My son once told me it has always been easier to speak on behalf of God than on behalf of science. Here is an interpretation, from both perspectives, of the ongoing efforts to radically redefine marriage and parenting.
God forgives every weakness even before it is committed to behavior. That forgiveness is equally available and perfectly attuned to each of us. But for all of God's infinite forgiveness He grants almost no up-front permission for the indulgence of weakness. Divine will has but one codicil — man-woman marriage. All aspects of egoic life are complications on the spiritual path. But regarding the desire for procreative sex, He has no choice but to accommodate it. And that is because of the laws of biology. Without procreative sex, humanity and the incomparable chance to love God, would not exist. To believe that unique exception granted in order to bring forth human life can be transferred to non-procreative sex serves deep and dangerous ignorance.
The human ego is continually under the stimulus of experiential wanting, which can be divided into three overlapping categories: Sexual lust, which is gratified through the body; greed, which is harbored in the heart; and anger and the will to domination, which are the fumes of a frustrated mind. All of the strife in the world — the wars, conquests, enslavements, extremes of poverty and wealth, crime — result from unrestrained manifestation of these forms of egoism. The permanent theistic religions impart the truth that lust, greed and anger impede spiritual advancement in this life and beyond. But let's eschew reference to religion, which we have been reminded again by the pro-sexuality hoax, is easily exploited to justify purposes of the temporally powerful. Let us instead address the heart and conscience to understand the dangers of the factitious same-sex marriage movement.
What does the heart say is the remedy for greed? Selfless love. What is the remedy for hate and anger? Again, selfless love. God provides freedom of choice to actualize selflessness and curb the lower impulses. Self-control is the remedy for the anguish caused by harrying wants. Nor does man-woman marriage neatly solve the problem of sex for married people. Marriage is a God-given accommodation for procreation, which does not apply to any of the innumerable lustful attachments. Add just one inessential lust and there is no reasonable basis to deny any sexual or emotional attachment as the basis of the many imaginable forms of matrimony.
Marriage is not necessary for, nor does it in itself engender, selfless love between two people. You may point out that many heterosexual couples cannot or do not wish to have children. God's color box has broad brushes, offering the same chance to love selflessly, to control wants, and the same grace of forgiveness for all, with or without marriage.
Justice Kennedy, you are widely believed to be the swing vote in an upcoming decision about gay marriage. You asked during oral arguments on April 18, 2015, “Haven't we learned a tremendous amount… just in the last ten years?” I guess you don't get out much. We have learned a tremendous amount in the last ten thousand years about the value of human life and the power of individual moral valuation. In the last few years we have forgotten much of it in a collapse into material and sensual experimentalism. The humane and advanced form of monogamy (which is constitutionally not the business of the federal government, anyway) is the product of moral advancement of thousands of years. It is dreadful that that great moral legacy may be delegitimized on behalf of a small minority of Americans who assert shape-shifting identities based on self-authorized sex and gender experimentalism.
An extensive literature in psychology about moral reasoning traces back to Jean Piaget, the genetic epistemologist who founded developmental psychology. Piaget, like almost all important psychologists, was a humanist uninterested in God or faith. He wrote, “Only education is capable of saving our societies.” The moral reasoning theories grounded in Piaget, Kohlberg, and others are actually not about morality at all. They are about strategies for getting what one wants.
Morality is the psychological process of directing life choices according to unchanging values, which are mental facets reflecting God's light. Morality is based in God, not in the wants and compulsions of man's law. The progress in marriage custom and law have followed the vast sweep of history from fear-based conformism through recent centuries of relatively humane moral valuation in Christian societies. But the political forces that have brought homosexual marriage before you are anti-moral. They do not accept the existence of a moral code based on unchanging values. They believe that choices regarding sexual behavior are rightfully based on self-directed experimentalism and identity formation. “How do I feel now? Who am I and what do I want? What is my sex and gender identity today?” Same-sex marriage is the terminus of the chaos wrought by that psychology.
Justice Kennedy, you remarked that same sex marriage bestows “dignity” that benefits the children of homosexual couples. Setting aside the irony that homosexual couples can't have children, here is a God-based definition of dignity. Dignity is an unalienable element of the human mind which shines forth most brightly in people who have been especially able to rise above the clamor of wants. Dignity does not come from human convention and cannot be bestowed by the laws of men. You may say that you are not charged with trying to figure out God's will, but you are supposed to keep American law out of God's way. Our liberty and right to pursue happiness are God given. Our Constitution is written to prevent governmental interference with that liberty. The purpose of your court is to interpret law to protect divinely granted freedom, not to make up human-based entitlements. The Constitution is not to be torn apart like an old couch and mined for the spare change of unnatural, unchartered special rights.
If “learning a tremendous amount” indicates your belief that the field of psychology has made unbiased contributions to our understanding of same-sex parenting, as a qualified federal expert witness I can inform you that you are mistaken. For decades, the American Psychological Association (APA) has devoted vast resources to the normalization of homosexuality and same-sex parenting. The following position on Lesbian and Gay Parenting (reinforced as recently as 2012 in another statement) is typical of the APA’s official and oft repeated stance:
Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.
Decades of research has not produced one study that is inimical to the promotion of same-sex parenting? This not science but doctrinaire politics.
A psychologist who conducts research from a perspective of the irreplaceable value of having a mother and father risks functional excommunication. Similarly, looking deeply at the psychological harm to people whose lives began with commercialized procreation such as sperm banks and surrogacy would likely be a career killer. This absolutism has helped create a new class of dissociative mental disorder by proscribing research into children raised by same-sex parents. What are the psychological effects of knowing one has a shadow family of brothers and sisters, biological parents and grandparents who can never give their love? I once saw a teenager who had been adopted at birth into a loving Christian family. Her first words to me were, "They are not my family."
Every human condition encompasses gifts and vulnerabilities. American psychology has deemed an honest examination of the inherent vulnerabilities of homosexual consciousness and same-sex parenting to be heretical.
I thank God for the chance to address you in freedom and security. I accept God's will for America and that whatever He does is for the best.
Dr. Tyler provides methodological evaluations (second opinions) of allegations of sexual abuse cases, and assessment of psychological injuries of Christian students and other victims of discrimination in public settings. She can be reached at metrics@intylergence.com.