I blog about Virginia policy and politics on Bacon’s Rebellion and Bearing Drift, as well as other topics at my own blog, Deo Vindice (www.americancivilization.net). Recent discussions about Virginia’s Marriage Amendment vote in November 2006 have surprised me. I’m amazed at how some bloggers are clueless why the Commonwealth of Virginia has legal guidelines on marriage or sexual behavior. Their questions are as basic as “why is there air” to natural sciences.

So, let’s look at the A, B, C’s of marriage.

Why is the state interfering with sex? Keep the government out of our bedrooms.
Cultures produce societies that range from tiny tribes to great civilizations – all have governments. Every society that has existed in 5,000 years of recorded history – and by extrapolation to the start of humankind – has three categories of sexual behavior.

Approved as honored, disapproved but tolerated, and punished as forbidden.

The lines among these three categories have varied widely, bizarrely, across centuries and continents through thousands of cultures.

Since Virginia is a state of a federal Republic under the Rule of Law, the legislature makes the rules on what sexual behavior is forbidden and punished. That’s why it is illegal to go naked, have sex in public, have sex with children, commit incest or bestiality.

If Virginia were a monarchy, theocracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, plutocracy, democracy, tribe, clan or any other government, the rules for sexual behavior would be made differently. But, there would be rules for sexual behavior. There always will be.

Why does government interfere with marriage? Marriage is a religious institution.
Pretend that Virginia was a Liberal Human Secularist Pagan state that worshipped the God of the small ‘g’ – Self. If that were the case, just like in the avowed atheist Communist countries and old Revolutionary France, the state regulates marriage. Every state has a compelling interest in making rules about marriage. It has nothing to do with religion.

The first duty of the state is to survive. Marriage and the family are essential to the survival of the state. The family is the basic unit of society and our American Civilization. Marriage civilizes men. A family with a father and a mother is the best formula for raising children into citizens who don’t commit crimes, take drugs, abuse alcohol, have promiscuous sex and get diseases and who finish school, work productively, provide financially and give expensive care for one another throughout life. Single parents and unmarried couples are legal, but less than the best family models for the state.

There are heroic single mothers and fathers, who prove the rules by their exceptions. The prisons are full of fatherless men. The statistics are clear on how to promote every social pathology – just discourage marriage. The destruction of the Black family since welfare promoted fatherless households is well documented.

Why is marriage limited to heterosexuals? Isn’t that discrimination?
There isn’t a ‘right’ to marriage. Marriage is regulated for the state by age, gender, competency and blood relationships. You can have any religious ceremony called ‘marriage’, but only those marriages meeting the legal qualifications are lawful marriages to the state.

No culture ever confused homosexual sex with marriage. Only modern Liberals deliberately fuzz the issue. Never in 5,000 years. Even civilizations that promoted homosexuality during their decadent, declining years didn’t have homosexual marriage. It never happened, ever, because it is an artifice – a lie.

Marriage for the state is about families. Homosexuals can never procreate children with one another. Biologically impossible. The state is not so intrusive to inquire about the fertility of heterosexual couples because at any adult age a man can ‘father’ and a woman can ‘mother’ an adopted child.

Homosexual activist bloggers call the idea of men as fathers and women mothers exclusively as – get this – “an abstract model of gender bipolarity”. How wrong. No man can ever mother like a woman. No woman can ever father like a man. A single parent may be wonderful, but is never the complete, complementary, missing other gender. No homosexual man, however effeminate, can be a mother. Likewise, the most ‘dyke’ lesbian never can be a real father. Basic biology.

Homosexuals and lesbians who call themselves families have to procure their children from someone else. One parent may be the biological parent, but not both, obviously.

Why is marriage for heterosexuals only in Virginia? It’s so unfair.

Since the legislature determines the rules for marriage, their understanding will reflect the consensus culture on what is right or wrong. If Virginia were Muslim, a man could have 4 wives. If Virginia were ancient Jewish Israel, old Mormon Utah or tribal pagan Africa, a man could have many wives. If Virginia were particular Pacific Island tribes, a woman could have many husbands. If Virginia were an Eskimo tribe, husbands and wives could share each other. If Virginia were ancient Rome or Greece, there would be a lot of homosexual behavior and prostitutes, but marriage would still be between one man and one woman.

For 400 years legislators in Virginia have had a Judeo-Christian worldview. That cultural outlook determines that marriage is between one man and one woman exclusively. If you reject that standard, then you can not deny polygamy, polyandry, incest, group marriage, or changing the age of consent for pedophiles. There is no legal basis to deny these diverse sexual behaviors the lawful status of marriage when you trash the current law. Where is it written that incest, polygamy and bestiality, etc. are wrong but monogamous, homosexuality (aping real marriage) is right? It isn’t. Liberals are just making it up as they go along.

Homosexual marriage doesn’t threaten my marriage. Let homosexuals be happy, monogamous and raise children in wonderful middle class ‘families’.
Homosexual marriage threatens the state, not your marriage. Nordic countries that have homosexual civil unions see a drastic drop off in normal marriages. Marriage with father and mother as heads of the family, is a basic building block for civilization. Social ills which cost the society and individuals great pain follow the break down of marriage. The destruction of marriage and the family is a huge step to destroy American Civilization.

Please, defend Virginia for marriage with your vote.

James Atticus Bowden

James Atticus Bowden has specialized in inter-disciplinary long range 'futures' studies for over a decade.  He is employed by a Defense Department contractor.  He is a retired United States Army Infantry Officer.  He is a 1972 graduate of the United States Military Academy and earned graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University.  He holds three elected Republican Party offices in Virginia.  Contact at jatticus@aol.com