17 June 2006
Gay marriage and murder
Gay marriage is good because murder is bad.
That may seem like a puzzling statement, but bear with me for a moment. I was thinking about the Biblical approach to morality and how it's been applied as really the only thing approaching an "objective" rationale for banning gay marriage. (I'll leave aside the very dubious Biblical basis for homophobia, since it's given about as much weight by God as His supposed support for making animal sacrifices.)
Let's step back for a second and look at an example of morality: murder. In the Bible, God forbids murder, calling it a sin and raising a commandment against it. Now, objectively speaking, is murder a bad thing for any other reason than God's will? Can any Christian honestly say that the only reason that murder is bad is because God forbids it? If God changed His mind, would murder suddenly be okay and accepted?
Of course not. Not in our time, not in any time. There's a basic, functional level on which murder is wrong, and an emotional level too, which have nothing to do with any religion. Long before Christianity, civilizations banned murder for a variety of reasons. In our modern world, there are myriad laws and regulations regarding things not even dreamt of in Biblical times.
What that all means is that even in our supposedly "Christian" nation, Biblical morality is not the only basis for our culture and laws. Thus, Biblical morality is not absolute, and thus it immediately becomes invalidated as the one source and limit of our laws.
In the absence of a Biblical justification, any practical arguments against allowing gay marriage quickly fall apart. The most common argument, that gay marriage is a "slippery slope" to any imaginable cojoining of creatures being recognized by the state, is an empty one. Very simply, marriage can be defined once and for all as occurring between two consenting adults. There. Wasn't that easy?
To make it even simpler, we could adopt an idea I recently read about online, which is to remove from churches the legal ability to enact civil unions. That way, churches could hold whatever ceremonies they want to (or don't want to), wedding people in the eyes of God; but the actual legal, government-sanctioned contract between two people would be a function of the state. That way, churches could continue to discriminate if they wished, but people in love who don't fit their preferred description could still have happy, devoted, and legally recognized relationships.
When you're not limited by the dogmatic blinders of organized religion, so much more--so much good--becomes possible.
Labels: Culture
Comments:
Ahhhh... my good friend... why did I read your blog. I've have to say a few words with regards to this one.
"is murder a bad thing for any other reason than God's will?"
"Long before Christianity, civilizations banned murder for a variety of reasons."
Well let's see. Because you are using the Bible as a source, I'll continue to do the same. If you are going to critisize the Christian for "Can any Christian honestly say that the only reason that murder is bad is because God forbids it?" then you have to view things from the lenses of a Christian. God created all things... nothing was before God, and nothing will be after God. God's will is God's will because it can be nothing else. Because God is perfect his will is perfect and the idea that He could even change that will is logically impossible because if it is his will then to change it would be to contradict Himself. Therefore, if the will of God in creation involved the absense of death (prior to the fall of Adam and Eve) then that is the only reason murder is wrong. Because God is perfect He sets the standard for everything. He is the absolute upon which all other things are based.
The original plan did not invovle death of any kind. It was bliss, simple elegance. But for man to understand what they had been given it was inevitable for it to be removed, thus the temtation of Eve and the fall from grace of man. Meaning man was no longer perfect, they were imperfect and capable of knowing evil from good. And the distortion of good things to evil things. Because of this knowledge, the Christian is ever on the quest to learn what perfection entails. Which lies in the person of Jesus Christ, the only perfect person to ever live. Who abolished all the imperfections of man with the blood sacrifice of His life.
It's because of the teachings of Jesus and the commandments of God that we know what perfection is. God destroyed Sodom and Gamorrah for its sexual pervions not only men/men and women/women but the idolatry of putting the act of sex ahead of the worship of God. Jesus restates the perversion of Sodom and Gamorrah in two of the gospels as well as Peter and Paul in subsequent letters to early members of the Christian church.
Man, since the beginning of time, has been perverting what is perfect into something less that perfect. And that is the nature of Sin. Missing the mark. We all must pay for missing the mark. For everyone has missed it. It's the love of Jesus Christ and His willingness to take on our punishment that allows us to again see what perfect is and, in this life, work to attain it.
Love ya brotha'
.g
"is murder a bad thing for any other reason than God's will?"
"Long before Christianity, civilizations banned murder for a variety of reasons."
Well let's see. Because you are using the Bible as a source, I'll continue to do the same. If you are going to critisize the Christian for "Can any Christian honestly say that the only reason that murder is bad is because God forbids it?" then you have to view things from the lenses of a Christian. God created all things... nothing was before God, and nothing will be after God. God's will is God's will because it can be nothing else. Because God is perfect his will is perfect and the idea that He could even change that will is logically impossible because if it is his will then to change it would be to contradict Himself. Therefore, if the will of God in creation involved the absense of death (prior to the fall of Adam and Eve) then that is the only reason murder is wrong. Because God is perfect He sets the standard for everything. He is the absolute upon which all other things are based.
The original plan did not invovle death of any kind. It was bliss, simple elegance. But for man to understand what they had been given it was inevitable for it to be removed, thus the temtation of Eve and the fall from grace of man. Meaning man was no longer perfect, they were imperfect and capable of knowing evil from good. And the distortion of good things to evil things. Because of this knowledge, the Christian is ever on the quest to learn what perfection entails. Which lies in the person of Jesus Christ, the only perfect person to ever live. Who abolished all the imperfections of man with the blood sacrifice of His life.
It's because of the teachings of Jesus and the commandments of God that we know what perfection is. God destroyed Sodom and Gamorrah for its sexual pervions not only men/men and women/women but the idolatry of putting the act of sex ahead of the worship of God. Jesus restates the perversion of Sodom and Gamorrah in two of the gospels as well as Peter and Paul in subsequent letters to early members of the Christian church.
Man, since the beginning of time, has been perverting what is perfect into something less that perfect. And that is the nature of Sin. Missing the mark. We all must pay for missing the mark. For everyone has missed it. It's the love of Jesus Christ and His willingness to take on our punishment that allows us to again see what perfect is and, in this life, work to attain it.
Love ya brotha'
.g
