Cecil was right to say that gay marriage presents a host of tricky issues, and one of them is that to orthodox Christians and Jews, marriage is not merely what Otto calls a “religious ritual.” In fact for many religious believers marriage is a state of life authored by God and a covenant between a man and a woman echoed throughout Scripture, all the way from the creation of man and woman for each other in the book of Genesis to the vision of the “wedding feast of the Lamb” in the book of Revelation. By that definition, the procreative and property transfer implications of marriage are important but decidedly secondary.
I will be accused of conflating the religious aspects of marriage with its legal and civil aspects, but my argument is precisely that the two sides of this coin cannot be separated.
The question to which Cecil originally responded was “What business is it of the government who I shack up with?” and the short answer is “it’s not the government’s business.” But marriage is more than shacking up, and even if you persist in thinking of it in those terms, every society has an interest in HOW you shack up. Marriage laws imply that there is a right way and a wrong way. God says --in effect-- never mind implication, here’s declaration. RTFM, for those in the know.
All well and good - no one is arguing that every church has the right to or not to marry same-sex couples. But without getting into the sidebar of the separation of church and state (and Cecil’s “who cares anyway?” attitude), the issue is not whether it’s right or wrong by Judeo-Christian standards, its whether it’s discriminatory for the United States to continue to deny same-sex couples the rights granted to opposite-sex couples. In this argument, religion doesn’t enter into it.
Esprix
Next time I want your opinion I’ll beat it out of you.
I live in New Hampshire, right on the border of VT/NH. The local paper is full of editorials over the issue. Those infavor of gay marriage invariably call christians a bunch of nasty names. Granted, christians have done the same to gays. (c.f. the pastor from the mid-west somewhere that protested at M. Sheppard’s funeral). Maybe the pot calling the kettle black, maybe not.
However, why should being against gay marriage all of a sudden make one a “bigot” (or insert one’s favorite “baiting” word)?
Further, “professional gay-hater”… hmm… Seems there are just as many stereotypes of christians as there are of gay folks. <IMG S
Some outstandingly good posts here, and may I compliment the authors!
A few quick comments on sidelights raised:
The cartoon: Slug is not above using a stereotype to encapsulate a point in a quickly-grasped manner, but I suspect strongly that that is not what he was doing here. IMHPO, the “man in a dress” bears more than a slight resemblance to Bruce Vilanch dragging out. Eden, are you around? Can you check my WAG out?
Anti-gay marriage = bigot: Maybe so. Depends on your definition. Howsabout the following scenario (not my personal view!): “As a conservative Christian, I think that homosexual activity is sinful. I sympathize with you as a gay person, but that’s what God said. Further, He makes it quite clear that He established marriage as a holy union between man and woman. Anyone presuming to use it for something else is sinning. As a good Christian, I care very much about you. So I’m going to push the idea that you should abstain from gay sex, and do my best to prohibit you from sinning by entering into a gay marriage, because I really don’t want you to suffer in Hell eternally for gratifying your sexual urges and your need for companionship in a way He forbids.” Is this person being a bigot? Depends on your definition. By his own lights, he’s certainly showing caring for you as another person.
Why? I would expect the percentage of homosexuals that have children to be
much lower than the perecentage of heterosexuals with children, I would
expect most homosexuals that have children to have done so with a
heterosexual partner, and I would expect very few such children to end up
in the care of a same-sex couple. I consider one percent to be a
reasonable percentage of homosexuals that are raising children in a
same-sex couple. That would give a range of 50k to 150k same-sex couples, given a range of 10M to 30M homosexuals. Also, you seem to be
confusing the number of homosexual parents with the number of same-sex
households. It seems extremely likely to me that the former is
substantially larger than the latter.
The rest of the quotes are from Paddy the Irish Mexican.
But later he said:
If it’s not a valid reason, then the only reason for presenting it is
bigotry.
And as for the Bible, I consider that a ridiculous argument. The Bible
was written by bigots, and using the words of bigots to defend one’s
position and then claiming that one isn’t a bigot is absurd. Besides
which, I don’t see any big Christian crusades against eating pork. That part of the Bible doesn’t seem to come up that much. But the
part about homosexuality is brought up over and over again. Why? Because
there is bigotry against homosexuals, and not against pork eaters.
What?!! Spiritus said that those that present this claim should back it
up. Spiritus did not say that it shouldn’t be studied; if
anything, Spiritus said that it should be studied more. Is
objecting to an unsupported claim “bad logic”?
Proposition 1: God loves all people.
Proposition 2: God has killed numerous people, and called upon his
followers to kill even more.
Conclusion: Killing is an act of love.
I don’t see how anyone can believe both Proposition 1 and Proposition 2
without believing the conclusion.
[Sorry if the formatting is screwed up. I’ve been having to move this post around because of problems with the message board.]
