THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF DIVERGENT MARRIAGE

By barzilaiendan on March 18, 2015 • ( 0 )

by Dr. Steve Elwart

A Different Kind of “Marriage” Ceremony

A very interesting article came out in The Daily Mail. The article was about three men in Thailand who decided to get “married”. In the article, the three homosexual men, Joke, 29, Bell, 21 and Art, 26, exchanged vows in a Buddhist ceremony on Valentine’s Day at their home in Uthai Thani Province, Thailand.

The ceremony became an Internet sensation after pictures of the non-sanctioned ceremony hit the web.

Although same sex marriages are not sanctioned under Thai law and those that participate in such a ceremony could face sanctions, the trio has little fear of reprisals in the

notoriously tolerant society.

According to one of the three, Joke, said: ‘Now Thai society has a better understanding of sexual orientation as many same sex weddings appear on TV, newspapers and social media, we feel more accepted and able to come out.”

In today’s climate, this statement is absolutely true.

Redefining Marriage

This author had a conversation in Washington D.C. about this subject with a person who is homosexual. When it was suggested that homosexual marriage would lead to all sorts of permutations on the definition of marriage (polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, etc.), the man (who since married another man in Maryland said, “That is ridiculous. That will not happen.”

Well, it has.

Redefining marriage from the traditional man – woman relationship has opened the floodgates to all sorts of combinations of marriages, all of which the LGBT (or now as the Left now terms it, the LGBTQIA) community insist that we accept it in the name of “tolerance”.

Far from being ridiculous, consider the following.

A “Throuple”

Besides the three men “marrying” as mentioned above, three women “married” in Massachusetts. As reported in the article, “The threesome swear [sic] the marriage is real. One claimed to have tears in her eyes when she saw the other women being escorted down the aisle.”

This poses a quandary for this state since they now recognize homosexual marriage.

What the three women did in Massachusetts has already been done in Brazil where a Brazilian notary’s recognized a “triad marriage” in that country. The public official said that the redefinition of marriage required it: “What we considered a family before isn’t necessarily what we would consider a family today.”

That is the key; one concept (marriage) is redefined to mean something new; the only thing one then has to do is change the definition to something else. The changes keep coming until the original concept is no longer recognizable.

If two people of the same sex can marry, why can’t three women or three men? Why not 4 or more? Why not polygamy? The door is open towards all sorts of pairings (or more)

A Woman and Her Mate

Consider Sharon Tendler, a woman in Israel. Sharon met Cindy 15 years ago. She said it was love at first sight. Tendler finally married Cindy in a ceremony at Dolphin Reef in the southern Israeli port of Eilat, Tendler was the bride. The groom? A dolphin.

The blushing bride said, “It’s not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He’s the love of my life.” Apparently, Tendler also believes in “open marriage”. “He will still play with all the other girls there,” she said, of their prenuptial agreement. “I hope he has a lot of baby dolphins with the other dolphins. The more dolphins the better.”

While it seems as if all this belongs in the Theater of the Absurd, two people of the same sex marrying fifteen or twenty years ago also seemed absurd at the time.

It is amazing how the definition of marriage has changed over the last few decades, how far it has deviated from the Biblical definition of marriage.

DOMA

Who defines marriage, and how it is defined are vital concerns for the function of society. In the late nineties, there were more than one thousand statutes in which “benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status or in which marital status is a factor.” Under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law in 1996, the terms marriage and spouse was defined by the U.S. Government in the following way:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

Opponents of DOMA and advocates of same-sex marriage have argued that marital benefits, rights and privileges must be accessible by all citizens if the law is to be free from discrimination. The Secular Coalition for America, as an example argues as follows:

Civil marriage is a license by the state … All marriages in America is civil marriages because all marriages require a civil license … The civil marriage contract requires adherence to no specific religious doctrine. The civil contract of marriage is given by governmental entities and affords over a thousand legal rights and responsibilities. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extends “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens. By denying gay men and lesbians to marry, the federal government is treating gay men and lesbian couples inequitably.

On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling that gives same-sex couples who hold a legal marriage in their state the same federal benefits as married straight couples. In their ruling, the justices overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law that forbade the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage as legal. The court claimed that DOMA displaced the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equality for all people.

Around the world, at least fifteen other nations have legalized marriage between same-sex partners. Obviously, the definition of marriage is truly changing. But is it the right of a government to redefine marriage, or has the definition of marriage already been set by a higher authority?

A Biblical Definition of Marriage

In Genesis 2:18, God declares it is not good for Adam to live alone. All the animals are there, but none of them are a suitable partner for Adam. God, therefore, in a special act of creation, makes a woman. Just a few verses later, the woman is called “his wife” (Genesis 2:25). Eden was the scene of the first marriage, ordained by God Himself. Genesis then records the standard by which all future marriages are defined:

Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

— Genesis 2:24, ISV

This passage of Scripture gives several points for understanding God’s design for marriage.

First, marriage involves a man and a woman. The Hebrew word for “wife” is gender-specific; it cannot mean anything other than “a woman.” There is no passage in Scripture that mentions a marriage involving anything other than a man and a woman. Since God ordained sex to only take place between a man and a woman, it follows that God’s design is for the family unit to be formed when a man and woman come together in a sexual relationship and have children.

The second principle from Genesis 2 about God’s design for marriage is that marriage is intended to last for a lifetime. As noted above verse 24 says the two become “one flesh.” Every marriage thereafter is intended to reflect the unity shared by Adam and Eve. Because their bond was “in the flesh,” they were together forever. There was no escape clause, no emergency exit written into the first marriage that allowed for the two to separate. That is to say that God designed marriage for life. When a man and a woman make a commitment to marry, they “become one flesh,” and that is why they say, “Till death do us part.”

A third principle from this passage about God’s design for marriage is monogamy. The Hebrew words for “man” and “wife” are singular and do not allow for multiple wives. Even though some people in Scripture did have multiple wives, it is clear from the creation account that God’s design for marriage was one man and one woman. Jesus emphasized this principle when He appealed to the Genesis account to counter the idea of easy divorce:

He answered them, “Haven’t you read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, man must never separate.”

— Matthew 19:4–6, ISV

It should come as no surprise that the world desires to change what God has instituted:

That is why the mind that focuses on human nature is hostile toward God. It refuses to submit to the authority of God’s Law because it is powerless to do so.

— Romans 8:7, ISV

Though the world is attempting to provide their own definitions for what they call “marriage,” the Bible still stands. The clear definition of marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life.