Let us not bastardize marriage

Pope Francis may be one of the most compassionate pontiffs to occupy the Chair of Peter.

Nevertheless, he calls a spade a spade.

After referring to “ideological colonization” during his trip to the Philippines last Jan. 15-18, the Pope wasted no time in reiterating the need to protect the family in his weekly audiences in Rome. In a general audience last Feb. 4, he made a declaration in defense of the family just days before Slovakians voted for the third time on whether or not same-sex unions should be legalized in their country. He did not mince words: “The family is being hit, the family is being struck, and the family is being bastardized… You can call everything family, right? … What is being proposed is not marriage; it’s an association. But it’s not marriage! It’s necessary to say these things very clearly, and we have to say it!”

Pope Francis lamented the fact that there are so many “new forms” of unions that are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.” As he did on many occasions in the Philippines, he encouraged Catholics and non-Catholics alike to engage in “close combat” with these destructive unions, particularly in the area of pastoral care, saying that it is the key to defending the sanctity of the sacrament. The bishops of Slovakia urged widespread support for campaigns to keep the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Referencing St. Joseph’s immediate defense of the Child Jesus when informed by an angel that Herod was seeking to kill the boy after his birth, the bishops encouraged all parents and grandparents to go to the polls and defend young lives and families.

As an expert on constitutional law, Jemy Gatdula, pointed out, the framers of the 1987 Philippine Constitution were very much influenced by the declaration of principles found in the US Constitution about the inalienable rights of every human being. Such rights proceed from the very nature of man as defined by philosophers who lived centuries before Christ.

Gatdula wrote in his commentary on the sexual orientation or gender identity antidiscrimination bill, quoting noted legal expert John Finnis: “At the heart of the Platonic-Aristotelian and later ancient philosophical rejections of all homosexual conduct, and thus of the modern ‘gay’ ideology, are three fundamental theses: (1) the commitment of a man and a woman to each other in the sexual union of marriage is intrinsically good and reasonable, and is incompatible with sexual relations outside marriage; (2) homosexual acts are radically and peculiarly nonmarital, and for that reason intrinsically unreasonable and unnatural; (3) furthermore, according to Plato, if not Aristotle, homosexual acts have a special similarity to solitary masturbation, and both types of radically nonmarital act are manifestly unworthy of the human being and immoral.”

From the use of natural reason alone, the intellectual leaders of ancient cultures arrived at the conclusion that the enjoyment of sexual pleasure outside of the marital union between a man and a woman is immoral. Homosexual acts are not being singled out. Masturbation, fornication, adultery and all other forms of sexual acts that are not within the marital union and open to life are also considered intrinsically evil. We should do everything possible to prevent a few lawmakers from smuggling into the sexual orientation or gender identity antidiscrimination bill any provision that will legalize gay marriages.

It is one thing to stop discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and another thing to smuggle into a law now pending in Congress a definition of marriage that will include homosexual unions. When the framers of the 1987 Constitution declared that marriage is an “inviolable institution,” there was no doubt in our minds that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. The Muslims who were among the 48 framers must be turning in their graves at the spectacle of one of the worst forms of “ideological colonization,” the efforts of a small minority in our society to ape countries in the West who have legalized gay marriages.

As a concerned reader, Wilma Brosas, wrote to me: “[W]hen government starts promoting and rewarding socially deviant behavior like homosexuality, other manner of selfish gratification such as incest, adultery and bestiality can certainly never be far behind.”

True enough, she cited reports that a teenager in New Jersey has announced her intention to marry her father; that three women, Doll, Kitter and Brynn from Massachusetts, “married” last autumn and are expecting a daughter in July; that, not to be outdone by the ladies, a trio of gay men from Thailand got “married” on Valentine’s Day in Uthai Thani province; that a 41-year-old woman became the world’s first person to “marry” a dolphin; and so and so forth. Deny the existence of a natural and universal law that governs human behavior, and anything goes!

Pope Francis chose the right phrase: “the bastardization of marriage.”

Bernardo M. Villegas ([email protected]) is senior vice president of the University of Asia and the Pacific.