Why the So-Called “Respect for Marriage Act” Would Spell Disaster for the Family, and Why Republicans Must Defeat it

Note: This article showcases a less-than-six-minute audio clip a from an April 4, 2022 Cross Politic Studios podcast featuring attorney Jeff Shafer, currently director of the Hale Institute at New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. In the clip, Shafer warns that Obergefell, by mandating what many have called “marriage equality,” is upending existing law by effectively mandating that since all marriages “equal,” they essentially are same-sex marriages and must be treated as same-sex marriages. Therefore children — all children — now belong to the state. This article presents the clip and the background information, but enough of the background information is included in the audio clip to give the listener and reader a sense of just how alarming this situation is. The audio clip, along with the text of what Jeff Shafer says, is available on a single page here.

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The central message of biblical Christianity is the possibility of men and women approaching God through the work of Christ. But the message also has secondary results, among them the unusual and wide freedoms which biblical Christianity gave to countries where it supplied the consensus. When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos. When this happens, as it has today, the, to quote [“American moral and social philosopher“] Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.” At that point the words left and right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left: the results are the same. An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it—from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. That is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus.
—Francis Schaeffer¹—

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Key points: This article explains how Obergefell has negated the natural parental rights of married opposite-sex couples, and in so doing it demonstrates why same-sex marriage is so dangerous. Yes, it’s true that the full impact of the negation of parental rights by Obergefell has not yet been fully seen by all, but eventually it will be! Meanwhile, the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” would enshrine Obergefell, same-sex marriage, and the negation of natural parental rights into federal law. Republicans can prevent this from happening, and they should. But will they? If they don’t, they will be committing political suicide.

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In this post I want to write about a topic I’ve discussed before — the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” and the possibility that enough Senate Republicans will go along with it to make it law. Previously we discussed the situation here and here. We stated in the first of these articles that “it is unconscionable that” numerous Republicans in the US Senate are

working with Democrats…to enshrine same-sex marriage into federal law. The Obergefell decision by SCOTUS (an unelected body) is certainly an affront to nature and to centuries of accepted norms and legal practice in the civilized world. If the US Congress (an elected body) were to pass a federal law consistent with the Obergefell ruling, this would effectively make same-sex marriage permanent — irreversible in a practical sense. The legislation is deceptively referred to as the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Nothing could be further from the truth.…

In July,

[f]orty-seven House Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic caucus in voting for the bill, leading to speculation that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) might be able to find enough Republican votes to pass the legislation. Although a handful of Republican senators have gone on record in opposition to the bill, a few have indicated support, while the majority have remained noncommittal.

Foundational Realities

Here are some basic realities about marriage of which Americans, including Republicans and including self-professed Christians, need to be reminded.

• • • As Chuck Colson stated many years ago, “the argument” of those advocating same-sex marriage “is that to deny homosexuals marriage is manifestly unfair. But it’s not unfair. Gays and lesbians are not unworthy of marriage; they are incapable of marriage.” To say this is not to malign same-sex couples, but simply to uphold marriage for what it was created to be, what it has been in civilized societies for centuries, and what it actually is, regardless of what people think or say.

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Gays and lesbians are not unworthy of marriage; they are incapable of marriage.
—Chuck Colson—

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• • • Here’s the truth. Affirming same-sex marriage is like saying round squares, dark sunlight, or a mild F-5 tornado can exist. Marriage is what it is, not because any two people come together, but because two opposite-sex people come together and commit themselves to each other for life. It is their being male and female that makes a marriage possible; that dynamic makes it a marriage. Remember that same-sex partners cannot naturally reproduce.
    • Jesus said in Matthew 19, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason [in other words, because God created the members of the human race male and female] a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” Thus, as we have indicated, the foundation and substance of marriage is an opposite-sex couple. If you have two men or two women, you can’t have a marriage. Jesus’ words, as well as Genesis and creation, or nature, itself, attest to this reality. Saying otherwise is either lying or promoting a lie because one is deceived. Being sincere doesn’t make a lie the truth.

The Obergefell Ruling

While each item in the above bulleted list is true, we must understand what the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling actually did to marriage in the eyes of the state, from a legal perspective. First, consider the opening paragraph of the majority ruling in Obergefell, a ruling Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

A Sober Warning to Republicans and to Everyone Else Tempted to Give Consent to “Marriage Equality”

Just how has marriage been redefined? “Marriage equality” is the mantra. Now, because of Obergefell, all marriages are equal in terms of the law — and they can only be equal if the state does not recognize the inherent abilities of opposite-sex couples to have and to parent children. Don’t dismiss this as a miscalculation or a fantasy. It is neither. Buckle your safety belts! Here’s what that means: From a legal perspective, every marriage, including marriages involving opposite-sex couples, must be treated as being a same-sex marriage.

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Because of Obergefell, from a legal perspective, every marriage, including marriages involving opposite-sex couples, must be treated as a same-sex marriage.

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Well, what does that mean? On the Cross Politic Studios Podcast of April 4, 2022
(here and here), attorney Jeff Shafer, a former ADF attorney who serves as the director of New St. Andrews College’s Hale Institute, explains in this must-hear, less-than-six-minutes-long audio clip. This is perhaps the most important audio clip I’ve shared since I started writing and posting articles at Word Foundations over seven years ago.

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This is perhaps the most important audio clip I’ve shared since I started writing and posting articles at Word Foundations over seven years ago.

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Jeff Shafer: One of the developments that is associated with the legal description of same-sex and opposite-sex couples as being equal — no differences between them as far as the law is concerned — then that means whatever would be different about them cannot have legal consequence.

What’s the difference? One is a procreative union and one is not. So insofar as both are married and thus have access to children, what’s the new understanding of parenthood? It has to be some understanding that encompasses both of them, not just one of them. Because if you were to assign significance to the procreative power of a male and female coming together, you would be thereby diminishing the same-sex couple which is incapable of doing that. Which thus requires the removal of significance in the law of that natural filial relation between parent and child. Parents should now be understood as a custodial relationship by which adults of some kind of management competence are in possession of children.

Now we have the technological model of procreating, of reproduction, being ratified in law as a constitutional imperative, on the back side of — this was happening on the front side of Obergefell, as well, in certain state courts. But the Supreme Court itself, in 2017 essentially ratified the birth certificate claim of the same-sex spouse, essentially giving parenthood [to same-sex couples].

And what we see corresponding to this is courts that purport to be interpreting state laws that speak of paternity, of husbands and fathers, using, “gender-neutral interpretation methods,” converting sexed categories, like fatherhood, husband, and the like into androgynous terms altogether. So the physiological connection, the genetic profundity associated with father to child is converted into a manufacturing model [and thus sexless] understanding, and the law is updated to accommodate itself to the new parenthood model.

Chocolate Knox: Does that bring us up to Dave Rubin?

Jeff Shafer: It does. I suppose and this is why he’s getting the applause of conservatives. They’re accustomed to this frame of reference.

Toby Sumpter: It strikes me, too. You alluded to this earlier, Jeff, and we haven’t emphasized this so much — yet, but if personhood, human life, family — all these things — are a matter of selection, to create [or] make what you will, it seems to me that the other thing that people frequently miss is they’re doing it in the name of freedom, for the masses, pick what you will, choose your own adventure, human life. But the unstated thing is that the state is behind all this. The state is the one enforcing this on states and families and communities, which means ultimately what is being stated, though, is that the state is the one that has the right to define what a human being is, what a father, or mother, or family unit is. Correct?

Jeff Shafer: Correct! Yeah, very well put.

Toby Sumpter: I mean, so, it’s — how does this, how does this happen, where people [tout] freedom, freedom, freedom! Yea! Freedom! And the very thing that’s actually being taken away is freedom? Because the state is gathering it to itself the prerogative to define and proclaim reality, essentially.

Jeff Shafer: Yeah, we are living in an epoch of flamboyant madness. There’s a kind of thoughtlessness associated with that. But in another sense we [have to] say it’s very logical. Once you’ve committed yourself to particular ideas, you better be ready to live with everything that’s associated with it.

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We are living in an epoch of flamboyant madness.
—Jeff Shafer—

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But, yeah. Your point, I think, is an excellent one, which is that when individual rights — the right to define yourself implies the idea that there is nothing external to you, [that] there’s no reality beyond the borders of your cranium. And that means the repudiation of any kind of natural authority, outside of you. So if you find yourself in a family, for instance, the state is going to have to knock down the family in order to elevate your interests, and self-definition, and the like.

So this plays out very nicely in these cases in which parents are having the custody of their children taken away from them because they refuse to “trans” them, you see. So the child’s self-definition means, in fact, the repudiation of the family altogether. And this should not surprise us. If male and female have no objective meaning; mother and father, likewise, have no meaning. There is no authority in that relationship any longer. It could only exist if male meant something, if female meant something. If the material and paternal relationships meant something. But once we’ve determined that there is no authority in those relationships, because there is no such thing as male and female, the family is gone.

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If male and female have no objective meaning; mother and father, likewise, have no meaning. There is no authority in that relationship any longer. It could only exist if male meant something, if female meant something. If the material and paternal relationships meant something. But once we’ve determined that there is no authority in those relationships, because there is no such thing as male and female, the family is gone.
—Jeff Shafer—

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Chocolate Knox: This is why it’s so easy for school boards to make decisions about what your kids can and cannot learn because there is no category of your kids anymore.

Jeff Shafer: They don’t belong to you.

Note this: It isn’t just the school boards who are acting as if they own America’s children. It’s also the state of California and the CDC (also go here and here) — and these are just some examples. Here is information about recent action taken by the CDC:

https://twitter.com/KateTalksTruth/status/1583151579141898241?s=20&t=-me-jLZHjQa31v9Jpl4ygg

In Other Words…

In other words — and this is legal reality, not a conspiracy theory or an ungrounded fear — Obergefell is dictating that children — all children — are the property of the state! This should not surprise us, given the reality that in calling a same-sex relationship a marriage, Obergefell upended the natural order of things, a design many people would call the created order, an order initiated and established from the beginning of time by God.

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Obergefell is dictating that children — all children — are the property of the state!

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It is no coincidence that at the same time all this is happening, the following events also are taking place. In his Letter to the American Church, author and speaker Eric Metaxas describes the sexual chaos and confusion running rampant in American society.

Very young children in schools are being fed pernicious ideas on the subject of sexuality—ideas with which their young minds are quite unable to cope, and to which their own parents object.

Older children are being so confused by sexual activists that they agree to have their bodies mutilated, so that they can never become the men and women God created them to be.²

Young women dedicate their whole beings to athletic excellence, only to be roughly shoved aside in what ought to be their long-awaited moment of triumph by a man who, to the applause of a hopelessly confused and broken culture, claims suddenly to be a woman. A young man is confused about his sexuality, but he only hears one message: that he must seize and celebrate his same-sex attractions as a gift from God.³

All these events are both causes and results of the upending of the created order by and through Obergefell.

Republicans — Be Forewarned!

If Republicans go along with the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” and cooperate with Democrats to enshrine same-sex marriage into federal law, they not only

• • • will be authorizing the seizing of children from families because “marriage equality” makes children the property of the state; they also
    • will be putting their stamp of approval on all these the other things we’ve highlighted that are occurring in society!

The “Respect for Marriage Act” therefore

• • • will make it all the more difficult to legally challenge transgender madness, including mutilation surgeries on biologically healthy young men and young women. It
    • will make it all the more difficult to keep biological men out of women’s restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities. It
    • will make it all the more difficult to protect religious liberty, no matter what religious liberty “protections” have been negotiated to get Republicans to support the legislation. Even before the Obergefell ruling was issued on June 26, 2015, Professor Robert George warned that same-sex marriage would put religious liberty in peril. Finally, returning to our primary point, it
    • will make it all the more difficult to make the case, legally, that biological parents have natural parental rights.

We already have Obergefell. Even states that went to great lengths to put marriage protection amendments in their state constitutions have been forced to recognize same-sex marriage because of the ruling endorsed by five out of nine unelected judges. And now the the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” is being considered by Congress — a body composed of two houses of elected representatives and senators. The above bulleted items highlight legal tasks that already are difficult because of Obergefell. Were the “Respect for Marriage Act” to pass and be signed into law, these tasks would be made even tougher, and perhaps next to impossible!

Republicans, do not do this to our country! Demonstrate, please, that at least in this case (Francis Schaeffer’s statement, which we quoted at the top of this post, notwithstanding), the “right” is not going to lead to the same destination as the “left.”

For the sakes of the members of future generations of Americans, and thus for the sake of America’s future and the sake of America herself — oppose the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act.”

 

 

Copyright  © 2022 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.

top image credit: Photo by Luemen Rutkowski on Unsplash

Notes:

¹Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1976), 245.

²Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2022), 84.

³Metaxas, 91.