A few quick thoughts based on what I’ve heard from some young, self proclaimed Catholic pro-life advocates as the Supreme Court heard a few landmark cases involving same-sex marriage. Namely, pledging their support for “marriage equality” and, when pressed, suggesting that it does not and should not have anything to do with abortion or the pro-life movement.

First of all, I welcome everyone who cares about the lives of the unborn and wants to join the fight against evil of abortion. And I appreciate all of your efforts.

BUT.

If you fail to see the connection between abortion and sexual immorality/the breakdown of the (traditional) family, then you are missing a HUGE piece of the culture of death puzzle.

As longtime readers have heard me say many times, people did not wake up one day and decide that they had a right to kill their own offspring. But they did progressively decide that it was their right to have meaningless sex without limit or consequence.

It is no mere coincidence that Roe v. Wade came after the lesser known Griswold v. Connecticut, overturning a CT law banning the use of contraception, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Yeah, but what does same-sex marriage have to do with this, you ask?

Divorcing procreation from the marital act is what got us into this mess in the first place, so accepting and affirming a ‘sexual’ relationship through which procreation is, by its very nature (this is key), impossible certainly doesn’t help things. Indeed, it can only serve to make them worse.

It’s not enough just to save babies, change laws and shut down abortion facilities. All of that is essential and good, of course, but abortion is a symptom of a much wider societal problem. According to the The Guttmacher Institute, 85% of women who opt for abortion are unmarried. The community most afflicted by abortion, African-Americans, is also the community that suffers the lowest marriage rate.

That’s not all. We’re also getting to the point where nearly half of the children born in the United States today are born to unwed mothers. While it’s certainly preferable that these women choose life for their unborn children, we can’t overlook the fact that this situation is not only not ideal, but it puts these children at a significant disadvantage, financially, emotionally, socially and it’s having a seriously negative affect on our society as a whole.

In order to have lasting change we must also work to build a culture that, on top of respecting the unborn child, also respects the act through which she’s created and preserves the institution designed by nature to love and protect her and give her the best future possible.

One other thing.

I have also seen some people actually trying to pass off making same-sex ‘marriage’ legal and legitimate as “pro-life” because it would make gay adoption easier and, after all, “every child deserves a loving home.” I see their logic, but homosexual couples aren’t all just adopting homeless children. An increasing number of them are turning to third-party reproduction to have children, which is, for both homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, an abuse of human rights that I believe should be a larger priority for the pro-life movement as a whole.

And then, of course, there’s this nonsense that was introduced in California recently. The comparison between same-sex marriage/relationships to infertile heterosexual ones is ludicrous. Not all infertilities are equal.

In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul II said that “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Likewise, life and marriage cannot, must not be separated for they are the glasses through which we get a glimpse of the resurrection and the fullness of eternal life.

Previous posts:
Equal Persons, Unequal Acts
Marriage Laws: It’s Not About Regulating Love
No to Gay Marriage, Yes to You