America’s largest online prayer effort, the Presidential Prayer Team, has this week asked its members to make marriage their top prayer priority.
For it is Marriage Protection Week in the United States, proclaimed by President George W Bush “to focus our efforts on preserving the sanctity of marriage”, with the support of 30 conservative groups.
Many of these organisations believe that marriage – which they see as the bedrock of American society – has been placed in grave danger both by homosexual activists who are calling for same-sex unions, and feminists who in recent decades have placed great emphasis on women’s independence and sexual liberation.
“Society has long been telling women they don’t need men and they don’t need marriage. But they do – sexual freedom is not a substitute. With this trend we have allowed men to become irresponsible playboys,” says Janice Shaw Crouse, a senior fellow at a think-tank within Concerned Women For America, which is sponsoring the week.
“Meanwhile marriage is also under immense threat from same-sex unions, which are widely known to be promiscuous and unstable, no matter how much they say they are not.”
Read the reactions from the gay community in the full article
First of all, there is a difference between a civil marriage and a religious one. The former gives legal rights to the people joined in marriage. The latter is a union before God, Allah, the Higher Powers or whatever you want to call it. I strongly believe that people from the same sex should be able to get married for the law and by doing so, get the same rights as heterosexual married couples. A religious marriage is in my opinion more controversial as the dogmas of several religions are strongly anti-homosexuality.
I wonder sometimes why people want to belong to a Church or religion that is so much against their lifestyle. But then again, I believe in a very personal relation between what’s on earth and what’s ‘up there’. I personally don’t feel the need to belong to one single religion, and if religious at all (depends on how you define ‘religious’), I prefer to take aspects from all religions as most religions, in their essence, are imho the same.
Yet on the other hand, I can imagine it’s important to some. Over here in Belgium and more specifically Antwerp, there’s a controversy about Islamic homosexuals (and some would say those simpy cannot excist, as when you say you’re gay, you have no ‘right’ to call yourself a Moslim anymore) struggling with their identity. I imagine it’s very hard, even impossible, to accept God, Allah or whatever you want to call that higher power, doesn’t love you, in fact despises you for being gay, as they want you to believe.
Speaking of despise, I intensely dislike Janice Shaw Crouse for suggesting that :
- not wanting to marry is only about sexual freedom
- women are responsible for the attitude of male pigs just because they don’t want to get married
- gay people are promiscuous and unstable
I dont like generalisations one single bit even though I admit they make live apparently easier. I wouldn’t want to feed heterosexual promiscuous and unstable people. I would go bankrupt in minutes. I always learned that ‘marriage is for life’ and I strongly believe most people enter a marriage with exactly that intention, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual.
October 16th, 2003 | 
Very sound comments on marriage – I completely agree. The difference between a civil contract and a religious vow is hardly ever emphasised, but they are certainly NOT the same.