(CNS)

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has released a video on YouTube urging preservation of the legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

“Marriage is not something we invent or change to suit our own purposes,” Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ committee to defend marriage, explains in the video.

The Spanish version of the video, featuring Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio, Texas, can be viewed here.

Measures related to upholding the traditional one-man, one-woman definition of marriage are on the ballots of several states.

Voters in California, Florida and Arizona will have the opportunity tomorrw to vote in favor of initiatives that would amend their state constitutions defining marriage this way, preventing courts from redefining its definition to include same-sex “marriage.”

In Connecticut, meanwhile, the state’s bishops are urging Catholics to vote in favor of a ballot measure to convene a constitutional convention at which delegates could amend the state constitution to allow ballot initiatives. In turn, that could lead to a ballot measure to amend Connecticut’s state constitution to define marriage as heterosexual-only.

Last month, Connecticut became the third state, along with Massachusetts and California, where a court has legalized homosexual “marriage.”

The U.S. bishops have explained in detail why Catholics and other Americans should resist the effort by the homosexual lobby to utilize the courts in this way.

Bishop Kurtz warns in the bishops’ new video that “this effort of redefining marriage to include same-sex unions will bring confusion to what marriage actually means. This confusion could spread and have enormous legal consequences for the rearing of children, public education, employment, and religious freedom. Children would be forced to learn that marriage is merely one kind of loving relationship among many. Churches would be prevented from witnessing to and teaching about the necessary and singular role of love between a man and a woman.”

— Tom McFeely