Gaylene Mayfield, left, and her lesbian partner, Judy Stern, join a rally in downtown Chattanooga supporting gay rights.
By David Tulis
It can only be hoped that city council member Jerry Mitchell will change his vote on gay partner benefits, but in the event he holds steadfast, Chattanoogans have other prospects to which to look forward.
One is a referendum led by pro-family and tea party activists. The other is litigation over the legal hubris expressed by a council that pretends to have the authority to create civil unions in a pro-marriage Southern state. Chattanooga is a municipal corporation, wholly the subject of the general assembly, which convenes at Nashville. Its charter, I suggest, does not grant it power to create ex nihilo (from nothing) a legal entity called a “domestic partnership.” That power is reserved to the people’s representatives in the house of representatives and state senate.
You can learn more about contacting a favorite city council representative by clicking this earlier file that contains contact info.
Dealing with objections to the marriage position
How can my domestic partnership hurt your marriage?
The issue before Chattanoogans and their elected officials is not simply a private relationship. Gay marriage and domestic union arguments are asking everyone, all of society, to alter the definition of marriage, to say that man and woman aren’t essential for family, marriage, society and capital.
Isn’t creating domestic partnership akin to taking a stand against racism that once prevented blacks and whites from intermarrying?
Homosexual unions and interracial marriage are dissimilar . Racial segregation is attended with many evils. Marriage between man and woman is an important social and public good. Racism and anti-misegination laws divide. Marriage unites. Gay marriage redefines, and domestic unions try to redefine, marriage, saying men and women are optional for the family.
How far is the gay theory willing to go?
Homosexuals, who have a subjective orientation about good and evil, say gay sex is OK, but some are squeamish about sex with small children. Asked if gay marriage leads to multi-party marriages, Cheryl Jacques, former head of Human Rights Campaign, said no, “because I don’t approve of that.” Before the homosexual steamroller is stopped, we will hear of prosecutions of people espousing the majority report.
The statement “a child needs a mother and a father” will be hounded as hate speech or sexually offensive water cooler talk at the office. Ministers will be threatened if they preach about God’s condemnation of homosexuality as an abomination.
What is the public benefit of marriage?
The Sunday Page A1 story about 32 men arrested in a Chattanooga street crime roundup shows eight rows of black faces. Many of these men are the fruit of ruined homes, broken marriages, fatherless households. Ask Skip Eberhardt, a former Chattanooga gang member trying to encourage others to divert themselves from the ruin of court and prison that face many of the defendants. A key background fault is their lack of a normal home life in youth.
The benefit of marriage is that its partners create the next generation Chattanooga police chief Bobby Dodd and many others know that a dearth of healthy childrearing couples brings peril into the city’s streets and school hallways. Marriage is not a recent innovation, but part of every culture since the beginning of time. “Nature enforces and imposes marriage upon all human civilizations, and it does so with very little tolerance,” says Glenn Stanton, an analyst with Focus on the Family.
“There is scarcely a dollar that state and federal government spends on social programs that is not driven in large part by family fragmentation: crime, poverty, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, mental and physical health problems,” says columnist Maggie Gallagher.
Channeled energy
Homosexual couples are sterile, not fecund, not producing of children. Do we expect homosexual unions to regulate the sexual energy of men?
The crime wave said to have been nipped by the police roundup last week is comprised of men who are not civilized, if we believe the reporting by reporter Beth Burger. The unattached male is one of society’s biggest problems. Marriage is equipped to solve that problem. Marriage socializes a man, directs his sexual energy and vigor and aggression into productive ends.Sex in marriage provides energy for society and a channel for ts strength.
A man civilized by marriage learns to care for his wife and children, to put his family first, to die to himself, to deny himself immediate pleasures in acts of self-mortification, to save for the future, Society needs men to be married. It needs a clear understanding of family and its constituent human elements. Chattanooga won’t be able to glorify God and enhance local economy if it strikes marriage on the side of the head by making domestic partnerships equal to it.
Hamilton County as of 2010 has 336,000 residents. If we view human beings made in God’s image as the most valuable form of capital, we are underpopulated. Our prosperity hints in large measure on the fruit of local economy: More babies. Support for the gay perspective rejects this optimistic and can-do thinking.
Sources: Beth Burger, “The goal is simple: break crack’s back,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, Nov. 17, 2013
Glenn Stanton, “Ten Leading Questions on ‘Why Not Gay Marriage?” monograph, Focus on the Family, provided by council member Larry Grohn to a tea party meeting
“Municipal Corporations,” Tennessee Jurisprudence
