Why I Oppose Gay Marriage

Roch keeps asking me (although I have answered in varying ways several times), so here goes, all at once, nothing new.

This answer is personal to me. I don’t represent any group, any church, any organization, or any secret society in what I write. I have not quoted from anybody or looked up anybody else’s arguments on the internet.

I suspect this will lose me some of the good will I have gained amongst the blogging crowd here. Also, I am really not planning to make this a debate. I was asked a question and I am answering it. I hope that can that just stand.

I am aware of the corners I am painting myself into. So be it.

Two quick prologue type notes.

One: I am answering the question as to why I oppose codifying gay marriage as law. I am not asking the question as to what I think the Bible says about homosexuality. I will mention that but not make an argument about it as I think it is obvious. For those who don’t think it is obvious and want to jump all over me for not offering yet another long explanation, well, you’ll just have to wait until I’m ready to do that. Like many of you I also have other things to do.

Two: I am addressing a public issue. I am not talking about individuals. I hope you can know the difference. What I think about gay marriage has nothing to do with whether or not I like an individual gay person or gay people. A gay person reading this may feel that I don’t like gay people. I am not talking about gay people per se, I am talking about the public issue of gay marriage. I do not think, at a personal level, that I am more or less inclined to like a gay person than a non gay person. Plus, as a Christian I am commanded not to judge those outside of the church (judging having a personal referent). I am also commanded to love my neighbor. The rhetoric of public discourse can be rough, and easily misjudged or confused with personal attitudes towards individual persons. That would be a mistake in my case.

OK, so here are six reasons, as of today, and in the time I have allotted myself to type with my two fingers, that I oppose gay marriage.

First of all there is the issue of morality. And don’t even start to think it. Your sense of morality plays into your sense of the public good, and the interest of the state, whether you will admit to it or not. Even if you are an atheist. There are issues where you will draw a line in the sand and say, “We cannot do that” and the only real reason you have is that at some deep gut level you just think it is too terribly wrong. Legal or rhetorical distinctions between whether such and such an act or behavior or policy involves or hurts other people are themselves rooted in the moral ground of conscience somewhere.

A long long time ago…..there was a cultural consensus about much of what we might call natural law or the moral law. That consensus has not always had everything right. Christians believe in a fallen world and don’t believe in the perfect ability of fallen people to perceive the perfection of God’s moral order. So that human beings get some of it wrong is not surprising. But we also believe that there is a strong reverberation of this order throughout the universe, and in human nature, so that we get a lot of it right is not surprising either.

The fact that human cultures of all kinds of widely varying faiths have held to marriage as between men and women is of no small consequence. Just because cross cultural consensus gets it wrong sometimes does not mean that it necessarily gets it wrong all the time, or this time.

I do not believe that it is the job of the Christian citizen to impose every Christian commandment or behavior on the general public through the statues and laws of the state. I am no theocrat. But, as I alluded before, there are times when a thing is SO wrong that codifying it is unthinkable. If you examine your mind and heart you can think of such things. For me gay marriage is one of those things.

I’m not picking on gay marriage. I would say the same to incestuous marriage or bigamous or polygamous marriage.

Marriage, that is, the family, is the core structural unit of any and all societies, as much as States want and wish to make it otherwise. I believe that both the light of nature and the light of revelation, general and special, point to marriage as meant to be between a man and a woman.

Second, I find the arguments for the gay lifestyle and for gay marriage to so inane, so immature, so adolescent, and so demeaning to the human person, that I cannot find anything which comes from those arguments to be anything but bad for our collective culture as human beings together. If we are persuaded by such terribly silly and juvenile lines of reasoning then we are collectively becoming a culture in utter and horrible decline.

When the justification for a thing being right or OK becomes genetic tendency or personal desire or being in love then we have totally lost any compass for determining what kind of behaviors can be thought of as good or bad, right or wrong, or in the public interest or not.

A culture that becomes accustomed to that sort of thinking is not a culture I want to see come about, though I fear it is too late. Post enlightenment deconstruction of traditional authorities may have already gone too far to be reversed.

So, in short, if the arguments for gay marriage are so terrible in themselves, I can’t see the product of those arguments as anything but bad either, and thus cannot again see codifying gay marriage as a good thing.

Third, all the arguments I have heard for gay marriage will, no matter what the present proponents want or desire, open the door to all sorts of other arrangements being also legalized or recognized. If an argument meant for one thing also allows many other things that one does not want, then that is legitimate reason for not allowing the one thing in the first place. This is not a Chicken Little scenario. This is not rhetoric to scare or inflame. This is just the way it is. No argument that would allow for gay marriage will not also open the door to incestuous marriage eventually. I have made that point enough not to go on and on here.

Fourth, the codification in our statutes of gay marriage will normalize the gay lifestyle even more in our culture, in our media, and in our schools. Yes, it can and will be worse than now. More gay TV programs, more gay movies, more mandatory gay appreciation days, etc. I think that all that will make life even harder on the majority of our families and parents struggling enough as it is with the overabundance of heterosexual and growing lesbian sex everywhere you look. Since I am not as awed by the genetic argument and think sexuality is a tender thing, and less hard wired than some folks like to suggest, I think that this greater normalization of gay and lesbian lifestyles will add to the already very confusing sexual growth and maturation process of young people from childhood to adulthood.

Fifth, the codification in our statues of gay marriage will increase pressure and persecution upon those opposed to gay marriage. We think the PC machine is bad now. I believe it will get worse and that the price will get higher and higher for expressing opposition to what then will be “the law.” I already have had many discussions with Canadian pastors about how their laws have created pressures on their churches and pastors. People say now that churches will still be free not to recognize civil unions. We’ll see. The people, the pressure groups, who advocate for gay marriage, are not exactly kind to Christian issues and Christian rights and Christian free speech. We’re already systematically and unashamedly called bigots, Nazis, homophobes, hypocrites, and idiots; you name it, we’re called it. And this is going to get better? Just recently I knew of a person who got into a lot of trouble when it became known in his company that he was opposed to gay marriage even though he was not even talking about it at work. I don’t think the left leaning supporters of gay marriage care too terribly much about free speech for its opponents, or for conservative Christians, and I think they will only be empowered as this juggernaut makes its way down the tracks.

Sixth, (and finally, because I have some other things to do) and pointing back to reason number one, I believe that the legalization of gay marriage will be bad for children. Children are best served, in my opinion, by having a male and a female parent. Legalization of gay marriage will solidify and liberalize rules and laws regarding gay adoption, which I am not supportive of generally (though, if we have it, I am supportive of rights of inheritance etc., for the sake of the children). Of course there are many examples of terrible heterosexual parents. So what? And of course many single parents have done a great job raising their children. So what? That does not mean that chldren are not best served by the complementing gifts and natures of a male and female parent.

As to adoption, there would be plenty of available adoptive parents for children in need of homes if some present adoption rules were readdressed. From a legal standpoint I know this argument rooted in procreation can’t stand, but I am not making a legal argument, I am giving my personal reasons for opposing gay marriage. I do think that the primary purpose of marriage was and is partnership in procreation, not mere sex or companionship. The fact that some people cannot have kids does not mitigate against procreation as the primary intended purpose, theologically and biologically speaking, of marriage. We as human beings were obviously built that way and for that purpose.

Again, and alluding back to my second reason, when people start resorting to talking about hermaphroditic worms or to alternative ways of stimulating the male penis, to get around this argument, I’m thinking we’re just going downhill fast. A culture that is looking at worms or apes as examples of alternative natural ways of doing it, is a culture that has lost its bearings, in my opinion.

Well, that should be enough for now.

Joel