Unfortunately, Wisconsin's Constitutional Ban on Same Sex Marriage is Likely to be on its Way Out.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit for a group of same sex couples in Madison on Monday (2/3/14). They will challenge Wisconsin's constitutional ban on same sex marriage.  With their success in other states as an indicator, then they are likely to succeed.  Why?  Is it inevitable? Probably so due to the fact that the dominant culture in the U.S. has not succeeded in distinguishing "marriage" from a plain legal "contract", nor does it seem to mean anything more than that in our popular culture.  So, may it rest in peace.

Yet, it's unfortunate.      

If Christians cannot define marriage to a lost world, a Christian institution with origins in the nation of Israel, then they may lose it.  They cannot seem to be able to differentiate it from a Constitutional right.  So perhaps that is what they've let it become?  Unfortunately, statistically, in the area of divorce, Christians are already equals with non-believers.  

If we cannot distinguish a "marriage" as being a unique union between a man and a woman and a "legal civil union" as being between any two friends of the same sex desiring legal protection, then we have lost our salt.  There should be no confusion between the two types of unions.  Two people of the same sex cannot produce biological descendants together nor cultivate their own biological family -- they have no incentive to endure a marriage, nor even need a marriage in the first place, apart from legal protection.  The institution of marriage was originated for at least this type of description, composed of man and woman, husband and wife, a label for a unique nuclear family, or simply a unique unit of two.  The facsimile of two people of the same sex trying to do the same thing bears no likeness.  Two people of the same sex can still have an intense fondness, lust, love, with a physical attraction, but can only imitate the critical part of a marriage.  Two people of the same sex cannot go through the consummating act of a marriage, but can only dumb it down, lessen, and perhaps even render the institution as being of no affect, useless anymore, and far gone from its original definition.  Perhaps in the future, gays will marry, and heterosexuals will enter a simply more pragmatic agreement of a legal civil union.  It is already happening in Europe, and therefore likely to be picking up steam in the U.S., proving, finally, that a civil union can indeed accomplish all of the legal requirements of marriage desired by the homosexual subculture, yet they are still plodding forward politically to ultimately and inadvertently prove that the original marriage was unobtainable, and they have in the process contributed to making it obsolete.   

Marriage predates Democracy, yet unfortunately we have allowed the political system to redefine it and assume its ownership.  The same political system would instead have helped the over 90% in our country who are heterosexual to retain its uniqueness.  But it seems as though they (we, I) cannot defend marriage as being different than a simple "legal civil union" and now must give it over to being something, apart from lip service, mostly legal.  It has been given over to being a mere legal contract, a signatory of friendship that can be legally honored or broken in court of law as a friendship wears out, void of any nuclear family need for genetic identity and longevity or historical significance, and simply be scavenged now by any two adults of any description purely for its legal entitlements.

A civil union signifies legal entitlements between friends -- a social entitlement that should have been extended long ago to a battered minority here in our society from a humane social and political perspective, but now is finally ushered in as once worthwhile human institutions and marital values are dying and being ushered out.

And to the rest of the world the founding institution of marriage will have a ring of religious bigotry to it instead of the sound of unique beauty and promise that it was founded on, because God's people could not help it continue to stand as originally intended.  They could not define it to anybody else as being different than a mere political civil/legal union.  What a shame.

_______________  Update  ________  02/17/2014_______

What do you know . . . 

In Indiana -- for one -- they know the difference between a "marriage" and a "civil union".

This move can maintain a plain institution of marriage there.  They are the new forward thinkers.