Marriage is a union between two souls. That alone should be explanation enough, but it would appear that a majority of Californians don't accept that. |
Many of them will tell you, "the Bible tells me so." Well, I'm going to break one of my cardinal rules and run the risk of alienating you right off the bat. Please, however, hear me out. If you are a Christian, believe me, your very soul hangs in the balance.
Sorry, but the Bible is wrong. This is America, folks. A democracy and not a theocracy. If you want one of those, you'll have to start your own country as neither Iran nor Israel would be your cup of java. We have this thing called "separation of church and state" which means that we respect Jews, Moslems, Hindi, Buddhists, Native Americans and members of any other religious or non-religious groups. That means that if I were to start a church that recognized gay and lesbian marriages, or if my denomination (the Unitarian Universalist Association) were to officially do so, to follow the dicta of Knight et al., would be an abridgement of my freedom of religion.
Again I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Either accept that we live in a pluralistic society or start you own and leave us be, but don't tell me whom and how I can and cannot love. If you really want to defend marriage, strengthen it by making it more difficult to get in and out of it, and broaden it by including all committed and loving couples, which, by its diversity, would strengthen it.Now. In most cases I shall be preaching to the choir. But in case someone who disagrees with me snuck in here (glory be, I certainly hope so!), I will first assume that you are one who does not check your brains at the church door. You do understand that the earth is round, that it circles the sun and not the other way around. That those notions were discovered by persons who used the brains God gave them for a purpose other than to fill the space between their ears. No, I am not going to change your mind (you've got to do that yourself or else it doesn't take.)
[Before I continue any further, I apologize for that crack about the Bible. But there's an important point I need to make, and that is that there are many Christians who do not take the Bible literally, and if you want people to respect you, then you must earn that respect by acknowledging that there are different points of view, even amongst yourselves, and they must all be heard if we are to live together in harmony, Christian or otherwise.]I will not say that you are wrong. I respect your beliefs. But I want you to understand why my view runs contrary to yours, and I call myself a Christian. (To address the latter, I am a member of a Unitarian Universalist church. Our heritage is Judeo-Christian and, in fact, our interpretation of Christianity is biblically based, as early Unitarians believed that to worship any saints, or Mother Mary, or even Jesus himself was akin to idolatry. That is why we are unitarian and not trinitarian.)
Oh, and one more thing. Please, gentlefolk, refrain from referring to the gay "lifestyle". A lifestyle is something one chooses (such as chastity or promiscuity, abstinence or indulgence.) One does not, contrary to many persons' beliefs (as opposed to knowledge), choose to be gay or lesbian. One may choose to disbelieve science (not to mention logic) on this one, but if one's core beliefs held, as one of their cornerstones, that the earth was flat, then one should refrain from going up in an airplane and traveling any great length, lest on become completely and irrevocably mentally unseated. The psychological sciences have already removed homosexuality from its list of aberrant behavior ("lifestyle choices", if you will); the biological sciences are already knocking on the door. And as for logic, if once chooses, well before puberty, to be a pariah, to be shunned, ridiculed, spat upon, beaten, tortured and even killed.... Hmm. Sounds familiar. Reminds me of the early Christians. I wonder if there's a parallel there? Well, one may chooses to become a Christian. But, a homosexual? I don't think so.We must, therefore, proceed on the presumption that one is or is not gay, not by choice, but by biological imperative. If you cannot follow me this far, I wish you well, and it saddens me, but we no longer have any common ground.
So. If God made us all, then she made some of straight, some of gay & lesbian, and some of us an interesting mix. The question now becomes one of procreation versus recreation and I'm positive you see where I'm headed. Not to put too fine a point on it, or to become graphic, but let's just say that I, as a straight person, have had an interesting, varied and wholly satisfying life, carnally speaking, and were I henceforth forbidden any experience but the "missionary position", I could say, I've lived and loved and leave it at that. And hope that any future partner of mine will be understanding and undemanding.
If your religious beliefs forbid any sexual activity for pleasure, you'd better either have much more discipline and restraint than I, or be able to afford an awfully large family. But if you've engaged in any sexual activity for pleasure, or have done anything different from the ol' M.P., then you would be a hypocrite to deny any other individual that which was codified in our own Declaration of Independence, the "pursuit of happiness" and may no longer call yourself a true American.So we now have us consenting adults engaging in what we engage in, and it must be okay or else we're sinners, too, and I feel terribly sad for us. For you. I may be a sinner, but I refuse to put those activities in the category. And they happen to be in a loving, committed relationship and wish to cement it with The Vows. What's the big whup? Is the institution of marriage so fragile that a little honest loving would shatter it? Remember, marriage, by law, is a civil institution so don't be pulling any Bible stuff on me. And if we can't use the bible to define civil law (and we sure can't!), then where does that leave us? How do we say that marriage is sacred? There must be some other reason to deny our brothers and sisters the rights we all enjoy.
Is a mother or a father (or two mothers and two fathers) unfit to raise a child? Please do not say that to any of the hundreds of thousands of single parents. And if a single mom or dad can successfully raise as child with all the love and nurturing and moral and ethical foundation an individual is capable of providing, then does it not stand to reason that two moms or two dads could do twice as well? Do you believe that a dysfunctional nuclear family is preferable to a kind and loving and moral gay family (no, I insist that's not an oxymoron, and you should know better than that if you're living in the twenty oughts and not the nineteen oughts)? I thought not.If, for some reason, you're continuing to read this, becoming more and more indignant and outraged by the line, then, let's get down to the real nitty-gritty:
Homophobia is too akin to racism to call.
It used to be, there were laws against people of different races marrying. Thank God, we've gotten over that one! Or have we?
Let's examine this, shall we. A person is a person. If we need to strip the skin to get past the color, then stripping the genitalia's fair play. The law says as much. It says that we may not discriminate against a person due to his or her sex. That mean that the law is blind to gender. And if the law is, indeed, blind to gender, than what business does it have discriminating in this area of law? If you deny a contract because you are a man and the other person is a woman, see ya in court, buddy! If you deny a contract because he's a he and he's a he, if you say that a legal contract between two men is invalid because they're men, I sure as heck hope to see you in court and you will lose because justice is blind–blind to race, blind to gender, blind to sexual orientation. And we will have justice! And any law you pass to attempt to invade my home, my religion will be struck down as any unjust law shall, as the Confederacy has learned, and as you will learn.I believe marriage to be a sacred institution. It must not be sullied or defiled by hatred, bigotry, racism, homophobia or any form of intolerance, by child abuse or spousal abuse, by infidelity or indifference. Gay and lesbian friends of mine have demonstrated a lovingness and commitment that many straight couples would envy. There are many rights that married couples enjoy that unmarried couples do not, regardless of their longevity or level of commitment. These are rights granted by law to honor two people because they have dedicated their lives to each other, two people who have pledged to serve each other and protect each other.
That is what the law is supposed to do: protect and serve, just like it says on the cop cars. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals, transsexuals and the transgendered are all too often neither served nor protected by the law, to our shame as Americans. That sham of a "protection of marriage" law, Proposition 22 of 2000, the Knight Initiative, is a travesty. It is un-American, it is anti-marriage and, under its guise of piety is hateful and spiteful, implicitly encouraging evil.
Fortunately for America, the institution of marriage is much stronger and more resilient than that. It will outlast bigotry and intolerance. It will endure. It will abide.Daniel Beck Abrahamson Zwickel
March 13, 2000
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