How dangerous would the acceptance of same-sex marriage be to the institution of marriage?
Before proceeding further, we need to put this problem in context. The disintegration of marriage in the United States and throughout Europe has been going on for several decades and has many faces such as contraception, no-fault divorce, cohabitation, adultery, same-sex unions, and now gay ‘marriage.’ Gerard Bradley, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, states that in comparison with abortion, which is ‘the greatest injustice in American society … the late twentieth-century disintegration of marriage is more epoch-defining and more hazardous to a person’s moral health. The question of legally recognising same-sex marriage thrust upon us by recent court decisions culminates this disintegration’ (‘Same-Sex Marriage: The End of Marriage?’, Catholic Dossier, Mar-Apr 2001, p. 36). The duty of government is to protect and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good. Society owes its continued survival to the family, which is founded on marriage. As the CDF
