Disappointing Decision
In a surprising decision announced May 15, a divided California Supreme Court, by a one-vote margin, struck down the California Defense of Marriage Act, a ballot initiative (Proposition 22) approved by more than 61 percent of voters in 2000, which held that “Only marriage between one man and one woman is valid and recognized in California.”
California’s Catholic bishops through the California Catholic Conference issued a statement that same day expressing disappointment at the high court ruling, stating that “Catholic teaching maintains that marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman joined in an intimate partnership of life and love – a union instituted by God for the mutual fulfillment of the husband and wife as well as for the procreation and education of children.”
San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer underscored the California bishops’ reference to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which he said, “follows forth from the teaching of Jesus Christ.”
Archbishop Niederauer stated, “At a moment in our society when we need to reinforce the strength of marriage and family this decision of the Supreme Court takes California in the opposite direction. This action challenges those in society who believe in the importance of the traditional understanding of marriage to deepen their witness to the unique and essential role that marriage between a man and a woman has in the life of society.”
This ruling by the California Supreme Court – four justices in favor and three justices dissenting – also overturns a 2006 California Appeals Court ruling, which said because same-sex marriage has never been recognized in California, “courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage.”
In the recent decision, however, a bare majority of the state’s highest judges have overridden the expressed will of a strong majority of the electorate and denied the axiom that in a democracy the people are sovereign.
Oakland Bishop Allen Vigneron said in a pastoral letter this week, based on the decision of the California Supreme Court, “we appear to be heading – at least for a time – toward a social order in which same-sex couples will be able to contract marriage.”
Bishop Vigneron stated, “The conviction that same-sex couples cannot enter marriage is a conviction which all Catholics implicitly affirm when, in our baptismal promises, we profess that we share the Church’s faith that the ‘Father Almighty [is] the Creator of heaven and earth.’ This conviction about marriage, while confirmed by faith, can be known from reason. Therefore, our efforts to enshrine this wisdom about marriage in the laws of our community are not an imposition of an ideology but a service of the truth which we make for the common good. This wisdom about the nature of marriage is not a form of discrimination, but undergirds our freedom to live according to God’s plan for us.”
Proponents of a definition of marriage as a union of one woman and one man already have gathered more than one million signatures to place on the November 2008 ballot an amendment to the California constitution, which would overrule the recent 4-3 vote of the State Supreme Court. The constitutional amendment would be similar to the marriage laws adopted in more than half the states in America in recent years.
The recent court decision reflects a secular phenomenon that seeks to normalize all aspects of homosexuality, and blur the intrinsic differences between heterosexual marriage and homosexual relations. Contemporary culture also finds advocates and a constituency for efforts to stigmatize religious beliefs regarding marriage, family and morality.
Pope Benedict XVI has noted that marriage is not “a casual sociological construction,” but a reflection of truth about the human person, the meaning of life and the relationship of human beings with the God who created them out of love and for love.
The pope also has noted that in recent generations, the overriding purpose of marriage has evolved to be the spouses’ mutual pleasure. This view differs from what every culture in history has recognized as the heart of marriage: the birth, welfare and education of children. The happiness of a couple is vital, certainly, but this is not the only or primary purpose of marriage. The Catholic Church has consistently recognized that society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage between a man and a woman.
The recent California Supreme Court decision – striking down the definition of marriage as between one woman and one man – calls to mind the words of Pope Benedict, when he warned of a “cultural context marked by relativism” and against any views of marriage as merely a legal union “that human will could manipulate as it pleases, even depriving it of its heterosexual nature.” MEH
