“Natural Marriage”

“Every time the citizens have voted on marriage, they have always sided with natural marriage,” said Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based Christian legal group.
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So Christians fight for what’s “natural” to be codified into our legal system?

Let us for the sake of argument grant that homosexuality is unnatural in some meaningful way. Guess what else is unnatural? Monogamy. Certainly the proportion of animals in the animal kingdom practicing monogamy is lower than that which practices homosexuality: Neither is unheard of, but both are comparatively rare. And if one can make an appeal to naturalness without reference to animals, then what constitutes naturality? Humanity stripped of its culture? No doubt homosexuality would be uncommon, but monogamy would no doubt be as well: the scenario changes nothing.

Arguments from naturalness must necessarily take homosexuality and monogamy as a package deal. Yet who among the social conservatives would advocate a repeal on polygamy bans on the basis of naturalness? Indeed, polygamy is usually further down the slippery slope than homosexuality in their conception, right before toaster marriage.

The error in reasoning that leads Christians to advocate a position which necessitates polygamy is readily apparent to anyone even marginally familiar with Christian doctrine, which apparently does not include the Liberty Counsel quoted above. Quite simply, “Natural” does not equal “Good”. “Natural” is almost always used negatively in the Bible. Throughout Romans 8, the natural man is contrasted with the spiritual man, and the natural man isn’t the good one. Indeed, sanctification at all – the necessary fruit of salvation – is completely unnatural, that is, against our nature. It is the result of an outside force, God, acting upon us, overcoming our natural tendencies – tendencies which would be to our ultimate destruction.

The Natural Marriage argument is nothing but a red herring, and coming from a legal group which calls itself Christian is at the same time a bastardization of Christian doctrine and a mockery of the American political process. It presumes a gospel which saves us to naturalness rather than godliness, and subverts the separation of church and state which exists for exactly this reason: that moral legislation (as distinct from just laws) is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst.