– I’ve been blessed during most of my adult life in having gay friends. Their strong presence in my life has helped to desensitize me to that nascent homophobia that was an inevitable part of my growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s.
– Their attractions towards members of their own sex and their practices in the bedroom may be different than mine, but I simply don’t care. They respect my practices and feelings just as I do theirs. How else in an enlightened world should it be?
– Some of us (both gays and straights) have discussed this topic a lot in recent weeks with a special emphasis on California’s recent vote on Proposition 8.
– Undeniably, prejudices still run deep here in our American society. But, progress is being made – albeit, over decades. Women’s rights have improved much as has racial equality though there is still a ways to go on both. But, thus far, gay rights have been trailing behind.
– These situations are generally deplored in polite civic conversations and essays but silently condoned in far too many private hearts. I, for one, think we should each speak our minds on these things publicly and let those who are timid and on the fence, as to what they believe, see that there are many of us willing to speak up.
– As a white heterosexual male, I don’t, as they say, have a dog in this fight. But that’s all the more reason to speak up. We should not, in good conscious, leave the work of struggling for social improvement to those who are oppressed.
– So, dear readers, be clear then. I support full equality for women, all racial groups and for gays. It may not be the world we live in today, God help us, but it is what the better world of the future should look like.
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Our Mutual Joy
– from Newsweek Magazine – Dec 6, 2008
Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.
Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. “It is better to marry than to burn with passion,” says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.
The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months—since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it—the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country’s pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.
The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: “The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition.”
To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else’s —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. “Marriage” in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God’s will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.
More… ➡
– Research thanks to John P.