One of the most common arguments behind the attacks on gay marriage is essentially theocratic in nature: our god and our religion define marriage in a certain way and it’s wrong for the government to define marriage differently. There is simply no escaping the fact that this would impose a particular theological view on all Americans.

Rebecca Hagelin writes:

Advocates of preserving traditional marriage, myself included, have argued that the fundamental building-block of every single civil society in the world throughout history has been marriage defined as a union between one man and one woman – all societies that have veered from this definition eventually vanished.

Every civil society has been founded upon marriage “defined as a union between one man and one woman,” and those that haven’t defined marriage that way have disappeared (because of their failure to define marriage “correctly”). Wait a minute... if every civil society has been founded on marriage defined that way, then there couldn’t be any that with different definitions that would lead to their downfall.

Talk about self-contradiction... but it was a necessary self-contradiction because even Hagelin must know that not every society has defined marriage as “a union between one man and one woman.” Unfortunately, she can’t demonstrate that their failure to define marriage that way in any way contributed to their eventual disappearance — a fact which completely undermines her argument.

Everything from advertising to children's textbooks will change to depict same-sex marriages as "normal." The costs of extending health care, insurance, social security and every other benefit to new types of married couples will skyrocket for everyone and could break the federal treasury.

Does Rebecca Hagelin have any evidence that the financial costs of legalizing same-sex marriage will be a problem? No. Does she care that she doesn’t and can’t support her claims? Not that I can tell. The fact of the matter is, gays constitute a minority of society and not all of them will want to get married anyway. In the end, the costs of legalizing same-sex marriage would probably be smaller than a serious reduction in the divorce rate, but I don’t see any religious or social conservatives arguing that divorce needs to remain high in order keep marriage costs low. I wonder why?

We have correctly raised all of these issues and more in our defense of marriage. But the basic question we must raise – the only one that really matters – is: "Was God wrong?" Our opposition tells us that we can't bring religion or God into the picture, that to do so would be to force our moral beliefs on others.

I wonder if Rebecca Hagelin is able to write such falsehoods without having to stop and have a good laugh at all her readers. The problem with her argument isn’t that it would force moral beliefs on other, but that it would force religious beliefs on others. Her question, Was God wrong, not only isn’t “the only one that really matters, it doesn’t actually matter at all from a public policy perspective.

Why? Because our government has no business deciding “what God wants” and then writing laws and policy to more closely match whatever it concludes. Americans disagree about “what God wants” when it comes to things like marriage, capital punishment, abortion, war, taxation, etc. If American law is written based upon what one group as opposed to another thinks “God wants,” that is an infringement on the religious and civil liberties of everyone else. The government doesn’t have the authority to pick out one theological view and declare it to be the correct one.

God's design for marriage is the only one that matters. The evidence – much of which has been provided in this column – also proves that God's design for marriage is the only one that works for mankind.

Rebecca Hagelin apparently doesn’t understand the crucial difference between “evidence” and “assertion.” She’s long on assertion, short on evidence.

The laws of nature – created and defined by the Creator – are the indisputable evidence that fundamental to mankind's societal existence is the cornerstone of marriage between one man and one woman. To say otherwise is to declare God wrong.

Ah, hubris. What people are actually saying is that people like Hagelin are wrong. These individuals may think that they speak for their god, but others either don’t buy it or simply don’t care. In the first instance, there is no good reason to think that Hagelin speaks for anyone but Hagelin, much less a deity. In the second instance, even if she speaks for a deity, that’s no reason to think that the government should adopt her position. She is entirely free to define her marriage according to her religious beliefs; she is not free to force anyone else to define their marriage according to her religious beliefs.

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