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How difficult is the same-sex marriage issue?      How equal are the same-sex union alternatives?

Early in the presentation Pastor Price makes the point, “if it could be argued that scripture does allow homosexual relationships to take place, then most Christians would not have an issue with same-sex marriage.”  Having said this, he devotes only a few minutes of the seventy to speak to what the Bible specifically says about homosexuality.  He explains:
 

Now when we turn to scripture, God has spoken about sexual behavior.  I am not going to look with you tonight at the four main passages where He speaks to you about homosexuality in scripture, and two additional passages, one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament because that is not the purpose of the evening.  It would take a long time to do that.
 

In the course of the talk Pastor Price does affirm the evangelical interpretation of what the Bible says on homosexuality. 

What Was the Aim of the Sermon?
 

So what was the purpose of the evening, if not to declare and explain relevant scriptural guidance?  The few evangelical statements above are eclipsed in the presentation by the hour devoted to offering opinion related to the pastor’s notwithstanding scripture phrase: “However, having said that…” More than anything else, these four words express the agenda for the evening.  The impression from the talk, if not the implicit purpose of the evening was: “To appeal to the evangelical audience to adopt a more liberal attitude towards homosexism.”
 

And the homosexist worldview states:
 

Homosexism is a new cosmology (worldview) that asserts there is no meant relationship between anatomical sex (genitalia), sexuality and gender.  The meanings attached to male and female are seen as social constructs, which can be “deconstructed.”  Homosexists claim one’s sexuality is a given, not a matter of choice; and therefore, the acting out of one’s sexual attraction is seen as a morally neutral decision.  Gay and lesbians claim an innate orientation; transsexuals and gueers claim a fluid orientation; and bisexuals declare alternating and simultaneous sexual attractions.  Homosexists deny the possibility of sexual reorientation and negatively label all heterosexuals who challenge the tenets of their worldview as “homophobes” and “bigots.”  Homosexuals who criticize the ideology are seen as victims of “internalized homophobia.”  Homosexists contend it is the state’s responsibility to develop technological and pharmaceutical solutions to overcome ecological hazards of their lifestyle, rather than constrain their sexual practices within “natural” and “safe” limits.  The worldview is wedded to the feminist analysis that claims heterosexuality is the “male-beneficent” organization of women’s labor, a patriarchal form of oppression.  Homosexism promotes a “free sex” ideology.  Homosexists assert the inert nature of same-sex intimacy is not appropriate grounds to discriminate in the social institutions of marriage and family.
 

On the other hand, the heterosexist paradigm states:
 

Heterosexism is the view that humankind is made up of two purposefully designed sexes - male and female.  Like a lock and key, male and female are companion sexes anatomically designed for procreative union.  Heterosexism does not imply that all males and females must mate and procreate; however, there is the reality that survival of humankind requires that some do.  In most societies marriage has been the privileged sacrament for these men and women, institutionalizing their union and legitimizing their offspring before the state.   The family consisting of a father, mother and biologically connected children is seen as the model.  Blended families by divorce and remarriage and other family variations, although common, are viewed as departures from this ideal.
 

There is a genuine dilemma in this sermon and it is rooted in the reality that one cannot hold two mutually opposing worldviews at the same time – heterosexism and homosexism.
 

World Versus Church Dilemma
 

The notion that the same-sex marriage debate is fundamentally a tug-of-war between a list of concerns of the state (government and courts) and those of the church must be challenged as perilously simplistic and misleading, too much parroting the propaganda of the homosexual rights movement.  Portrayal of the governments and the courts as the altruistic agencies of civil liberties, equality and human rights, pitted against religious communities implies a level of unity and grouping of opinion that has never existed.  Government and courts aside for the moment, the church is hardly unanimous in its opinion on same-sex marriage.  The largest so-called “mainline protestant denomination” wants marriage redefined, as do some splinter Anglican churches.   Moreover, the concerns of Christians vary and go far beyond the meanings of homosexuality and marriage.  When 76 percent[4] of the population claims Christianity as their religion (and other world religions account for another 4 percent), the idea of the concerns of “government” versus those of the “church” seems counter intuitive, if not undemocratic.  An EKOS survey[5] of Canadians conducted over 7-9 February 2005, showed that only 42 percent of the population were in favor of same-sex marriage.  The majority of Canadians (churched and non-churched) either did not see the matter as a human rights issue or did not care.  In Pastor Price’s “world versus church” framework the inference is that all non-churched Canadians are advocates of same-sex marriage.  This is not true, secularists can be ardently opposed to redefining marriage.  The non-religious rationale against same-sex marriage is no less persuasive than the religious.  In a democratic country, governance should reflect the values and interests of its citizens not usurp them.  And when this happens, it is vital to understand why.  For these reasons, no balanced articulation of the same-sex marriage issue can leave out the machinations of politics and the scheming of special interest groups, a complication Pastor Price avoids.
 

In 1999, the government and the church were actually united in thought.  The Liberal majority Parliament had voted 216-55 in favor of protecting traditional marriage.  Justice Minister Anne McClellan said at that time:
 

We on this side agree that the institution of marriage is a central and important institution in the lives of many Canadians.  It plays an important part in all societies worldwide, second only to the fundamental importance of family to all of us…the definition of marriage is already clear in law…Let me state again for the record that the government has no intention of changing the definition of marriage or of legislating same-sex marriages.  No jurisdiction worldwide defines a legal marriage as existing between same-sex partners.[6]
 

Five years later, before the American homosexual organization Equality Forum, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon admitted how precarious the same-sex marriage fight had been, even among Liberals.  He said that only four individuals in Ottawa were instrumental in reversing the Liberal same-sex marriage policy.  And once Prime Minister Chrétien was on board, the rest was easy – he ruled over his Caucus and Cabinet like a dictator.  Indeed, the reality of the actual same-sex marriage vote, two months after Pastor Price’s talk, was that 45 percent of parliamentarians were against it, 35 Liberals said “No,” and the 39 members of the Liberal Cabinet were ordered by Prime Minister Martin to vote “yes,” regardless of the will of their constituencies.  One member of the NDP voted against the bill, subsequently losing her riding.  The final tally was 158 - 133.  These are not images of dilemma – concerns of an altruistic government versus concerns of a homophobic church; but rather reflections of raw politics.   Indeed, the vote in June 2005 was only possible because the Liberals survived a non-confidence vote in May by one; the Honourable Belinda Stronach crossed the floor to the Liberal camp.  Marriage redefinition was never inevitable and never the church against the world.
 

Court Versus Church Dilemma
 

Framing a dilemma of concerns between the “court” and the “church” is equally troublesome.  When the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was ratified by parliament and ten legislatures in 1982, the document said nothing about homosexuality in spite of gay and lesbian lobby.  And the Preamble to our Constitution reads: “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God.”  Strictly speaking the Constitution and the Charter were composed with a heterosexist worldview in mind.  Most are familiar with these facts.  However, when Pastor Price refers to the lower courts “paving the way” for the federal government to legislate the redefinition of marriage, the message received is one of the innate rightness and progressive nature of the provincial court rulings.  This impression of constitutionally based justice working its way through the system is far from the truth.
 

In The Charter Revolution & The Court Party, social scientists F.L. Morton and Rainer Knopff, describe the challenge of deconstructing the heterosexist basis of Canadian governance:
 

To use the Charter as part of such an ideological battle, gay and lesbian activists had first to overcome the intentional omission of sexual orientation from the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in section 15 of the Charter.  They thus began publishing articles advocating that it be added by way of judicial interpretation.[7]
 

In order to prevail over the so-called “homophobic” will of the heterosexual majority the strategy became the persistent and incremental conversion of the judicial system to a homosexist worldview, starting with the provincial courts.  The goal - to convert the judiciary to the ideology of sexual orientations: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer (GBLTQ), and to the corresponding need for homosexual rights.  Choosing the judicial system as the key battleground, human rights as the claimed grievance and sympathetic judiciary as allies became the means by which three percent of society was able to deconstruct heterosexism.  By a process of judicial rulings the court read homosexual rights into the Charter.  At the 1998 International Human Rights Commission, Justice Rosalie Abella, described this allied ideological battle: “…unlike civil liberties, which re-arranges no social relationships and only protects our political ones, human rights is a direct assault on the status quo.  It is inherently about change.”  Here the status quo is “heterosexism” and the assault is targeted at “marriage” and the “family.”
 

Again the courts have never been unanimous on the need to redefine marriage.  Not all the justices interpreted the Charter in the pro-gay manner of Justice Abella.  In his 2001 verdict, which denied Shane McCloskey and Dave Shortt a marriage license, BC Supreme Court Judge, Ian Pitfield, concluded that marital discrimination against same-sex couples is justified.  He wrote:
 

The objective of limiting marriage to opposite sex couples is sufficiently important to warrant infringing on the rights of the petitioners.  The gain to society from the preservation of the deep-rooted and fundamental legal institution of opposite-sex marriage outweighs the detrimental effect of the law on the petitioners.[8]
 

Judge Pitfield went on to say that equality rights can be overridden by Section 1 of the Charter.  He dismissed other arguments, ruling that, for same-sex couples, current freedoms of expression or association, as well as mobility rights and rights of liberty and security are not infringed by the ban on marriage.[9]  In time he would be replaced.
 

In “The Idolatry of Law: When Law is Seen as ‘Like Religion’,” lawyer, Iain T. Benson, warns Canadians to be aware of a totalitarian “jurocracy,” where judges deem themselves capable of replacing morals, philosophy, or religion and making their own wills the measure of right and wrong.  In a jurocracy an elitist party usurps their proper role in a democracy.  Benson writes:
 

This new legal movement uses the language of ‘equality’ and ‘dignity’ (the first of which is in the constitution itself) to effect ends that are well beyond the usual judicial role.  In this new juggernaut of forced consensus, what is really at issue is the power of judges to force their own personal moral and theological beliefs upon society.  Under the guise of ‘legal interpretation,’ the ‘new theologians,’ believing law is comprehensive, promulgate the dogmatic rules of the day.[10]
 

Morton and Knopff label these judicial activists the “court party” - a group with their own elite agenda.  In their own words, Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry says the court’s role is to “forge a new social concensus,”[11] and Justice Rosalie Abella, says the justices are pushing “the juggernaut of rights.”[12] These terms are Court Party phraseologies for adopting homosexism.  The connection of this Court Party from provincial to federal level (just in time for the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage) is described in the Lesbian and Gay Law Notes, edited at the New York Law School.  The Notes record the appointment of two Ontario Court of Appeal Justices to the Supreme Court in August 2004:
 

The Supreme Court of Canada will take up the questions posed by the government in connection with a proposed marriage bill in October.  Meanwhile, new Prime Minister Paul Martin had to fill two vacancies that have occurred on the court, and he angered the same-sex marriage opponents by appointing Justices Louise Charron and Rosalie Abella of the Ontario Court of Appeal.  Both of these judges are seen as generally supportive of gay rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Justice Charron was part of the three-judge panel that issued a favorable decision for gay plaintiffs in M v. H, 1996 Carswell Ont 4723, 31 O.R.(3d) 417 (Ontario Ct. App. 1996), a case that required the provincial government to extend certain recognition to same-sex couples and which, on appeal to the Supreme Court, produced a ruling that stimulated reforms in Canadian federal law to recognize same-sex partners in scores of federal statutes.[13]
 

And media records of the first-ever Parliamentary Committee to review these appointments show a vexed screening process: 

Conservative deputy leader Peter MacKay called the process ‘a sham’ that breaks Prime Minister Paul Martin's promise to open the high-court selection system.  `It's a joke,’ MacKay said after the hearing. ‘It's window dressing. It's lip service. It's just running it by us for some form of credibility that doesn't exist.’  MacKay and Conservative justice critic Vic Toews lambasted Cotler [Liberal Justice Minister] for giving the panel 24 hours' notice, a three-hour televised hearing and just two days to report on the candidates. Abella and Charron weren't announced as nominees until Tuesday.  Cotler, on the other hand, spent eight months researching potential nominees, consulting with judges and lawyers, and reviewing rulings.  Even before the hearing began, Toews noted that Abella and Charron are both known for judgments supporting same-sex rights. The nine-member Supreme Court will hold a milestone hearing in October on Liberal efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. Toews suggested a political connection.  ‘It is clear for everyone to see that this is part of the prime minister's agenda’ to allow gay weddings, he said.[14]  Asked whether he was ‘hiding’ behind the Supreme Court on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage, Cotler declined to address the issue directly. He said only that in selecting the two nominees, ‘the one criterion [the government] had in mind was merit, which extends far beyond the subject matter of one case.’ [15]
 

Notwithstanding the “stacked” status of the Supreme Court at the time of the December 2004 ruling, the Court did not order Parliament to redefine marriage.  The ruling stated that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples was constitutional.  The Court declined to respond to the Government’s question - Is the traditional definition of marriage consistent with the Charter [summarized text].  And in defending its position the Supreme Court asserted, “the federal government has stated its intention to address the issue of same-sex marriage legislatively regardless of the Court’s opinion on this matter;” the same-sex litigants in the lower court rulings “have relied upon the finality of the decisions and have acquired rights which are entitled to be protected;” and a “no” response would “throw the [proposed] law into confusion.” Call this circular argument the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy, jurocracy style.
 

So blatant is the Court Party’s bias, that in the same ruling they dismiss the opposing interveners’ allegation of a “collision of rights” by a complete reversal of their previous line of reasoning.  The Supreme Court ruled, “The Proposed Act has not been passed, much less implemented.  Therefore, the alleged collision of rights is purely abstract…Charter decisions should not and must not be made in a factual vacuum.”  Try and square this ruling with the fact that Catholic School Boards had already been ordered to allow homosexual dating at school proms; that Scott Brockie, a religious print shop owner, had already been ordered to print explicit homosexual materials for the “Lesbian and Gay Archives” regardless of his faith convictions; and that promoting homosexual culture in public school curricula already has privileged status over affirming orthodox religious values.  
 

The picture described above is not of the so-called “world” (representative government and impartial judiciary) concerned with implementing the inherent provisions of the Charter.  What is described is a shell game with the goal of hiding the blame for enacting controversial and patently undemocratic governance.  The Liberal Government hid behind the Supreme Court, claiming that the justices require marriage redefinition.  The Supreme Court remained mute on the constitutionality of exclusive heterosexual marriage and hid behind the claim that the Liberal Government had already decided to redefine marriage.  What makes this undemocratic, beyond the machinations leading to the final vote (158 – 133), is that neither the Liberal government nor Supreme Court was prepared to adequately inform the voting public (and their MPs) of the downstream governance implications and of the “collision of rights” resulting from the law.
 

Civil Equality Dilemma

Where is the scripture evidence to support the notion of “civil equality” regarding homosexuals?  Pastor Price admits that there is no affirmation of homosexuality in the Bible.  So this notion is drawn from the world, from a homosexist paradigm.  He has not only succumbed to the postmodernist culture, but the Court Party has also victimized him.  If same-sex marriage is truly a Charter “equality” and “human rights” issue, and not a “political” issue, the so-called “world” (government and courts) would be enacting legislation to also allow bisexuals, queers and transsexuals to have their equality marriage rights.  But they are not, even though the Charter is interpreted to give them the same protections against discrimination on the grounds sexual orientation.
 

Moreover, the bid for marriage access represents a complete turnaround of homosexual liberation interests and strategy.  Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the institution of marriage was rabidly proclaimed by lesbian feminists and gay activists as oppressive, patriarchal, hierarchical, a social institution to be avoided.  Now, after decades of deriding and undermining marriage, all in the name of free sex and feminism, the demand is for marriage inclusion.  Gareth Kirby, editor of Xtra West, is one of a number of homosexuals who admit to the incongruency of this new claim.  He writes:
 

Marriage belongs to the heterosexual culture and we should respect that.  It’s a ceremony tying a woman and a man together… Gay men and lesbians tend to divvy out the emotional ties between different people… And love, in gay culture, is a spectrum, not a hierarchy.  That’s our culture…If we win access to this marriage snake-pit, it will begin the erosion of the culture that we’ve worked three decades to build.[16]
 

In the beginning, typical liberation activists, like Margaret Small, sought separation not inclusion.  She wrote:
 

Heterosexual ideology limits our vision of any alternative sexed, erotic community…You have to create the space that stands outside of all the boundaries of heterosexuality - assumptions about the family, about marriage, about motherhood, about housework, about childrearing, about rape, about illegitimacy, about spinsterhood - about everything that has to do with the relationships between men and women.[17]
 

And in 1990, Paula Ettelbrick, Lambda’s[18] legal director, argued for upholding the original radical feminist analysis, which declares marriage oppressive and discriminatory, an intrusion of state authority into individual relationships.   Rather than bring gay people into the marriage system, Ettelbrick would eliminate the preferential treatment granted to married people.  If gay men and lesbians were given the right to marry, she fears, a replication would occur of the discriminatory two-tier system already existing among married and unmarried straight couples; legalized gay marriage, then, would make gays who don’t marry outlaws among outlaws.  She argues:
 

I don’t know that any of us are ready to push for more than two people getting married.  If you have two women and two men who are raising that child, assuming that one of the men is the biological father and one of the women is the biological mother of the child, you still have two individuals in that family unit who do not relate legally to the child.  The broad nature of gay relationships - some sexual, some mentoring, some fraternal, some utilitarian - commonly involves more than two individuals.  A movement to bring lesbians and gay men into the existing marriage system would almost certainly curtail ongoing experimentation with new extended families that recreate the complex emotional and practical support systems that existed in extended families of pre-industrial times.[19]
 

Given that marriage is about monogamy, the homosexual bid for inclusion seems spurious and hazardous to the meaning of the institution.  The 1994 National Health and Social Life Survey (US) revealed that 75 per cent of heterosexual men and 85 per cent of heterosexual women said they had never cheated in their marriage.  On the other hand, a federally funded health study of Vancouver gay men found that only two per cent were in long-term relationships.[20]  In his book, The Male Couple’s Guide: Finding A Man, Making A Home, Building A Life, Eric Marcus gives insight into the meaning the majority of gay men associate with primary partnership. He suggests the following rules be negotiated:

Sex with other partners is allowed, but must be kept secret. (2) Sex with other partners is allowed, but must be discussed.  (3) Sex is not permitted with mutual friends.  (4) Only anonymous sexual encounters are permitted.  (5) Sex is permitted only when one partner is out of town.  (6) Sex with other partners is not permitted at home.  (7) Sex with other partners is permitted at home, but not in the couple’s bedroom.  (8) Outside sex is permitted, but only when both partners choose a third to join them. [21]
 

Further separating homosexual coupling from heterosexual marriage, Marcus adds: “Once you’ve set rules, leave room for discussion to adjust the boundaries should you find that the original rules aren’t working in practice.”   Robert Williams, the first openly gay Episcopal priest to be ordained, declared a virtual homosexist free-sex commandment in Newsweek, when he wrote: “If people want to try, OK.  But the fact is, people are not monogamous.  It is crazy to hold up this ideal… ”[22] Finally, Mark Steyn makes a severe point about the multi-partner lifestyle of gays in the American Spector: “A grisly plague has not furthered the cause of homosexual monogamy, so why should a permit from a town clerk.”[23]
 

If many homosexuals are against redefining marriage, and if so few are genuinely interested in the institution, what is the movement really after with all this effort?  Redefinition of marriage is fundamentally not about equality, it is a bid for sameness, a strategy to achieve social acceptance, as already said, a way to deconstruct heterosexism.  Orthodox Rabbi Reuven Bulka of Ottawa describes the dynamic:
 

Nobody wants to look like they’re denying anyone else equal rights – that’s the mantra of today, equal rights.  Still with regards to the definition of marriage, this is not an issue of equality, but a claim to sameness; and it’s not the same.  Marriage has always been a sacred thing throughout the history of civilization, and religious traditionalists are defending what they see as the sanctity of marital union.  If everything is marriage, then nothing is marriage.[24]
 

Indeed, Martin Cauchon, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, wrote in “Marriage and Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Unions: A Discussion Paper, November 2002:
 

What are others doing?
 

Marriage could remain an opposite-sex institution.  What would this be like?
 

If Parliament chooses to keep marriage, as it is, that is the “union of one man and one woman,” this opposite-sex meaning could be set out explicitly in a new federal law.  In that case, this would be a clear expression of what Parliament believes marriage is, but would not address the equality concerns of same-sex couples.
 

If Parliament wished to also address some of the equality concerns, it would enact a new federal statute creating a new registry that would be deemed equivalent to marriage for the purposes of federal laws and programs.  This new civil union or domestic partner registry would either be open only to same-sex couples and to opposite-sex couples who choose not to marry.  The federal statute creating this new registry could include a provision stating that marriage is an opposite-sex institution.[26]
 

Marriage Is Not a Christian Ordinance

Pastor Price’s statements speak volumes, but not in evangelical vernacular.  Ironically, only two months before his sermon, The Peoples Church paper (Pastor Price’s church paper) carried an article by Bruce Clemenger, President of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, which shows the EFC President holding an opinion in contradiction to Price.  Clemenger said:
 

There is no strict separation of church and state when it comes to marriage in Canada.  To suggest otherwise is to misunderstand Canadian constitutional history, our traditions and practice…Civil and religious marriage have been fused in Canada.  Seventy-five percent of marriages in Canada are performed by clergy, ninety-eight percent in Ontario.  It is naïve to presume that these can be separated without consequence to marriage.

What marriage redefinition advocates are not revealing, is that same-sex marriage opens the institution to further assault (deconstruction) by the hostile majority within the homosexual community.

Merriam-Webster’s defines the word “liberal” as lacking moral restraint; not literal or strict; and not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy or traditional forms of change.  Few would flinch at labeling the United Church of Canada as a liberal entity, if not apostate.  The Peoples Church is evangelical, a member of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.  So too are Baptists.  Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister, as were his father and grandfather.  Is Pastor Price implying by his “civil rights - liberal churches” analogy that only the liberal-minded can “have a dream;” that only the liberal-minded are defenders of civil liberties and human rights?  Evangelical Christians look at abortion and cry for the rights of the unborn, and see a parallel with slavery and with treatment of those in Nazi death camps; they “have a dream.”  Both liberals and conservatives try to claim ownership of renowned reformers such as William Wilberforce to advance their points-of-view.  The fact is William Wilberforce was as interested in promoting moral and spiritual reform at home as he was in the abolition of slavery.  One of his lesser known accomplishments was the issue of a royal proclamation for the “Encouragement of Piety and Virtue.”[29
 

Postmodernism, according to Pastor Price, is the dominant “world” view that there is no complete picture, morality is subjective, and there is a plurality of sexualities.  If this assertion is correct, then Christianity must be inherently conservative.   In this era of phenomenal liberalization and moral change, Christianity must be counter-cultural to preserve the good from the past.  The Christian objective in the “world” is always to conserve the idea that God exists and that society, government and courts should recognize His will in their behavior and governance.  It is not clear what aim is served by putting evangelicals on the defensive regarding civil liberties and human rights.
 

In the context of his sermon on homosexuality and same-sex marriage what is the rationale in the connection of “civil liberties” or “civil rights” with “men and women stand equally before God; and therefore, equally before the law”?  God has not given same-sex attracted men or women license to have sex with the same gender.  In His kingdom such behavior is not an available civil liberty, not a civil right.  In one sense homosexuals and heterosexuals are equal before God; all will face their Creator and give an account on judgment day.  But clearly, the saved and the lost, the sinner and the saint, are not equal in God’s eyes.  There are many vices that will preclude both unrepentant heterosexuals and homosexuals from the kingdom; however, Apostle Paul specifically identifies homosexual offenders as excluded from the kingdom.[30]  This is not the declaration of equally before God that fits with Pastor Price’s line of thinking.
 

Is he implying that homosexuals cannot/need not repent of their behavior because, like one’s skin colour, they have no choice in the matter; they are not responsible for their so-called “identity”?  It is true that one cannot repent of skin colour, ethnic background, gender or physical disability.  God will not judge people on these criteria.  In this regard, men and women stand equally before God.  [Much more will be said later on the issue of “identity” in Part 2 of the article]  But gender and physical disability does impose natural limitations, which invalidate the notion of equality.  Two females are not equal to a male and a female in reproductive capacity.  And a blind person is not equal to one who can see in all situations.  For example, the blind are precluded from obtaining an automobile driver’s license; they are denied eligibility to play in the National Hockey League.  God does not judge anyone for his or her blindness, but nature discriminates on this basis.  The history of marriage is entirely rooted in providing legal license to procreate and rear children; hence the associated term “born out of wedlock.”  If Pastor Price is implying, for the sake of “equality before the law,” that the inert nature of same-sex unions should be overlooked in granting homosexuals a marriage license, he should not link his argument to God, because male and female were created by God exclusively for heterosexual pair bonding and procreation.  
 

Pastor Price demonstrates a liberal bias and humanist acculturation in the emphasis he places on civil liberties in contrast to the absence of meaningful guidance on the negative consequences of redefining marriage.  Most would contend that scripture does not depict choosing between the Law of God (where sodomy is a sin) and the Law of man (where sodomy is legal) as a dilemma.

Ignoring The Assault On The Biblical Family
 

While focusing on equality rights, Pastor Price omits to acknowledge the longstanding homosexual assault on the nuclear family and to recognize the negative consequences of marriage redefinition on the family.  Deconstruction of heterosexism made the nuclear family a target.  Jodi Freeman, an activist who helped develop EGALE’s[31] factum in the ground-breaking gay rights case, Mossup, had written that “rights litigation can be a useful tool in the pursuit of social change, as part of a broader strategy.”[32] Just as the traditional family is defined by law, so changing the law can deconstruct it.  And in 1990, Didi Herman, Canada’s most published gay rights lawyer described the assault on heterosexist governance in stronger terms: “law reform is part of an ideological battle, and fighting over the meanings of marriage and family constitutes resistance to heterosexual hegemony.”[33]  Thus began a publishing strategy aimed, in Herman’s words,  “to supply the appropriate argument for lesbian and gay litigants to make.”[34]  David Raymond Greener conducted a study of 22 law review articles discussing the definition of family, all published since the 1982 Charter.  While the broader literature revealed a lively debate about the merits of the family, including defenses of the traditional family, the law journal articles were “uniformly critical of ‘familial ideology.”  The “traditional family,” was portrayed as “the ideological centerpiece of heterosexual supremacy.”[35]  Morton and Knopff comment:
 

The only serious disagreement in this literature was whether to seek a partial deconstruction of the heterosexual definition of family so as to allow homosexual marriage, or to pursue ‘a more radical deconstruction that aims to abolish any meaningful distinction between family and non-family.[36]
 

According to Jodi Freeman, “recognizing marriage between gay men or lesbians would revolutionize its [the family’s] meaning.”[37]

In The Case for Same-Sex Marriage, William N. Eskridge Jr. contends that homosexual culture will not assimilate and disappear in an era of redefined marriage, but will continue to experiment and improvise.  He writes:
 

Initially, it seems unlikely that married gay couples would be just like married straight couples...Nor would the gay and lesbian culture cease to be distinctive. One feature of our experience has been an emphasis on ‘families we choose,’ anthropologist Kath Weston’s felicitous phrase…Such families are fluid alliances independent of ties imposed by blood and by law.  Often estranged from blood kin, openly gay people are more prone to rely on current as well as former lovers, close friends, and neighbors as their social and emotional support system.  Include children in this fluid network and the complexity becomes more pronounced…Because same-sex couples cannot have children through their own efforts, a third party must be involved: a former different-sex spouse, a sperm donor, a surrogate mother, a parent or agency offering a child for adoption.  The family of choice can and often does include a relationship with this third party.  Gay and lesbian couples are pioneering novel family configurations, and gay marriage would not seriously obstruct the creation of the larger families we choose.[38]
 

Christians should not be indifferent to the number of children growing up without knowledge of their biological heritage or to the effects of “fluid” parenting or to the effects of mother or father absence.  Does Pastor Price’s affinity for homosexual equality rights extend to indifference to family make-up; indifference to the importance of heterosexual parenthood; indifference to the use of technologies to overcome anatomically inert same-sex coupling?  We can look to Scandinavia for some idea of the consequence of breaking down the nuclear family model.  A study of kinship rights in Sweden shows the path that the country has taken.  Homosexuals have enjoyed marriage equality through registered partnerships since 1995.   Lawyer Siv Westerberg said in her lecture to The Family Education Trust:
 

Sweden has, during the last decades, developed into a kind of socio-medical totalitarian state.  A totalitarian state where families are deprived of the right to care for and educate their own children; and are deprived of the basic human right to both family life and private life...both people with low incomes, and professionals have no choice.  You have to leave your small children for eight to ten hours every day in state governed care.  In statistical terms, a child is in day nursery from the age of one year till the age of six years, will encounter, on average, 275 different grown up people who care for them.  As for their own parents – they are lucky if they see them for more than one or two hours a day.  By this means, everybody is delivered into the embrace of the state and its servants.  By this means too, the state has succeeded where many other tyrannies have failed, in controlling the family.[39]
 

Social anthropologist Peter Klevius warns against other abuses of Scandinavian governance on nuclear family kinship.  He writes:
 

The word religion can namely be traced to Latin re- ‘back’ and ligare ‘tie,’ i.e., kinship tied back in the form of ancestor worship.  Kinship could therefore be seen as the main element in binding the society together and religion the form in which this is done.  Today the base on which most of the child protection laws stand is the view that ‘the child is an independent subject of its own rights’ (Finnish child protection law of 1984) and therefore stands in an obvious state of opposition to kinship systems and religion…Actions severing family bonds take the form not only of taking children into the custody of the state, but also…of marginalizing parenthood by an increasing amount of rather aggressive interventions by the social state in matters of child-rearing.  What has been forgotten in legalization of these efforts ‘in the best interests of the child,’ is the child’s right to continuity concerning its family and relatives…In a recent and quite remarkable study, Flinn and England have shown how reduced kinship ties in the rearing environment increase children’s stress measured as cortisol levels…In a Finnish study consisting of 7,000 15-16 years-old children the incest (sexual abuse at home) figures for girls raised by their biological parents was less than 0.15 percent while the figures for girls living with step fathers or in completely non-biological environments, were 15-30 times higher (Sariola 1990).[40]
 

The heterosexual system of marriage and nuclear family is the chief obstacle to an experimental and totalitarian society, where the minority dictates social policy to the majority, through state-sponsored homosexism.  If biblical marriage prospers, the biblical family will also and the realm of the state and its bureaucratic intrusion into the affairs of its citizens can be limited.  If the biblical design and code for sexual relations is favoured, the imposition of technological reproductive alternatives will be mitigated.  George Gilder describes the imminent technocratic intrusion this way:
 

If the family should widely breakdown, then the world of artificial wombs, clones and child-development centers would become an important reality rather than a laboratory curiosity.[41]
 

Pastor Price Knows Better Than Those Committed to Stopping Marriage Redefinition