Bryan Fischer
Bryan Fischer: Rand Paul's view of marriage would be a disaster for America
By Bryan Fischer
I think Rand Paul's position on marriage – getting government out of it altogether – is perfectly disastrous. The GOP must not go down this road.
Rand Paul does not strike me as a guy who changes his mind much, since he is a man of unbending principle. This is great when he's right and dangerous when he's wrong. He's just plain wrong on this. If he holds to this position, he must not become the GOP candidate in 2016.
Two concerns, among many:
His approach devalues the institution of marriage. It's just another agreement or contract, like the one Earl and Ray or Earlene and Raylene can get. There would be nothing special about marriage at all. This means, as we have seen in Scandinavian countries, that people stop getting married altogether. Children suffer. They grow up in unstable environments, with father or mother figures drifting in and out of their lives.
To me, this is absolutely and totally unacceptable if we care about the wellbeing of children. The state does have an appropriate interest in recognizing and supporting marriage between a man and a woman as the optimal nurturing environment for children.
The fatal weakness of libertarianism is that it inevitably and ineluctably deteriorates into license. That's not the America our Founders established. They predicated the entire American experiment on ordered liberty, the capacity of Americans to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
Everyone in society was expected, by scriptural teaching, social custom and public policy, to arrange their lives according to the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian tradition. America was not, and can never be, a culture in which every man does what is right in his own eyes. If we get to the point where that becomes the official position of the government, America will no longer be America. That is a recipe for social fragmentation and eventual destruction.
Secondly, you couldn't keep government out of these quasi-marriages even if you tried, for one reason: divorce, or whatever it would be called. You will have, as today, bitter custody fights over who gets the kids. A judge is going to wind up deciding these issues whether for good or for ill.
Since this approach, in my judgment, would make the whole issue of domestic arrangements more fluid and unstable, we'd have more of these custody and division-of-assets conflicts than we have now. Rand Paul's view should be an absolute non-starter for conservatives.
© Bryan Fischer
March 16, 2013
I think Rand Paul's position on marriage – getting government out of it altogether – is perfectly disastrous. The GOP must not go down this road.
Rand Paul does not strike me as a guy who changes his mind much, since he is a man of unbending principle. This is great when he's right and dangerous when he's wrong. He's just plain wrong on this. If he holds to this position, he must not become the GOP candidate in 2016.
Two concerns, among many:
His approach devalues the institution of marriage. It's just another agreement or contract, like the one Earl and Ray or Earlene and Raylene can get. There would be nothing special about marriage at all. This means, as we have seen in Scandinavian countries, that people stop getting married altogether. Children suffer. They grow up in unstable environments, with father or mother figures drifting in and out of their lives.
To me, this is absolutely and totally unacceptable if we care about the wellbeing of children. The state does have an appropriate interest in recognizing and supporting marriage between a man and a woman as the optimal nurturing environment for children.
The fatal weakness of libertarianism is that it inevitably and ineluctably deteriorates into license. That's not the America our Founders established. They predicated the entire American experiment on ordered liberty, the capacity of Americans to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
Everyone in society was expected, by scriptural teaching, social custom and public policy, to arrange their lives according to the moral standards of the Judeo-Christian tradition. America was not, and can never be, a culture in which every man does what is right in his own eyes. If we get to the point where that becomes the official position of the government, America will no longer be America. That is a recipe for social fragmentation and eventual destruction.
Secondly, you couldn't keep government out of these quasi-marriages even if you tried, for one reason: divorce, or whatever it would be called. You will have, as today, bitter custody fights over who gets the kids. A judge is going to wind up deciding these issues whether for good or for ill.
Since this approach, in my judgment, would make the whole issue of domestic arrangements more fluid and unstable, we'd have more of these custody and division-of-assets conflicts than we have now. Rand Paul's view should be an absolute non-starter for conservatives.
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
