B<\/span>ased…upon natural creation, even as our Lord Jesus Christ did as reported in the holy Gospels…the Church recognizes the word, \u201cmarriage,\u201d as designating only one datum: the fleshly union of one man and one woman, \u201cjust as Adam and Eve in the beginning of the world\u201d (ancient betrothal, Service of Matrimony<\/em>) in an exclusive way, allowing no others.<\/p>\n

It is this exclusive union of love which alone is fertile and thus the nursery of the human race until the end of time. Any other so-called \u201cmarriage,\u201d including socalled \u201csame-sex marriage,\u201d is a forgery and death-dealing, sterile and doomed to frustration and the ruin of body and soul of its participants.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the Church cannot recognize or countenance any other definition of marriage by any human law, since any such \u201claw\u201d contrary to God\u2019s own created ordinance cannot stand as law, but is and will be a dead letter. \u201cThere is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end thereof is death.\u201d This, then, is the Church\u2019s word to our North American people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Met. Joseph is the Archbishop of the Antiochian Orthodox Church of North America.<\/p>\n