In 2000, nearly two thirds of Californians passed a law forbidding homosexual marriage. Last month, a mere four individuals killed that law, nullified the will of the people, and shoved open the door to same-sex marriage in California. The weddings will start next Monday.

Massachusetts passed a similar law in 2003, but a statute prevents non-residents from marrying there. Not so with California. Couples from around the country can come to the Golden State to be wed—and then return to their home states ready to launch legal battles to have their unions officially recognized there as well.

This judgment is one of the most hostile attacks on traditional marriage ever mounted. Remarkably, however, in the face of this monumental redefinition of the most important institution in society, virtually no one is standing up and articulating an effective and credible defense.

Those commentators who speak out about the decision generally focus on the thwarting of democracy by four radically activist California Supreme Court judges. They raise concerns over the possible economic fallout. They bemoan the prospect of the bizarre illogic of the decision leading toward eventual legal acceptance of polygamy, pedophilia, or other unorthodox “family” arrangements. They wonder aloud why California couldn’t have just left well enough alone with the “domestic partnerships” already permitted under state law.

In other words, aggressive homosexual activists have been so successful in promoting their agenda that this argument is taking place—and being lost—on the fringes of a battlefield on which they have already planted their rainbow-colored flag.

A recent usatoday/Gallup Poll revealed that an astonishing 63 percent of Americans say same-sex marriage is “strictly a private decision” between two people and that the state shouldn’t interfere. Apparently the majority view is, since homosexuals marrying doesn’t prevent heterosexuals from marrying, what difference does it make?

This promotion of personal license over the broader interests of society is a deadly error.

Evidence is plenteous showing the benefits of traditional marriage to both husband and wife, as well as society at large—and the high costs associated with its dissolution. Time and again, studies have shown the enormous advantages to children—in personal safety, academic performance, financial well-being, emotional stability, self-respect, and assimilation into law-abiding adult life, among other things—of growing up under the same roof with both biological parents. In other words, societal stability directly depends on the greatest number of children possible growing up in a home with both a father and a mother to whom they are biologically related.

Marriage is the most effective way of guaranteeing children grow up in this favorable environment. For the sake of our children and our society, we should be doing all we can to promote stable opposite-sex marriages.

However, under an onslaught of no-fault divorce and other anti-family pressures, these marriages are falling apart at alarming rates. In just the past few generations, every centuries-long tradition regarding marriage—which, it should be mentioned, were based on God-ordained laws—has been challenged: the respective roles of husband as guide and provider, and wife as helpmeet and homemaker; the importance of abstaining from sex outside of marriage; the authority of parents over their children. As these ideas were contested, a negative cycle began. Rejection of these principles produced bad marriages and fueled the tendency to question its fundamental nature. The result was a general, misguided dissatisfaction with marriage itself and an inevitable lack of appreciation for and understanding of this institution. The current dispute over the very idea of marriage involving one man and one woman is a measure of just how deep this misunderstanding has grown.

The legitimization of homosexual marriage—as the jewel in the crown of a host of initiatives aimed at drawing more and more people into the homosexual lifestyle—is moving 180 degrees opposite the family stability we desperately need to be encouraging.

This goes far deeper than the mere fact that same-sex relationships—even “marriages”—are two to three times likelier to dissolve than heterosexual relationships. It’s more than just that a child in such a home cannot grow up with both biological parents and is deprived the influence at home of strong role models of both sexes.

Marriage is not a mere tradition. Marriage is actually a sacred institution, originated and established by God at the creation of humankind. It was created for specific purposes and designed to function according to definite laws. Those laws are as absolute and inexorable as the physical laws governing the universe. If they are broken, unhappiness and dissatisfaction result.

God created sexual attraction, to draw a man and a woman into a love relationship. He created marriage—a binding covenant relationship with prescribed, God-ordained roles (e.g. Genesis 2:18, 21-25; Ephesians 5:29-33; 1 Timothy 5:8), and gave laws confining the use of sex to that marital relationship (e.g. Exodus 20:14, 17). He intended this covenant relationship to bring stability into our lives, to teach us faithfulness and loyalty, and to give each mate the opportunity to learn to live unselfishly with another person, different from himself or herself, as a harmonious team.

In addition, God created our anatomies so that this two-person relationship is what generates children. He designed the human development process to occur slowly—much more slowly than in animals—in order to make family life necessary: Children are completely dependent upon their parents, and parents must love, nurture, protect, educate and discipline their children. He gave laws and principles governing that parent-child relationship (e.g. Exodus 20:12).

Why? To one who doesn’t understand God’s purpose for mankind, it might seem somewhat arbitrary. Why male and female? Why marriage? Why do we reproduce through sex? Why children? Why family?

But the answer is clear to anyone who understands the truth revealed in the Bible but not generally understood—that of the incredible human potential.

The way God designed male, female, marriage and children, the family unit naturally creates a government structure patterned after the God Family pattern.

God designed all of these things the way He did to prepare us for eternal life in His Family!

The truth of this reality far surpasses the insipid view of an afterlife spent sitting on a cloud strumming a harp. God is about to establish a Kingdom, here on Earth, ruling all nations, with literal positions of king-priesthood to be filled by human beings transformed into Spirit-born members of the God Family! (Request our book The Incredible Human Potential for a thorough biblical explanation of this truth.)

This is why the human family is so critical in God’s mind. We need family, as God designed it, in order to prepare for positions in God’s Family! Done right, marriage is intended to teach spiritual lessons about the God Family. A child growing up in a godly family learns spiritual lessons. If a family is run the way God intended it to be run, then there are God-plane dynamics at work—living lessons in God’s government and family love.

There is a war being waged over marriage and family. On one side are those trying to preserve God’s design; on the other are those trying to destroy God’s design. Proponents of homosexual marriage overlook, ignore, dismiss and ridicule any evidence that exposes the damage their agenda produces. In their eyes, the deepest sacrifices to society are worth the resulting gains in personal license.

But that license hurts both the individuals who indulge in it and society as a whole. It deeply violates the law of God. Time will prove conclusively that the more California or any other state interprets its laws or creates new laws to permit what God has condemned, the more misery, strife, bitterness and unhappiness it will generate. In the end, the increasing social fragmentation it brings will result in societal ruin.