About
Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of
Terrorism Research for
BasicsProject.org a non-profit,
non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His
writing has been recognized by the US House International
Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict
Prevention. His organization partnered in producing the original
national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical
Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the
International Analyst Network. He serves as the managing editor for The New
Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor
on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio
including on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent
Radio Network and on The Captain's America Radio Show catering
to the US Armed Forces around the world. His opinion-editorials
have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The
Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally.
He is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is
available for public speaking engagements.
Frank Salvato,
Managing Editor
Giving Marriage Back to the Church November 21, 2008
Across the country the issue of “gay
marriage” is being debated, examined, voted on and legislated. Groups,
both pro and con, have taken to the streets from Massachusetts and
Connecticut to both ends of California to express their support and
opposition to legislating finality to this issue. While the answer to
this ideological impasse may indeed come from legislation, it may come
in an unexpected form and require those on both sides of the issue to
dial back on their own self-importance.
At the risk of leaving many a religious person’s mouth agape, I don’t
have a problem with people who have declared themselves homosexual.
Having spent many years of my young adulthood in the entertainment
industry I came to know many good, honest, hardworking, patriotic people
who had come to the conclusion that they were gay. While this is not a
lifestyle I choose to embrace for myself, because I believe in the
concepts of “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness” I find it hard to
pass judgment on someone’s lifestyle when their actions do not affect my
liberty or pursuit of happiness.
“The legitimate powers of
government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
– Thomas Jefferson
My anti-homophobe and heterosexual declarations understood, I can’t say
that I would ever be moved to limit someone’s ability to provide for
another, especially where the issue of a life’s devotion is concerned.
As my wife and I emerged from our polling place this past November 4th,
we ran into one of our neighbors. I will call her Marilyn. Marilyn and
Diane had lived as partners for the entire time we had known them and
had, in fact, been in a monogamous relationship for a long time before
that. On this day Marilyn informed us that she and Diane were splitting
up and that she would be moving out of their house. Looking onto her
face I saw heartbreak and sadness. Not a heartbreak and sadness reserved
for someone belonging to a special interest group but the heartbreak and
sadness of a person who was witnessing the end of a relationship with
someone they once loved unconditionally. The pain was obvious and it was
genuine.
At that moment I thought to myself, “Why? Why all the disagreement, all
the vitriol, over allowing two people to officially declare that they
want to spend the rest of their lives together?”
Then, as I watched the evening news recently, I witnessed a group of gay
rights zealots invading a church service in rural Michigan. These
activists disrupted a religious service by chanting pro-gay marriage
slogans, throwing leaflets into the crowd, kissing in front of the
congregation and otherwise displaying a grotesque and grand disregard
for the parishioners First Amendment constitutional right to freedom of
religion. This brought to mind recent events in San Francisco where
similar “protests” were executed against the Catholic Church for their
“stand” on gay marriage. My only conclusion to these events was that
these fanatics don’t represent the gay people that I know and that they
were setting their own cause back years if not decades.
Again, the issue here was a gay person’s freedom to “marry.”
The concept of “marriage” is as old as the ages. Within the context of
Western history, marriage was a private matter employed between two
families; the government, or the state, was not a party to the act. In
fact, it wasn’t until the 16th Century that the Europeans began the
practice of licensing marriages. And although the colonial United States
required marriages to be registered it wasn’t until the mid-19th Century
that states began to restrict the parameters of “marriage.”
Interestingly, and perhaps disturbingly, the initial restrictions placed
on marriage in the United States were born of bigotry. By the 1920s, 38
states prohibited whites from marrying interracially; marriage between
whites and blacks, “mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Mongol,
Malaysians or Filipinos was prohibited. A dozen states wouldn’t issue a
marriage license on moral grounds; if one partner was a drunk, an addict
or a “mental defect.”
As the United States entered into the Civil Rights Movement the courts
invalidated marriage laws based on racism and other discriminatory
practices. But this moment in time saw the government place another role
onto the legality of marriage; as a vehicle for distributing resources
to dependents. Whether the issue was the distribution of Social Security
or pension benefits, the inclusion of descendants and spouses in
employer insurance benefits or the issues of inheritance and the receipt
of medical information, government had successfully manipulated what was
first meant to be a private bond between two families into a legal
vehicle for ascertaining liability and authority.
In addition, government used the vehicle of licensed marriage to create
– create – revenue generating instruments of taxation.
So, what was once a private matter between two families has now been
transformed – or better yet, hijacked – by government for self-serving
and self-beneficial reasons. And, as is the problem with most
overreaching initiatives enacted by government, those responsible for
the transformation failed to utilize the vision needed to avert societal
crisis.
Some indicate that the remedy for this societal crisis is the
institution of a constitutional amendment mandating that marriage is the
exclusive domain between one man and one woman. This ideological
approach has incited great angst on both sides of the issue and is
ten-thousand pounds of cure when an ounce would do.
If government were to remove the word marriage from its purview –
instead creating a common language contract document that recognizes a
formal and legal bond between two consenting adults – marriage, the term
and the concept, would revert back to the spiritual domain of the church
and once again become a vehicle of celebration instead of legal
indoctrination.
In approaching the issue by reverting back to the original premise of
marriage, those who wish to engage in gay marriage would be afforded the
freedom and liberty to search out a church in which their union would be
recognized and celebrated; the legality of their union recognized
through a common language contract that reserves the sacrament of
marriage for the churches. It would also dispose of the need for
overbearing ideological zealots to encroach upon houses of worship that
don’t share their ideological viewpoint.
Of course, this means that the government would have to get out of the
marriage license business. Don’t look now, but you just witnessed a
solution at the hand of the limited government concept.
“I never told my religion nor
scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor
wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by
their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our
religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me.”
– Thomas Jefferson
