They Won’t Give Up — Will We?

We all remember November. Moral-values voters rejected same-sex “marriage” in 11 states while choosing the presidential candidate most identified with the defense of marriage.

We may have expected this to demoralize the activists who want to redefine marriage. But marriage’s defenders will have to fight the temptation to underestimate marriage’s opponents. They’re committed and tenacious, and we’ll need to be just as committed and tenacious as they are.

The next battleground for marriage may be the very state in which this newspaper is published — Connecticut.

“An Act Concerning Marriage Equality” was dropped in the hopper at the Connecticut Statehouse late in January. As promised by its authors at the organization “Love Makes a Family” — and lamented by Brian Brown at the Connecticut Family Institute, who provided us with this information — this measure is one of the most extreme same-sex “marriage” bills imaginable.

It legalizes “marriage” for “any two persons … regardless of the sex.” It removes the words “bride and groom” from the current statute and replaces them with “both persons.”

It adds language listing various types of families that are in “the best interests of the child” while omitting any mention of a child’s need for both a mom and a dad.

It is, says Brown, the most “in-your-face” same-sex “marriage” bill ever introduced.

How did this happen? How did homosexual activists decide that this was the right move after experiencing dispiriting losses amid pro-family victories nationally?

The strategy may be to follow up the sad autumn with a big local victory that can help rally the troops nationally. Regardless, the pro-marriage strategy is simple: Do whatever it takes to reinforce November’s gains whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.

The opportunity has definitely arisen in Connecticut.

Brown says that Connecticut’s “Love Makes a Family” activists have claimed their cause will fare better on what they have dubbed “Planet Connecticut.”

But, with the unveiling of the extreme bill, says Brown, its own friends are beginning to wonder if Love Makes a Family is from another world.

Even the sympathetic press is lamenting that the organization has made a tactical mistake. Newspapers point to its “controversial decision” to launch “an all-or-nothing” campaign to legalize same-sex “marriage,” rather than civil unions.

Activist state lawmakers are saying the same thing.

“We have a real opportunity to pass a civil union bill this year with all the rights of marriage. The position taken by Love Makes a Family puts that at risk,” said Rep. Cameron Staples (D-New Haven). “I was disappointed.”

To capitalize on November’s gains, pro-family forces should make the most of this overreaching.

Those who support same-sex “marriage” have a blind spot for public opinion. They like to cite statistics showing a new public acceptance of homosexual lifestyles and a new public willingness to acknowledge homosexual relationships in some way.

What they forget is that people still draw a bright line when it comes to marriage and, particularly, children.

Brown says that people oppose same-sex “marriage” because they recognize that it would create permanent and obligatory motherlessness or fatherlessness for children who need both a mom and a dad.

The disastrous consequences of the divorce revolution of the 1970s were a defining experience for many people in America today, he says. They have seen the destruction in their own families, and they’ve learned that it’s a bad idea to engage in vast, untested social experiments with children.

The job for marriage proponents is to take the inkling people have about the crucial importance of marriage and take it one step farther, says Brown.

People need to know that if same-sex “marriage” were legalized, the consequences would snowball. Further distortions of marriage — such as polygamy — will become inevitable. Schools would indoctrinate children with a societal redefinition of marriage, regardless of parental opposition.

November’s victories weren’t the end of a war; they were the first skirmishes in a massive struggle. It will be necessary to continue to fight for the right to have a vote on marriage, and not allow unelected judges to define what marriage is. And we will have to watch what happens in our own state capitols carefully.

Marriage’s opponents certainly are.