Well said, Your Eminence

Sandy Rios quotes the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, thus in the wake of the Illinois Senate's vote to legalize gay "marriage:"

Sexual relations between a man and a woman are naturally and necessarily different from sexual relations between same-sex partners. This truth is part of the common sense of the human race. It was true before the existence of either Church or State, and it will continue to be true when there is no State of Illinois and no United States of America. A proposal to change this truth about marriage in civil law is less a threat to religion than it is an affront to human reason and the common good of society. It means we are all to pretend to accept something we know is physically impossible. The Legislature might just as well repeal the law of gravity.

There will come a day not too far down the line when we as a society collectively realize that almost no gay people are getting "married" whatever the law may say, and that social acceptance of their sexual behavior as equivalent to that of heterosexuals, rather than marriage, was the goal all along. We will also realize that "married" gay men generally hold no particular expectation of sexual monogamy for either themselves or their "husbands," and that the divorce rate for gays (and especially for lesbians) is far higher- perhaps twice as high, in the case of lesbians- than for heterosexuals.

This is not to say that we will do anything about it. Nearly half of all births occur out of wedlock, STD's are spreading at epidemic rates, a considerable body of evidence exists that living together before marriage actually increases the likelihood of divorce, abortion as a form of birth control is celebrated as a virtual sacrament by the social Left, and huge numbers of young women are chosing- heroically, it should be said; they could easily choose otherwise- to give up the chance of a decent life for themselves in order to raise children without benefit of a partner. Men and women alike are divorcing their spouses as an exercise in self-fulfilment, and the theraputic culture has destroyed any sanctity marriage vows as such have ever had. And it says a great deal that the response of our society to the AIDS epidemic has been to grant increasing social sanction to a specific lifestyle characterized by promiscuity, even while continuing to embrace patterns which would be considered promiscuous by any other era in history for ourselves.

The sexual and theraputic revolutions have come pretty close to wrecking our society, yet comparatively few of us feel any particular need to revisit their dubious presuppositions. No, I'm afraid that a few years down the line, when same-sex "marriage" is revealed beyond debate to have been a social disaster that undermines marriage as an institution while granting no particular benefits to anyone, we'll still be unlikely to do anything about it.

It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well, welcome to the Insane Society.

HT: Real Clear Religion