Let’s defend traditional marriage

A “Dump Starbucks” campaign is circulating in the World Wide Web. The reason? Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, in an annual shareholders’ meeting, allegedly “sent a clear message to anyone who supports traditional message over gay marriage: we don’t want your business”. Reports say that he told a shareholder who supports traditional marriage to sell his shares and invest in some other company.

If this is true (and I think the news reporter has no reason to be inventing), then we should also say to Starbucks here in Davao: “we don’t want your coffee”.

In the US Supreme Court this week, the legal battle over gay marriage reached its height as the highest court deliberated on two cases that – the Boston Globe says – “could dramatically reshape the debate”. The same source also noted that public support for gay marriage is “at an all-time high” with 58% of Americans favoring gay marriage while only 36% opposing it.

If the truth could be determined by statistics, then, the true meaning of marriage would eventually be modified.

But no statistics or Supreme Court pronouncement could change the objective truth on marriage. Since time immemorial, civil and religious laws alike are unanimous in holding that marriage, by nature, is between man and woman, even though, at times both laws do not agree on whether marriage should be monogamous or not. In maintaining this truth, these positive laws simply echo the truth on marriage contained in the natural law, which, in turn, is a reflection of the divine law. This is why, man, in trying to modify these positive laws, is simply going against nature, and eventually, is going against the will of God.

“Without the Creator the creature would disappear… When God is forgotten…, the creature itself grows unintelligible” (Gaudium et spes, 36).

Gaudium et spes, in this sense, is prophetic. When reference to God and to God’s design for marriage and family is taken away, naturally, human family would become unintelligible. It would very soon disappear. Everybody recognizes the morally, emotionally and psychologically harmful effects of divorce, parents’ separation and single parenthood to the growth of children. Can we afford to add the same-sex marriage to this list?

In the Philippines, we must sound the alarm! Not a few senatorial candidates maintain an explicit positive stand on same-sex marriage. Others, while not explicit in their opposition, are not really against it.

Advocates of gay marriage insist on their rights to marry and form a family. But is it also their rights to modify the long and widely held definition of marriage and deprive others, especially the young generation, of this truth? Our freedom (rights) ends where the freedom (rights) of others begins!

In his opposition to the Argentinian government’s support for a gay marriage bill, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) said: “Let's not be naive: this isn’t a simple political fight, it’s an attempt to destroy God’s plan”.

In defending traditional marriage from wicked attacks like that of Starbucks, we are actually defending God’s plan!