Marriage is more than just beautiful. Marriage is more than just
moral. Marriage is beautiful because it is moral. Indeed it
sensitizes people to the beauty of morality, the symmetry and
structure and form and nuance and grace of life lived rightly. It
often inspires people to moral behavior in other aspects of their
lives.
It was not the Bible that turned me on to marriage, but marriage
that turned me on to the Bible. It offers an intuitive experience
that confirms the truth of the odd narrative presented there as the
basis for the connubial bond. The Bible makes the startling claim
that man and woman were once part of a single organism that then
subdivided, a claim echoed by the evolutionists. When you fall in
love with a member of the opposite sex, you can actually sense
yourself being drawn back into a primordial state of oneness.
Maimonides introduces his exposition of the Jewish laws of
marriage with a preamble. “Before the Torah was given, a man met a
woman in the marketplace, and if they decided to marry they could
achieve that simply by moving in together. If one of them moved
out, that constituted a divorce.” Later commentaries wonder why he
thought this relevant to contemporary marital law as codified in
the Bible and Talmud.
It seems clear that his goal is to clarify that the institution
of marriage is not an invention of the Bible; rather, it is an
essential component of the human condition. Man and woman discover
each other and merge into their natural unit. They become “as one
flesh” with the birth of a child, the fusion of their identities
culminating in a new human life astonishingly incorporating the
passion of each into an original life force.
As secularized as Hollywood has been from the first, marriage
between a man and a woman is still its bread and butter. There may
be a crude macho camaraderie in chuckling about sexuality, but the
better angels in both men and women are touched by wedding scenes.
Study Hollywood fare in any random year and you will be astonished
to see how many films managed to work a full-dress wedding ceremony
into the plot.
Producers know this to be a sure winner. The radiance, the
innocence, the glow, the anticipation, the tenderness, the
hopefulness, the sense of moment, the celebration of past and
present and future, the opening of a door to unlimited possibility;
all the noblest sentiments of humanity are gathered here in one
place.
THIS IS A GREAT JUNCTURE in American history. Things have not
been going well and we are being called to effect improvements. We
have to make ourselves better to make our country better. A good
place to start would be by rekindling our devotion to marriage.
The good people of North Carolina have heeded this call. They
understood the crisis in their hearts and they came together to
embrace this vision of beauty and symmetry. Marriage is a sacrament
between a man and a woman — a truly simple yet eloquent
concept.
Now is the time to recommit to this vision. Sadly, the forces of
destruction are heading in the exact opposite direction. They want
to revive the primitive rite of homosexual “marriage” practiced in
ancient times. In fact, the Midrash teaches that this type of
nuptials was common before the Flood.
The Talmud famously ponders the morality of the countries of its
time and finally manages to detect only three virtues they held
universally. 1. They did not practice cannibalism. 2. They did not
give marriage licenses to homosexuals. 3. They show respect for the
Bible. Are we down to just the first of these three?
But this is not the time to focus on knocking the other guys,
many of whom are gentle folks who are just trying to be nice.
Instead let us take strength from the fortitude of North Carolina.
We must celebrate the fine people of that State and the spark which
ignites their hearts.
Marriage is perhaps the most beautiful asset of our culture and
I cannot bear to see it squandered by a coalition of the
self-indulgent and the indulgent, the political and the polite, the
pushy and the pushover.
There is beauty here and it is in danger. Is there a prince in
the house? A knight? We must be wishful.
