There’s a juggernaut coming our way that seems likely to sweep every opposition from its path. 

In 2003 marriage in this country was defined exclusively as a union between one man and one woman.  Since then, however, seventeen states have legalized same-sex marriage either by legislative action or voter referendum.

In 2013 the United States Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage act, and that has opened the door for judges in five more states to nullify state laws prohibiting same sex marriage.  Ultimately, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will decide if the expressed will of the people in the remaining thirty-three states will be allowed to stand.

Don’t hold your breath.  A recent poll reveals that fifty-three percent of Americans believe homosexuals should have the right to marry.  Among Millennials, those 18-33, the approval rate is 70 percent.  If same sex-marriage is denied for the present, the opposition does not seem likely to hold out for long.

It only seems fair, does it not?  Why should those who are attracted to others of the same sex be denied the joys and legal privileges that heterosexual couples receive.  Isn’t this a civil rights issue?  That’s how the argument goes.  And it seems hard to resist.

But these are early days.  No other society in the long history of the human race has ever taken this step.   We have entered into a social experiment that treds an uncharted path.  It remains to be seen if this grand reordering of the social and cultural landscape will usher us into a new paradise or plunge us into ruin.  You can’t tell.  Not for a while yet.

But the first hints are starting to rise to the surface.  Hawaii legalized same-sex marriage last December 2.  Widely published predictions forecast an economic boom for the Aloha State.  Same sex couples would flock to the islands for the romance Hawaii promises, and they would bring with them many tourist dollars.  But that hasn’t happened.

Something else has, though.  In 1991 a judge in Hawaii began all this fuss by ruling that Hawaii’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples was discriminatory.  Since 1991 the rate of marriage in the United States has fallen by twenty percent according to the centers for Disease Control.

That’s not all the fault of the homosexual movement, of course.  But homosexual activists deserve some of the blame.  In the words of Janice Shaw Crouse, who directs the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America, they have sought to “weaken, devalue, and diminish [marriage]as a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman committed to their union and their children.”

According to a 1999 study by the Brookings Institute, the annual cost to society of marriage breakdown is $229 billion.   That does not factor in the emotional cost of broken lives, of children forced to grow up in poverty, of lowered academic achievement and social maladjustment.  And handing those things down to the generation that follows.   Sorrow and sorrow multiplied to the third and fourth generation.

Jesus, the greatest teacher who ever lived, warned about harming children.  He said, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6)

That was for one child.  What about a whole generation of children?

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..