Pro-Family Advocate: Losing Biblical Marriage Means Losing Life, Liberty

by Allie Martin and Bill Fancher
August 10, 2004

(AgapePress) - A pro-family legal expert says the fight for traditional marriage will be the most important cultural battle faced by the United States.

Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver says without a doubt, pro-life activists' effort to overturn Roe v. Wade has been at the forefront of the culture wars for three decades. But Staver says the battle for traditional marriage has become the fight that will determine the future of the nation.

Mat Staver

The attorney feels the marriage issue has overtaken abortion as the most important cultural issue confronting America. In Staver's opinion, the one issue encompasses the other since, once the family is destroyed, the value of human life in society is threatened. "If the family goes," he says, "it in fact destroys the entire structure, and it in fact is an additional nail in the coffin against the unborn child."

The definition of marriage is a weighty issue, and Liberty Counsel's spokesman asserts that the moral direction of the entire nation hangs in the balance. "Once you start breaking apart the family and say that marriage is really not necessary for procreation, you have even further escalated the issue of abortion and cheapened the sanctity of human life," he says.

Also, Staver points out, just as life is at risk in this battle, so is liberty. If the battle for marriage is lost, he predicts that Christians will gradually lose the right to openly acknowledge biblical truth and will eventually even face legal penalties for speaking out against homosexuality.

A Flank Attack on 'One-Man, One-Woman' Marriage
Meanwhile, some pro-family groups are saying their warnings about the impact of the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Texas anti-sodomy law last year have unfortunately proven true. Genevieve Wood of the Family Research Council (FRC) recalls that, from the beginning, homosexual activists labeled these pro-family advocates as alarmists.

However, a recent effort to restore polygamy in Utah has vindicated the "alarmists." Traditional marriage advocates have repeatedly predicted that efforts to legalize polygamy and incestuous relationships would follow on the heels of legalized same-sex marriage. Now two woman and a man in Utah have initiated a court challenge to have the state ban on polygamy lifted.

Genevieve Wood

But the FRC spokeswoman sees a positive side to all this. She believes this challenge to the traditional definition of marriage may ultimately have a positive impact in the same-sex marriage debate.

"The good thing that can come from that is that it makes the American public realize, wow, we need to put the brakes on," Wood explains. "We need to put a stop to allowing same-sex marriage in this country because this is the kind of thing others will be demanding a year from now, two years from now, if we start down that road."

In that respect, the pro-family advocate notes, this new attack not only proves the slippery-slope warnings true, but "actually contributes in a good way to the whole debate we're currently having over marriage." Wood says the advocates of traditional marriage will continue to sound such alarms in an effort to raise awareness about the danger of allowing cultural radicals to redefine marriage.