Chattanoogans have the liberty today and on Aug. 7 to vote on marriage. Yes, marriage itself is the subject of the domestic partnership referendum.
Only marginally is it about “gay rights” or “equality of pay” or “equal pay for equal work” or “loving relationships of our gay brothers,” and other phrasings that are cast into the marketplace of ideas to alter the opinion of a decent man asking himself: “How shall I vote?”
It’s important to understand the organization and method of the homosexual lobby. It has craftily and cunningly changed the framework of the debate over marriage and homosexual unions to place the upholders of marriage on the defensive by suggesting it is nasty, bigoted, hateful and cultural backward to deny homosexuals marriage as a moral and legal state.
Gays said the City Council vote favoring homosexuality was not about marriage at all, not an attack on marriage, not taking anything away from any married person. But the potentially costly ordinance is about fair treatment, equal favor for an oppressed class just emerged from the closet, a basic mode of fairness premised on loving relationship between one man and and one man, or one woman and a lesbian friend. Fair play. Equal treatment.
Similarly, people who defend marriage in the vote need to take a similar tack. The referendum isn’t against anyone. It is not about homosexuals. It is about marriage itself. It is about the definition of marriage as mankind has understood it since the time of Adam and Eve in the garden.
Marriage is a conjugal relationship between one man and one woman, a union for life that is comprehensive, lasting until the death of one spouse, openly avowed and publicly enforced, legally recognized and exclusive of all others, the uniting for the purpose of procreation — babies, children, family and inheritance.
Tennessee law does not deny anyone the right to marriage. Chris Anderson, the city council member who crafts his identity around his sexual life, has as much right to marry as do you. No one is denying his right to marry. It is within his power of will and desire to wed any woman he chooses who might accept his petition for her hand (and whose father will have him). We have equal treatment before the law.
Tennessee has no ban on gay marriage
Therefore, the media claim that Tennessee bans gay marriage is a misnomer. It erroneously describes the constitutional recognition of marriage as it has been from mankind’s beginning. If Tennessee had a ban on gay unions, it would have a statute of prohibition. It would explicitly make criminally or civilly liable any act that was or pretended to be a homosexual union.
No such ban exists in Tennessee law. Mr. Anderson, with council member Jerry Mitchell as his sober witness, is free to go to the Unitarian church and have a nuptial event with a sexual partner. He can hold himself out as married, he can sexually consummate his erstwhile marriage. The current state of Tennessee law does not disallow or prohibit this sequence of public acts.
Revisionism based on feelings, not commitment
Tennessee’s law is different. It defines marriage as between one man and one woman, and states that Tennessee government and its agencies (counties, cities) will not recognize any erstwhile “marriage” contracted in other states between two men. Tennessee law upholds the creational ordinance of marriage as recorded in Genesis.
Homosexuals want to demolish this definition. They want to redefine marriage. They are revisionists. They want to take the existing fact and meaning of marriage, destroy it, and erect a new definition not based on a comprehensive and procreative relationship of husband and wife. No, they wish to erect a revisionist definition based on EMOTION.
I suggest Chattanoogans vote against the “domestic partnership” ordinance passed by our betters on the City Council, a measure indeed deserving of scare quotes
— David Tulis hosts Nooganomics.com on
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