29 The recognition of so-called same-sex marriage illustrates where an evolutionary beginning leads. The biblical marriage is a one-flesh, lifelong, faithful union between a man and a woman who raise the natural or adoptive children God gives them. Children are most likely to thrive in a home where they are in close contact with an adult man and an adult woman who are committed in a legal marriage to work together with one another until death. The plurality in unity of marriage offers children an everyday example of how two opposite-sex people can function together as a team, ultimately providing insight into the Triune nature of their Creator. In contrast, same-sex relationships are notorious for their instability and the absence of exclusive faithfulness. Current data indicates that when legal marriage is available to same-sex partners, the overwhelming majority of them do not seek it. The loss of commitment in the culture at large contributes to acceptance of homosexual pairings so that an attraction to a person of the same sex is justified as an “orientation” that is deeply rooted within the individual. The biblical understanding of “love” is that of a commitment to give oneself to another person in spite of one’s subjective emotions, attractions, or satisfactions. We are the recipients of that kind of divine love, a love that is not the expression of an internal, subjective orientation. God’s creative priority is for marriage to occur first, followed by childbearing. Marriage is the lifelong foundation upon which the family is built. Children are to be raised so they might leave and establish their own lifelong marriages. Marriage is permanent; parenting is temporary. The evolutionary worldview has led to the reversal of that order so that almost half of children born in the United States are born to unmarried women. In many communities, mothers remain unmarried while men float through the neighborhood siring children. In such an arrangement, the most permanent relationship is that of a mother and her daughter who raise the next generation together with no male assistance or presence in the home. Now the family is permanent and marriage is temporary, if marriage occurs at all. There is nothing surprising about this, given an evolutionary beginning. It is the logical and natural conclusion. Shifting from the institutional expression of religion to the very nature and existence of religion, sociologists perceive religion most often through the lens of secularization theory. French sociologist Émile Durkheim could
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