It’s therefore a states-rights issue, and California decided what the law shall be for Californians—marriage is between men and women. End of discussion.

Or we could say…

The State (or Nation) decided what the law shall be for the State (or Nation) – black people can’t vote. End of discussion.

The State (or Nation) decided what the law shall be for the State (or Nation) – women people can’t vote. End of discussion.

The State (or Nation) decided what the law shall be for the State (or Nation) -interracial marriage is illegal. End of discussion.

The State (or Nation) decided what the law shall be for the State (or Nation) – white people can own black people as slaves. End of discussion.

Good thing others didn’t buy into the “end of discussion.”

Great blog by the by!
(thanks for turning me on to it Mike)
Cheers!

You are forgetting to ask yourself “why” marriage laws do what they do. Marriage is indeed about economic protection of women and children. Since children cannot raise and take care of themselves, and since a woman who produces children is severely restricted in her ability to provide for herself and children, the marriage contract (1) ensures economic stability and provision for all parties and (2) penalizes a spouse who should try to abandon the other parties covered in the contract. Heterosexuals must have this marriage law, as their sex produces a situation that needs a contract!

The State has an interest in this precisely because heterosexuals produce and care for the citizenry. The State recognizes this unique service that heterosexuals provide to the State. As a result, the State tries to not add harmful burdens on married heterosexuals. To the contrary, the state offers tax breaks that help married couples better provide economically for their families, which are produced naturally and often by their coupling.

The reason I ignore adoption is (1) because it is a rare exception to the norm and (2) we never write our contracts around rare exceptions to norms! We write them around the rule, and the rule is that heterosexuals mass produce humans by the billions, and thus need a contract to protect the material rights and needs of those family members. This procreative reality is material, concrete, and unique among all human relationships. Nature simply has not tasked gays with the long-range responsibilities of procreation. It is the heterosexuals who have been given that responsibility, and marriage is the legal contract for this.

The reason “no-fault divorce” sucks is twofold: (1) it enables adults to freely deprive their children of the long-term care they require (18 years per child, from infant to adult), and (2) it removes the legal recourse women and children have against a breadwinner who flees. In short, it removes the legal protections that original marriage offered to women and children. The economic result for women and children is poverty.

Finally, and I mean finally, we need contracts precisely because we know that humans tend to wrong to each other. Therefore, when severe material risk is involved, we use contracts to enforce right behavior and to severely penalize people who break the contracts. This protects people from victimization.

Laws and contracts are *essential* to an orderly and thriving society. You may have the last word, Mr. Gough.

To Mr. Gough: you already live in “my world,” as OUR world has legal contracts everywhere, and they exist to protect the material rights of people and children. Sadly, my sense in talking with you is that you never even knew that marriage was a contract. Even worse, perhaps you don’t know anything about contract law, and why it matters to humanity. As a result, my points appear to fall prey to your ignorance.

To conclude my comments, contracts are *necessary* for heterosexuals because they mass produce children by the billions, and these children require decades of material provisions, care, and education. The only way for humanity to effectively and constructively manage this procreative fact of our existence is to enter the marriage contract, which was designed because of the procreative fact of heterosexuality. It’s so self-evident and concrete as to hardly need explaining. Yet, sadly, there are many uneducated members of society who think marriage is a mere romance contract—and one that can be dissolved at any time without penalty. What an educational crisis! Think of the infants and children, and you will understand what the marriage contract is and does for society.

Despite your ignorance, it is a fact that most social ills—from poverty to delinquency–are traceable to broken homes. The family is every human being’s first society. When it dissolves, anarchy takes over.

Should the government police marriage? What do you think our legal system in America is? It’s the way we make and enforce laws. Good grief. We police smoking. We police trans-fat. We police littering. We police child abandonment. We police speeding. We police polygamy. We police everything. But you believe we should NOT have laws that protect woman and children from abandonment? How cruel do you want society to be towards helpless children?

All the best,

I don’t want to live in Mr. Manning’s world. I don’t know if I’m reading him right but it’s a world where every couple who has a child is forced to marry and divorce is criminalized? What is one to the married man who has a child with another woman?
He seems convinced hetrosexual marriage is the key to fixing all of our problems if we only enforced it more. Should the government police marriage?
Marriage is a social construct in a chaotic world. There is no reason why society cannot adjust that construct.

This issue remains a ‘flashpoint’ in the culture wars, and a kind of barometer for spiritual/theological/generational differences these days. It’s not just dividing culture, but historic denominations and churches.

How to relate? Responses to this question hurt so many people coming from so many places. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people feel marginalized, sidelined, and un-loved. Those who hold to (what they see as) ‘traditional morality’ often feel just as unloved, like they’re the last minority that it’s okay to openly mock and ridicule…this must be the ‘curse of political correctness’ that I hear a person or two responding to in this thread.

I grew up in quite the politically/theologically conservative home. It was a great home, very loving and supportive. And I had pretty much the default fundamentalist/evangelical cultural opinion of homosexual persons, which on it’s most charitable days was a variation of “God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay there.”

All of this was strongly challenged a few years ago when a friend and mentor of mine, 30 years my senior, began reexamining his own rather entrenched views on the matter. This author and traveling minister had, in the space of one month, two church elder friends of his and one on-fire-for-God missionary niece come out of the closet! These weren’t ‘backslidden’ people, but rather people in the prime of their spiritual lives dealing with this at time confusing orientation. My friend didn’t know what to do with this, so he took it to Father in prayer for a season. In the meantime, it was like a whole new world was opened up to him: LGBT Christians, confused about their sexuality, trying counseling, nonmarried celibacy, ‘deliverance’ sessions and more to make their orientation conform to their theological beliefs – with a 0% success rate. People whom Jesus had delivered from many other addictions, problems, and hang-ups in life…what to do about this apparently immovable object?

My friend didn’t come to any hard-and-fast conclusions regarding the ‘meta’ of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in this case. He simply decided what we *all* need abundant grace to make it, and that he’d make himself available to LGBT Christians (and non) in a ministry capacity. It was then that the invitations started rolling in. Evangelical and charismatic gay and lesbian congregations all over the country began getting wind of this preacher of grace who was not offended by what he didn’t understand, who longed to hear a message – not about how their sexual orientation was ‘okay’ – they were adults who would wrestle with God on that one on their own – but someone who would treat them like beloved human beings and share the riches of Christ. I wouldn’t be shocked if there are a plethora of MyChurch members who wrestle with questions of orientation and once again sink in despair at it being treated like a ‘topic.’

With this said, what follows is not an attempt to change anyone’s mind about the sinfulness or blessedness of homosexual orientation and practice. We all have our perspectives, and they change like glaciers, not ice cubes. Rather, I want to lay out in as concise a manner as possible my own readings, prayer, and reflection in this these past few years, showing essentially four different options people of faith have in this regard. I’m pretty sure we all fall into one of these four understandings. My goal in showing them in a descriptive, matter-of-fact manner is to humanize all four perspectives, so that we don’t demonize one another.

By way of a quick prelude: I will not be handling any Old Testament passages that describe or seem to describe homosexual activity as an ‘abomination.’ That is because these very same passages (as God Hates Shrimp humorously points out) describe many other things as ‘abominations,’ our English translations belying the fact that this word simply denotes that which is cultically unacceptable to the ritual purity of set-apart Israel. So I will exclusively look at the three New Testament passages, which all happen to be by Paul (Jesus doesn’t mention homosexuality in the Gospels). I’m not even going to go into Paul’s passages in-depth, but they’re the ones in I Corinthians 6, Romans 1 and 1 Timothy 1:10.

The four options, as I’ve seen them, is as follows:

1.) Paul *is* addressing contemporary homosexual orientation/practice and this *does* matter

2.) Paul *is* addressing contemporary homosexual orientation/practice and this *doesn’t* matter

3.) Paul *isn’t* addressing contemporary homosexual orientation/practice and that *does* matter

4.) Paul *isn’t* addressing contemporary homosexual orientation/practice and it *doesn’t* matter

1.) This is the standard view in most evangelical churches as well as the official Roman Catholic and East Orthodox perspective. In essence, our English translations of ‘homosexual’ in the NT are to be trusted and affirmed as addressing precisely the same kind of homosexual orientation and activity as we see today among monogamous and non-married homosexual persons. Because Scripture is inspired and profitable for teaching, we should see this as prescriptive for moral and Godly living today, teaching it accordingly.

2.) Paul is talking about contemporary homosexual orientation/action, but it’s up to us, the Church, to decide whether this is binding for today. Now lest you think this is an option only for hippie-dippy liberal revisionists, think again: The church *always* interprets Scripture for today. The evangelical church, for instance, decided that was Jesus told one guy (Nicodemus) about being ‘born again’ was binding on all people everywhere, whereas what he told another guy (the rich young ruler) about selling all possessions and giving them to the poor was virtually never applicable! We’ve also decided that Peter’s admonition of women not to wear braids or jewelry because of sinful pride was culturally-conditioned and temporary, as is Paul’s admonition of women to wear head-coverings, even though he seems to appeal to some pretty cosmic and universal principles for doing so. In the same manner, some good Christian people (and churches) conclude that Paul was simply mistaken about homosexual orientation & practice, or that his teaching was culturally-appropriate for his era but actually harmful and contrary to the Gospel for ours. We the Church are always ‘binding an loosing’ interpretations of our Holy Writ…an awesome and wonderful responsibility.

3.) Many biblical scholars puzzle over the actual meaning of arsenokoitai, the Greek word Paul used which is translated from King James on as ‘homosexuals.’ (See explanation) In short, many think that Paul is writing about pedastry – man-boy love – and temple prostitution where otherwise ’straight’ people become ‘gay for a day’ (only not really) to engage in debasing pagan rituals. So Paul is in fact, according to this perspective, writing about the primacy of love and consideration, and against harmful idolatry. 2,000 years of translation later and we lose sight of context and original intent. Most sociologists agree that contemporary loving, monogamous homosexual orientation didn’t even exist until relatively contemporary times…therefore we are dealing with, strictly speaking, an ‘extra-biblical’ phenomenon that should, perhaps, be looked at through a different lens than seemingly ‘obvious’ passages in Scripture. We should instead appeal to Jesus and Paul’s clear teaching on love, freedom and liberty of conscience, while upholding healthy Christian standards of monogamy and sexuality that we’d encourage anyone of *any* orientation to keep as best as possible.

4.) Number 4 is a bit of a non-sequitur, as I think you can see. : )

My personal .02: I think it’s possible to hold any of these four (really three) perspectives with love and integrity, shining Christ’s life into everyone we meet. I also think it’s possible to hold any of these with pride, fear, and hostility, using them as battering rams to force those who disagree into feeling marginalized, sinful, and ‘less than.’ One of the things I’ve appreciated about certain trends emerging expressions of faith is that people who hold to all three of the above (and yes, there are plenty of ‘emergers’ who hold to #1) can peacefully coexist and even encourage one another.

“I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions. The government should do this for both gay couples and straight couples, and leave marriage in the hands of the Church and other religious entities. That’s the way it works in Holland: If a couple wants to be united in the eyes of the law, whether gay or straight, they go down to city hall and legally register, securing all the rights and privileges a couple has under Dutch law. Then, if the couple wants their relationship blessed – to be married – they go to a church, synagogue or other house of worship.

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state…homosexual couples could go to churches that welcome and affirm gay marriage and get their unions blessed there…isn’t that the way it should be in a nation that guarantees people the right to promotion religion according to their personal convictions?”

The Constitution/Bill of Rights says not a thing about marriage. It’s therefore a states-rights issue, and California decided what the law shall be for Californians—marriage is between men and women. End of discussion. There is no cosmic rule book of the universe that says they are wrong. Sorry.

Next, marriage protects children’s rights by ensuring under penalty of law that children will be parented and provided for, and not abandoned, by the people who sired them. That’s the legal force of marriage law. The vast majority of parents who stay married do indeed provide for the material and educational care of their children, at least up to their 18th birthday. In cases where the parents divorce, or where no marriage contract is in place to begin with, full abandonment of children by one or more parents has reached epidemic proportions! So, marriage laws are quite effective in preventing this. Remember, a spouse who breaches the marriage contract becomes materially liable and must pay reparations/compensation to the children and spouse. That protects the woman and children.

You are right about child support, but that does not help the woman’s career loss, or the fact that she will now have to work full time and leave the kids with no one. Moreover, child support came into being when society realized that the popularity of no-fault divorce left children without any protections. Moreover, when the man remarries a new woman, he now must provide for two sets of families by law . This economic burden is unsustainable and results in personal bankruptcy.

As for “gay marriage,” I see no reason that gays need a legal contract. What exchange would the contract entail? What penalties would be enforceable for breach of contract? What would constitute breach of contract? There is simply no tangible reason for a contract for gay people.

Finally, you asked why churches aren’t spending money/time/energy on poverty? They are. In addition, poverty’s primary causes are illegitimacy and divorce. So, a strong marriage policy is the No. 1 cure for poverty in America. Juan Williams of NPR has written an entire book on this cure. Look it up: Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do about It

And my final comment to Mr Gough is this: In matters of democratic governance, whatever the majority determines to be the law is what’s “right,” whether we personally agree with it or not. Do you know of some cosmic rule book I don’t know about, by which the “rightness” of laws is decided???

Cheers, everyone. Over and out.

All married couples know *experientially* the truth of what I’m saying. In fact, divorced women and cohabitating women know the truth of what I’m saying even more. They and their children are being devastated by their unscrupulous sexual partners, and they have no legal recourse whatsoever. The loss of traditional marriage as a preeminent social contract has doomed the masses to cycles of chronic poverty and single-parent exhaustion—again, with no legal recourse or protections.

As for national ethics, I’m not speaking of some sort of mystical ethics magic. I’m talking about concrete social policies and their direct results/consequences. When a society begins mass producing neglected, abandoned, beggarly, delinquent, and dropout populations, that society is doomed to the dustbin of history, and nothing can save it.

Such weak nations make easy conquests for stronger more orderly societies. Survival of the fittest.

By your reasoning in your last comment, I’m guessing you think that Greece and Rome must have been a pretty ethical societies, since they lasted for so long. Oh, and the Vandals and Visigoths who sacked Rome must have been even more ethical, right?

Don’t worry. Had you lived at that time, you would have made a good eromenos…

Marriage exists because of procreation—namely, because children produced by heterosexuals have material needs and a normative right to provisions from the people who sired them. The need for the contract emerges out of the fact that children and women are at risk of material destitution as a result of heterosexual sex acts. The contract therefore ensures their material protections under penalty of law for breach of contract. (Gay adults have no such similar circumstance or material risk. They don’t produce babies, they don’t have material risk.)

Finally, if ever a majority does support gay marriage in the U.S., I will say that’s the law of the land. So, yes, while that gay definition of “marriage” will have no protections of children or women arising from procreation, it will still be the law of the land. And children and women will be the ones materially harmed by such laws (as is already the case with “no-fault divorce” laws).

And, any society whose laws don’t ensure the material care and discipline of new populations will weaken and decay until a stronger and more ethical society moves in and takes it over.

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/11/18/proposition-8-protests-turn-violent-is-that-necessary/