Hi Friend,

Do words have meaning?  For example, if every runner wins the race, what is a winner?  If no team can lose the game, what is a winner? What is a Super Bowl or World Series?  What is achieved when a culture redefines a term and, more importantly, what is lost? Before we redefine winning and losing we must understand that if there is no winner, there is no Super Bowl.

The attempt to solve a problem by redefining the term is as historic as it is ineffective.  Calling a loser a winner does not make him a winner any more than calling a homosexual union a marriage makes it one.

Now there are some who would argue that the world would be better off without the World Cup Championships or an NCAA college champion.  Some even want the scoreboard removed so that no score is kept in any game.  If that happens, what is left?

The real desire of egalitarians is not elevating the masses, but eliminating winners.  But losers gain nothing when winners can’t win.  One is tempted to conclude that the goal of losers is the destruction of winners.

It’s understandable that well-meaning teachers want every student to receive a participation award, but if there is no first place then the teachers have eliminated winners.  And that is the problem.  It doesn’t elevate the loser but it eliminates the achiever. And without those who succeed we all lose what they contribute to our culture.  We have eliminated the entrepreneur who will work forty hours without sleep to find the right filament for a light bulb.

That concept came to mind recently during the debate about same sex marriage.  If the term marriage is redefined to include two people of the same sex, who can be excluded?  Can marriage be redefined again to include an adult and a child? What about three people—or five?  What about brother and sister, parent and child or human and animal? On what basis can anyone be excluded from the definition of marriage?    When everyone is married, what is marriage?

Maybe the battle is most clearly stated by Masha Gessen, a lesbian journalist speaking at a conference in Sydney, Australia.  She said, “It’s a no-brainer that we (homosexuals) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”   She went on to explain that “marriage equality” should become “marriage elasticity” with the goal of “marriage extinction.”

Jill Kirby, with the Centre for Policy Studies in England, said:  “The suggestion has been that the new laws are about extending the privileges of marriage to another group.  But that’s not true—they are about obliterating marriage.”

Sociologist Patricia Morgan, an author on marriage, cohabitation and the welfare system, said: “This is an attempt to get rid of marriage.”

The more clearly we see the direction that intellectuals want to lead us, the more convincing it is that God does exist and that He is the author of marriage.  When the Pharisees questioned Jesus about divorce, he responded, “At the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”  (Matt. 19:4-6)

There is no institution that is the equal of the family. It is the cornerstone of civilization. Next to the Spirit of God, it is the greatest blessing given to man. The family relationship has done more to civilize mankind than any other institution.  It has instilled more discipline than any army—instilled a love of learning in children better than any school—nurtured more people to health than any hospital and emulated virtue more than most churchesWhen a nation undermines marriage and family, it destroys its foundation. History shows us that no nation has long endured when marriage has been corrupted.

Before we let them redefine marriage, let us ask what will replace it when it’s gone?

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien