Thomas Martin

Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Recently in the "Midland Voices" of the Omaha World-Herald there was a series of op-eds on the controversial issues of abortion and same sex-marriage. Regardless of the legality of these two practices or a citizen's approval or denial of these acts as rights guaranteed by the Constitution, both practices are united in their refusal of the life-giving fruits of the act of procreation, the means by which human creation is forwarded. The former aborts the delivery of the child into creation and the latter denies the natural procreative function.

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, recently clouded the issue of marriage in ruling that:

. . . moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians, and further claimed that Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Judge Walker is confused about the institution of marriage when claiming "Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine the notion in the California Constitution that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."

Using Judge Walker's term "opposite-sex couples" for married couples is like calling bachelors single -- it is a redundancy. He might as well establish the right for bachelors to marry and remain bachelors or for a man to marry himself on the grounds that he alone is compatible with himself.

The relationship between husband and wife [opposite-sex couples] is not superior in kind to that of man and man or woman and woman. It is different in kind.

Marriage is not a natural right, it is a natural practice that forwards mankind on earth.

Aristotle long ago noted that the natural domestic society, a family of father, mother, and children, precedes the political society. It is the social relationship of a father and mother into which each child is naturally born. This is the root of natural law, what is natural to man, and can plainly be seen as the natural function, for example, of the sexual organs.

Furthermore, the father and mother are entrusted with raising their children to live virtuously, which is learned habitually until the child comes to the age of rational discernment. At this point, he has the capacity to live a moral life by actively following the moral principles necessary for the end and perfection of the family, as well as the nation.

In the moral universe in which man resides, Aristotle's patriarchal family of father, mother, and child was turned on its head by the Holy family of history -- Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The traditional position of the Father was replaced by the Son when Mary looked down on her child and her God. A child born of a woman was now at the center of the moral universe.

President John Adams noted:

Nature, which has established in the universe a chain of being and universal order, descending from archangels to microscopic animalcules, has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal. Although, among men, all are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.

We are not equal in kind as physical beings, nor do we possess the same physical capacities or intellectual aptitudes by nature. A father is not a mother and a mother is not a father. Government cannot take what is unequal in kind and make it equal, but it can enforce juridical equality, which is to protect each person's right to fulfill himself as nature has so endowed him and to do freely what is right as a virtuous citizen.

American-endowed rights in the Declaration of Independence come from God, nature's creator, and are the basic principles of the moral universe that Judge Walker fails to recognize when claiming that "moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

George Washington's Farewell Address is well worth remembering in these times when judges dispense of moral disapproval in the face of natural practices:

'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

So goes the moral foundation of the family, so goes the nation. *

"If you meet it promptly and without flinching -- you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!" British Prime Minister Winston Churchill