A Certain Trumpet: Life and Marriage on November’s Virginia Ballot

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Bugling is an ancient military tradition. According to Penn State professor Daniel A. Russell, Roman armies used trumpets and related instruments “to sound the alarm, to signal attack, retreat and formation changes during battle, to announce changes of the watch, and were played to provide accompaniment for soldiers while marching.”[1] So, when the apostle Paul asked the Corinthian Christians, “if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?”, they understood the metaphor clearly.

The battle for life and marriage is being fought in Virginia today. And the call of the moral trumpet to Christians is clear.

Proposals to embed abortion-on-demand and same-sex marriage in the Commonwealth’s constitution will be decided in a few short weeks. As my pastor, Dan Hardesty, wrote recently to our congregation, “These amendments stand in opposition to biblical imperatives” concerning the sacredness of human personhood from conception to natural death and marriage as the covenantal union of one man and woman, for life. In opposing these political assaults on the unborn and their mothers – women vulnerable to the predatory abortion industry – and the essence of marriage as ordained by our Creator, “we honor God and are faithful to His purposes for us, for our church and our community,” Pastor Dan concluded.

Non-believers might ask what right Christians have to “impose” their convictions on our increasingly secular society. We seek to impose nothing. We are asking simply that voters consider the consequences of measures that would calcify the culture of death into permanent law and further erode the beneficial complementarity of marriage.

Our arguments are grounded not only in the revealed Word of God, which reminds us that God “wove” us in our mothers’ wombs (see Psalm 139). Yet even apart from Scripture, we can appeal to what the Founders of our country called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Reason and the conscience join to compel us to confront the reality of personhood in the womb. So, then, for the sake of argument, then, let’s subtract biblical teaching from the political equation and ask a few simple questions:

Does the unborn child have any value independent of the will of her mother?
Does personhood depend on location – i.e., nine months within the womb, the balance of one’s life outside it?

At conception, the nascent person inherits the full complement of his DNA, the very essence of humanness. The Mayo Clinic describes this astonishing fact in simple terms: “The zygote” – the single-cell entity resulting from the union of the female egg and the male sperm – “typically has 46 chromosomes. That includes 23 from each biological parent.”[2] So: the person begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. This means that you and I have no more or less of all the building-blocks of our lives – our DNA – right now than when we were first conceived. If that’s true, what changes during pregnancy is not the personhood of the tiny life but merely her development. And consider the consequences of this truth:

If size determines humanness, is the taller person more “human” than the shorter?

If morphological, biological, or intellectual development determines full personhood, are more attractive, more athletic, or more intelligent people more human than those less visually appealing, less athletic, or less mentally gifted than others?

The canards of the pro-abortion movement collapse under even modest scrutiny.

What, then, of marriage? Shouldn’t two people who profess love for one another be able to marry whether man and woman, man and man, or woman and woman?

Well, sure, if affection and consent are the only criteria for marriage. Yet Scripture makes it clear that marriage is so much more. As one man and one woman join in marriage, they are united in a life-giving relationship. “More than 30 years of social science studies tell us children do best with a married mother and father, so we know that the loss of either is detrimental to a child’s development,” writes marriage scholar Jeff Johnson.[3]

This does not mean that same-sex couples love the children they raise any less than traditional couples or that every child raised in a homosexual home will fall into great evil. Rather, we’re talking about optimal outcomes for those little ones entrusted to parental care. And, too, men and women need each other – as scholar Dr. Marian Adshade asks, “should we, as a society, be prioritizing marriage over other ways of living? I’m going to leave answering that question to others. But I will say this: we have something to learn from the benefits that marriage bestows on men and women.”[4]

Like the Roman trumpets of old, the call to stand in public life for truth and right is vibrant, ringing, with sharp clarity for all followers of Jesus. Fulfill that call and vote against Virginia constitutional amendments 1 and 2 this November.

Regent Honors College student Faith Rodriguez offers a powerful refutation of the abortion amendment in this compelling video: “Abortion and Marriage Amendments on Virginia Ballot This Fall,” https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/abortion-and-marriage-amendments-on-virginia-ballot-this-fall/

[1] Daniel A. Russell, “Roman Military Brass Instruments,” https://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Asterix/02-RomanBrass.html

[2] The Mayo Clinic, “Fetal development: The first trimester,” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/prenatal-care/art-20045302

[3] Jeff Johnson, “Why Children Need Both a Mom and a Dad,” https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/why-children-need-a-mom-and-a-dad/

[4] Dr. Mariane Adshade, “Does Marriage Really Make Us Healthier and Happier?” https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-marriage-really-make-us-healthier-and-happier