c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)

UNDATED _ Few were surprised that a Hawaii court has ruled in favor of homosexual marriage, but a major shock may result from the societal earthquake this decision will trigger. This promises to be more profound than the abortion upheaval for the simple reason that marriage affects so many more people.

This decision will also drive home a fact that Americans have long tried to avoid: Increasingly arrogant judges have rejected the set of traditional beliefs by which most of us order our lives, thereby disregarding the moral consensus necessary to sustain law in a democratic society.

First, let’s consider where this case is heading. Hawaii’s Supreme Court will surely affirm the lower court’s ruling. The immediate consequence will be a boom in the tourist industry as gay couples fly in from around the country to solemnize their now-blessed state. While the most detailed surveys show that less than 3 percent of the population is exclusively homosexual, and while common sense indicates that a very small percentage of gays will want to tie the knot, these weddings will receive disproportionate coverage.

The case will quickly move to the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s consider the environment in which the high court will take up this issue. Many states have already passed laws relieving them of the necessity of recognizing gay marriage. Congress has done the same with the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed by President Clinton, albeit in the middle of the night. Activist lawyers will have a field day filing suits in every state in the nation, arguing that the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize all legal contracts from other states. The Supreme Court will, therefore, act in a time of significant upheaval.

My prediction: The case will whistle through. In Romer vs. Evans the Court found that denying special protective status to homosexuals, as voters in Colorado decided, was an act of animus and, therefore, unconstitutional. This incredibly twisted decision, which in effect said Colorado voters are a bunch of bigots, established bad law that will be put into action regarding gay marriage. If denying special status represents animus, denying gays the right to marry certainly cannot stand.

After the Supreme Court hands down its affirmation, a profound confrontation may well follow as many states announce they will not recognize the Court’s decision. At the same time orthodox religious believers, along with many secular Americans, will experience severe doubts about the very legitimacy of the government that supposedly reflects their beliefs and interests.

Among the orthodox _ and this of course is my position _ the Court’s embrace of gay marriage represents nothing less than a frontal attack on the heterosexual family, which is the first institution ordained by God. To put marriage between man and man (or woman and woman) on the same moral plane as marriage between man and woman is to mock what we hold as the natural order of the universe. Having been ordered to accept the desacralization of life, we must now accept yet another assault on a core belief.

Secular Americans will come at this from a different angle: Our society is not suffering epidemics in crime, drug abuse, and violence because families are too strong, but because too many of them are either unstable or disintegrating. Because the family is the normative, ordering institution in society, to further weaken it is to ask for more social discord, which a legitimate government would not advocate.

We have not arrived here by chance, of course. Members of our various elites have made a sport of thumbing their noses at traditional morality. In the words of Richard John Neuhaus, we have separated freedom from truth and ended up with chaos and tyranny _ in this case the tyranny of judges who think nothing of overturning popular will as Hawaiians had earlier voted to ban gay marriage.

Some people will dismiss these arguments as homophobia. Some will echo gay congressman Barney Frank’s question: How does it hurt heterosexuals if my lover and I live a monogamous existence down the block?

To the charge of homophobia I plead not guilty. I have yet to bump into one of these critics during my rounds in this nation’s and this world’s prisons, where I embrace AIDS patients and minister to them in their darkest hours.

Rep. Frank’s question, however, is right on target. How indeed does gay marriage undermine the real thing? The answer has to do with moral preferences. Would it matter if an 80-year-old man down the block decided to smother his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife? That would not hurt me, nor would it hurt my children. Many will argue that putting her out of her misery would be an enlightened choice.

But accepting such an act undermines the traditional and morally appropriate response to disease, which is to care for those who are ill up to the time of their death. Choosing life is no longer an imperative _ just another option.

So it goes for homosexual marriage’s impact on heterosexual unions, which would become just another type of living arrangement, no better than any other, even though children might well be involved.

What Hawaii has begun signals the beginning of gay marriage. It also signals the divorce of law and morality.

MJP END COLSON