The amendment was first proposed publicly as a four-part comment to the January 4, 2013, article "In Illinois, Redefining Marriage Threatens Marriage and Religious Freedom" posted in THE FOUNDRY part of The Heritage Foundation website at: http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/04/in-illinois-redefining-marriage-threatens-marriage-and-religious-freedom/
Part 1 of 3
It is time to engage the fight with new thinking. What
follows is long in explanation, but it solves the problem simply and
completely — and in a way that should offend no one, including God.
Please read what I have written. Thank you.
Ephesians 3:14-15
(NRSV) states: "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from
whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name." Bible
commentary adds regarding verse 15: "The Greek term for "family" is
derived from the word "father" (text note: Gk fatherhood)."
Ephesians
3:15 matters because it is the only verse in the New Testament in which
the word "family" is used, according to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance
of The Bible (King James Version).
Webster's Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary (Copyright 1976) defines "family" as: "1 :
FELLOWSHIP 2 a : a group of persons of common ancestry : CLAN b : a
people or group of peoples regarded as deriving from a common stock :
RACE 3 : a group of individuals living under one roof and usu. under one
head : HOUSEHOLD ... 5 : the basic unit in society having as its
nucleus two or more adults living together and cooperating in the care
and rearing of their own or adopted children ... " That dictionary
definition is based on Webster's Third New International Dictionary and
follows the practice of ordering definitions "where the earliest
ascertainable meaning is placed first and later meanings are arranged in
the order shown to be most probable by dated citations and semantic
development." Furthermore, the "family" definition "is the product of
the only organization specializing completely in dictionary making with
more than 100 years of continuous experience in this field (Copyright
1976)," so make that now "more than 136 years."
In 1976,
same-sex marriage was unthinkable in America. In fact, the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld the constitutionality of sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick
in 1986, and did not reverse that decision until its 2003 ruling in
Lawrence v. Texas. In 1976, Webster’s defined "marriage" as: "1 a : the
state of being married b : the mutual relation of husband and wife :
WEDLOCK c : the institution whereby men and women are joined in a
special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding
and maintaining a family 2 : an act of marrying or the rite by which the
married status is effected; esp : the wedding ceremony and attendant
festivities or formalities 3 : an intimate or close union." None of that
definition opened any doors to same-sex marriage; indeed, the term
"same-sex" is antithetical to the term "marriage" according to the
entire history of the English language as recorded by the world's
preeminent English language dictionary. And yet, here we are in January
2013: teetering at a tipping point.
I am opposed to same-sex marriage and have stated so in comments to this Heritage website. Read my comments at: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/11/18/hardly-obsole... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/15/memo-to-the-w...
None
of my thinking regarding same-sex marriage has diminished in the last
two years. If anything, my thinking has only intensified. Some might
characterize my intensified thinking as bullheadedness, but they would
be wrong. Intensified thinking (by definition: thinking that is
deepening, strengthening, and sharpening while being made markedly more
acute in keen discernment and intellectual perception of subtle
distinctions in the midst of conflicting emotions) is thinking that can
sometimes achieve breakthroughs, so it is the sort of thinking that
should be encouraged and constructively challenged whenever possible.
I
care about my fellow American citizens who identify themselves as
homosexuals, and I insist that they be treated fairly in the law and in
the doings of our society. But I also insist with equal fervor that
wrongs should be righted with quiet grace and calm intelligence, not
with uproar and hostility. Raw emotions driving reckless ambitions
should never be the stuff of law making. Better solutions are now being
ignored in America’s same-sex marriage debate, because those solutions
have no voice in the yelling match that now only acknowledges two bad
choices as the available alternatives.
In his Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus said: "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds
that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven." (Matthew 5:20 NRSV)
Any God-fearing, Bible believing,
conservative Republican who cares at all about doing the right thing —
that is: being righteous in God's sight — must regularly ponder the
Sermon on the Mount. Reading Matthew chapters 5 through 7 is sobering
and humbling, especially because "the scribes and Pharisees" were the
political conservatives in the Holy Land when Jesus spoke his warning.
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
Part 2 of 3
To make ready, one must keep modern computer
technologies fully in mind, because the better solutions I will here
propose are made simple by those technologies. Furthermore, one must
keep the needs and the potential efficiencies of government and society
fully in mind, because meeting those needs and accomplishing those
potential efficiencies are my aims.
I propose the following as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Legal Identity of Citizens in the Law
Section
1. A natural born citizen’s fundamental right to know his/her true
biological identity shall supersede the right to privacy of all other
citizens.
The government shall issue a birth certificate to
every citizen born in the United States. The birth certificate shall
note the date, time, and place of birth; shall identify both the
biological father and the biological mother by full legal name and DNA
profile; shall identify the newborn citizen by full legal name, genital
and chromosomal sex, and DNA profile; and shall be variously filed in
government records, including separately according to the Social
Security Number of each biological parent. Only verified biological
parents shall be named as parents on the birth certificate. The
government shall reissue a birth certificate to a citizen upon request.
A
citizen shall be entitled to know the whereabouts of his/her biological
parents who are fellow citizens. The government shall help a citizen
locate his/her living biological parents upon request.
In a
conception, the biological father shall be the man who produces the
sperm and the biological mother shall be the woman who produces the egg.
It shall be a felony crime to withhold the name of a biological father
or a biological mother, or to in any way aid and abet an anonymous sperm
or egg donor in a conception that results in a live birth. A surrogate
who has another woman’s egg implanted in her womb shall not be the
biological mother when she gives birth to a newborn citizen.
If
the biological parents are not married, the biological father shall
have no right to compel the birth of his child, but shall have the right
to parent his child if he chooses, even if the biological mother
forfeits her parental rights.
A minor citizen shall have
biological birthrights that cannot be removed, disinherited, disowned,
disallowed, withdrawn, or in any way waived by adoption, abandonment, or
any legal means, including the birthrights to Social Security survivor
benefits and a biological child’s fair share to an estate and its
privileges.
A minor citizen shall have the right to sue his/her biological parents for direct child support.
Section
2. Henceforth, the government shall not identify its citizens by
religion, heritage, ethnicity, and/or race, except regarding the
existing historical record. Henceforth, the government shall not
question its citizens regarding religion, heritage, ethnicity, and/or
race, except to ask Yes or No: Are you a citizen of the United States of
America?
A citizen shall be known as an American.
Section
3. The government shall recognize three legal status categories that
citizens can use to join with other citizens in beneficial ways: 1)
legal co-equal, 2) marriage, and 3) family. Each category shall have its
rights and privileges legislated by Congress.
An adult citizen
shall have the right to designate one other adult citizen as his/her
legal co-equal. Each adult citizen can designate only one legal
co-equal, but any adult citizen might be the designated legal co-equal
for many other adult citizens (example: three unmarried adult siblings
might each designate their widowed mother as their legal co-equal, and
the widowed mother might designate her married sister as her legal
co-equal, and the married sister might designate her husband as her
legal co-equal, and the married husband might designate his best friend
living in another state as his legal co-equal, and so forth in any
strange way). All adult citizens shall be encouraged to designate a
legal co-equal.
Marriage shall legally join one man to one
woman in an exclusive conjugal union that assumes regular sexual
intercourse and the possibility of procreation. Marriage shall exist in
the law as a biological distinction, because it is the only pairing of
two adults that is capable of producing children without using other
people.
Family shall legally acknowledge and benefit any
grouping of two or more citizens in which at least one of the citizens
is an adult. The term “family” shall be used as both a noun and a verb
in the law.
The rights and privileges of the three legal status
categories shall largely and significantly overlap in ways that are
identical. However, Congress shall have the right to legislate
distinctions that might benefit each category in different ways and
might benefit any one category exclusively.
* * *
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
Part 3 of 3
COMMENTARY: In my proposed amendment, I have reframed
the argument in the same-sex marriage debate. Now who matters most in
the debate is each and every newborn citizen, not any one adult citizen
who is in love with another adult citizen. The lawmakers and the courts
need to focus on those who matter most. In doing so, what results is
what I have proposed above, which is thinking that paves the road to
better solutions that are not now being considered.
If one
looks to find a parallel to the human breeding that is now happening
among same-sex couples throughout America, the only parallel to be found
is the selective breeding that occurred in the Lebensborn program in
Nazi Germany. It is horrifying to make such a claim, but it is true.
Consider
the following equivalent. I was born without a left hand because a
physician prescribed a drug to my mother during her pregnancy with me.
That physician made an unintentional mistake out of ignorance. However,
if he had willfully and intentionally caused me to be born without a
hand, that would have been criminal and manifestly evil by any measure,
for no one has the right to permanently disable a child by purposeful
actions of any sort, no matter how well intentioned those actions might
be. Yet, it is legal in America today to purposely breed a child using
an anonymous sperm donor and/or an anonymous egg donor, which is no
different than purposely causing a child to be born without a hand, for
to be forced by others without your prior consent to live your life
without knowing one or both of your biological parents is to be
permanently disabled by the evil premeditated acts of others. That is
the truth. That is the undeniable truth.
Same-sex marriage
proponents allow themselves to perpetrate an evil that they have tried
to masquerade as a good, because they imagine the selfish ends they
might accomplish justify whatever horrible means they might employ. It
is evil to ever rob a child of his/her “fundamental right to know
his/her true biological identity,” but to somehow succeed in doing that
evil legally is a basic strategy of the same-sex marriage movement. They
speak of creating children out of love through artificial means, but
all they accomplish in the end are the outcomes of Lebensborn — children
who have been permanently disabled by the evil selfish acts of others.
Such things should be criminal in America.
Even so, the U.S.
Constitution should recognize the legal status category of family, and
that category should not be defined by the definition of marriage, for
it is plainly the case that a single parent raising a biological child
should rightly constitute a family, as should a same-sex couple raising
an adopted child. Family should be defined in the law as “any grouping
of two or more citizens in which at least one of the citizens is an
adult” — and that without exception.
Again, Ephesians 3:14-15
(NRSV) states: "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from
whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name." God be
praised. Amen
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
Addendum to my three previous posts: 1 of 3; 2 of 3; and 3 of 3
The news supports my concerns: http://cjonline.com/news/2012-12-29/topeka-mother... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/sperm-do... http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/william-marott...
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
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