Posted on 10/30/2012 7:35:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
Next week voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington will vote on whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.
Given that there are good people on both sides of this issue, how are we to explain their opposing views?
The primary explanation is this: Proponents and opponents ask two different questions.
Proponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is keeping the definition of marriage as man-woman fair to gays? Opponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is same-sex marriage good for society?
Few on either side honestly address the question of the other side. Opponents of same-sex marriage rarely acknowledge how unfair the age-old man-woman definition is to gay couples. And proponents rarely, if ever, acknowledge that this unprecedented redefinition of marriage may not be good for society.
That is why proponents have it much easier. All they need to do is to focus the public's attention on individual gay people, show wonderful gay individuals who love each other, and ask the American public: Is it fair to continue to deprive these people of the right to marry one another?
When added to Americans' aversion to discrimination, to the elevation of compassion to perhaps the highest national value, and to the equating of opposition to same-sex marriage with opposition to interracial marriage, it is no wonder that many Americans have been persuaded that opposition to same-sex marriage is hateful, backwards and the moral equivalent of racism.
Is there any argument that can compete with the emotionally compelling fairness argument?
The answer is that one can -- namely, the answer to the second question, Is it good for society?
Before answering that question, however, it is necessary to respond to the charge that opposition to same-sex marriage is morally equivalent to opposition to interracial marriage and, therefore, the moral equivalent of racism.
There are two responses:
First, this charge is predicated on the profoundly false premise that race and sex (or "gender" as it is now referred to) are analogous.
They are not.
I like Prager a lot, but think that he is off on this “fairness” argument.
I know that he deems it “unfair” that a blind person cannot be an airline pilot, or that a tone-deaf individual cannot become an orchestra conductor. Unfair how? That’s just the way it is.
Marriage exists primarily to give individuals some sense of lineage, familial descent and ancestry, not to provide two men, two women or a man and his pet turtle some sort of satisfaction about themselves. Hopefully love will strengthen the former, but society has no legitimate interest in whether or not it will fortify the latter.
It has been said that the more tolerant society is of homosexuality, the more of it it gets. This certainly seems true wherein as American society began to loosen these strictures we heard, “Oh, no. We’d never push for the likes of marriage. We just want to be left alone and unpersecuted for our “choice”. Yet here we are, now to be chastised and even fired from employment if the “gay marriage” mantra is not endorsed and codified and expanded.
Yet expanded to what? as the so-called “progressive” agenda is never satisfied, and must take on more and more of society’s “wrongs” until as we’ve seen even in our lifetimes as in Greece, and parts of “egalitarian” western Europe, it comes crashing in on itself toward anarchy, or even worse, Islamism from which there is no dissent.
These “economic” failings might at first glance seem divorced from homosexuality, but they are related in the permissive sense of society that progressivism endorses.
I fear for my granddaughter and the America she will have to grow up in.
There is no such thing as “same sex marriage”, it is just two homosexuals trying to screw companies out of paying for employee medical insurance.
A counter-argument can be made in very simple terms:
(1) Did Gay Marriage exist in Biblical days? Obviously no. Therefore the Bible could not be said to refute Gay Marriage, because Gay Marriage didn't then exist.
(2) All that existed in those days, was Gay fornication, adultery, servile pederasty, temple prostitution, and the like. All the Bible teachings are against these non-marital arrangements --- but not against Gay Marriage.
(3) The Old Testament prohibitions were man-on-man sex are just like the OT prohibitions on unclean (non-kosher) foods. Not applicable under the New Testament.
(4)The New Testament prohibitions were against pederasty, prostitution, and the like, not against marriage in any form.
(5) The Epistle to the Hebrews states: "Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge" (Hebrews 13:4). So marriage is honorable "to all" (not just heterosexuals) and it's only prostitution and adultery that makes it undefiled, not gay marriage.
Now I'm sure some FReepers will get on to argue as if I, Mrs. Don-o, were advocating these points: but I am not. I am completely anti- Gay Marriage, which is in itself a misnomer because the coupling of two people of the same sex is not even remotely analogous to marriage.
BUT my point is: it's really very easy to construct a pro-gay-marriage argument from Scripture Alone, --- if you don't buttress your argument with Natural Law and an agreed principle of authoritative interpretation.
Prager is the textbook RINO.
He acquiesces to the cultural pressure to accept homosexual BEHAVIOR and merely draws the line at marriage. This is surrender, and the sodomites know it.
So do "civil unions." And this is exactly what Prager is advocating for.
Not eating pork is unfair to pig farmers and the pork industry; but we don’t force pork down the throats of Jewish children in schools, nor encourage the schools to call their parents bigots for not eating pork.
To protect children.
The ads here in WA seem to run 20 to 1 against Referendum 74.
I agree with you on all of these points but Jesus did define marriage.
Instead of attacking the author and using projection , why don’t you comment on the article instead?
I agree that government shouldn’t be in the marriage-recognizing business. To answer your question literally: Initially governments just struggled to get basic census-like information. It so happened that, until very recently, the overwhelming majority of folks got married, as opposed to co-habited without marriage, and open homosexual relationships were unheard of. Once marriage started to offer certain GOVERNMENT-CONFERRED advantages, such as tax treatment, inheritance issues, etc., the long slide began.
“why is the government involved in marriage, a religious ceremony, in the first place?”
It gives massive control of the culture, either for good or ill.
The problem with the state’s involvement, at least in the modern era, is that the definition it uses to recognize the institution is simply whatever judges, pols or the majority thinks it is at any one time. And that’s it, and that’s all it will ever be. Combine that with the fact many have been conditioned to think marriage comes from and is defined by the state and you have what we have today. It was always a danger. Pope Leo XIII warned about it 130 years ago.
Freegards
"6 ...at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.’
7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
The key here is in the translation, of which I am not an expert.* Did the original say, "who" God has joined together, which would point to a marriage based on the love of individuals for one another, or did the original say "what" God has joined together, which would indicate that male should be joined to female, and no one should "cast asunder" this institution of the natural order of things? My vote is for the latter; and I also believe that the Commandment "do not commit adultery" had a wide scope of application, not just sexual immorality, but any sort of deliberate adulteration of Truth, or of God's purposes in the created world.
Also, in Matthew 19:29 (NIV), Jesus said, "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." Throughout the Bible he refers to persons in terms of their sex. He does not say "siblings", but "brothers or sisters". He does not say "parents", but "father or mother"; and he does not say "spouse" or "partner", but "wife", having already covered elsewhere that men are to be the caretakers of women and children and love them as God himself loves the Church. The only non-specific sex in this passage is "children", not because their sex did not matter, but because they are all dependents of the adults not just for their upbringing, but also for the social order in which they live and which they will inherit.
*wideawake, you know Bible scholarship. What do you say?
Did you read the second sentence in my post? That directly address the crux of Prager’s article.
The title begs the conversed to be asked: Can a “good” person vote FOR same-sex “marriage.”
Given that they’re not deluded or coerced, I say an unqualified “no.”
Lots of reasons, mainly having to do with children and property, since the time of Moses at least.
fairness?
This is a twisting of thought, making no sense. How about the difference between evil and good?
In war we kill the enemy. But it is evil to kill another person ... one not attacking the person in self defense. What one person calls good, some will call evil. There is no compromise between good and evil.
The Holy Bible containing the Holy Writ is the standard, Almighty God gave to man to tell men/women the standard for living a good life, pleasing to God.
The fact there are atheists, does not make the Word of God any less Sovereign.
From the beginning the evil (Satan) deceived the woman and man.
The same thing is still happening and it is called good.
Jehovah God, Let us not be deceived LORD, let us sincerely repent. Forgive us our sins and lead us in the way to eternal live with Thee, in Jesus name amen.
We are to love our fellow man as Jesus has loved us.
We are to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul strength, and mind.
Are you sure you thought this through? Maybe you are a Libertarian anarchist?
Why is society involved in marriage? Why is religion involved in marriage?
Marriage has been around since the beginning; before government. There are many things the government recognizes, promotes and protects that are inalienable, endowed by the Creator.
Government did not create marriage and therefore can not redefine it.
Not counting you and other anarchic moral pacifists there are two sides to this issue which mirrors many other issues of the day.
There are those that want to redefine and impose upon society some leftist Utopian concept of fairness versus those who want to maintain that which is time tested and successful -a result of the free marketplace of ideas and choices made freely by millions upon millions over the centuries.
Homosexual marriage is a leftist construct. To NOT oppose the left is to promote the left -pick a side.
First of all the idea that less government is better government is hardly anarchist, although plenty of nanny staters who claim to be conservatives would like to think otherwise.
That said, our founders chose to protect our inalienable, creator endowed rights by placing checks on the government power to interfere. Foolishly, many have chosen to give government power over things we want to protect or promote but in doing so we ceded control, power, and legitimacy to the politicians and bureaucrats.
Giving government the power to involve itself in marriage was great... until it wasn't and now you have governments perverting marriage. Had marriage been kept out of the hands of government, two sodomites could be joined in any silly ceremony they wanted but it would not be marriage, and would have no more legitimacy than what they could convince others of. Now that same perversion can be legally sanctioned with the same benefits as a real marriage. Now we are not just facing cultural rot but government sanctioned and protected rot.
So back to my original question, why involve the government in the first place? What would it have cost us as a nation to make no laws, or regulations regarding marriage. What would it have cost us to keep the legal aspects of marriage strictly in the realm of contracts? I don't want a government definition of marriage specifically because I don't trust them not to pervert that definition. I want government out of the marriage business so I am free to shun wrongdoers without fear of government retribution. I want to protect what is good in the same way I believe our founders did, and that is to keep government away.
BTTT!
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