The Iowa Supreme Court today strikes down a statutory ban on “gay marriage” within the State as unconstitutional. While Iowa joins a growing number of States where the Courts have disavowed the manifest will of the people, and the doctrine of separation of powers, in order to foist a politically correct interpretation of “equal protection” as their rationale for anti-family, social engineering, it is important to see how the devaluing of traditional marriage over time indeed has fostered this judicial tyranny.

What is most striking in the unanimous decision of the Iowa Supreme Court is when the opinion remarks rather boldly: “We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective.”

There is a legitimate debate as to whether marriage should be licensed by the State at all, or if it is better left to the realm of private contract. My view is that marriage serves as a foundation of civic society when it is seen primarily as sacramental in nature and as such the primary prerogative of the Church, or of persons in their own private spheres, instead of as a primarily civil relationship governed by the licensing powers of the State. There is no doubt that marriage has been ordained by God as a sign of divine love for man as it is revealed in the world and as a mechanism for men and women to learn how to love each other in the bonds of an intrinsically sacrificial fidelity. That is to say, marriage points to that love which transcends the transitory measure of life in this world, which explains as such why the fidelity is seen properly and ideally as indefinite in nature, as distinct from those purely contractual bonds, that terminate upon a certain condition or period of time. At the same time, it is very much a this-worldly union, one that demands real fellowship, compromise, and forgiveness among persons who are otherwise given to a self-absorbed negation of the importance of others, at least with respect to what seems so very “critical” to their own happiness in this lifetime. It is resplendent in the unchanging verities of that blessed world in which God reigns triumphant and is seen without the darkened shades of human ignorance, just as it is also in and among the discordant passions of people who in this lifetime see only dimly into what is truth. I am reminded of the Summary of the Law: “Thou must love thy God with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Marriage in its sacramental realness teaches and indeed allows for both: the love of God in the maintaining of a matrimonial fidelity, and the love of another human being in that sacrificial manner, which is at the heart of an ever deepening orientation toward charity.

Now, what I have just said is very theological in nature; and from the modern day view of “the Separation of Church and State,” it may seem harsh to hear in the context of the civil law. Nevertheless, it is precisely because marriage has that sacramental value, that ability in theory and more so in actual practice to orient men and women towards what is indeed most godly in themselves, that it is pivotal in sustaining generations of men who have the internal, moral temerity to live as free men in the exercise of their God given liberties. As may be said in another fashion, without marriage men would all too easily slink back into that most debased state, where self-absorbed action is the measure of all “truths,” both in a personal and societal sense, and where even the idea of “love” becomes confused in the minds of many with transitory sentiment, one that has no more lasting impact upon souls, than any other diversion or fantasy. A culture without sacramental marriage at the core of how its citizens, or at least a clear majority of them, learn to love and to pass on values to their children, breeds irresponsibility, weakness of character, and ultimately despair.

President George Washington has said the same: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”  It is an unhealthy, utopian conceit to imagine a society where all men live in accordance with the verities of God as revealed in “the law of Nature and of Nature’s God;” but it is not hard to imagine a society where, in spite of the universal prevalence of sin, the clear majority of men have been oriented through familial traditions, religious instructions, educational standards, and social and legal institutions into behavioral patterns, which at least tend to promote those religious principles upon which the national morality may rest. Indeed, in maintaining such a national morality at the time of the Revolution, the familial, religious, educational, and social ethos of the American colonies practically cried out for that state of national independence through which most men could live out their lives as free. We are thus a free nation, because first we are a moral nation. Sacramental marriage is very much at the heart of how that national morality infuses itself through marital love into the lives of men and then, through their example within the family, into the future generation.

What matters then in preserving the Republic is in first and foremost preserving among at least a clear majority a distinctly sacramental view on marriage. Besides providing a clear example of sacrificial love, sacramental marriage underscores family life as having a very distinct identity of its own, one to be differentiated from the State. Part of the fidelity of a marriage is its exclusivity, not just in a purely sexual sense, but in that sense of sustaining a household apart from others. Children then first discover their own specific identities as members of a family, with its own surname, household rituals, and recounted traditions of the past, well before they learn to see themselves as citizens of the State. It is in such self-identity that they are capable of even knowing their intrinsic freedom; without it, they are bred not as citizens of a Republic but as wards of the State. Marriage performs this role in a free society, to the extent that it is understood as sacramental and thus as demanding the exclusive, loving fidelities of an institution designed by God. As marriage loses such role, because its sacramental nature has been watered away, it becomes for far too many men a merely temporal contract, instead of an indefinite bond; a mere expression of a sentiment, instead of a sign of a sacred love; and yet another act of lofty narcissism, where the bonds are seen as falling away when “they grow apart” or just stop being “happy,” instead of an enduring will to love ones partner, in spite of the temptations and travails of this lifetime.

Assuming the importance of sacramental marriage in sustaining a national morality fit for a Republic of free men, the question becomes: How is marriage sacramental? Like all the sacraments of grace found both in nature and in the Church, the sacramental nature of the sacrament is first and foremost in the fact that it is ordained as such by God. Thus, we are able to say that marriage is sacramental, to the extent that it is in line with how God in the history of men ordains marriage. How has God in the history of men ordained marriage? I think that it is clear to say, even without recourse to the account in the Book of Genesis in regards to the coming together of Adam and Eve as husband and wife, that in all histories and cultures of men it has been understood that God ordains real marriage to be a lifelong bond between persons of opposite sex (either monogamous or otherwise) for the principal good of maintaining a stable family life for children. As a Christian, I am inclined to view God as having ordained marriage as a lifelong, monogamous union between one man and one woman; but even if I adopt said inclinations of a culture that practices polygamous or polyandrous marriages, then I must recognize still that sexual difference is at the core of a marriage ordained by God. The reason is abundantly clear: Sacrificial love is encountered in the giving of oneself for the life of “the other,” and “the other” with respect to a man is a woman, as “the other” with respect to a woman is a man. Another reason is clear: While love may be expressed in a myriad of ways, there is no greater testament to such capacity of love to engender new life, as the love of God is at the heart of His creation of new life, than in such coming together of husband and wife for the creation and rearing of children.

Sacramental marriage is critical in preserving that national morality in which a Republic of free men may persist; and sacramental marriage has a unique character, that is wholly unlike the watered down, contract based, secularized type of marriage, which said Iowa Supreme Court has said must include same-sex pairings. When too many of our citizens stopped seeing marriage as sacramental, by easing said legal capacity to divorce, and by upholding non-traditional family structures as compatible as marriage in conceiving and rearing children, they consigned it to the contract based, secularized status that it is now holding in the eyes of a growing number of jurists, professionals, academics, journalists, and other policymakers. Let us make no mistake: in degrading the law and the practices of marriage first among themselves, heterosexuals cheapened the status of marriage, well before the militant, homosexual lobby found their present opportunity to deny it even the last vestiges of its former, sacramental nature. It is only because of what the heterosexual community has done, in denying the importance of religious principles within so many of our civic institutions, including married life itself, that the Iowa Supreme Court is able to proclaim now that there is “no important governmental objective” in maintaining a legal preference for sacramental marriage.

It is absurd on its face to claim that in fact there is “no important governmental objective” in preserving the fundamental cultural basis for stable, family life – namely, the ideal of a marriage that is identified not with the feeling of “love,” which indeed may or may not be all too transitory, but rather with the commitment of creating and of rearing stable, family lives modeled on the lifelong, sacrificial love between a man and a woman. If indeed said government has no objective in preserving stable families, which are the very bedrock of a free society, then it has no meaningful objective whatsoever. In such a case, it then will be better to free sacramental marriage from the licensing powers of the State, even at said cost of certain legal benefits, so as to maintain its unique character for future generations. The result will be catastrophic for our civic and political realms, since the last vestiges of “the law of Nature and of Nature’s God,” which are so fundamental to our Constitutional governance under the principles of the Declaration of Independence, will be lost. There is then the certitude of a Republic in Name Only, where the outward appearances of fidelity to Constitutional prerogatives and norms will mask a growing tyranny on the freedoms of men and the consciences of their children. Those who know that true freedom arises only in the souls of moral men, and who accordingly know intellectually or at least intuitively that to be free in exercising ones liberties requires first maintaining a rightful relationship to God, will need to separate ever more from the tyranny of the false Republic, abiding in patience until the tyranny falls upon itself. Until then, the good fight must be waged, even if doomed to the snares of the noisome pestilence of a perverse age, because it is with that resolve that the memory of what has been lost may inspire in due time a great rebirth, in a courageous toil, of what is good and holy in the affairs of men.