I have read the entire thread, and I just want to make a few of my own general observations about gays and the church.
When I consider the situation of gays and the church (any established church), I compare the situation to how the church treats me as an atheist. Just about every established church says I’m going straight to hell when I die, or some variation on that theme, and that’s fine with me. It doesn’t bother me one bit what churches and the various individual believers think of atheists on religious matters, as long as we’re all agreed that we are all equal in civil matters.
And that’s pretty much the status quo in the civil arena these days. I recognize the right of believers to believe as they please, and believers recognize my right to not believe. We also see each other as equals before the law. I don’t try to pass laws that would strip believers of their civil rights, and the churches and individual believers seem to accept that atheists should not be stripped of their civil rights just because they are atheists. (And the religious question of whether or not I’m going to hell has absolutely no bearing one way or the other.)
If I were to find an instance of an established church attempting to pass laws that strip atheists of civil rights, I would fight that church. But I haven’t seen any real threats of this type during my life, so I don’t have any beef with the churches. In fact, the status quo seems to be that atheists and believers generally defend each other’s civil rights when they are threatened in one manner or another. And personally, I have worked–in one manner or another–for the right of religious people to believe as they please on several occasions in my life (by contributing to campaigns to support religious dissidents abroad, for instance).
And this is also roughly the way I measure relations between a particular church (or individual believer) and other groups or individuals when analyzing other issues (such as gay rights). I don’t care what they believe, but do they respect each other’s civil rights, and do they treat each other as equals in the civil arena?
With regard to gays and lesbians, it is pretty much universally recognized that gays and lesbians have fewer civil rights than straights. [disclaimer]I post on the pro-gay side. I personally am straight, but a member of my family is gay.[/disclaimer]
This inequity occurs in a number of areas of life, but the most egregious is the fact that gays and lesbians cannot marry their SOs. As a straight man, I can marry any woman off the street with only a short wait for blood work, and then divorce her six months later and immediately marry some other woman off the street. OTOH, two gay men living together monogamously for 20 years and raising children together cannot get married. Ever.
There are churches that can and do perform marriage ceremonies for gays and lesbians. But those marriages are not recognized by the federal government. Nor are civil ceremonies recognized by the federal government. In other words, the inequity occurs at the level of civil rights (legal recognition by the government), and not at the level of religious belief (marriage as a sacrament). Most gays and lesbians don’t care if the Catholic Church recognizes their marriage or not. What matters is that the federal government won’t recognize their marriage. It’s the inequity in the civil arena that represents the problem here.
This situation has literally hundreds of legal consequences. Because gay couples cannot get married, they are treated differently from straight couples when it comes to things like spousal health care, inheritance, custody of children, custody of property, tax treatment of couples, emigration from one country to another, and so on and so on. Some of these inequities can be rectified with wills and trusts and legal agreements, but many cannot. Until gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry, they have second-class legal status compared to straight couples.
Much of the opposition to allowing gays and lesbians to marry stems from religious beliefs and from the churches. Thus, I tend to believe that gays and lesbians have some legitimate grounds for antagonism toward those churches and individual believers who would deny them the right to marry. Furthermore, it just seems un-American (to me personally) for churches and individual believers to support a status quo where gays and lesbians have fewer civil rights than straights.
When talking to a representative of a church or an individual believer, I tend to see this issue as a key indicator of their attitude toward gays and straights. I tend to ask, “If there were a referendum in your state to permit government recognition of gay and lesbian marriages, would you vote yes or no?” In other words, given that gays and lesbians have fewer civil rights than straights, would the church or the individuals do something to rectify that situation and promote equal rights for gays and lesbians?
I recognize that there are situations where the church may feel one way about the issue while a member of that same church may disagree with the official church stance. The Catholic Church does not believe that gays and lesbians should marry, but many believers feel differently. Catholics in particular are known for “cafeteria Christianity”–that is, they feel they have the right to pick and choose among the church’s beliefs and follow some beliefs while ignoring others (they are famous for ignoring the church’s anti-birth-control and anti-abortion stances). As such, if a Catholic believer supports gay marriage, then I tend not to give them a hard time about their church’s stance on the issue. It’s not up to me to question their relationship with their church. And I respect the right of the individual and the church to believe one way on the religious plane and vote a different way in the civil arena. But if a Catholic believer refuses to support gay marriage and cites the church’s stance on the issue as a reason for their position, then I will definitely question both the believer and their church. If nothing else, I resent the intrusion of a religious belief into civil rights affairs. America has a tradition of separation of church and state, and I resent the believer who would take a private religious belief and try to impose it in the civil arena to justify unequal treatment of American citizens before the law.
That’s my take on this situation. It may be a little naive in points, but it’s the best and fairest way I know to judge matters of religious beliefs versus gay rights. I don’t know how it applies to pepperlandgirl or the LDS Church since I know little or nothing about either. But I thought that if I was going to post to this message thread, I would like to begin with a broad statement of my thoughts and how I analyze this issue so that people know where I’m coming from.
