Marriage isn't in Trouble! (but we are)

Despite all the hyperbole on the airwaves these days, marriage isn't in the slightest danger. You see, marriage is an institution created by God, and like the church and the state, the other two institutions, it's definition and proper sphere of authority is defined by Him and can't be altered by anyone else.
A marriage requires only three ingredients: one, a man and a woman who are qualified to get married (i.e. not closely related or already married), two, a commitment before God to live as husband and wife, and three, living together as husband and wife. Since a marriage is important to the community a marriage generally includes people to witness the commitment and encourage the couple. The blessing of the church and the recognition of the state, the other two God given institutions, are generally also sought. However, all these can do is supervise and recognize the marriage- they don't make it, and their refusal to do so wouldn't change a couple's marital status before God in the least. At times, states have ignored, outlawed, or tried alter the church to it's whims, but the church has existed just the same. Marriage and the family will also always exist, regardless of the state's actions. It's simply outside of government jurisdiction.

What the government can do, though is change it's recognition of marriage. They can decide to treat a mostly monogamous version of habitual sexual perversion as equal with the natural and holy sexual outlet and lifestyle of marriage. One creates and protects children, the other produces none and is linked with the abuse of them. One is beneficial for health and emotional well being of the partners, the other is accompanied by disease and physiological problems. One has been considered a good thing in every society in history, the other has always been considered evil or at least abnormal. One could hardly find two more obviously different relationships, but the state can, if it wishes, thumb its nose at the mandate of God and pretend they are equal. Despite the masquerade, marriage will still be what it has always been.

What will be affected, however, is us. Our society will respond to the confusion in the same way as we have witnessed in the other countries which have taken this path. Marriage is cheapend by the state's slanderous relabeling, in much the same way college degrees would be if 4th grade teachers began handing them out to their students. "When everybody is special, no one is" as the Incredibles put it. When a marriage certificate means less, fewer couples will bother getting one, and live-in relationships, single parents and out of wedlock births will multiply, and along with them, all their attendant host of problems. Communities are weakened by the lack of healthy families, the educational system is taxed by the lack of involved parents, and the ripples keep spreading. With the united front of church and state broken, the church will soon take the full brunt of the force of the gay rights lobby wielding their captured state power to force the church into complicity with the scheme. Legislative gag orders, compulsory gay weddings, and other chaos and damage are sure to follow.

And the gay couples that all this was done to accommodate? Evidence suggests that only a small percentage of this already small group will marry, and of those, five years later, only a very small percentage indeed will still be together. What do you really expect when you try to play marriage with something that isn't remotely close to one?

Through history, the acceptance of homosexuality a trademark of civilizations that were past their zenith, just before they began to collapse. Even those never attempted to give it the status of marriage. No, I'm not fearful for marriage, but I'm very, very, afraid for the future of western civilization.