Thinking to Believe

A proposal to legalize same-sex marriage in Britain in 2014 has passed its first major hurdle to becoming law when the lower house of Parliament passed the proposal 400-175 on Tuesday.

British law already allows for civil unions, which offer the exact same rights and privileges of marriage.  Since same-sex marriage is already recognized in England in-all-but-name, the legal ramifications of this law should be negligible.  The real impact of this law will be social.  I’ll explain how, but first let me make the case against calling same-sex unions “marriage” even if they enjoy the exact same rights afforded to married couples.

Treated as equals vs. being thought of as equals

Personally, I oppose any legal recognition and/or regulation of same-sex relationships, including civil unions.  If you are going to create civil unions as an alternative institution to marriage, however, it is foolish to make it identical to marriage in every respect but the name.  It’s like saying “you can work at the same place I work at, make the same money I make, get the same health insurance I have, but you can’t call it a ‘job.’”[1]  Nevertheless, that is what England and other countries (including various states in the U.S.) have done.  They have created two institutions that are identical in all-but-name.

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Russia is experiencing a population problem.  Putin has hired Boyz II Men ahead of Valentine’s Day to get the Russians in the mood for baby-making!  As Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard quipped, he should have hired a pro-life organization instead.  In Russia, for every 10 babies born 13 more are aborted.  That is a staggeringly high abortion rate (for comparison, in the U.S. “only” 2.5 babies are aborted for every 10 babies born).  More babies are killed than born!

Russia will never fix its population problem until it fixes its culture of death that devalues unborn human life.