A little debate

I read this Blog which sparked a response to do a pretty good rant, which I will feature here. I cut an pasted his Blog Entry including my response on how I feel on this matter. please Enjoy.
Myopia: (n) a lack of foresight or discernment : a narrow view of something
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The Gay Marriage Catch-22
This blog might not make any sense, because it's essentially a "brain dump" of a number of things that hit me while re-reading Jill Ensley's blog on gay marriage and thinking about Bill Horn's comment below. I have not really thought it through, so I would appreciate anyone wanting to punch holes in it...Back in college I read a book called "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller (as a side note, at the time, it seemed to me the funniest book I'd ever read, but when I started to re-read it 15 years later, it just struck me as sad). In the book, a Catch-22 was a legal or procedural oxymoron. For example, no one who was insane had to fly bombing runs, so if you wanted to get out of them, you just had to show you were insane. But, the fact of trying to get out of them proved your sanity, so you had to do them. If you were sane, you had to fly, if not, you didn't have to but wanted to. Either way, you flew, sane or not. The rules simply meant nothing.What has that to do with gay marriage?A couple of quotes from posters on Jill's blog struck me as the same kind of thing:"And that may be what angers me the most, the notion that this amendment could take away domestic partner rights from hundreds, thousands, of people.""Marriage is the last major barrier that separates gay people from the rest of the population.""Fine, then, if marriage is reserved for the straight and wholly(sic), then at least let same-sex couples who have been faithful to one another for many years receive the same benefits that married couples receive from the government."It seems that the most popular argument used for gay marriage is that marriage provides government benefits that gays are locked out of, so they want to get married just like straight people.But why do straight people want marriage? I've yet to see a straight couple get married for tax reasons or for insurance. Maybe it happens, I have just never seen it. Straight people that I know get married because it's the natural thing to do in order to create a home and a family.So, in other words, straights want to get married for x reason, but they get y benefits for doing so. Gays want to be able to get married, not for x reasons, but so they can get y benefits.The Catch-22? If you don't care about y, you can have it. If you want y, you can't have it.Maybe that makes sense of not, it just stuck me as odd. But what if Y is "separation from the rest of society" rather than government benefits? Does the lack of marriage separate gays? Well, let's ask it this way, is a hetero couple that's not married separated from society? No. From family and church, perhaps, but not from society so far as the law is concerned. Perhaps their cohabitation is technically unlawful, but as in Virginia, such laws have not been enforced for 4 generations and are tossed when they become an issue. So if you get married for x reasons, you get y in this case as well (not that it matters), but if you just want y, you can't have it. Catch-22.But what it seems to me is that the "approval" gays seek is more than just government approval. They want moral approval, for everyone else to say, "That's just fine". But that's not really something government can grant. Societal approval comes from the individuals in society, not from the laws that govern it (this one is weak, I know, as laws may be in some sense a 'gauge' of societal acceptance/approval). But since every time gay marriage hits the polls it loses, societal approval is not there.I don't know if this makes sense or not, as I'm just trying to think through a governmental "approach" to gay marriage. As a Christian, there's no issue...sodomy is outside God's design for Man and is therefore a sin. No amount of societal or legal approval can change that. But as an American, I don't believe that every sin ought to be illegal. The government ought to protect the rights we have as God's creation, not grant or deny them based on public opinion. The extent to which government ought to "mold" society is the issue. It's not a question of sin or anyone's interpretation of the Bible, but of the power we want to give other men over our lives and decisions, and whether we are going to trust them to make the decisions that we as individuals, don't seem to trust ourselves to make.
posted Sunday, 23 January 2005

Craig Caudill made this comment,
hello I read your comment about gay marriage and catch 22, which I've been meaning to read. As for the moral aspects againsts homosexuals. if you read the bible jesus never said anything against gays, and I don't take anything that could or could not be interpreted as such. because the bible is too vague. I wonder why there was not an Elleventh comandment on this topic? maybe God didn't think it was that important?
now other parts of the bible like the old testament is quit out of date.
I thinks that was the whole point of what jesus was all about. i mean if you read some stuff about who can and cannot enter a church is quit retarded. So what jesus said was it's really about a personal relationship with God. it's not about Rules and regulations for humans to expect everyone to follow or Punish certain behavior.
I'm not saying you feel this way. But I know lots conservative christians do.
Now being married myself and who does have gay friends. i don't think if they had the right to get married that it would trivialize my marriage or make my marriage any less important.
I think people who feel that way are Stuck up snobs, who if it were a hundreds years ago, would be saying the same thing about Black peopple or whites and blacks getting married.
i don't think people should be creating legislation for moral reasons to affect how everyone else behaves. with acception to of course Children. Victimless crimes are another matter
Now the tax benefit is only one example for reasons why gay people want to get married. if people had the guts to get to know ones nieghborsand stop playing power trip and pushing people around, there might be some understanding around here.
in my opinion which doesn't mean much to lots of people. Our country is being destroyed by the powers that be, both Political and Corporate. the Creed is greed and lots of fear. This is what people should be worried about. Not queer eye or spongebob squarpants.
Again I'm not saying you feel this. You obviously stated everyones rights should be protected. I'm also letting you know in no way was i trying to trash how you feel. I value most opinions that come from a good place, wether I agree or not.
peace
Craig
posted Sunday, 23 January 2005
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El Borak made this comment,
Hi, Craig. Thanks for quoting this and for your response. If you followed the link to "Godjilla", you'll see that we had quite a discussion going, and that it (almost) remained civil. I was pretty happy to see that was the case, as it's rather a rare occurrence.
I would like to address one point you made, just to clarify my position. Since you're a new reader there, you may not have the background that a lot of my readers do, so rather than repeating it over there, I figured I'd bring it over here.
You said: "if you read the bible jesus never said anything against gays, and I don't take anything that could or could not be interpreted as such. because the bible is too vague. I wonder why there was not an Elleventh comandment on this topic? maybe God didn't think it was that important?"
Now, I do read the Bible and you are correct that he never mentions homosexuality. There are two possible reasons for that. The first is that it's not important and the second is that it was simply not an issue in 1st century Judaism. He never mentions meth production, marriage licences, environmentalism, animal cruelty, smuggling, borders, or a host of other things that we moderns deal with. But I think that if we look at his society and some of the other things he said (like about marriage), we can draw some indication about his teachings through that.
I, like Jesus, approach marriage via what I call the "Creation Principle". That is, that God created mankind to act in a certain way. For example:
Jesus answered them, "Have you not read that God who made them in the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh?'
Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
Then they asked him, "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?"
And he answered, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives: but from the beginning it was not so".-- Matt 19:4-8
Now, we can glean a bit of the Creation Principle from this, and why I, as a Christian, don't think that principle ought to necessarily be part of the law.
First point: God created male and female, and Jesus was very concerned that individuals respect the permanence of marriage. Why? First and foremost, because it was a work of God.
Second point: God IS willing to change the law to deal with humans as we are. In this case, He gave Moses the ability to allow divorce, and it was a lot easier to get divorced in ancient Israel than it is in modern America. All it took was a "Dear John" letter.
But just because divorce was legal does not make it "moral". It's allowed, but Jesus commanded his diciples to treat marriage as permanent (in the next sentence). But even then there was an exception: that of unfaithfulness on the part of a spouse.
Jesus' morality, in this case, derived from the purpose for which man was created, but the law had to deal with the reality of imperfect people.
I approach (and I think Jesus would have approached) homosexual conduct the same way. In other words, homosexual conduct, like adultery and divorce, are not part of God's design for man (He created them 'male and female' to become one), therefore they are outside God's will and thus a sin.
BUT the law needs to deal with man is he exists, as a flawed creature who simply cannot do God's will in all areas, even under threat of sanction. God allowed divorce because of the stubbornness of the Israelites, but that never made it right or admirable or even desireable. But it did make it, in some cases anyway, the lesser of 2 evils.
Now, I say all that as a Christian, but a lot of Christians do not draw a distinction between legality and morality. In fact, most people, Christian or not, want "banned" things they find immoral, like animal cruelty for example.
However, I'm not a conservative (at least not in the George Bush sense), I'm a libertarian. I believe the purpose of government is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, that government is to protect God-given rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (property), and that whether people bugger one another is not really the business of government, unless the rights of a person are being violated.
So could I ever personally approve of a homosexual union? No, any more than I could approve of a man married to his mother or his dog. But, it's not up to me to approve it. I would try to help the person overcome such a sin/temptation/attitude if he wanted it (and I, too, have gay friends, some of whom are now happily and heterosexually married), but no force of law can make them change, any more than the law against adultery can keep me from being tempted heterosexually.
Now, I know that's a lot of noise, but I just wanted to clarify the point that I'm not "against" gays any more than I'm "against" adulterers (in fact, if I'm "against" any it would be the latter, as there we have an innocent victim, the spouse). I do not approve of their actions because I believe them to be harmful to themselves and in violation of the creation principle.
The Creation Principle says things are not sins simply because God says they are. Rather, He says they are sins because they are (note the swapping of cause and effect). God wants us to live in a certain way, because that's the way we were created, and true joy can only come to a human by living in the way God created him to live.
comment added :: 23rd January 2005, 18:14 GMT



Frank Fathom made this comment,
Interesting. in light of that many people can still contrue that Jesus when He said
Jesus answered them, "Have you not read that God who made them in the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh?'
it still seems like he was only talking about a relationship between men and women.
also I can't make the comparrisons with acts of homosexuality to that of Selling meth on the street, animal cruelty, because those are negative things. Now in relationships there are different kinds and various degrees. Because it all depends on whats in your heart.
Thanks i appreciate our frienldy debate.
comment added :: 24th January 2005, 13:23 GMT
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