The root cause of the Supreme Court's decision legalizing homosexual “marriage”

To the Editor of the Linacre Quarterly,

We are all aware of the ruling of the United States Supreme Court legalizing homosexual marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges)¹ throughout the country in June 2015. Unknown to most of the American public, the Mexican Supreme Court also legalized homosexual marriage just a few weeks before that.² I think the most interesting argument for the legalization of gay “marriage” is the one made by the Mexican Supreme Court. That court said that marriage is not linked to procreation anymore. Although I disagree vehemently with the Mexican Court for legalizing gay marriage, I am glad they transparently defined the reason for it, a reason that convicts much of modern day society as the cause of the demise of traditional marriage.

A principal reason for the sea change on gay marriage is contraceptive use. Therefore, in our post-mortem, who is truly at “fault” for gay marriage? The answer is the vast majority of Catholics and Protestants who support, or at least don't oppose, contraception, and of course the medical profession which has been more than complicit in making hormonal contraceptives widely available in spite of the fact that they treat no pathology and have serious side effects. As many of your readers are aware, the problem started with the acceptance of contraception by the Anglican Church in 1930, but continued with a vast number of priests and bishops who have opposed Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae³ in 1968, and the majority of our fellow Catholic physicians, who do the same. Contraception could be argued to be a major contributor to, if not the root cause of, the breakdown of the family, abortion, divorce, pornography, the sex trade, and homosexuality over the last four decades. If sexual intercourse has no defined or inherent purpose, and is only sacred or special if a person wishes it to be, then marriage itself is in the eye of the beholder—one can walk away from it, snuff out its fruitfulness through the destruction of human life, violate fidelity in both its form and function, or redefine it in a way that suits one's purpose. Men have come to worship their autonomy over their own God.

But St. Paul already wrote about this in the Letter to the Romans (see Romans 1: 18–32; below is an excerpt):

Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.

Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another.

When we as Catholic and Christian healthcare professionals, and even some bishops and priests, have not done much to change the society around us—instead allowing society to change us—this is what happens. St. Paul predicted as much two millennia ago. No one is excused, because everyone, even those who are not church-goers, should know the truth, because it has been revealed to everyone. And unfortunately rain falls on the good and bad, so the good will also feel the main thrust of the negative impact our society will receive for these events. Hopefully we will continue to persevere to receive joy in the next world, even if in this world our joy and comfort as faithful Christians is likely to be curtailed in the era of progressively decreasing religious freedom.

Sincerely,

Thomas Zabiega, M.D.