Beyond the Yuck Factor

How will government-sanctioned homosexual marriage cause the downfall of American society as we know it? Who really knows if it will? Hey, it might not. Are you surprised reading that output from the keyboard of a professed Christian? I can’t see why you would be. From a Christian perspective, the mainstreaming of homosexuality into society(ies) isn’t exactly a big surpise.

Claiming themselves to be wise without God, they became utter fools instead. (TLB; Romans 1:22)

Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies.

So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things.

That is why God let go of them and let them do all these evil things, so that even their women turned against God’s natural plan for them and indulged in sexual sin with each other.

And the men, instead of having a normal sexual relationship with women, burned with lust for each other, men doing shameful things with other men and, as a result receiving within their own souls the penalty they so richly deserved.

So it was that when they gave God up and would not even acknowledge him, God gave them up to doing everything their evil minds could think of. (TLB; Romans 1:25-28)

For those of you who haven’t opened a Bible since Sunday School, Paul goes on to give some examples of the products of an evil mind. (I like The Living Bible for its plain, straight-forward language, though some concepts are likely better expressed in the original language written. I wonder if an Aramaic class is available at one of the community colleges around here.)

In the preamble, Paul tells the Romans that all men have the knowledge of God instinctively in their “hearts” and either accept it or reject it. And, like it or not, Paul uses rampant homosexuality as an example--a symptom--of the rejection of God.

The thing is, either one believes this or one does not. Christians believe this is a harbinger of things to come, so why worry about homosexuals marrying? You all knew this would happen if you read the owner's manual. Non-Christians blow it off as superstition or blasphemy, so why worry about it? You don't believe in this stuff anyway.

The way homosexual marriage is being implemented, however, is politically dangerous: judicially-mandated in Massachusetts and executively-mandated from the mayor’s office in San Francisco. This particular slippery slope is more frightening than a couple of old lesbians locking lips after tying the knot. Put a homosexual marriage bill before the good people of Massachusetts and they just might pass it. But we Californians said “no-way, José y Miguel” a few years back with Proposition 22.

Since when did a court/executive decision become equal to legislative action/the initiative process? And what law, palatable or not, will be forced into place next?

Put the decision before us and let us decide.

Comments

[Jennifer Martinez]

That part about knowing this would happen, you know, my Grandmother said the exact the same thing to me about a week ago.Good and thoughtful post, good read.

Jennifer Martinez sends

[joatmoaf]

The same people who say they don`t believe in God also tend to blame Him for all of their woes.
You made a good point on a hot topic. It IS inevitable that evil will reign for a time, but that doesn`t make it acceptable.

[wes jackson]

You are right that it will not be a homosexual or an abortion that will bring society down. It will be a whole passel of appointed judges. This is why it makes me so crazy that GWB doesn't put it all on the line for his nominees to the courts.
THERE lies the back door to the palace!

[Mike O]

"Since when did a court/executive decision become equal to legislative action/the initiative process?" About 1948 was when the U.S. Supreme Court started rewriting the Constitution under the guise of "original intent". That's where presently sitting judges deciede what the framers of the Constitution really meant without consulting what the framers said and did and wrote down (and many were prolific writers who wrote much on the subject}.

[Francis W. Porretto]

Juliette, I've admired you for a while now, but for this post, I love you desperately. This one took large quantities of both insight and courage.

Keep the faith, dear.

[baldilocks]

Francis: Wow! What to say? It's good to be loved, especially by really intelligent guys.
:-)

[cooper]

Juliette, thank you for this post.

What seems more frightening than anything is the utter disregard for the law. If this is allowed to stand, then lawlessness will prevail. Liqor store owners knowing that their sales could go through the roof if they could just sell to minors. The "It's a stupid law, I don't agree with it" so I will do want I want metality is just dangerous.

We need to be outraged.

[Prince C.]

Good try.

The people should not vote on this. Just give gays the same rights and life will go on. It's much ado about the inevitable. A complete waste of time. Anyone who is for denying rights because someone is gay is nothing but a nazi disguised as a Christian. The Bible you quote is the same one used to deny Blacks and women rights when those 'special interests' wanted a piece of the constitution. The Bible holds no standing in the real world except when someone wants to justify racism and oppression.

[Bryon]

I totally agree.

[Maryjane]

I think the Prince doth protest too much.

[Lyana]

Prince C. - IIRC, the Nazis systematically killed homosexuals. Nothing Juliette said came anywhere close to that. Democratic process = Nazi totalitarianism? Try another analogy.

[Shawn]

Beautiful. It's not like we hate homosexuals, they're just wrong.

By the way, the original language is Greek so taking an Aramaic course would be counterproductive. You should be able to find a decent Greek course at any decent Christian seminary.

[Jason]

I'll just quote The Reverend Al Sharpton:

"I believe in equal human rights, before the law, for all human beings, and race, gender, disability, class or sexual orientation should not be a factor under the law. Even though we live under the law in a secular democratic society, religious groups must still be able to maintain their spiritual and moral option to either give or withhold a religious or sacred blessing to such unions. However, the government should not have that option. It must affirm the human and legal rights of everyone."

[joatmoaf]

Shawn,
It was originally Aramaic. It was Greek later. King James had 72 scholars translate it from Aramaic to Greek to English so that little if anything would be lost in translation.

[wes jackson]

"However, the government should not have that option. It must affirm the human and legal rights of everyone."

I am a 53 year old man. I want to marry the sisters that live two streets over,(both at the same time, of course). Also my brother keeps goats, and of his flock of 30, there is a sexy one with brown spots. I would like to marry that goat.
The rasist, oppressors in Government must affirm my marriage to these sentient beings NOW!
Can you believe it? My Nazi Christian rasist neighbors are upset, and don't want me mating with two women and a goat! Don't they see????All my best buddies do this now........it's inevitable!

[Lola Lee]

Here is what SCOBA (tanding Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas) stated about the same-sex unions:

. I am glad to hear such a firm statement from my bishop.

[Lola Lee]

Dang . . . URL didn't get translated. http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Orthodox-Churches/scoba/scoba.moralcrisis.html.

[og]

Just wait till the divorces start.
The gay community will be sorry they
opened that specific pandora's box.
Have to be a whole new class of divorce
lawyers who specialize in gay divorces, too.

[Prince C.]

Wes Jackson, marrying 2 women is ILLEGAL. Marrying a goat is ILLEGAL.
Gay marriage is not, hence the run to change/make laws.
You are using the same argument racists used to try to stop interracial marriages. You sound like a fool.

[jess passenthru]

Prince, I would like to know what law says marriage between the same sex is "legal." Isn't that what the whole debate is about?

As of now, the law, as I understand it, states that marriage is (1) to be between two humans only, (2) that each person must be of the opposite sex, and (3) the one man and one woman must be of legal age.

There is no discrimination there. Everyone has to follow the same "law." If you want to get into the "love" aspect of it, well...there are several marriages which are not wrought of love at all; it only helps.

[wes jackson]

Now come on.......you know that was an attempt to use absurdity to reveal the absurd in the statement I referenced. At least IMHO.
And just because something is not specificaly illeagal does not mean it's leagal.
Do you mean to say interracial marriage and same sex marriage are one and the same? I wasn't alive, or too young to pay attention when that issue played out.....and i'm happy it ended as it did. Racism is wrong, I just wish the term wasn't thrown around so......it takes the validity out of a true charge of racism.
The bottom line is; if you want to make something leagal, PASS A LAW.....don't try a damn end run with some silly-ass judge.

[wes jackson]

just wish i could spell faster!

[Susan K]

Um, Prince, you might want to check yer facts, buddy. Same sex marriages ARE illegal, being they are not recognized. And I would like to know why the Mayor of San Francisco feels he has the right to make the laws as he sees fit?

[Prince C.]

Calf. constitution says that it's illegal to deny rights based on sexual orientation. She's following the State constitution.

[wes jackson]

Drivers license=not a right
Marriage= not a right
As you define rights down, where do we stop?

[Jessa Thot]

I was pretty ambivalent about gay marriage until the "you're a nazi!" people started getting worked up. Now I'm not ambivalent at all. (Which means I'm a nazi, I guess. Oh well.)

[Perelandra]

Joatmoaf--

Uh, no. The books of Romans was not originally written in Aramaic at all, but Greek, as with the other books of the New Testament. Romans, along with Paul's other epistles, was written as a letter to a church in a part of the world that didn't speak Aramaic at all. Koine ("common") Greek was the lingua franca at the time of Jesus and the apostles. When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into a common language for the Jewish diaspora scattered throughout the world, Greek was the language it was translated into, for this exact reason. This Greek translation of the Old Testament is known as the Septuagint. When Paul or other NT writers quote the Old Testament, they quote the Septuagint, showing that it had become the default translation used by the church at the time.

Aramaic (related to Hebrew) was the language spoken in large parts of Judea at the time of Christ, but anyone wanting to communicate with someone from anywhere else in the world would have to use a different language. Koine Greek was the obvious choice.

[submandave]

Years ago "gay marriage" was not specifically made illegal as it was intuitive that marriage = man and woman. This is and has been a universal understanding of the word "marriage" for millinea. Attempts to change marriage into something it has never been, however, has prompted legalistic approaches, such as CA prop 22 to specifically define that which is intuitive. In many ways, the "gay marriage" argument sounds an awful lot like Regi wanting to have a baby in Life of Brian. Never mind the fact he was man, any attempt to tell him he couldn't have a baby was repression of his basic human rights.

[Geoffrey]

I've called my Senator more than once. It's going to be interesting to see if there are any election time repercussions.

[La Shawn Barber]

Excellent post!

[joatmoaf]

Dear Perelander:
I am right. Always. If you don`t believe me just ask me.
Just kidding.
But I do disagree,it`s been a while and I have to find my facts again, so maybe we can follow up on this later. Right now I don`t have ammunition to counter your argument.

[eaglemtnr]

One of the facts that people keep forgetting about while they are getting worked up about "activist judges" redefining the laws of the land by obviating the will of the elected officials is that this is part of their job.

As I recall from my American Government classes, the Legislative Branch is responsible for making laws, the Executive Branch ratifies the laws or vetos them and is responsible for the day to day running of the nation. The Judicial Branch is responsible for enforcing the law and making sure that unjust laws are removed.

The founders of our nation were not fools. They realized that in a democracy, there exists a grave potential for hysteria and panic to be used by politicians to incite the people to create laws that do not conform to a free society. The system of checks and balances was set up to counter this sort of thing.

The House can pass any law they want. Then the Senate has to review and pass it. After that, the president has the option to to pass or veto. If he/she vetos the bill, it returns to Congress where it must be voted on again. If it passes both House and Senate with a 2/3rds majority it becomes a law. At this point, the final arbitration lies in the courts.

Any law that is made is still subject to challenge in the judicial system. If the lower courts find it to be unjust, it is tossed out or appealed up the chain until it hits the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is the final word on any law. All of the hype about "activist judges" is just more attempts by reactionary groups to dupe people who are uninformed about our own government.

If the Defense of Marriage Act is legal (which I personally doubt as it is based on discrimination), then the Supreme Court will eventually decide to uphold it.

My personal opinion is that they will eventually scrap it as history has proved that "separate but equal" never is.

[wes jackson]

Where will you be lecturing tommorow night professor Arigante?

[baldilocks]

eaglemntr: That's right. Has any marriage law in Mass. been made that's unjust? Has their been a judicial review of the marriage law here in CA? If not, there's a problem in both cases. Judicial and exec branches have stepped out of their roles-defined above by you and as I understand them as well.

[eaglemtnr]

Baldilocks: The issue in Mass. is that the State Supreme Court stepped in and stated that under the terms of the state's constitution, there was discrimination under the law. They then told the state legislature to figure out another path or the court would allow gays and lesbians to have the same rights as everyone else. When the legislature came back with a civil union proposal, the court noted that separate but equal laws have never held up in the past due to the inherent discrimination of the principles involved and the fact that they never work as intended when put into practice.

In the case of the San Francisco marriages being performed this week, there are 2 laws that are in conflict: the state's constitution and proposition 22.

The Mayor of the city decided to follow the constitution. In my opinion, this was a move designed to get the issue resolved by a court as soon as possible, rather than waiting for a decade for civil suits to bring it up in time.

If you want another prominent example of an elected official bucking the law to make a point, you have only to look back to the civil rights movement when a state's govenor decided to buck a federal mandate and block the entry of African-American students to a state university. I am currently stuck overseas and don't have my history texts in front of me, but I believe that it was the governor and University of Alabama.

The national guard was called in to keep the peace with that incident; at least this time we don't have the Klan or other hotheads causing enough ruckus to put troops in the streets.

For the unjust law, you only have to look at the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In any professional matter, it is illegal to judge someone based on race, religion, sex or sexual preference. Yet the DOMA does just that; it relegates all federal benefits associated with marriage based on sexual preference. It tells the states that they do not have to recognize marriages performed for gays and lesbians in other states as being legal entities even though heterosexual marriages from those states are recognized. It's a fairly straight forward legal concept, which is why I think that the Supreme Court will eventually strike it down if it gets up to that level.

Whatever your personal feelings are on the subject of gay and lesbian sex, is it right for our government to limit personal actions, benefits and freedoms? Especially when it is based on a criterea that is already unlawful to use as a basis for discrimination?

"The Judicial Branch is responsible for enforcing the law and making sure that unjust laws are removed."
I thought that they were to interpret the law. Not write it. Your post seems to have great faith in the wisdom of our founding fathers. A few years ago in a U.S. Supreme court case about prayer at a public high school commencement a newspaper article from the 1790's was part of the evidence. It was a speech given to a New York public high school graduating class in which the speaker started with something like you have been given a wonderful education at public expense to greater enable you to serve God and country. What followed was a sermon that would have caused several members of congress to leave the room. It was given by John Jay representative from New York to the first and second continental congress and the first Chief Justice(appointed by Washington) of the Supreme Court. The court voted 5 to 4 against allowing such prayer of course. The disenting opinion listed this and other such evidence presented and concluded that either the founding fathers were the biggest hypocrites in history or the present courts were wrong. I vote for premise #2. You are correct that the founding fathers gave us a republic(govened by rule of law) rather than a democracy because they had that biblical view that people are untrustworthy, well maybe you didn't add the biblical tie, but they didn't trust judges either and said so.

[Sam Barnes]

eaglemtnr,

Judges do NOT have the right to eliminate unjust laws as such. They have the authority to void laws and executive actions that run counter to higher laws--such as the U.S. Constitution, in the federal system. There is NO mandate that only just laws are consistent with the Constitution, because that would explicitly give judges a blank check to impose their personal whims on the general populace without the possibility of check or balance. A judge is bound by law to follow the judgement of higher courts and the text of the Constitution, even if he disagrees with the justice of the result.

Moreover, certainly the government can limit personal actions. That's why some actions are designated as "crimes." The government also has the right to discriminate--not on the basis of race, which is explicitly banned by Constitutional Amendment, but frequently on the basis of age, for instance. Stating that sexual orientation is obviously in the same category as race, without any factual backing and despite the expressed wishes of 3/4 of the states with regards to marriage, is ludicrous.

[eaglemtnr]

Sam Barnes: You are correct about the judges being required to adhere to the constitution and other legal precedents as laid out by higher courts. I neglegted to define how I was using the term "unjust".

I disagree with you that sexual oreientation does not pose a bar to legal discrimination. For many years, the laws have forbidden discrimination for employment, housing and many other considerations to be based off of all the items I listed in a previous post. Age should also have been included in that listing.

[Sam Barnes]

My point was that age is considered a legitimate basis of discrimination by the government, and has always been--I'm not sure if that came across clearly.

Moreover, you have not demonstrated that marriage is a civil rights issue to begin with. The definition of marriage as a contractual relationship between a man and a woman is millenia-old. That is a simple definition; it is not a right. Framing the debate as a civil-rights issue skips right past a number of assumptions that are not generally accepted. For instance, demonstrate that there is a societal benefit to extending the privileges of marriage to groups that are not included within the traditional definition.

Also, simply rejecting the traditional definition itself won't work, because then you will have to defend against the slippery-slope argument, which is legitimate in this case. If the traditional definition is faulty, then why should the new definition be "a consenting relationship between two adult humans who are not closely related to each other?" What justification exists that would toss out the opposite-sex qualifier, but could not be used to toss out one or more of the other qualifiers? I've run across some hardcore libertarians who wouldn't flinch at legalizing polygamy or incest, but I suggest that this viewpoint is not common.

[p. lukasiak]

On the issue of voting on gay marriage rather than having Judges deciding that gays should be allowed to be married...

the only necessary comment is:

Brown v Board of Education, 1954

you should know better, Juliet.

[baldilocks]

p. lukasiak:

Brown v Board overturned existing laws. What law banning marriage between people of the same sex has been challenged in *any* court? Proponents of same sex marriage here in CA have had several years since the passing of Prop 22 to do this. When are they going to do it?

You, p. lukasiak, should know how this sort of thing works before you perpetrate your condescension in public.