From my days as a student at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN, I recall a newspaper story about a Minneapolis City Councilman who was a rather voyeuristic homosexual. While cruising for sex, the councilman picked up a teenage boy and took him to his home, whereupon the teenager killed him.
A tragic story, but even more tragic was the bittersweet, semi eulogy written by a homosexual friend of the deceased and published on the editorial page of the Minneapolis Star. Though sympathetic, the author of the editorial took time to offer gentle rebuke to the dead for his somewhat open and irresponsible indiscretions. However, the author included an admission that left me scratching my head. In effect he said the dead councilman should have been monogamous. His rationale? Here’s the tragedy: “Because I’ve been monogamous, sometimes for long periods of time, and monogamy is better” (emphasis mine).*
There are a variety of issues here, more grist than today’s mill can handle. But as an aside this anecdote gives us a peak into the inner sanctum of the homosexual lifestyle. Though rarely admitted publicly, beliefs regarding homosexuals’ insatiable sexual appetites and reckless sexual escapades are based on more than mere “stereotypes.”
More to the point: though the editorialist may not have known it, he wrote somewhat prophetically. Twenty plus years later, his comments have bearing on the homosexual marriage debate. My purpose here is not to rehash the arguments used in favor of homosexual marriage and refute them, nor to even defend traditional heterosexual marriage. That has been done well elsewhere. My purpose in this essay is to show that redefining terms does nothing to make a homosexual union a “marriage.” In a future essay entitled Sodom Redivivus 2, I will demonstrate the slippery slope down which civilization slides if marriage is redefined to include homosexual relationships.
First things first. In order for homosexuals to justify their behavior and win moral and political approval** they must redefine terms. Notice the implied meaning of the word “monogamous” in the above quote from the Minneapolis Star. The author was sometimes monogamous “for long periods of time.” That implies he was sometimes monogamous “for short periods of time.” My question is “How short can short be?” He didn’t say in the editorial, but given his statement he apparently defines monogamy simply as “one sex partner at a time regardless of the length of the relationship.”
Now in fairness, dictionary definitions allow (sort of) for such an understanding of monogamy. However such a definition strains the limits of the definition – and reason – to the breaking point. Does anyone seriously think a person can be monogamous 365 different times in a year, or 24 times in a day? What would be our assessment of a person who said “I was monogamous last night, and I’ll be monogamous again tonight with a new fling. I was monogamous at 8pm with X, now I’ll be monogamous at 9pm with Y?” Under such a definition even a polygamist could be considered monogamous.*** Certainly monogamy must be something other than “At the precise moment I was having sex, I was having it with only one partner.” Defining the term this way one could have caught dozens of fish over the course of a year. He could then with justification look you right in the eye and say regarding today’s catch, “We are in a monogamous relationship.”
Yes, traditional monogamous relationships (one man and one woman for life) often fail, yet only the most credulous would think monogamy could be defined as my petit ami du jour. But this “serial monogamy” is what the editorial writer quoted above would have us accept.
But the slide continues. Perhaps you’ve heard of “monogamish” relationships. This is a relationship where two partners are emotionally monogamous but sexually active outside this bond. This sounds like the short-term monogamy mentioned above, except homosexuals tout monogamish relationships as “open and honest,” as opposed to those where one or both partners engage in surreptitious cheating.****
Once again homosexuals have redefined monogamy to adapt it to their lifestyle. Realizing they are not really monogamous, they redefine it to mean mere “emotional attachment,” then create a new term to allow for sexual promiscuity while remaining “monogamous.” In other words, they’ve re-defined monogamy so as to permit themselves indulgence in non-monogamous relationships while remaining monogamous. Confused yet? Who’s on first?
All this has bearing on the homosexual marriage debate. In reality homosexuals can’t be married at all. Like with monogamy, they merely change the definition of marriage to fit them, rather than fit themselves into the definition of marriage. How so?
By definition, marriage consists of a union between a man and a woman in order to procreate and provide a stable environment for children. On the surface then, homosexual marriage is impossible since homosexual unions 
consist of two people of the same sex. Those clamoring for homosexual marriage argue the definition of marriage should be changed so as to include same sex unions. But this would not bring about the desired results. No matter what the State or anyone else says, changing a definition does not change the nature of a thing; we only satisfy our whims with a sort of verbal fiction.
For example I have a dog; a Pug named Dolly. Suppose I want a horse, and instead of buying one I redefine “horse” to include Pugs. Such a post-modern verbal shell game has no bearing on reality. I may have changed the definition of horse, but Dolly is still a dog. The same is true with marriage. If we change the definition of marriage so that homosexual couples have “the same thing” as heterosexual couples, they still aren’t married, because changing the definition does nothing to change “the thing.” No man and woman, no marriage. It’s like a story I once heard about Abraham Lincoln. He asks some fellows “How many legs does a cow have if you call its tail a leg?” His friends answered “five.” Lincoln replied, “No; it still has only four. A tail is a tail no matter what you call it.”
So does a homosexual union constitute a marriage if we call it a marriage? The answer is “No.”
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* I’m going on memory here. Though I’m not sure of all the details of this account 20+ years later, I’m sure my recollections of events and the quote are substantially accurate.
** More on this in Sodom Redivivus 2.
*** And as long as we’re re-defining terms, Bill Clinton was “celibate” while in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, because he wasn’t having sex with Monica Lewinsky at the very moment he was asked about it. Remember the nit picking over the meaning of “is.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/1998/09/bill_clinton_and_the_meaning_of_is.html
**** A similar movement is taking place amongst heterosexuals. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-sexual-revolution-polyamory
