Eliminating sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage necessarily means formally declaring that marriage has no inherent connection to reproductive potential. Those who seek to redefine marriage—marriage revisionists—claim that because many marriages don’t result in children, the issue of reproductive potential is irrelevant. 

But reproductive potential is the only reason the government is involved in marriage. The government is involved in the marriage business precisely because the union of one man and one woman is the type of relationship that naturally results in children. And the government has a vested interest in protecting the rights and needs of children upon whom the future health of any nation depends. 

Marriage revisionists who claim that marriage has no inherent connection to reproductive potential and is constituted solely by deep emotional bonds shift the focus from the needs and rights of children to the desires of adults. In so doing, marriage revisionists erode the only justification for government involvement in marriage. 

Further, marriage revisionists have no reason to prohibit plural marriage or incestuous homosexual marriage and no way to explain why marriage should be permanent and exclusive. 

If marriage is constituted by deep emotional bonds with no inherent connection to procreation and childrearing, then there’s no reason to desire it to be exclusive or permanent. After all the government  has no more vested interest in recognizing and regulating inherently sterile loving relationships between two homosexuals than it does in recognizing and regulating loving relationships between platonic friends. 

And the government has no more vested interest in supporting through marriage the permanence and exclusivity of inherently sterile, loving relationships between two homosexuals who have acquired a child to raise than it does in supporting through marriage the permanence and exclusivity of two friends (or siblings) who may be raising an orphaned child together. 

Just because the conjugal union of one man and one woman is the type of relationship (i.e., marital) that naturally results in children does not mean that the every type of relationship that involves the raising of children is a marriage.  

The traditional and true understanding of marriage is the only view of marriage that can justify and account for the cultural belief that marriage is necessarily binary, exclusive, and permanent. 

The inevitable consequences of such a radical revision of marital laws are profound. Some will be felt immediately; some will not be manifest for some years. But all will be destructive to children and the family. 

Here are just a few of the ways the legal recognition of homosexual unions as “marriages” will affect the family: 

• Once marriage is severed from any inherent connection to reproductive potential, once the revisionist view of marriage as a private relationship constituted solely by the deep feelings of those seeking to marry, it becomes meaningless as a public institution. Eventually even heterosexual investment in it will decrease.
• As fewer heterosexuals choose to marry and increased numbers of children are raised by single mothers or lesbians, greater numbers of children will grow up fatherless, which will increase the myriad and tragic harms that result from being deprived of fathers (click HERE  and HERE  for more information). 
• The law will support and propagate the radical, destructive, and fallacious idea that children have no inherent right to know and be raised by their biological parents. 
• The law will support and propagate the radical, destructive, and fallacious idea that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that mothers or fathers are expendable. 
• Unethical ways of producing children (e.g., egg and sperm donation, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization) will be further normalized and increase in frequency. 
• Increasing numbers of children will be deliberately deprived of either a mother or father, which will harm children in incalculable and numerous ways (click HERE , HERE  and HERE). 
• Children will be deprived of the right to be known by their biological parents.
• Public schools —including elementary schools—will expose children to non-objective homosexuality-affirming beliefs about homosexuality. 
• Public schools will censor all competing (i.e., conservative) views of homosexuality.
• Children will be taught that traditional beliefs about what marriage is are hateful, bigoted, and ignorant.
• Parents of children in public schools will lose the right to be the sole determiner of what their children learn about homosexuality and when they learn it. 
• Laws currently presume that the spouse of a woman who has given birth is the father. When homosexuals are allowed to marry that presumption becomes irrational. The government will become ever more entangled in issues related to legal parentage.

Abolishing sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage is not an “equality” issue. It’s not an issue of “fairness” or “justice.” And it’s certainly not an issue of compassion. Homosexual activists are not pursuing marriage for the benefits or privileges that accompany marriage. They already have those. 

They are pursuing the elimination of the central defining feature of marriage in the service of their unholy quest for compulsory cultural approval of homosexuality—approval that they seek too through access to the hearts and minds of our little ones. Legalized “same-sex marriage” wins them that access.

Take ACTION:  If you haven’t yet sent an email or a fax to your state representative — it is time to speak up now!  Click HERE to contact your Illinois Representative and tell him/her to oppose the effort to redefine marriage!.  You can also call him/her through the Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

Better still, schedule a meeting with your representative, bring as many constituents as you can, and ask him or her the questions available HERE.

Click HERE for Talking Points.

More ACTION:  Contact your family and friends at church and let them know that they should speak out against this radical proposal — post your opinions on Facebook and Twitter.

You can also help us continue the fight for natural marriage by donating $10, $25, $50 or $100 or more today. With your support we can continue our vital work!  Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute.