The following comprehensive analysis is provided by MassResistance.org:

As most people know, this is a terribly critical time regarding the imposition of “gay marriage” on America.

On Tuesday, March 26, the United States Supreme Court in Washington heard arguments on the lawsuit to overturn the Proposition 8 Constitutional Amendment vote in California. The following day, the Court heard arguments on the lawsuit to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Either of these would be huge wins for the homosexual movement and could change the country similar to the way that the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” changed the military.

Both of these cases were strategically targeted and crafted for maximum success. And they were filed in carefully chosen venues to get the most gay-friendly federal judges. All of that worked out stunningly for the homosexual legal teams. Both cases sailed through the federal courts with barely a hitch. And both, as we shall see, were further aided by less than stellar representation by their opposition.

Both cases have generated mountains of paperwork in their filings, amicus briefs, and rulings, along with the myriad of groups and individuals that have been involved on each side,. It can be quite overwhelming. Our aim here is to explain all this in reasonably simple terms.

Most important to understand is that both of these cases have used the “equal protection under the law” clause of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment as their primary argument. And in our opinion, this what the pro-family side has largely failed to effectively defend.

The Proposition 8 Case

Since 1998, 30 states have passed constitutional amendments to ban same-sex “marriage.” An additional state, Hawaii, passed an amendment to allow the legislature to decide. Nine states currently allow same-sex “marriage.”

The homosexual movement calculated that it could undo all of this by getting a federal court to declare such an amendment unconstitutional. They decided to target the California amendment, known as “Proposition 8”, which was passed in 2008.

There were good reasons for this choice. California is in the very liberal 9th Circuit federal court district. But in addition, they were able to arrange for Judge Vaughn Walker to preside over the case. Walker, who later publicly acknowledged he was homosexual, struck down the amendment. (However, he did order a stay of enforcement until it worked its way through the legal system. This stay was challenged in court by the homosexual legal team but in this they were not successful.)

The gist of the case, as mentioned above, is that under the “equal protection under the law” clause of the US Constitution, homosexuals who want to marry were being treated differently from heterosexuals who want to marry. Instead, California allows them to enter into civil unions. Such discrimination is unconstitutional, they argue. Homosexual couples should have the same rights to marry as heterosexuals, because they as citizens have the same basic civil rights. The federal judge and the appeals judges all agreed with that reasoning.

The counter-argument was that the same laws on marriage apply to everybody — i.e., everyone can marry someone of the opposite sex — therefore, there’s no “equal protection” problem. But that was rejected by the judges. The fact that the lawyers on our side accepted California’s civil union law as a legitimate compromise made that argument difficult to defend. (That was another strategic reason for choosing California as the target.)

But beyond that, the pro-family handling of that case was widely criticized as a “perfect storm” of incompetence and non-aggression. See the MassResistance report from 2010 on this.

It’s always appeared to us that the only effective way to discredit the “equal protection” argument would be to discredit homosexual behavior itself. It should be easy. There’s certainly an enormous amount of material to do that. But the pro-family lawyers have almost completely avoided that approach.

Thus, during the US Supreme Court arguments, when the right made a brief foray into some stronger points, it didn’t go well. Here’s how (the far-left pro-gay) Mother Jones magazine reported on pro-family lawyer Charles J. Cooper’s interchange with the justices:

When Cooper argued that California was justified in enacting the ban because of “society’s interest in responsible procreation,” Justice Elena Kagan asked if it would be constitutional to ban marriages between infertile couples. When Cooper argued that it’s possible that same-sex marriage harms children, Justice Anthony Kennedy pointed out that there were already more than 40,000 children being raised by same-sex couples in California. Asked by Kennedy and Kagan how same-sex marriage could have a negative effect on “traditional” marriages, Cooper couldn’t offer any examples.

According to reports, throughout all the court hearings the pro-family lawyers were trying craft arguments that would fit the predicted the temperament of Justice Kennedy, the assumed “swing vote,” rather than on the strict legal aspects of the case. It’s an interesting type of calculated risk.

If the Supreme Court ultimately agrees with the lower courts, what does that mean? The answer: It’s devastating. 

It would effectively strike down all laws and state constitutional amendments in the US against same-sex “marriage.” This is the holy grail of the entire homosexual movement. It will basically undo all the work that’s been done in defending marriage, and in one stroke will completely redefine the family unit for the entire country. Like the 1973 abortion ruling, it would be a sweeping mandate by judicial fiat with no possibility of fighting back by the citizens.

The Defense of Marriage (DOMA) case

DOMA was passed in 1996 by huge majorities in Congress and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law (1) bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex “marriages” in any of its laws, programs, benefits, etc. It also (2) gives individual states the legal option not to recognize them, even if other states allow them.

The homosexual movement’s strategy here was to file several cases and hope that at least one was successful. In 2009 and 2010 four separate federal lawsuits seeking to overturn DOMA were filed: two in Massachusetts, one in Connecticut, and one in New York. All four were filed in “pro-gay” federal court venues with relatively gay-friendly judges presiding.
July 9, 2010: The DOMA ruling in Boston Federal Court was celebrated in the mainstream press as a great civil rights victory.

But the “equal protection” clause was the primary argument they used, but one of the Massachusetts lawsuits also invoked the 10th Amendment “states’ rights” argument. (Ironically, the “states’ rights” argument has also been used — more persuasively — by lawyers on our side of this case. They argue on the rights of states NOT to recognize “gay marriage” on a federal level.)

MassResistance had followed the two lawsuits in Massachusetts, one filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and the other by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) legal group, as they went through the federal court in Boston. Read our analysis published in 2010.

All four anti-DOMA lawsuits won in the federal courts. A contributing factor was the weak-kneed defense of DOMA by the Obama Administration’s justice department. The DOJ’s reluctance to be aggressive was admitted to in a statement in February, 2011.

From these, the US Supreme Court selected the New York case, Windsor v United States, to hear. But after seeing how poorly the Obama Administration defended the DOMA case in the lower courts, the House of Representatives sued and won the right to hire its own legal counsel to defend it before the Supreme Court. They hired former Solicitor General Paul Clement.

After Clement accepted case, his high-profile firm, King and Spaulding in Atlanta, caved in to pressure from homosexual activists and withdrew the firm it! So Clement resigned from the firm and has continued defending DOMA.

The DOMA lawsuit targets particular part of the law (Section 3 in the statute) which states:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.’

The plaintiffs have argued that the federal government must treat “gay marriages” the same as regular marriages throughout all its laws, regulations, etc., because “gay people” have the same rights as everyone else and “gay marriages” are still marriages. Otherwise, “gay people” are not being treated equally under the law. And it’s the right of the states to determine that.

Unfortunately, in our opinion, Clement’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court and in his briefs were only moderately better than the pro-family Proposition 8 lawyers. He didn’t aggressively take on the heart of the matter regarding “equal protection” — the issue of homosexuality and homosexual behavior. Instead, he mostly stuck to the states’ rights argument and the traditional purposes and reasons for the institution of marriage.

Interestingly, it was Justice Kagan who brought out the fact that DOMA was originally passed because of the widespread disgust over homosexuality in America. As Politico reported:

Kagan read aloud from the House Judiciary Committee report on DOMA which described the statute as a way to resist the immorality of homosexuality. “I’m going to quote from the House report here….’Congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality,'” she said.

How important are these points? No one can really tell.

If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court ruling and overturns the key Section 3 of DOMA, the homosexual movement can accomplish the following:

• It would require the federal government (funded by taxpayers in all 50 states) to include homosexual “marriages” in all federal benefits. This includes Social Security, federal pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, Veteran’s benefits, and everything else involving marriage, including filing jointly on Federal income taxes.

• It also includes access to federal programs and other things run or controlled by the federal government, such as housing, federal loans, passports, health insurance, military housing, burial in military cemeteries, etc. Thus, the federal government would recognize homosexual behavior as equal to regular marriage throughout the range of all its activities.

• But even more frightening: Given the wording of the decision it would also likely extend to any activities that receive federal funding, such as state programs, college programs, and virtually anything else involving federal money, such as federal contracts. We believe that the Obama administration would use this as a lever to accelerate the forced equalization of homosexuality with heterosexuality in all federal activities or anything connected to federal money — similar to the way it did in the military with the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Also going on: Massive nationwide PR assault

The two Supreme Court cases are the homosexual movement’s “ground war.” There is also the “air war” going on.

Most people, even pro-family activists, don’t realize that for the last few months America has been under what’s likely the largest and most expensive public relations campaign in the history of the homosexual movement.

All of those politicians (including some Republicans) who are suddenly very publicly “coming around” on the “gay marriage” issue isn’t a coincidence but clearly the result of a very intense lobbying effort — targeted for the time when the Supreme Court would be considering the “gay marriage” cases.

The same goes for the huge news generated when Sen. Portman’s “gay” son conveniently persuaded them to change his mind at just the right time. And how does it happen to get into all the right media in the right way? It goes on and on. There are the full-page ads in major newspapers listing the major corporations supporting “gay marriage.” The influx of gay-marriage and gay-relationship issues on this season’s TV shows. The magazine stories, including TIME with the homosexual kisses. Even the flood of Internet ads (even on conservative sites) on gay marriage. And of course, the phony polls on major networks showing a huge national support for gay marriage. We’ve even seen “gay rights” sidewalk canvassers in some cities.

Most of the money for this seems to be flowing from established groups like Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. But there are obviously other vehicles that are less visible at work.

It a D-Day-like effort to persuade the nation — and especially the Supreme Court — that “gay marriage” is inevitable and that trying to fight it is fruitless.

A tale of two marriage rallies: DC and Boston

The two “gay marriage” rallies that took place the first day of the first Supreme Court “gay marriage” oral arguments said a lot about the nature of this battle.

On Tuesday, March 26, thousands of regular pro-family people made the trip to Washington DC and marched outside the Supreme Court building, easily outnumbering the homosexual activists gathered there. The speakers were various pro-family activists, group leaders, and a few politicians.

That same day in downtown Boston it was the elites: The homosexual lobby and the liberal establishment held its own rally celebrating the DOMA lawsuit which was first filed in Boston. It attracted a few hundred activists and press. But the speakers were an impressive gathering of at least a dozen prominent city, state, and federal politicians, including the Mayor of Boston, Congressman Ed Markey, along with major homosexual activist leaders. (There was one Republican, US Senate candidate and current state rep. Dan Winslow, who gave a rousing pro-gay speech.)

VIDEO: What it was like. Scenes from the two marriage rallies: Washington DC the Boston.

How will the Supreme Court rule?

As the battle continues across the country, over the next few months the Justices and their staffs will digest the oral arguments and the large number of amicus briefs submitted by both sides, and also discuss the cases among themselves. It’s generally predicted that they will release their decision in the latter part of June, just before this year’s session ends at the end of June.

If this were decided strictly on the rule of law, we think that both cases would lose. Applying “equal protection under the law” to homosexual behavior is absurd by any rational application. And the states’ rights argument is far-fetched, despite the liberal Boston judge’s ruling; DOMA was written to protect states’ rights. But unfortunately, there’s a long history of the courts ignoring the obvious constitutional law.

The conventional wisdom is that Anthony Kennedy will be the deciding vote on this. So most of the national focus has been on him. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito are considered safe traditionalists expected to decide against both cases, and Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan are seen as left-wing on just about everything and will support both. (The fact that Sotomayor and Kagan, the Obama nominees with documented radical pasts, are even on the Supreme Court is a testament to the cowardice of the Republican Party for not blocking them when they should have.)

Many commentators have also read in their tea leaves that Kennedy is not eager to have the courts mandate national “gay marriage” by fiat the way the court did with the much-maligned and contentions 1972 abortion ruling. But it’s hard to believe that they would leave the homosexual movement with nothing at all.

Our prediction is that Kennedy will not overturn Proposition 8 and mandate gay marriage everywhere. But he’s likely to strike down DOMA to at least some degree, and force it throughout the federal government.

But who knows? Whatever side of the bed Kennedy gets up on that day could determine the fate of the family structure and morality in America. It’s a terrible situation. The Founding Fathers never intended courts to have this kind of despotic power over the country. But our politicians (and ultimately the citizens) and have allowed it to happen.

On the other hand, there’s still two months to go. Anything can happen. If anything the fight needs to be stepped up.

Column by Nidra Poller (February 2013) an American journalist living in Paris, France. She is reporting on the movement in France to question where it is as a culture.

Fertility (Dis)Figure(d)

Un enfant quand je veux si je veux… The battle cry of the feminists marching for freedom from fertility—“a baby when I want one if I want one”—was ringing out in the streets of Paris when I came to live here in 1972. After lagging behind the United States, where the diaphragm + spermicide had been available to married women since the 1940s and oral contraception since 1957, France caught up with The Pill in 1967 and legalized abortion in 1975, championed by Auschwitz survivor and then Health Minister Simone Veil. The process has gone forward on all fronts, with generalized use of fail-proof methods, unfettered access to abortion when fail-proof fails, reimbursement across the board including, just recently, 100% free contraceptive pills for women 15 to 18.

Contraception and abortion alone could not bring about the desired transformation of the female condition. They were the technology. The metaphysics was what has become known as “gender studies.” In the early days of Women’s Liberation it was makeshift ideology peddled in volumes of look-alike fiction and non-fiction best sellers shouting that maternity was a drag, femininity a hype, sexual differences induced by cynical manipulation, love and marriage an extension of the military industrial complex, and men were chauvinist pigs. No more pink for girls and blue for boys. Sexually marked toys were not abandoned but switched: cars and trucks for girls, dolls and tea sets for boys. Women wanted, or were told they wanted, something called equality.

The harbingers of this “sexual revolution” were, more often than not, closet lesbians. Later we not only discovered that they were lesbians telling heterosexual women to kick their men in the balls and out of their lives, they were also playing stereotypical sexual roles in private, some as simpering mistresses to others more macho than any man could be.

In the space of one generation we went from the prohibition of pre-marital sex to promiscuity for all. The stakes were high for a young woman in the 50s. Sleeping around or, oh horrors, getting pregnant killed her chances of a good marriage… only way to climb the social ladder. Unmarried women could not be fitted for a diaphragm. There was no place to make love decently. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in 1952, female students under 21 were not allowed to live off campus. We were quartered in dorms, with 10 PM curfews. The lower classes and a dissolute bohemian minority did what they wanted and dealt with the consequences as best they could. Decent women waited to discover the pleasures or disappointments of conjugal life. Twenty years later, a young man with nothing to offer and nothing to lose, would mumble his momentary itch; if the chick dared to decline, he’d toss off a whiny “what’s the matter, you got hangups?” before shuffling off to another.

Teenage girls rushed to lose their virginity before getting their first bra. The boys they slept with had a pressing need for freedom. Don’t cramp my style, don’t try to hold on to me, I’m not into commitment. A girl who, for whatever reason, didn’t solve the fertility problem by taking The Pill was too much of a bother. Women were supposed to be liberated… meaning, available 24/24 with no strings attached. Somehow Women’s Liberation turned out to be an emergency exit for men, inclined to run out on their responsibilities and give in to their more shiftless instincts.

Well- educated, professionally accomplished, financially independent women made babies with a male friend or part time lover, with the clear understanding that the woman would assume 100% of the responsibility for raising and providing for the child. Looking back, it’s almost laughable to see how feminine they were! Liberated from drudgery they voluntarily opted for impossible burdens. A woman’s work is never done. Marriage was spurned or diluted by up-front adultery. Lovers and mistresses joined the family for dinner, children’s birthday parties, and family vacations. Wives and husbands moved in and out, and it was no more dramatic than changing seasons.

None of this nullifies the undeniable improvements in the lives of women, our chances for fulfillment in love, marriage, maternity, and a wide range of professions. No longer on the outside looking in, we can see for ourselves how the working world is organized, how power is won and exercised, how many seemingly fascinating jobs are less interesting than, for instance, taking care of babies. Today, young women deserve our help in re-examining the past to reconceive the equilibrium between biology and choice. They have heard enough about what was acquired. What about the losses?

Fertility is formidable. Connecting unbridled fertility to irresistible sexual pleasure is a work of genius. Is it true that primitive people did not make the connection between making love and making babies? Everything has been arranged to make young fertile men and women forget it… until it’s too late. The consequences are enormous. Mouths to feed, and a lifetime of responsibility. Women, until just recently, could be left holding the bag… unless the man voluntarily took his share of the burden and attendant joys. At the same time, women took the blame for sterility. In the understandable wish to get beyond all of that primitive stuff we have, of course, created new problems.

While reassuring women that the advantages of oral contraception outweigh the dangers, the French Health Ministry has issued warnings about 3rd and 4th generation contraceptives after a young woman suffered a debilitating stroke. But these dramatic risks are the visible peak of a throbbing ache that has never been addressed. Women who cannot bear the changes induced by oral contraceptives may be a minority but those who are uncomfortable with the effects associated with artificial hormonal activity are probably a silent majority. How does the body regain the intelligence of reproduction when it has been silenced for years by oral contraception or IUDs?

Fertility is a daunting challenge, a stunning competitor that interferes with our short and long term plans. It should not be treated as an enemy. Granted, we need some control over this magnificent life force that doesn’t exactly go with our current lifestyle. But if we smash it, suppress it, rough it up, and fail to honor it we wake up one day with a problem that few futurists imagined: drastic population decline. Just as a family can wither away and disappear in a few generations, a nation can lose its bid for posterity. We find ourselves with advanced societies collapsing on an upended age pyramid while the under-25 majority of retrograde populations are out in the streets throwing rocks and firebombs or drugging themselves on heroin and despair.

And then there is AIDS. Super safe birth control that theoretically allows for super carefree pleasure notwithstanding, the clumsy old condom was brought back into service.

Once and for all defined as progress, women’s liberation is stubbornly entrenched. Thinking women, happy to be involved in board meetings, business travel, financial transactions, and research projects, have pocketed the progress and ignored the twisted paths that take us away from our destination. The fine arts and literature, seemingly locked into the hysterical phase, do little to help women conserve or recover the delicate skills that help us nurture the masculinity of men. Women have used more clout to get the right to drive buses, work on automobile assembly lines and now, in the US, go into combat than to improve the balance between work, maternity, and child care.

We keep getting hit with the downside of our miracle solutions. For example, the two-for-one baby boom. I am not qualified to say whether the proliferation of twins is due to post-contraception sterility, pre-menopausal maternity or new techniques of assisted procreation, but it is troubling when every third stroller you pass on the street is a double. First, contraception has to be 99.9% reliable for women at the peak of fertility, then medical genius has to compensate for damaged fertility… there is a time for everything but who knows what time it is?

Un enfant quand je veux comme je veux. The motor of Progress must not idle. Having established the religion of free love, liberated women from the disgusting femininity-maternity couplet, placed abortion on the same level of noblesse as procreation, demanded parity everywhere from floor sweepers to CEOs, purified language of the despicable undifferentiated masculine collective, the battalions of Progress are back on the front lines and their battle cry is “A child when I want how I want.” Are homosexuals the latter day saints of love marriage and procreation? The issue of same-sex marriage is currently debated in the French legislature. Debate is a euphemism for the arrogant steamroller of the left wing majority, reveling in a no holds barred shouting match against the opposition. Deaf to the outcry of a huge segment of the population, indifferent to reasoned argument, secure in the certainty that President Hollande will not put the question to a popular referendum, the majority is having a ball.

The bill, in an inimitable French lace formulation, is called “mariage pour tous [marriage for everyone]. It actually means “marriage for no one,” in that the institution will be gutted and the shell decorated with garlands of flowers. Lurking behind this mariage nouveau is a devious plan for “procreation without biological borders.” With imperial disdain, a government, elected with a modest majority is dismantling the basic building block of society. Long stretches of the proceedings at the National Assembly are broadcast live on our equivalent of C-Span. Dozens of mini-Robespierres grab the microphone as if it were a whip and lash out at the Opposition, accused of homophobia, retrogradia, and obstruction of the wheels of History. Following the lead of Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, whose corn rows are meant to be an argument in themselves, deputies alternate revolutionary thunder with cooing over kitschy homosexual weddings with all the trimmings and heartfelt pleas for the children (hundreds? thousands? who knows?) who will finally bathe in the crowning glory of marriage for their homoparents.

Indulgent media visit the happy homes of happy homosexuals with their happy broods. No complaints from these child soldiers. Daddy plus Daddy makes a house a home. And aren’t two mothers better than one? Who are the dastardly reactionaries that would deprive innocent children of the dignity of married homoparenthood? How dare they insinuate that same sex parents are not as good if not better than heterosexuals? Who are they to say that marriage is the union of a man and a woman intending to make a family? Homosexuals deserve the same rights to marry and found a family as heterosexuals!

The opposition claims “mariage pour tous” is a Trojan horse: procreation-booster rights will inevitably follow the same-sex marriage & adoption bill. In fact, MAP (medically assisted procreation) for lesbian partners, included in an earlier draft of the bill, was withdrawn due to opposition within the majority party and the French electorate. It will eventually be tacked on to a family affairs bill initially promised for March, now postponed to October, pending—but not depending on—the recommendations of the Bioethical commission. Opposition deputies predict that males will demand and obtain, on the grounds of equality, legalization of surrogate motherhood. The majority cries Foul! You don’t want same-sex marriage so you drag in unrelated issues. False, shouts the opposition, and the memorandum shows what’s up your sleeve. For some reason the Justice Minister issued a memorandum last week notifying consular officials that recourse to surrogate motherhood– a criminal offense under French law– is not in and of itself grounds for refusal to naturalize the child.

Once these fait accompli children are brought to France, the father(s) will demand official filiation. Does the wish to have children–against the implacable laws of nature–justify cheating? Other subterfuges are detailed in a chuckling article in Le Monde.1 One member of a lesbian union hides all evidence of her partner during the adoption procedure. Then the two women raise the adopted child together… until they separate. The once-hidden partner now fears her ties to the child might be broken. Karim was the odd man out when his partner Yann fertilized a Ukrainian woman, but today they live happily with their five year-old twins in a remote village where friendly neighbors are satisfied to learn that that both men are “papas d’intention” [daddies by intention] of the children born via a “maman de naissance” [birth mommy]. Yann doesn’t like the term “maman porteuse” [carrying mommy]; it sounds too industrial. He says there’s nothing inspiring about the biological bond. “The act itself is shabby– masturbating into a test tube–and the consequences are a monstrosity.” I assume he means the pregnancy.
Members of the left wing parliamentary majority, infuriated by the Trojan horse argument of the opposition, cannot in fact justify the same-sex marriage juggernaut without the hidden procreative project. Back in 1999, their predecessors promised that the PACS [contract of civil solidarity], tailored to the needs of homosexuals, was the last and final stage. No marriage, no adoption, no procreation, no filiation. Of 142,738 contracts signed in 2012, 3,680 were male-male, 3,064 female-female, and 135,994 male-female. Did homosexuals shun the PACS because it was beneath them or because they weren’t really interested in forming more perfect unions? And what if a tiny minority of a tiny minority will actually take advantage of same-sex marriage? How can that justify the slapdash, sloppy, ill-considered, unjustified dismantling of marriage and filiation?

Can the impossibility of making children without a male and a female participant be solved by same-sex marriage, MAP, and surrogate motherhood? Isn’t it a way of forcing the children born under these circumstances to perpetuate the myth of homoparenthood? Neither our respect for homosexual friends and family nor individual examples of wonderful children raised by same-sex partners can resolve this dilemma. The question is what shall society encourage, allow, condone, facilitate, tolerate, forbid or punish.

The idea that a child needs a mother and a father is suddenly labeled reactionary! One might as well burn all the world’s literature and retool humanity into heartless robots. Who can deny the suffering of a child who loses a mother or a father by illness, accident, abandonment or divorce? Proponents of mariage pour tous claim the opposition is motivated by base prejudice against equality in marriage, while they stubbornly deny the inequality imposed on the children brought into the world via this misconception. An infant doesn’t need to be cradled against a mother’s breast and held in strong male arms? The orchestration of contrasting male-female sensations–muscles, odor, voice, rhythm, mentality– is a vital need for children. It has nothing to do with socially-imposed stereotypes; it is a corollary of the ineluctable reality that reproduction is only possible when a female ovule is fertilized by male sperm.

Advocates of same-sex marriage portray homosexuals as innocent victims of discrimination; there is nothing intrinsically distressing about their biologically sterile sexuality. Evil lies in the eyes of the beholder. End the social disapproval, costume homosexuals in bridal attire, and let them get on with their normal lives. The reality is far more complex. Honest acceptance of homosexuals does not exclude a guts rejection of their sexuality. In your face lurid gay pride, smoldering hostility to heterosexuals, coteries and rainbow flag nationalism can’t be ignored. The slogan on a banner carried in a Mariage pour Tous demonstration — “Une paire de meres est mieux qu’un père de merde” [a pair of mothers is better than a shitty father]—reminds us of the 70s: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” When homosexuality was a disgrace, many hid their shame in heterosexual marriage; when coming out was in style, homosexuality was worn as a badge of honor. Many of the children raised in same-sex households today were born of heterosexual marriages that ended when one of the partners discovered his or her homosexuality. Children should not be dragged like rag dolls into these complications.

At a time when half the children born in France are technically out of wedlock, why would homosexuals be dying to get married? Why not create an institution that is truly adapted to their difference? No. If we don’t give them our marriage and turn ourselves into fish farms to provide them with progeny, we’re selfish reactionaries. Same-sex marriage, we are promised, will subtract nothing from marriage; it is the simple addition of one unjustly excluded category of citizens to the existing cohort. Though the opposition doesn’t have the votes to defeat the mariage pour tous bill, the National Assembly debate has the merit of casting light on its hidden consequences. The “simple” addition of same-sex unions nullifies marriage, makes spaghetti of filiation, axes the patronym, betrays the biological facts of procreation by deleting their representation in law and language, and dumps centuries of continuity into muddy confusion. The nation is sterilized. Justice Minister Taubira pours an acid smile on opposition deputies who object to some 200 radiations of the words (and the concept) “father and mother” from the Code Civil. Voyons, messieurs, it’s replaced by “parents.”(“Parents” means parents or relatives.) And what’s wrong with replacing “mari” and “femme” by the unisex “époux.”

The government and its majority are now spelling opposition “o-b-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-o-n.” No one must stand in the way of the forward march of History. Or should it be called Itstory?

We have reached the endpoint of a package of social changes that began in the sixties. Instead of reexamining the premises and consequences, today’s activists want to take us over the cliff. Before we can help our homosexual citizens, we have to ask ourselves why the femininity decried in women is acceptable when parodied by men. Why men were male chauvinist pigs but macho women can simultaneously be husbands to their female partners and mothers to “their” children. Why is everything organized so that young women at the most propitious time for childbearing use overwhelming contraception while women in their forties and same sex partners resort to every possible stratagem to have children?

And how can we maintain the prohibition against incest when Johnny Appleseed donors are spreading their sperm to the winds with no return address?

ABOUT NIDRA POLLER:

Nidra Poller is an American writer and translator who has lived in Paris since 1972. She has contributed to English-language publications such as The Wall Street Journal, National Review, FrontPage Magazine, and The New York Sun.

Poller has been described as a novelist, author of illustrated books for youth, and also a translator, notably of the philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. Her writings include observations on society and politics, including the Muhammad al-Durrah incident and the Ilan Halimi trial.