This post originally appeared at https://wifamilycouncil.org/radio/what-can-lurk-in-a-budget/

2023 | Week of May 29 | Radio Transcript #1518

It’s amazing what can lurk in a bill that’s over eighteen hundred pages long.  In February, Governor Tony Evers released his proposed budget in the form of Assembly Bill forty-three. Beyond unprecedented spending increases, the bill shows Evers’ dedication to attacking God’s plan for humanity as expressed in our biological sex and marriage and family.

For starters, Evers included a provision that would ensconce same-sex marriage in state statute. Liberals are still not convinced that the US Supreme Court won’t eventually overturn Obergefell, the decision the high court made in June 2015 that forced legalized same-sex marriage on the entire country and essentially overrode the expressed will of the people in states like Wisconsin where in 2006, we passed with a 60-40 vote, a statewide resolution that amended our state constitution, clearly declaring that in our state the only legal marriage is that between one man and one woman.

If the high court were to indeed overturn Obergefell and rightly return the issue of marriage to the states, then current laws regarding marriage in the various states would be enforced. I’m quite sure the liberals believe that once Janet Protasiewicz is seated on the court in early August, and they have the 4-3 liberal majority they have wanted for years, that probably sooner rather than later, the Marriage Amendment in our constitution will be ruled unconstitutional based on Obergefell.

Assuming that happens, then those bent on completely deconstructing and thereby destroying God’s plan for marriage, want to be sure there is a law in place that clearly makes same-sex marriage legal. That’s why this was put in Governor Evers’ budget plan originally—so the liberals are prepared to once again get what they want.

In addition, in the Governor’s proposed budget, he wanted to blatantly ensure that adoption by a same-sex couple—married or otherwise—was legal. Right now, we don’t have a state statute that specifically says that. It happens, but there’s no statutory authority for it. But, if this were to become law, we would have very clearly the state intentionally sanctioning motherless or fatherless homes—something that compassionate, caring, concerned societies should never do because they should understand, want, and sanction only what is best for children,  which is to be raised in the homes of their married biological mother and biological father.

But the governor doesn’t stop there. He also proposes denying reality and biology by replacing throughout state law basically any word that is gender-identifying. For instance, he would replace “father” and “mother” with terms such as “parent,” or “birth parent,“ or  “parent who gave birth to the child,” replacing “male” and “man” with “person,” “husband” and “wife” with “spouse,” “woman” and “mother,” in discussions about invitro fertilization, with “person inseminated.”

But the governor wasn’t finished. He uses the budget to try to change the definition of “natural parent,” which according to our current law refers to a biological parent of a child. Evers proposes we redefine “natural parent” to mean “a parent of a child who is not an adoptive parent, whether or not the parent is biologically related to the child.” This means that if a woman in a same-sex marriage were to give birth, her female spouse, even though she has not adopted the child, would be considered that child’s natural parent. That’s patently wrong.

Words have meaning, and when those meanings are deliberately changed to accomplish a particular ideological and political agenda, we are set on a dangerous and destructive course.

All these changes directly attack God’s creative order, the fact that God created, according to Genesis, male and female period…and then pronounced that creation as being very good. He also in the opening chapters of Genesis gives us the foundational institution of marriage, designed for His glory and for the good of the humans He so beautifully created.  Essentially, Governor Evers’ attacks are against God Himself—and that never works out well.

Thankfully, the Republican legislature has removed these portions of the budget. However, this attempt to sneak radical, even destructive legislation into the budget is a powerful reminder that elections have very real consequences.

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you the prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

(Anna Morken, primary researcher & co-author. Anna is a Summer 2023 intern for Wisconsin Family Council.)

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