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Four of the Five Intervenors in the New Jersey Same Sex Marriage Case are LDS

Seven homosexual couples are suing for the right to wed in New Jersey, seeking a court order to be granted marriage licenses. The law suit-filed last June-pits them against the commissioners of the Department of Human Services, the Department of Health and Senior Services and the acting state registrar of vital statistics.

Three family coalitions, which are predominantly LDS and two married LDS couples are joining the fray. Collectively known as Non-Profit Family Intervenors and Individuals, The New Jersey Family Policy Council, the New Jersey Marriage Coalition, the Arizona-based United Family International, and two married couples argue in their Feb. 21 motion to intervene that the attorney general's office is not predisposed to vigorously fighting against the plaintiffs.

Here is the official position of the New Jersey Coalition for Marriage:

WHY NEW JERSEY SHOULD RETAIN CURRENT MARRIAGE STATUTES

Marriage is the legal, social, economic and spiritual union of a man and a woman. One man and one woman are necessary for a valid marriage. If that definition is radically altered then anything is possible. There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry, or for eliminating other requirements, such as minimum age, blood relative status or even the limitation of the relationship to human beings. Those who are trying to radically redefine New Jersey's marriage laws for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the rest of the population. Those citizens opposed to any change in New Jersey's marriage statutes are merely defending the basic morality that has sustained the culture for everyone against a radical attack.

When same-sex couples seek New Jersey's approval and all the benefits that the state reserves for married couples, they impose the law on everyone. According non-marital relationships the same status as marriage would mean that millions of people would be disenfranchised by their own governments. The state would be telling them that their beliefs are no longer valid, and would turn the civil rights laws into a battering ram against them.

Law is not a suggestion, as George Washington observed, "it is force". An official state sanction of same-sex relationships as "marriage" would bring the full apparatus of the state against those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. The New Jersey Coalition for Traditional Marriage views this as outlawing traditional morality.

Eliminating one entire sex from an institution defined as the union of the two sexes is a quantum leap from eliminating racial discrimination, which did not alter the fundamental character of marriage. Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that devalued the nuclear family soon lost what he called "expansive energy," which might best be summarized as society's will to make things better for the next generation. In fact, no society that has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage has survived. Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued.

When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. . If the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point for continuing the assault on marriage.

If feelings are the key requirement, then why not let three people marry, or two adults and a child, or consenting blood relatives of any age? . Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability and continuity in our state. Child abuse is much more prevalent when a living arrangement is not based on kinship. Kinship imparts family names, heritage, and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the community.

The US Supreme Court declared in 1885 that states' marriage laws must be based on "the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.''

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