Writing on the Minnesota Public Radio web site, Prof. Savage of the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity decries the breakdown of traditional gender roles.

But, as advocates of gay marriage point out, marriage as an institution is not exactly the exemplar of stability it used to be. The sad fact is that the same factors that have contributed to its fragmentation — a misunderstanding of the complementarity of men and women, the divorce between the procreative and unitive dimensions of the sexual act, promiscuity, etc. — are at work in the breakdown of traditional marriage as well.

You see what happens when you forsake the original Biblical commandments for the roles men and women are supposed to play? St. Paul is quite clear that correct, Biblical gender roles are essential, not just for society and social institutions like marriage, but for salvation as well (at least for women).

Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness. For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through her child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.

By the way, did I mention that Prof. Savage’s first name is Deborah? Speaking of the “breakdown” of traditional, Biblical gender roles…

As for the rest of her argument, I’m sure you’ve all heard it before.

Despite the position taken (apparently) by some that there is “no difference” in measureable outcomes for kids raised by gay parents, there is plenty of evidence that children do best in an intact home with both a mother and a father.

She doesn’t happen to have any of that alleged evidence, but she makes the assertion anyway, for show.

No one has a “right” to marry just anyone; we already place legal limits on who can marry whom in perfectly understandable and — so far — indisputable ways.

No one has the right to oppress minorities, either, and we already place legal limits on how far you can go in discriminating against people you don’t like. We just don’t go far enough, and still tolerate too much injustice and bigotry in public policy.

The Catholic Church’s position is grounded … in self-evident principles derived first of all from an encounter with reality itself, a world created by God and held in existence by him. It is a world that makes sense, inhabited by creatures with natures composed of both matter and form, soul and body — and headed toward some purpose. This is the basis of the church’s position on same-sex marriage and a whole host of other issues: that the world as we encounter it is given to us, that it is intelligible — and that human beings can know it.

Such high-minded, noble-sounding language can only mean one thing: she is about to espouse a position that has no foundation in reality and is based purely on irrational bigotry and superstition.

The “freedom” to marry is only secondarily a political freedom. Men and women have a freedom to marry that emerges naturally from the design of their bodies. Surely no one can dispute that they are designed for each other in a way that is clearly meant to be. I don’t doubt for a second that homosexual persons can and do love each other. How they express that love is up to them.

Yup, nailed it.

At its heart, any attempt to make “gay marriage” legal, to pretend that homosexual persons are designed for the union that is at the heart of the marriage covenant, is to ask all of us to suspend the evidence of our senses. And to ask our children to accept that a man may marry another man is to force them — without their consent — into a world where nothing is as it seems. It is to ask them to suspend their capacity to judge the world around them and judge it truly.

Prof. Savage seems a bit unclear on the difference between “the evidence of our senses” and plain old superstitious bigotry. She might as well argue that white people are “designed” to marry white people, because the evidence of our senses clearly tells us that mixed-races allow the union of people whose skin is a different color.

Look, nobody is telling Catholics that they can’t be as superstitious as they want about their own marriages. If they want to sit around imagining that they’re “designed” to marry the opposite sex as part of some divine purpose that, according to Jesus, will end up making them all unmarried again (and make them all sons, apparently), then fine, by all means, sit around and fantasize. But don’t pretend your fantasies give you the right to impose your bigotry on other people.

Especially when your God is a same-sex union of three male Persons.