The status of marriage in the U.S. is very big deal indeed

A couple of weeks or so ago, a number of Winona Daily News editors accused the president of using the homosexual marriage issue as a diversion to displace concern about more pressing issues. In effect they were saying gay marriage is not that big a deal.

I adamantly disagree. It is a very, very big deal. By definition, marriage is the union of a man and woman and nothing else. The institution of marriage is under assault and we need a constitutional amendment to ensure it stays protected.

It is remarkable that in all of human history we have suddenly come to think that marriage may be something other than between male and female. If homosexual marriage is a civil right, why hasn’t it been an issue in the centuries before now. One would have thought that an earlier civilization would have addressed and embraced homosexual “marriage.” And one would think that other civilizations would have adopted the practice also. Or are we now suddenly smarter than everyone who lived before us?

This debate is really about destruction and overthrowing a norm. As National Review puts it, it is “discarding the roots that have nurtured and still sustain Western liberal democratic societies.”

Some conclude that legalizing homosexual “marriage will have no effect other than granting an oppressed minority a civil right. The Canadian experience tells us otherwise. In Ontario, every reference to “husband, wife, widow, and widower” in every statute had to be removed. On the national level, one can no longer use the term “natural parent” any longer. Legal parent is the term that has to be used now. Husband, wife, mother, and father have been essentially stripped of any legal meaning. If you don’t think similar pressures to redefine terms won’t be brought to bear here in the United States, then you are probably a wild-eyed liberal with an out-of-date lexicon.
[snip] Winona Daily News