of Marriage and of course, all the Sacraments of the One Holy Catholic Church, through which Jesus Christ can pour out his graces to give us all the supernatural help we need to conquer the Hater of Marriage. 

That said, I don't expect to remain silent on the civil front:

Love not a legal element of marriage

Where's research in gay marriage arguments?

And more to come.

Data for several of the references in this post can be found here.