Homosexual marriages are empty from the beginning

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Cort Flint: County Council needs to pitch in on local projects (04/11/04) • Gary B. Melton: Communities must resolve to keep our children safe (04/11/04) • Thomas Ravenel: Here's how to cut $200 billion in federal spending (04/09/04) • Paul A. Barra: Vouchers will save good students from bad schools (04/07/04) • George Fletcher: Let's support the Braves in their last season here (04/06/04) More details Mike Fair, R-Greenville, was elected to the state Senate in 1995 from District 6, and he is the chairman of the Senate Corrections and Penology Committee. He has served in the state House of Representatives and on Greenville County Council. He can be reached at CP@scsenate.org.

The battlefield today is the covenant of marriage.

For example, a few mayors in California, New Mexico and New York have decided they can choose which laws to honor and which to ignore. So some localities are issuing marriage licenses to members of the same gender in spite of state laws that ban same sex marriage.

There are scores of health and sociological reasons why marriage is between a man and a woman. We have 6,000 years of recorded history that both establishes marriage as the first institution in society as well as establishing marriage as the most important institution in society. Marriage is the exclusive domain of males to females. Any other arrangement is counterproductive to all that is good.

Consider the fact that the single biggest predictor of success in a child's life is being in a home with both a mother and a father. It has always been that way.

However, God and other interventions will override circumstances to bring about desirable results.

Nevertheless, "best practices" dictate the formation of policy. Traditional marriage is a "best practice."

Children model behavior. Same-sex environments produce more teen pregnancies and earlier sexual experimentation and more frequent homosexual experimentation. Straights who worship at the altar of tolerance will argue about this research with regard to kids modeling behavior. Unfortunately, gays will not see a problem at all with replicating themselves in their children.

Obsessing on sex has eclipsed rational thinking to the point that our culture often allows perversion to exist without challenge. In a Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting in Columbia in early March, I asked a Department of Social Services representative if the safety of a child was more important than so-called sexual freedom for adults. My question went unanswered.

The sexual union involved in traditional marriage produces children and reaffirms the biblical concept of oneness that is essential to happy marriages. Homosexual unions produce disease, unnatural stressors and apparently an insatiable appetite for more homosexual unions.

With the serial nature of homosexual partners, married or not (reference Belgium, Canada and The Netherlands), same-sex marriage capability is mostly an attempt at affirmation of normalcy.

When compared to the general population, there is very little that is normal about the homosexual lifestyle. Homosexuals comprise from 1 percent to 5 percent (many sources) of the population. Some of the highest rates of suicides reside within various homosexual age groups, and suicide is not normal.

Psychiatrists removed homosexuality from their list of "mental illnesses" as one of the first acts of political correctness 25 years ago. Treatment for physical and mental illness among those who practice homosexual behavior is high and as high as it has ever been. Is that normal?

Churches have not only ordained homosexual ministers, they have ordained them while they have been cohabitating. Sexual standards are relaxed for homosexuals within the clergy in some denominations, and that clearly is not normal. How does a teen's parents discuss abstinence from sex when their pastor is cohabitating with a live-in lover. How is that normal?

Single heterosexual pastors are ostracized — as well they should be — if they select premarital sexual partners. Discipline is the guiding principle. Yet, discipline is not expected to be applied to homosexual behavior. A homosexual's libido apparently is off-limits for a consideration of discipline.

Does our culture care more about the sexual freedom of adults than it does about our youth's physical and emotional stability? I choose to believe that we in South Carolina defer to the best interest of our children.

In 1996, same-sex marriage was an issue in South Carolina, and the General Assembly, under the leadership of Gov. David Beasley, passed a law banning "same-sex" marriage. Thirty-eight or 39 states have passed similar measures.

Our law says that same sex marriages are void ab initio. That is as empty as a thing can be. The moment it happens, it is not. The law also declares that this is the public policy of the state of South Carolina. The General Assembly is currently considering an expansion of the statute that would explain in detail the effect of "void ab initio."

Marriage is not empty.

Homosexual marriage is void ab initio. It is void from the beginning.