I have said it before, I am a Christian. Like I said before I am not going to throw bibles at you or stand on street corner with signs screaming at you. That bugs me. I am just a Christian. For my entire life, I have grown up in the church and my entire life I have always followed a conservative viewpoint. Lately though, gay marriage has really confused me on what side I am really on.
On one hand, as a Christian, I don´t agree with it. I feel that marriage was created for a man and a woman. I mean just looking at our body parts, that´s how everything seems to work. It´s in the bible, and for me it makes sense.
But than on the other hand, I have started to think about whose right is it to regulate a persons feelings towards another person. I am not gay, but I suppose that if I were I wouldn´t want someone telling me I couldn´t be with the person I loved. Also, what gives Christians the right to impose our religion on other people who may not neccessarily believe the same things? Thats where the lines become grey.
I think what I have come to decide is that I am against gay marriage if you follow the bible. Like if you are a Christian or if in your religion it says that marriage belongs between a man and a woman. But for everyone else out there, I think that its your perrogative.
What do you guys think? I would love to hear your opinions because it´s something that I don´t have all the facts for.
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I appreciate your thoughtful comments, but I always find it interesting when christians present the proposition that marriage is some sort of "religious institution," especially since the christian chruch didn't even get into the business of performing marriages until sometime during the 13th century.
The simple fact is that in the United States, one cannot use religion as a basis to deny a citizen his or her fundamental rights. The First and Fourteenth Amendments are really pretty cut and dried as they relate to this issue, and even the Supreme Court has designated the "freedom to marry" as a vital personal right for citizens (see the case of Loving v. Virginia). To quote that case...
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html
It is interesting that the same religious objections that we hear today are almost identical to the religious objections that we used to hear concerning interracial marriages. The Loving decision references overturned a state court decision that contained the following comments from the presiding judge...
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Its almost errie, isn't it?
The bottom line is that people with a religious objection to same-sex marriage are fully welcome NOT to marry someone of the same sex. But to say that that religious objection gives them a LEGAL right to bar other citizens from tying the knot is a pretty obvious Constitutional fallacy.
percivale
Thanks, I completely agree with your comment. I think with my blog I was trying to say that for me religion shouldn´t dictate the countries stance on gay marriage, it should only dictate the followers of the certain religion.
So what would you say if I knew a Protestant preacher who was openly gay. He is the head of his own congregation calls Jesus Christ his Savior yet he is a homosexual... what is your opinion on that.
My opinion would be that he couldn´t help being gay if he was born liking men. But there is a big difference between just being gay and acting on it. My parents have a friend who goes to our church and he´s gay but he doesn´t have boyfriends or anything because he wants to follow the bible. He lives kind of a bachelor lifestyle. I think that if the pastor wanted to marry a man that would be contradictory to what the bible says and I wouldn´t support that.
"...he couldn´t help being gay if he was born liking men."
So you believe God allows people to be born homosexual but puts in the bible that they are not allowed to act upon those feelings that HE gave them.
Wow good point. Ehh I am honestly not sure about that because I never thought about it in that way. When you bring up the point that God giving them the desire to be attracted to men it makes me requestion what I wrote. I can´t speak for homosexuals and I honestly don´t know if they were born that way. I am not trying to back track on what I said, I just need to rethink it. I suppose I can´t answer that question because I don´t know if homosexuals are born with that desire or if it like comes later. I don´t think God would make you gay if he than wrote that you couldn´t act on it. Thank you, you have actually really made me think. What do you think?
I am not a homosexual either, but someone very close to me is, and he has told me time and time again that he never chose to be gay. He presented the question why would I CHOOSE to be a homosexual when I see all the persecution of gays out there. So I truly believe someone does not choose to be gay, but the point is this will always be a hotly debated issue.
What difference does it make whether gay people choose to be that way or not? Atheists choose to be atheists, and we allow them to marry. Buddhists choose to be buddhists, and we allow them to marry, too. The POINT is that religious opinions really don't have a place in determing the content of our Laws. The Constitution protects our citizens because they are CITIZENS, not because of their sexuality (or their religion).
I think George Washington said it best...
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens."
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/bigotry.html
But, if the question of choice is still something that bothers you, I would suggest that you consider the fact that the scientific consensus on this matter is rather conclusive. to quote the American Psychological Association...
"Is Sexual Orientation a Choice?
No, human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed."
http://www.apa.org/topics/orientation.html#choice
Or, you could turn to literally ANY of the major credible professional associations in any of the relevant fields of psychology, psychiatry or sociology. They will all tell you the same thing.
And, if you have a problem reconciling your religious beliefs with the contents of the bible, ask youself if you believe that the world is flat, fixed in place in the center or the universe, and that everything else circles around it...or that snakes eat dirt, or that eating shellfish is an abomination, or that having a birth defect is sin (don't get me started).
There are a lot of things in the bible that really don't stand up well in the light of our modern understanding of the world around us. A mature spirituality IMHO should take into account that many of the religious opinions passed down through the ages originated in some very PRIMITIVE societies, and those opinions reflect a primitive point-of-view.
percivale