My friend, Corey, sent me a link to this article at Newsweek about Gay Marriage. As such, i am not looking for comments and/or arguments that say the same thing over and over and over again against same-sex marriage. i know and have heard most, if not all, of the arguments from those from the Christian Right. So, keep your comments/arguments to yourself as they will be deleted from this post! If you want to have some serious and open-minded conversations, then go ahead and comment.
Here are some excerpts i found interesting:
". . . The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev.
Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as
between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless
same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and
our tradition."
To which there are two obvious
responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things
about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between
one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no
sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look
in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage"
in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a
civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the
two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both
partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the
care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a
religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of
both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in
sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's
will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each
other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical
literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful
for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we
change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good
reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously)
married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should . . .
Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive
scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed
with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a
critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence,
promiscuity and debauchery. In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the
scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous
passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of
Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped
instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at
all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who
have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like
gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent
people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one
might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least
half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.
Religious
objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then,
but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a
personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument).
Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal
Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the
man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but
it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that
Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends
the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have
sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for
anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we
have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for
a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face
value, to ours . . .
We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it
for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future. The
Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage,
family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of
families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our
children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving
pairs . . .
. . ..In addition to its praise of friendship and its condemnation of
divorce, the Bible gives many examples of marriages that defy
convention yet benefit the greater community. The Torah discouraged the
ancient Hebrews from marrying outside the tribe, yet Moses himself is
married to a foreigner, Zipporah. Queen Esther is married to a non-Jew
and, according to legend, saves the Jewish people. Rabbi Arthur Waskow,
of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, believes that Judaism thrives
through diversity and inclusion. "I don't think Judaism should or ought
to want to leave any portion of the human population outside the
religious process," he says. "We should not want to leave [homosexuals]
outside the sacred tent." The marriage of Joseph and Mary is also
unorthodox (to say the least), a case of an unconventional arrangement
accepted by society for the common good. The boy needed two human
parents, after all . . .
. . . The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the
reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community
over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical
values argue for gay marriage. If one is for racial equality and the
common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and
family necessarily follow. Terry Davis is the pastor of First
Presbyterian Church in Hartford, Conn., and has been presiding over
"holy unions" since 1992. "I'm against promiscuity—love ought to be
expressed in committed relationships, not through casual sex, and I
think the church should recognize the validity of committed same-sex
relationships," he says . . .
. . . If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to
deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same
thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even
semiserious) person would argue that. People get married "for their
mutual joy," explains the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the
Interfaith Center in New York, quoting the Episcopal marriage ceremony.
That's what religious people do: care for each other in spite of
difficulty, she adds. In marriage, couples grow closer to God: "Being
with one another in community is how you love God. That's what marriage
is about."
Recent Comments