Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | I | Insight on the News

Q: Would the legalization of gay marriage result in a net benefit to heterosexuals? No: Hetrosexual society will not be made healther or safer by legalizing homosexual unions.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Paul Cameron , SPECIAL TO INSIGHT

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has decreed that the state constitution guarantees the right of homosexuals to marry. And the political left not only has approved the decision on egalitarian grounds, but also predicts that gay marriage will hold all sorts of beneficial effects for the rest of us.

Such arguments - designed to shore up an absurd decision in an increasingly absurd nation - fail to recognize the true nature of marriage. It is a community institution, and its very existence verifies the old truth that sex is not just a private matter between consenting adults, as gay activists maintain.

Marriage, whether in ancient Israel, Greece, Rome or in modern America, is designed to control sexual behavior and bring children into the community. Sex is a highly significant and volatile drive: It can create life as well as spread death. In a broad sense, it is everybody's business. Thus marriage always has been the norm: a man and a woman living together and confining their sexual activity to each other for life. In the past divorce was rare because people believed the institution was more important than the two people involved, so couples stayed together. More recently, men and women have tended to enter into marriage for "self-fulfillment," Hollywood-style. However, with the inevitable abatement of sexual excitement, partners increasingly have decided to divorce, shuttle the children between households and seek new sexual adventures.

Yet even in an era when marriage has fallen on hard times, it still is the most important stabilizing...