Nienstedt Misses the Mark on Marriage

Archbishop Nienstedt’s support of the marriage amendment is wrong, misses the whole idea of marriage and comes from a very myopic point of view.
 
The Archbishops argument in The Catholic Spirit (June 9, 2011) that a marriage is between a man and a woman hangs its whole theological hat on the proposition in two narrow quotes from the bible: Genesis 1:27-28 and Matthew 19:8-9. Genesis only mentions the fact that “God created mankind in his own image” and that we should be “fruitful and increase in number.” Matthew describes that “anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”  Now, I’ve read several different version of these bible quotes in the New International Version, the King James Version, and the American Standard version to name a few. Sorry your religiousness, but there’s no mention of homosexuality, that two men can’t get married, not even two men or two women. The fact that they mention that a marriage can be between a man and a woman doesn’t mean that it can’t be between two men or two women. You are stretching the boundaries of imagination to think that these describe any possible description of what marriage should be.
 
The Archbishop also tries to convince the faithful on the idea of marriage with his extremely thin secular arguments. He has the misguided idea of an exclusive reproductive nature of marriage and that the children from this “enfleshed oneness of a man and a woman” flourish the “best” with a mother and father. While it may be true that sometimes marriage produces children; what about those marriages that don’t produce children? What about any couple who adopts because their infertile? What about those individuals who get married in their eighties or nineties? Surely marriage for them isn’t about reproduction because they can’t have children.  Would his devoutness think that marriages in these situations should be prohibited because they don’t fit his narrow view about the reproductive nature of marriage?  I hope not. Otherwise there are a whole lot of octogenarians out there living in sin. When those who are married actually have children, the misguided idea that they can only flourish with only a father and mother is ridiculous. A review of 81 studies of family types released late last year shows that idea to be a myth. Children will thrive in any household as long as they are loved and nurtured regardless of whether they have one parent, two same sex parents, or a whole extended family. His saintliness needs to realize that people get married for a whole lot of reasons beside reproduction and find the most amazing ways to love and care for their children when they do have them.
 
Marriage, quite simply, is about two people that love each other. Whether it's two men, two women, or a man and a woman, as long as there is love between two people they should be allowed to spend the rest of their lives together. That’s what marriage is all about. If they should decide to have children, in whatever form they may have children, then it also includes sharing that love with their children. That’s what God is about too: love. God’s not about being exclusive and divisive, but rather about being inclusive.  Representative John Kriesel of the Minnesota legislature stated it best when he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that “people fight to find happiness,” he said. “You find someone you love and now other people are saying because [they] don’t consider that normal, you can’t do it?” Well your holiness, get with the program because you can’t stop people from loving each other.