Matt Daniels at Alliance for Marriage is fond of saying that the American people need a wake-up call on the issue of homosexual marriage. The recent decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court is just such a wake-up call. Let's hope it didn't come too late.

Herewith, a resource list of arguments and actions for readers. Why homosexual marriage is wrong.

• Marriage is meant to bring children into the world. If either of your parents chose a homosexual marriage, you wouldn't be here.

• Marriage necessarily has to have a limited definition. If its definition is simply, “two people who love each other as spouses,” how can you exclude a brother and sister from marriage? Or a father and his daughter? Indeed, how can you limit it to two people?

• If homosexual marriage is legal in Massachusetts, it will effectively be legal in your state, too. Federal precedent protects the status of people who move from state to state. Some 80% of the people who entered into civil unions in Vermont left the state after that. It will be the same in Massachusetts.

• There are few homosexuals who have lifelong relationships. These relationships can be honored the way close friends' relationships are honored — allowing hospital visits, for instance — without giving them marriage status.

• If “homosexual marriage” is the same as heterosexual marriage, then if you die, your children could be adopted by either a homosexual couple or a heterosexual couple. The Massachusetts court decision calls it unfair prejudice for you to prefer one over the other.

• For all of these reasons, and others, legalizing homosexual marriage will have the effect of ending marriage as we know it. It thus strikes at the basic building block of society.

Why the Massachusetts court's action was wrong.

• Homosexual-activist organizations avoid voters like the plague. They know that when Americans vote about marriage, they vote for it to be between a man and a woman, no exceptions. Voters, not courts, should govern in a democracy.

• The Massachusetts high court has instructed the Legislature to legalize homosexual marriage. But it is not the court's place to “instruct” a legislature to do anything. That's Civics 101: American self-government is controlled by a system of checks and balances. By separating the executive, law-making and judicial branches, democracy ensures no individual branch monopolizes government's functions. The elected representatives of Massachusetts' people, not its judges, are the ones who should be deciding what new laws are called for.

• By refusing to allow the people to govern themselves, the Massachusetts court decision doesn't just strike at marriage — it strikes at democracy. Any elected representative who supports homosexual marriage is effectively supporting the end of marriage and refusing to act as his people's representative.

What you can do.

• In states where a popular uprising defended marriage, the people won. For instance, Connecticut's Catholic Conference recently confronted a behind-the-scenes legislative assault on traditional marriage in the statehouse. It got the word out and a phone assault on the state-house began. The bill was soon dead. When concerned voters speak, politicians listen.

• Write to every representative you have in state and federal government. Find their names and addresses by typing in your zip code at http://www.vote-smart.org Use t.he arguments above or your own arguments to tell them that you won't support them if they support homosexual marriage. Ask them what they plan to do to stop this assault on marriage. Perhaps tell them you back the Federal Marriage Amendment (see the opposite page). If you don't hear back, write again!

• Pray. In his apostolic letter on the rosary, Pope John Paul II said he was calling for daily rosaries with two main intentions: for peace and for the family. He said the attacks on the family were “menacing … so as to make us fear for the future of this fundamental and indispensable institution and, with it, for the future of society as a whole.”

• Evangelize. The only long-term solution to this crisis will be the re-Christianization of society. Take up the Holy Father's straightforward and simple challenge. See the back page of this issue for details.