Such a ruling shows inconsistency with other laws. For instance, teachers would agree that students scolding vulgar words in class is very wrong. Most people would object to marriage between siblings. Yet human beings do not provide irrefutable rational bases. Taiwan’s Ex-Justice Minister Tseng Yung-Fu rationalised the need for capital punishment as that “it relates to our traditional culture and beliefs. There’s a belief in the concept of karma, that what goes around comes around.” Is this a reasonable rational basis for capital punishment? Another Taiwanese who was against capital punishment objected, saying, “you can’t use culture and tradition as an excuse” for legalising capital punishment. Quite clearly, many of these rules and laws do not seem to have rational bases and yet they are enforced in the society. If the basis for removing a law is lack of rational basis, then many laws should also be removed. Yet, many of these laws are still in place in Taiwan. Taiwan’s highest court has not provided a good reason for their ruling.
That said, that laws must be enforced based on a rational basis is right, but not the way Taiwan’s highest court argued. There are good reasons for enforcing many laws, including capital punishment and, in this case, that marriage takes place only between a man and a woman. The rational basis is God’s law. Because God’s law exists, we have an absolute moral standard to follow. Otherwise, there is no absolute wrong and right. There would be chaos in the society. Why is God’s law the reasonable basis for all laws including laws in the country?
That God’s law exists in human beings can be seen from the fact that many people in different countries in the past centuries have always agreed that homosexuality is wrong. Likewise, most people, if not everyone, would agree that marriage must be between a man and a woman. When you tell a lie, your conscience immediately rebukes you. You do not need to argue with most students or adults that it is very wrong to scold vulgar words. For many years when capital punishment was meted out for murder, no one would disagree. These observations tell us that everyone follows a set of moral laws that is seated deep in our hearts. This is precisely what the Bible says: “since what may be known about God is plain to them” (Rom 1:19). Jews were given God’s law by Moses and the prophets. But gentiles (non-Jews) were not given God’s law. Yet they knew God’s law (Rom 2:14-15):
When gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves,. even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts accusing them and at other times even defending them.
The Bible condemns homosexuality, including same sex marriage. When God created the first human beings, God created Adam and Eve, a man and a woman, for marriage: “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). The Bible also condemns homosexuality: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another . . . even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men” (Rom 1:24-27). Marriage applies only to a man and a woman relationship. All other forms violate God’s holy law.