One Man, One Woman for Life

This weekend, some students on campus organized a symposium called “Stand for the Family”. It was inspired and sponsored by the Ruth Institute, which is a project of the National Organization for Marriage. I understand that it was organized in response to the many symposiums and rallies for those in favor of the redefinition of marriage, to promote research and advocacy of the traditional view of marriage. The symposium started Friday night with a talk about eternal marriage by a member of the Presidency of the Seventy, and then continued Saturday morning with student presentations of related research, lectures by professionals in related fields, and finally a speech from the founder of the Ruth Institute herself. I didn’t make it to the talk Friday night, but I made it early enough to hear some of the student research presentations, and it was all very interesting and informative.
One of the student presentations was based on the thesis that legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to the legalizing of polygamy. At first, I didn’t really see the relevance, but the student’s research showed very clearly that the same arguments for same-sex marriage legalization would be used, because it was all based on the “love” of one for another or others.
Then the first lecture was given by a professor from Canada about the “No-Fault” clauses in divorce laws and how this adversely affects society in a variety of ways without really having the effect that it should have. He showed a graph displaying the distribution of age of marriage, which distribution narrowed with this new clause. He explained that before the change, younger people who get married would have the mindset to stick together and work out their marriage, and that older people waited to get married because they wanted to find their “soul-mate”. After the law was changed, the younger people waited a little before getting married because they knew there was more of a chance for divorce, and the older people would get married younger with the mindset that they could try a few times before really finding their soul-mate. He also showed a statistic that I didn’t really think about much at the time, but which was referred to later on by the founder of the Ruth Institute. He said that although divorce-related suicides decreased among adults, they increased among children.
The founder of the Ruth Institute talked all about how she became so involved in the marriage debate because she adopted and had a child about the same time, so she saw while raising her children the difference of having two biological parents vs. non-biological parents. I hadn’t really thought of it this way, but she said that adoption is a child-centered organization—fining a home for a child that would most truly represent the home he or she should have grown up in. Adoption is for children to find the home they need, not for adults who cannot have children (meaning gay or lesbian couples) to have the children that they want. Then she said that redefining marriage is pitting the needs of children against the wants of the adults. If marriage is just an outward sign of what adults want, why does it have such a big impact on children? Redefining marriage is a very selfish, adult-centered idea that does not take children into consideration. Yes, making divorce more readily available lowered the suicide rates of adults, but think of the children. That just made their lives worse.
There were also some other very interesting lectures. One was given by an LDS neurologist about the similarities between drug addictions and natural (drug) addictions. He said that the brain produces adrenaline (or epinephrine, as the drug is called when made outside the body) and dopamine (which also comes in “drug” form), and that one can make the brain overdose on these and become addicted naturally. He talked about how these drug addictions actually shrink the frontal lobe of the brain, which acts as the “brakes”, as he called it. When the frontal lobe shrinks by way of addiction, the same results are seen in patients who have been in an accident and damaged the frontal lobe through contact. There were four things that resulted in damage of the frontal lobe, but I can only remember two: Impulsiveness and Compulsiveness. (Maybe you could help me out a little here, Mike.) He said these natural addictions include pornography, sex, overeating, and even exercise.
After that lecture I went to a class given by one of the Mechanical Engineering Professors and his wife, which was all about how engineering and the design process should be applied to families. Engineering is a problem-solving process that is not self-centered. He said that a good engineer designs something to fit the customer’s needs, and so he is using his talents as a service. He pretty much said that good engineers make good families  The other lecture that I went to was all about how music in the home can affect families. This professor (he is also a free-lance trumpet player) talked about how music stimulates the brain to good, both making music and simply music appreciation. Something that I learned in both of these classes is that humans have an inherent desire of creation, and I applied that to both engineering and music. This inherent desire is God-given, and so I believe that is why those that explore that talent of creation of music or art or engineering are less likely to go down the wrong path.
This symposium took up pretty much the entire day yesterday, but it was definitely worth it. I had been thinking that I didn’t ever do anything during the whole deal with Proposition 8, but that this idea of protecting marriage is definitely worth investing in. That’s why I was so interested in this program, and I don’t think I’ve stayed awake that well through so many lectures in one sitting before! I decided that I want to know enough to be an advocate of the true definition of marriage and the meaning of good families, and I invite you all to do the same. If you are interested, I just found the Ruth Institute website at www.ruthinstitute.org where there are lots of presentations on all sorts of stuff like this.