There is nothing more important for the long-term stability of a society than healthy marriages and healthy families. Healthy marriages will produce healthy families, which in turn will produce a healthy society. Unhealthy marriages will produce unhealthy families, which in turn will produce an unhealthy society. That’s why we dare not tamper with the meaning and purpose of marriage. If we do, we tamper with the foundations of society.
One of those societal foundations, which in turn is a foundation of marriage, is the distinction between the sexes, as laid out clearly in Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
That is why, regardless of culture, nationality, ethnicity, or skin color, every society has men and women, husband and wives, sons and daughters, boys and girls. To make these objective realities into subjective realities is to open a Pandora’s box of confusion.
That’s why, when Facebook yielded to transgender activists, who protested the “all-too-confining male-femalechoices” on the personal bio page, they added 50 ways to describe your gender, including 10 simultaneously. (That’s right, you could simultaneously choose to identify as male, female, genderqueer, and seven other options.)
If I offered you a million dollars to come up with 50 gender descriptions, could you? How about 25? Maybe 10? Most of us would be hard-pressed to do so, but it turns out 50 was not enough. Facebook had to add one more option: “Fill in the blank.” I kid you not!
One website offered a lengthy list of gender descriptions and sexual orientations, including: Bigendered, Bi-Dyke, Boidyke (or, Boydyke), Bro-sis, Cross Dresser, Cross-Living, Femme Dyke, Fetishistic Transvestite, Gender Illusionist, Gender-Bender, Gender-Blender, Intersex, Male Impersonator, Metamorph, No-gendered, Omnisexual, Transitioning, Transmale, Two-Spirit, Ze.
One young man stated, “I’m a gender smoothie. Just take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, press the button, and that’s me.” Another explained that he preferred not to be identified as male or female. Instead, he preferred to be called “Tractor.”
Today, on some college campuses, professors are required to ask students how they want to be identified. Pronoun options include: “ve/vis/vir/verself; jee/jem/jeir/jemself; lee/lim/lis/limself; kye/kyr/kyne/kyrself; per/per/pers/perself; hu/hum/hus/humself; bun/bun/buns/bunself; it/it/its/itself.”
With all due compassion for those who genuinely struggle with their gender identity, this is collaborating with madness, and it naturally leads to a situation where some people identify as part animal or part alien. After all, if perception is reality and if something as fundamental as the male-female distinction becomes malleable, why not?
When it comes to marriage, once you redefine it, you render it meaningless. Simply stated, if marriage is not the union of a man and a woman, then why should it be limited to two people (or, for that matter, require two people)? Why can’t it be one or three or five? What makes the number “two” so special if it doesn’t refer to the union of a male and a female?
It’s no surprise that, in recent years, we have not only seen the rise of same-sex “marriage” but of other distortions and perversions of God-ordained marriage, including: polyamory (multiple loving partners in any number or configuration); polygamy (gaining popularity in America, no doubt with the help of shows like Big Love and Sister Wives and My Five Wives); sologamy (marrying oneself, with a growing network to serve those doing so); throuples (three men or three women); marrying robots; marrying animals (from snakes to dogs to dolphins); marrying inanimate objects (from the Eiffel Tower—just search for Erika Eiffel—to a computer. At least a man tried, without success, to marry his computer).
In light of this societal chaos, we would do well to remember the wise words of G.K. Chesterton: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” The good news is that this God-ordained fence of gender distinctions and monogamous, male-female marriage has not been taken down all the way, and if we as God’s people give ourselves to His ways and repair and restore that fence, there can be a positive, ripple effect through the nation. God’s light will always outshine the darkness (see
John 1:5). ©2017 Michael Brown
Scripture quotation is taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version.
Michael Brown is a radio host, author and theologian who has been confronting the LGBT activist agenda for more than a decade with the truth and love of Christ.