Reclaiming Marriage

As an energy company’s corporate officer in 2008, Margot Kyd was struggling to explain the truth about marriage in her workplace.

Margot Kyd

After opponents of California’s Proposition 8 to ban same-sex “marriage” publicized her support for the measure, Kyd — a member of Legatus’ San Diego Chapter — redoubled her efforts to articulate her beliefs in a way people could relate to and understand.

In her search for help, she discovered Catholics for the Common Good Institute and now, as chairman of its board of directors, Kyd is part of the organization’s recently launched Marriage Reality Movement.

Unifying movement

Introduced at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia last September, the Marriage Reality Movement seeks to form people so that they can talk about marriage — especially with their children — in a culture rife with confusion about gender and relationships.

“Our goal is to communicate the reality of marriage to our children in a way that they say, ‘That’s beautiful,’” said Bill May, founder and president of Catholics for the Common Good. “The battle over marriage has moved from the Supreme Court to the classroom and the family dinner table.”

Bill May

May said the movement focuses on what Marriage Reality members are for, not what they’re against. It recognizes marriage as a universal reality integral to God’s plan for creation. It also defends and promotes the human right of children to be united with their mothers and fathers and brought up within marriage — and the right of young people to know the truth about love, marriage, family and sexuality.

Additionally, the movement evaluates all laws, institutions and curriculums in light of how well they support men and women in marriage, men and women marrying before they have children, and young people developing relationships that can lead to marriage.

These principles, May said, can unite people who are on the same side of the marriage issue, just as clear objectives have brought members of the pro-life movement together despite differing strategies and programs.

“Our view is that there really has been an absence of a unifying movement across the country that recognizes the crisis we have with the breakdown of marriage and is a platform for those working around this issue,” Kyd explained. “The Marriage Reality Movement was born from that recognition and need.”

The truth of marriage

Over the last few years, May added, Catholics for the Common Good has been developing a new way of thinking about marriage as understood from revelation and verified by common human experience.

“It’s a totally different way of communicating about it with a change of language and thinking,” he explained. “For example, the Church doesn’t teach that marriage is good for children or what children need. She teaches precisely that marriage is connected with a fundamental human right of children and there are corresponding responsibilities. We actually translate Church teaching into nonreligious language.”

The group has published its own educational materials and is now forming a coalition of organizations that agree with the movement’s principles.

In her own efforts to explain the truth about marriage, Kyd said, she quickly realized that the root of the problem is that the culture has obscured the meaning of marriage and redefined it by such social changes as no-fault divorce and separating marriage from children and procreation through contraception.

“The issue here is not about same-sex ‘marriage,’” she explained. “The issue is we’ve lost the meaning of marriage. To begin rebuilding a marriage culture it’s necessary to start by reintroducing marriage.”

Brian Brown

Universal truths

Taking into account the breakdown of marriage and the need to protect children’s rights, Kyd said the Catholics for the Common Good approach resonated with her because of its simplicity and positive message that marriage not only unites a man and woman with each other but with any children born from their union.

“This is not a religious issue,” she said, “it’s a fundamental human rights issue and it applies to everyone.”

Philadelphia Legate Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said he appreciates the Marriage Reality Movement’s emphasis on children’s rights.

“One of our mottoes is: ‘Children do best with both a mother and a father.’ And we’ve seen the group in France — La Manif pour Tous — rally millions of people by focusing not on adult desires, but the very real needs of children. I think this is an excellent focus.”

Brown said proponents of redefining marriage have spent years and untold sums of money putting forth the idea that children end up the same whether they’re raised by the biological mother and father or two men or two women.

“On every level of culture, we need to point back to the truth that children not only need, but have a mother and father. That is biological reality, not ideology.”

Although his group is more focused on public policy and activism, Brown said he welcomes the Marriage Reality Movement’s involvement in the battle to preserve marriage.

“The more the merrier. We’re up against a juggernaut that wants to redefine the very nature of what it means to be a human person. We encourage as many efforts as possible to lay out the reality that, regardless of what the law says, marriage remains what it has always been: the union of man and woman.”

Rose Sweet

Rose Sweet, a Catholic author and marriage speaker who attended the Marriage Reality Movement launch, said what she appreciates most about the movement’s approach is its message that husbands and wives are irreplaceable to each other and to their children.

“I love the word ‘irreplaceable,’” she said. “It’s a lot more powerful than we realize.”

Sweet said she is beginning to see and hear such language in blogs and talks by Catholic leaders — a reflection of the outreach that May and Catholics for the Common Good have done.

As their message moves into the culture, Sweet also said she believes it helps not to mention Church teaching by name.

“I know the wisdom of being able to share universal truth without using religious language. That’s what Jesus did. He tapped into the deepest desires of the heart and universal truth that we all understand.”

JUDY ROBERTS is a Legatus magazine staff writer.

Learn more: takebackmarriage.org

ccgaction.org
nationformarriage.org
rosesweet.com