California's Marriage Protection Act is Good Public Policy

Fifteen-year-old Joshua Roberts "pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon" causing great bodily injury during an unprovoked assault on Levi Snyder outside a local movie theater according to Redding's Record Searchlight for April 17. Snyder was rendered comatose as a result of the attack.

And this story is yet another reason for all California citizens of good will to support the California Marriage Protection Act. This California initiative constitutional amendment would put into the California Constitution California's current marriage statute: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This step has become necessary because these 14 words have been challenged in the California courts by homosexual activists and the California Supreme Court is set to decide the fate of man-woman marriage during the current session.

We males being barbarians by nature, civilizing each new generation of boys and young men is the basic task of society and fathers are crucial to this task. So when I saw Joshua Roberts's photo in the newspaper I thought, "Dollars to doughnuts he doesn't live with his father." And a local resident who claimed to know the boy confirmed my assumption. Whether this is true of Roberts or not, I believe it is true that the best single predictor for a boy's dropping out of school, getting into drugs or getting into trouble with the law is his not living in a household with his natural father.

And marriage is the social institution that helps men to remain with their children. But in countries such as Sweden and Denmark where same-sex marriages are legal, marriage is said to have tanked. That is, neither gays nor straights are bothering to get married. Thus, same-sex marriage seems to subvert traditional marriage by dishonoring it in the eyes of many people. In the United States where the majority of the population still believes that homosexual acts are sinful, the negative effect on marriage rates could be even more pronounced than in Scandanavia.

So your personal safety as you lock up your bike at the local Movies 10 depends on marriage and the support it affords teenagers and young men by helping keep dad in their homes. This argument has helped hesitant petition signers get up the nerve to do what they ought to do and sign the Marriage Protection Act petition. It works kind of like Garrison Keillor's Powder Milk Biscuits.