Is Same-Sex Love the Basis of Marriage?
Advocates of same-sex marriage use the following argument: “Love” experienced by heterosexuals is the same as “love” experienced by homosexuals. (“Love is love.”) And, (as Frank Sinatra sang) “Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage,”— that is, “love” is the basis for marriage. Therefore, all those who “love” (including same-sex “lovers”) have a right to marriage. Is love the basis of marriage?
In the play, Fiddler on the Roof, the idea that a man and a woman would get married because of “love” was opined as “a new style,” “radical,” and “a little crazy.” The notion prompted Tevye to ask Golde “Do you love me?” She had to wrestle with the answer because it never occurred to her that marriage would be based on such a notion since it wasn’t for them—they were “matched.” The notion that “love” ought to replace “tradition” as the basis of marriage won out in the play and in western culture.
However, for the vast majority of human history—and even today in many countries of the world—marriage was not based on “love,” but the decision of parents, and they made their decision based upon their religious beliefs. In other words, God was the basis of marriage, not “love.”The Bible says, “Whatsoever God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). This doesn’t mean that the married should not love one another. After all, God is love—but “love” is not God. Believers don’t worship “love;” they worship God. Love is a consequence of a God-based marriage, not the basis of it. To make “love” into God is idolatry. In marriage, the love of the heterosexual is God-based; the love of the homosexual is not. The two are not the same.