How to decide which instances of opposition to gay marriage are hateful and bigoted.

Great Debates
321

You realize that no one is attempting to force Christian churches to have SSM ceremonies, right? If a church does not want to bless a gay union, that is their right, and I fully support their right.
But, for the moment at least, we do not live in a theocracy. There are many people who wish to get married who are not Christian, and some Christians who want to get married in churches who have decided that God is not against gay marriages. Why do they not have the right to get married, because your personal beliefs are against it? Why should the slight decrease in your happiness from seeing gay people get married outweigh the great increase in their happiness from getting married?

It is an unfortunate fact that bigotry for what seems like good reasons to the bigot is still bigotry. Many people used to think that it was better for women not to get too educated. Some racists convinced themselves that the slaves were happier as slaves. You measure bigotry from the point of view of the target, not the person thinking bigoted thoughts. Bigotry can easily happen without hate.
And I also hope you realize that the “some of my best friends are …” argument had become a cliche and a joke during the civil rights period of the early 1960s.

Being raised Jewish, I am the descendant of generations of men and women not married according to Christian tenets, and back far enough from people married religiously before Christianity even existed. You might think about taking off your Christian blinders.

322

If marriage is an explicitly Christian religious institution, how do you feel about the state recognizing Jewish marriages? Or Muslim? Or atheist? Along the same lines, what about Christian churches that are willing to perform gay marriages? Do you think it’s problematical that the state recognize one Christian sect’s definition of marriage under the law at the expense of a different sect’s definition?

Somewhat more esoterical, but if God has a problem with gay marriage, why do you think he’d be okay with civil unions that grant identical rights as marriage? Is God that easily fooled by semantics? Why do you think he’s particularly invested in the word “marriage,” particularly given that it’s a word in a language that didn’t exist until some five centuries after the New Testament was written?

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Which is a bigoted position; if it’s a religious conviction, that just makes it religious bigotry. If God condemns homosexuality as immoral, that doesn’t mean that it’s immoral; it means that God is a bigot.

It’s not. It’s a legal, government institution that religions like to perform rituals about. It’s the recognition by the government that gives a marriage meaning on a wider social scale; having a religion perform a ritual only matters to those particular believers.

And as already said, why does your version of Christianity get to define marriage?

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Putting the Christian tenants aside (personally I’ve always wanted to rent to a Hindu death goddess, but that’s beside the point), Miller’s question is perfect. To make it personal:

I’m straight, and I’m married. I’m also an atheist.

We used a traditional Christian ceremony, except we went through it with a fine-toothed comb and removed all religious references from the ceremony, leaving only the parts about community and love and sickness and health etc. Although we had an ordained minister officiate, she agreed to do so without mentioning religion at any point.

If you controlled the state, would you have my marriage invalidated?

If not, why not?

325

That is an eminently reasonable and, in my opinion, wise view. But around here it will still earn you the title of bigot, homophobe, or gay-hater.

So it has been written, so it shall be done.

326

To begin with, you posted a sensible, sensitive, thoughtful, and good comment. It’s clear you’ve given the matter a lot of thought, and that you are working as hard as you can to uphold the highest morality.

Alas… I can’t agree. Anyone who takes positive, determined steps to prevent someone else from enjoying their full civil rights in a democratic community is a “bad guy.” Maybe a bigot. Maybe just a good person doing harmful things out of some theological inspiration.

But singling out a group of people and saying, “You shall not enjoy the same civil rights as another group” seems extremely difficult to justify morally. I think it is necessary for Christianity to re-examine this doctrine, just as, historically, it has re-examined the doctrine of “legitimacy” – in days gone by, the taint of “bastardy” was very important; today, hardly at all. Christianity also used to be opposed to interracial marriages, and there were specific Biblical verses used to support this opposition. Today, the church has gotten past it.

I respect what you are trying to do…but in effect, you are to some degree on the side of some very, very bad people.

327

First, a couple items of clarification:

  1. I am not a theologian, nor do I have a Bat Phone to God. I’m just a guy trying to live his life right, raise his children right, and understand as best I can “Who God is” (ala A.W. Tozier) through a combination of prayer, reading the Bible, reading some scholarly work, and thoughtful debate (would that I could have heard the “great debaters”).
  2. I don’t have time to respond to those who aren’t participating in open, honest, thoughtful conversation. Aggressive or irrational comments I must ignore (God’s a bigot, for example). There’s just not enough time, space, and nor is this the thread for comments I would put in the same category as “Can God make a rock he cannot lift”.
  3. Just because I may not respond to you doesn’t necessarily mean I think you qualify as #2.
  4. I don’t know how to do the cool quote thing the rest of you seem to be able to do.

Thanks to the folks who have posted kindly, especially Trinopus, who disagrees with me. I could discuss matters like this with someone with your attitude all day.

My view must be seperated into 2 categories: The religious, and The legal. I understand that The legal sometimes comes into conflict with The religious, but we are imperfect people with an imperfect system. In addition to being a Christian and a conservative, I am also a Patriot (the Patriotic definition, not the lunatic milita definition). I served my country faithfully and with distinction, I may not always agree with my government, but I believe in America and I believe our laws try very hard to be all things to all people.

Elvis, why wouldn’t I want to get into a conversation about the vision God gives us in the OT? His vision is the same, it’s the consequences of sin that changed. Yes, I do accept that Paul was divinely inspired in his writings. Perhaps he (unlike me) had a BatPhone to God. Paul in fact had a lot to say about marriage, and we see an example where Paul offers his own opinion after presenting God’s view when he discusses marriage and divorce.

Voyager, yes, I understand that nobody is trying to force SSM ceremonies on Christian churches. The problem is that we’re in un-tested waters for the first time with this issue. I believe marriage is a religious institution, with my religion being Christianity. I think that marriage should remain a religious institution (more on different religions in a bit). Perhaps, and I’m just thinking aloud here, perhaps the term “Civil Union” should have been at the top of the governmental hierarchy from the inception of our legal system, where religious marriages where recognized as legal Civil Unions after filing the same paperwork everyone else has to file. I think this could have saved a lot of grief, protected the religious concept of marriage, and made atheists and homosexual couples happy. Some may call this semantics, and I agree, but I think what we’re ALL getting hung up on is different definitions of “marriage”.

Speaking to your “some of my best friends are…” comment: Yes, and I gave it great thought before writing that for those reasons. In the end, I decided to add it to illustrate that my emotional attachments, my compassion, my respect for one’s character, etc. are in no way influenced by whether I disagree with their views. The man I had in mind when I wrote that was a great friend to me, and evidenced many traits I respected. He was honest, loving, and kind. He never kicked puppies and he sought knowledge and truth. We discussed his orientation openly and honestly at a time when my views about homosexuals were a bit more irrational. I ended up respecting his perspective, and he respected mine. Even after 20 years it’s difficult for me to remember his passing. Every bit as difficult as it was when I lost a close friend in Saudi Arabia who was heterosexual.

Miller, I’ll address your “multi-religious” comment shortly, but thanks for your second paragraph where you question if I think God is ok with the government recognizing SS civil unions and giving them the same rights as married couples. I spent some time thinking on this one. The short answer is I just don’t know. My opinion is probably not, but with qualifications. God tells us homosexuality is sinful, so choosing to engage in a homosexual civil union would be sinful (I can already see someone trying to split hairs “what if they complete a civil union but don’t have sex?”, and I won’t get into that). That said, I do believe in a seperation of church and state and freedom of religion, and as I’ve noted before I steadfastly believe that the state is here to protect and serve ALL Americans with NO consideration given to whether or not they adhere to God’s view. Therefore, I cannot and will not justify or support keeping them from pursuing the same freedoms and rights I have, even if their choices are in conflict with God’s vision and my personal ideals.

Der Trihs, I will ignore your first statement and will not address it. However, I will address your comment that (marriage is) a legal, government institution that religions like to perform rituals about. I disagree. I think marriage is a religious institution that the government likes lots of paperwork for in order to recognize it as legal.

Dorkness, Well, if Shiva were actually the Godess of Death in the fashion most westerners mistakenly believe, that kind of wedding would have to be a hoot.

I’m ok with setting aside the Christian element for your comment. As I suggested above, if my belief that marriage should be defined as a religious institution is correct, and legally considered a sub-category of Civil Unions, why would you want to be married? It involves lots of spiritual vows and commitments you don’t believe in. If a Civil Union were the accepted legal norm in our society, I submit that marriage wouldn’t enter your mind. I will take exception to one of your comments, though. You stated that you used a “traditional Christian ceremony”, but removed all the references to religion…I mean, I respect your choices, but how is removing all religious references even vaguely a Christian ceremony? Unless you simply meant a Christian leader officiated a legal contract in a Christian church and said nice things about you…removing religious references by definition is removing the Christian element from it.

Magellan, thanks for your kind comments. I find that if we can remove the emotion from an issue, while maintaining our passion for the topic, and ignore the irrational people (there are some on ANY side of ANY issue) we can generally find a common ground and find a way for us all to get what we as individuals need to feel fulfilled.

Trinopus, Please understand, I seperate “religious morality” from “civil rights/liberties”. Religious Morality pertains to how I personally believe all people should conduct themselves. Civil Liberties pertains to how we as a government and country need to treat our citizens with the understanding that government has no place legislating or endorsing any particular religion. As much as I may idealize the thought of a Christian country, and bearing in mind that this country and our legal system was founded on Christian concepts, there’s just too much evidence that state endorsed religion goes terribly awry. Just look at historic England, or today’s Iran and Afghanistan.

A couple folks have asked if I believe that other marriages conducted in other religions should be “real” or endorsed. First, as stated many times, I support everyone’s right to believe or not believe how they wish. I don’t try to impose my beliefs on others, but I am always open to share my beliefs when asked, or on the rare occaision that I feel someone could benefit to hear what I know in my heart as “truth” (very rare). In the interest of clarity…

I think a possible resolution would be if the US Government had long ago had defined any commited relationship seeking legal status as “Civil Unions”. I believe that the term “marriage” should have been relegated to religious belief systems wherein the couples involved would still have to satisfy the legal paperwork filings to be recognized by the government. Now I’m aware that many Christian leaders would disagree, they would see this as an errosion of the foundation of our country, and they’re right. Where I think they’re wrong, is in not facing the reality of where we are today as a society and by holding so doggedly to what has been, they’re not considering a shift in our civiliazation and not casting an eye towards compromises that could benefit everyone in the long run. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe my BatPhone will ring and God will tell me to retract this, but for now, it’s the best I have.

328

Never mind about that–you typed “tenants” when you meant to type “tenets,” and I was riffing off that and off my lifelong desire to have a boarder Kali.

Because I disagree. Let me tell you about my marriage.

My marriage signifies my deep, abiding, and lifelong love for my wife. It signifies my desire to share both a bed and a home with her until I die. It signifies my desire to be treated as a social unit under many circumstances. It signifies my desire to choose to make a family with her (and with our children). It signifies my willingness to share my legal life with her–we own property together, we’re the primary beneficiaries in one another’s wills, we have power of attorney for one another, etc.

You might think “marriage” must be religious, but that has nothing to do with my definition. When you read about my marriage, does it really sound all that different from yours? So different that the mere irreligiosity of it means you wouldn’t consider it to be a marriage?

To reiterate my question: if you controlled the state, would you declare that my marriage was nullified? I’d really like to see an answer to that question.

This is quite simply incorrect, because marriage, to me, is about everything I mentioned in my paragraph above. The legal aspect of it is, of the things I listed, the least important–but still very important. The social aspect, the relationship aspect, these are the parts of marriage that matter so much to me. Is that not a supremely important part of your own marriage?

I phrased that poorly. When I said we used a traditional Christian ceremony, I only meant that such a ceremony was our starting point: we didn’t write vows from scratch, nor did we base our ceremony on ancient Cherokee ritual or Klingon mating customs. We took the “honor and cherish” ceremony and edited it until it was recognizable but no longer a Christian ceremony. Hope that clears up that point!

329

One more question: what specific needs of yours would be unfulfilled if my dear lesbian friends could get married? If you can describe those, we may be able to ameliorate your concerns :).

330

It’s a factually inaccurate view. Marriage in its current form has been around for about 100 years - or about 30 if you take marital rape laws into account. Torn sounds like a pretty nice guy, but there is no factual basis for his position.

331

First, thanks for responding in such a thoughtful way.
I’m not sure what you mean by the religious view of marriage. As I said, marriage predates Christianity by a lot, and perhaps organized religion also. And which religion? The US is far from the only government in the world. Are Hindus married in India not really married? Buddhists? Jews in Israel? Protestants in countries where Catholicism is the state religion? If two Christians wanted to be married in India, do you think it would be right for the government to tell them that they are not allowed to be, and must settle for a civil union.
BTW I am assuming that you support civil unions with the full rights of marriage. One problem in the US today is that in many cases civil unions are second class in the eyes of the government and some businesses. Christians who oppose SSM also oppose truly equal civil unions for the most part.
The town that I live in is probably less than 50% Christian at the moment. Should more than 50% of our town be prevented from marrying in their various faiths? One of the very cornerstones of our democracy is to not impose a faith on all others (though we’ve gotten better at this with time.) Do you want to slap Thomas Jefferson in the face?

That is very commendable - but not as commendable as allowing him to act on what made him him. It seems to me that your respected his views so long as he did nothing to offend yours. Look, my brother moved to Boston and became a Red Sox fan. :eek: I still love him, even so, and would never try to pass a law preventing him from going to Fenway. And that was a choice on his part, unlike sexual preference. (You don’t consider that a choice, I hope.)

To respond to some of your other responses.

Does God consider sex in the context of a committed relationship somehow more sinful than sex outside of one? Some people claim that marriage reduces sex (not my experience!) so maybe God should be in favor of SSM.
And I cannot align your second paragraph above with opposition to state sanctioned SSM. Don’t you think it is every person’s right to choose what he or she thinks what God wants? Some Christian leaders have no trouble with homosexuality, so opposition to SSM is not only imposing Christianity on people, but a subset of Christianity.

I’m a fervent supporter of marriage. I got married in a non-religious ceremony (in the Ethical Culture Society) and given that we’ve been married well over 30 years, it seems to have worked. If I had found someone Jewish to marry I still would not have been married in a Christian ceremony. Like I said, if marriage is really religious, it should be exclusively Jewish in the US, since we’ve got hundreds of years over you guys.

There is an underlying assumption in your posts - that Christianity (some form of it, anyhow) is correct. This is not the thread to debate this, I can start one if you are willing to defend this proposition. If you believe on faith, fine, but then you need to explain why your faith trumps the rights of my friends, and why your faith is any more valid than Jewish faith, Hindu faith, Buddhist faith, Islamic faith, or even no faith. Many Christians in this country say they do not have to demonstrate the correctness of their beliefs because they are based on faith, and then jump to imposing them on others as if they were correct. You should examine your thought processes to see if you have fallen into this trap.

332

Same sex marriage has been legal in my sate for a few years now. Doesn’t seem to have affected my (opposite sex) marriage of twenty-five years in the least particular, and I cannot find mention anywhere in the news, police reports, divorce records, etc of it affecting anyone else’s (heterosexual) marriages.

That concern seems to be a non-starter, and only of concern to people who don’t want to share anything with guys who like to fuck each other up the ass.

333

Thanks for the reply, but I don’t think you quite caught the point of my question. If allowing gays to marry is going to displease God, why would allowing gays to get civil unions displease him less? Surely, God isn’t concerned with which particular label we use to describe something that displeases him - if you start referring to murder as a “forced life termination event,” it’s not any less of a sin in God’s eyes, right? So if marriage must be kept away from gays for the sake of God, surely it’s the institution that he’s concerned with, and not the name we apply to the institution?

That’s a very admirable ethic, but I have to note that you’re not living up to it. By opposing gay marriage, you are imposing your religion on hundreds of thousands of other Americans. You are using the government to force me to follow your religious beliefs.

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Alright, you. Watch it! :slight_smile:

335

I think I figured out the quote thing!

Voyager

Marriage doesn’t predate God. See my second post where Genesis is quoted. Marriage is NOT a Christian concept, it’s an establishment created by God. Christianity is modeled after the vision established by God, and differs from some remarkably similar religions in that we believe Jesus came as savior.

As I do believe in freedom of religion, of course any religion could see fit to marry whomever they chose. The difference my Civil Union thoughts have is that NO marriage would be considered “legal” by the government until the couples involved satisfied the Civil Union requirements which wouldn’t necessarily require a religious element, but could incorporate verbiage of the religion (or non-religion) of choice ensuring equal validation for all.

Yes, I secularly support Civil Unions with the full rights of marriage. I agree there would be some perceptions to overcome and it would require a paradigm shift. But as others have pointed out, we’ve overcome shifts in many other areas to include sufferage and racism.

I think I answered this above.

I’d say that sometimes, though it may be “unfair”, that’s a part of disagreeing. Have you ever had a friend with whom you had a fundamental difference of beliefs and worked together to find a common ground that allowed mutual respect for one another? I won’t prevent him from equality, I just won’t support an equality where lack of desire to compromise ends up infringing on a value I hold dear. If there were no alternatives, I’m not sure where I’d land…this would require a great deal of thought…but there are.

The Bible is rather clear that no sin is worse than any other.

You’ve got more than that over us. Again, I’m not advocating ONLY for Christian marriage…well, in a religious sense I guess that would be cool, but there be Dragons here, so…, from a societal perspective, see above a couple lines.

I do believe that Christianity is correct. I was raised that way and when I got old enough I stopped. Life brought me to a place to seek truth…I began with philosopy and a study of ancient and modern philosophers and was distressed to see that we still ask the same questions today that the Greeks did. Finding only questions in philosophy and no answers, I moved on. I wrote a thesis on the major religions and cults of the western hemisphere where I had the opportunity to study many belief systems (including Judaism, btw)…I even included the Plains Indians in my notes just out of personal curiosity. Based on my studies, and the works of other learned people as well as some personal experience, I came to beleive in Jesus. Yes, it’s partly based on faith, partly on personal experience, and partly on studying. I have little desire to start a thread defending my beliefs…I doubt I would do it justice as some of the minds on these boards would no doubt run circles around me. I’ll leave that to apologists, scholars, and Rabbis.

Dorkness

My need to continue seeing what I consider a Christian (or whatever religion to others) sacrement of marriage as established by God’s vision continue to reflect God’s vision. We all get very hung up both religously and secularly on the word “marriage”. I guess I’m included for all my desire to consider others.

Let me say I LOVE how you describe your marriage. If it is as you describe it, then lots of folks regardless of religion could learn a thing or two from you, myself included.

No, I would not have your marriage declared invalid. But we’re getting hung up on the marriage definition again. You have an emotional and romantic association with that term. What I suggest is we shift the societal paradigm and associate those feelings with the word Union. It sounds terribly juvenile as I read that back, but we’re talking about and debating about a legal term and a religous concept, not emotions. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and frankly what I think won’t mean a whit in how this all works out. I don’t know, would you feel less validated in your marriage as others see it if you were “Union-ized” (I’m throwing that out as a flippant term because they all sound odd to me) rather than “married”?

I do like your Klingon thought…I know it wasn’t a thought, but I did make my wife promise to paint herself green and agree to “re-union” with me on the bridge of the Enterprise in the Star Trek Experience that used to be in Vegas.

Someone asked much earlier if the sin of homosexuality is in the practice or the feelings. I want to address that. I really don’t know, and if I do, I’m not sure I particularly like it. My opinion is that it depends on what’s in your heart. We are told that sin is in the heart, (paraphrasing as I’m in a hurry) if you harbor hatred for a man in your heart, surely you’ve murdered him. If you sin in your heart, you’ve sinned. Now for the apologists and really smart people…is this literal? Is this Jesus simply attempting to communicate a concept in terms that make us think of it personally? Is it metaphorical? I don’t know, but the answer holds implications for my own life as well. I’m not really looking for an answer on this thread, but I wanted to address the question as I considered it a really good one.

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Most assuredly untrue.

Regardless of any belief in any deity, or the machinations thereof, man invented marriage. Then again, man invented God, so there you go.

337

I’m not sure I understand. There are already self-identified Christian* churches in which gay folks are getting married, and your posts make it sound as though you wouldn’t outlaw those ceremonies, am I right? Surely those ceremonies are a greater impairment to your seeing the Christian sacrament of marriage reflecting God’s vision [as you understand it], right? It seems to me that a legal same-sex marriage would no more affect the Christian sacrament of marriage than would my atheist marriage, or my friend’s Buddhist marriage.

Sincerely, thanks.

Now, imagine that I’d slightly misled you (I didn’t–but let’s play pretend)–that I was actually married to another man instead of to a woman, but that everything else I said was true . Would you still love how I described my marriage? Or would all those things I said about the meaning of my marriage suddenly describe something other than a marriage?

Normally a debate may not be the right place to talk about emotions, but for Pete’s sake, we’re talking about marriage, and if emotions aren’t a part of your understanding of marriage, then all bets are off. Yes,I have an emotional association with the word marriage–and that’s entirely, 100% appropriate. Just like I have an emotional understanding of “family” and “fatherhood” and “vocation” and many other words.

What I do NOT have is a religious understanding of marriage. I mean, sure, I know religion is part of other folks’ marriage, and that’s fine, but it’s not at all part of mine. It’s not part of many people’s marriage.

And I see absolutely no advantage to shifting the societal paradigm to associate those emotions with Union, as you suggest. Those emotions are fundamental to my understanding of marriage, central to my family. Why on earth would it be a good idea to make such a shift?

Okay, this may surprise you, but I’ve argued before that my ideal situation would be civil unions for everyone as far as the government was concerned, and marriages for anyone who wants them according to any criteria they want, with no government involvement. Under such circumstances, I’d be perfectly happy with my government-issued civil union, BECAUSE what really matters about my marriage is the vows I took with my wife (and the covenant all our wedding guests signed promising to support our union, a tradition we stole from Quakers).

However, if our government took a two-tiered approach–issuing “marriages” to religious folks and “civil unions” to everyone else–I’d feel less validated. Consider how you’d feel if I, a hypothetical insanely-evil atheist, got in power and decided that “separation of church and state” meant that your church wedding was legally irrelevant, and that due to your false claims of being married, I’d forbid you from ever getting a legal marriage again. But I’d allow you to get a civil union. Wouldn’t you feel like you were being treated as a second-class citizen?

Our current situation, in which my uncle’s five ridiculous travesties of marriages are all considered legal, but my dear lesbian friends’ sincere lifelong commitment to one another is not considered legal, certainly feels trivializing, as though society considers marriage to be less about committed love than about complementary genitalia.

If you like my description of marriage above, please understand that I’m sincere in my definition, and that “marriage” is the emotion-laden word that captures that relationship so fully for me. And please consider that, if I were married to a man instead of a woman, it would still be the right word to describe that relationship.

  • FWIW I agree with the identification, but I’m putting that weasel-word in there so we can avoid any irrelevant discussion about whether they’re true Scotsmen.
338

And this is the problem. Regardless of what you think “marriage” means in Christian tradition, it has a secular legal meaning to the federal and state governments of the United States, and thus they do not limit application thereof to Christians. You are supporting the denial of access to this secular legal concept to your fellow citizens because they are homosexual, and you are doing this even though their access will cost you nothing, do you no harm, do nothing whatsoever to keep you from also accessing the privilege if you wish…

I’m sorry, but whether you realize it or not, your position is at the very least spiteful, and almost certainly hateful.

339

In other words, you support gay marriage as long as there’s a different word. It’s down to that? That’s what you want to cling to, a word?

340

Along the lines of what lance strongarm said…

You mention [universal] suffrage. Before women had the vote, it was the exclusive province of men, right? Even the enlightened Greeks were not quite enlightened enough to let their women have a say in government. So, voting has historically been defined as men voicing their opinions on who should run the government (or what laws should be passed), right.

If two people of the same sex can’t have a marriage because historically that’s not what a marriage is, can a woman have a vote? Shouldn’t we call women’s votes something else to avoid corrupting the traditional definition of the vote? “Lady-opinioned”, perhaps?