| | Let me lay the groundwork for my point today by citing several recent, very topical circumstances that I'm sure most of us have heard about. - John and Kate Gosselin, stars of the wildly popular "John & Kate Plus Eight" TV show and parents to eight beautiful children, have filed for divorce. The couple, married for about 10 years, each indicate the other's infidelities as the root cause of their divorce.
- Sen. John Ensign, a father of three and the prominent Republican senator from Nevada who had been cited as a possible presidential hopeful, announced a prolonged extramarital affair with a former friend of the family. While Ensign did not resign his Senate seat, he did step down as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. He and his wife Darlene have been active in the Christian ministry PromiseKeepers for many years.
Ensign never knew his birth father, but was adopted by his stepfather, a successful casino gaming executive, when Ensign was a teenager.
- Republican Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for days following the recent bitter and hard-fought session of that state's legislature. Upon his reappearance, Sanford admitted to an affair with an Argentinean woman and confessed that it was the cause of his absence. Sanford's wife Jenny, an executive and heiress to the Skil Power Tool company, had managed his political campaigns and bore his four sons.
- Former Miss California Carrie Prejean, who recently was relieved of her title for "failing to make scheduled public appearances", was prominently criticized by homosexual activist Perez Hilton for her statement that marriage "should be between one man and one woman".
The United States - and the entire Western world - are in the middle of a quantum shift in social structure. For Americans, it began shortly after the end of the Civil War. For Europeans, it began about 40 years earlier with the end of the Napoleonic Era. This cultural metamorphosis is much like the ones that other cultures have endured prior to their inevitable and catastrophic replacement by more disciplined and moral cultures.
Marriage is the foundational element of every human culture. It can - and does - take different forms that embrace monogamy, bigamy, polygamy and even divorce itself. However, what makes marriage the common connective expression for mankind is the universal understanding that comes to us through childhood.
We love our parents. Inherent to our biology (and, even more deeply, to our spirits) is a connection to those people who created us. Whether or we know them or not, our bio-emotional attachment to our mothers and our fathers is inescapable and eternal.
For this reason, because the human connection to our birth parents is innate and ultimately unbreakable, our collective conscience establishes firm and disciplined rules for the unions between those two people we all love. This, regardless of the varied forms it may evolve or devolve into, is the root of the universal human cultural practice of marriage. The current American/Western cultural crisis is, in very large part, tied directly to our rejection of the intent, purpose and morality of marriage. Our continued efforts to re-define not only the purpose of marriage, but its very parameters, reveals our disregard for the institution itself. It is not only homosexuals who have no regard for the human purpose or cultural intent for marriage. They can almost be forgiven for wanting to get in on the sham. Our own political and religious leaders fail to see the absolute necessity of remaining faithful to your spouse.
And you and I, sitting in our living rooms like hypocrites, are among the worst offenders against marriage. We glorify media stars while they're in the process of destroying the lives of children. "John and Kate Plus Eight" drew its highest ratings ever on Monday night when the couple announced their impending divorce. Carrie Prejean may have had it right. But she only had it partially right. If marriage is to be between one man and one woman, then there must be a reason for that. And the reason is that that intercourse - in both the physical and spiritual senses of the word - between a man and a woman is intended to produce children. And those children need to be guaranteed the presence of their parents' love for one another. I anticipate this discussion will incorporate questions about childless marriages and the subtopic of the differences between erotic and spiritual loves, not to mention the chimera of "loveless marriage".
At the end of the day, however, your marriage is about continuing your lineage. And your lineage ostensibly carries your customs and beliefs. If marriage works, then our customs and beliefs came from our parents. But, if marriage fails, our customs and beliefs can - and often do - come from anywhere.
|
