Dennis Prager has a great post on Conservatives and Gays: Where Do We Stand?
Excerpt:
The truth that we are all sinners in need of His grace and redemption does not eliminate our responsibility to speak out against sin. My responsibility-- our responsibility-- is to be truthful, and to struggle against sin wherever it appears.
Yet we conservative Christians should always take care-- and generally do take care-- to respect the worth and dignity of each of us. We are all sinners. We all need forgiveness. And we all have a responsibility to work against sin.
There is no contradiction in those last three assertions. They are, really, the essence of Christian moral teaching.
Excerpt:
... I am not anti-gay. Proponents of same-sex marriage may conflate opposition to same-sex marriage with being anti-gay. But conservatives must not.
Those of us who fear the consequences of redefining marriage — asking children if they hope to marry a boy or a girl when they get older, banning religious adoption agencies from placing children first with a married man and woman, denying the importance of both sexes in making families, choosing boys to be high-school prom queens and girls to be high-school prom kings, and much more — must make it clear that we regard homosexuals as fellow human beings created in God’s image just as heterosexuals are...
Conservatives must object to values, not to individuals.I agree. I oppose much of the agenda of the gay Left, more because it is left than because it is gay. I believe that homosexual acts are sinful, but I have plenty of my own sins, and I make no claim that my sins are less grave than those of my neighbors.
The truth that we are all sinners in need of His grace and redemption does not eliminate our responsibility to speak out against sin. My responsibility-- our responsibility-- is to be truthful, and to struggle against sin wherever it appears.
Yet we conservative Christians should always take care-- and generally do take care-- to respect the worth and dignity of each of us. We are all sinners. We all need forgiveness. And we all have a responsibility to work against sin.
There is no contradiction in those last three assertions. They are, really, the essence of Christian moral teaching.
So the gay Right, which is also very much working towards implementing marriage equality provisions, is okay in your book?
ReplyDelete"Marriage is a heterosexual union."
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about that? Because the history of the early church seems to contradict you.
Making crap up again, I see.
DeleteJoey
The idea that God's law is higher than man's law is what brought about the demise of slavery and segregation.
ReplyDeleteAnd now God's law has nothing to do with our worldly institutions. It says so, right there in the Constitution. Um...give me a second, I'll find it somewhere. I think it's in the penumbras section, between the right to birth control and the right to watch pron on library computers.
The Torch
Sorry, that should be "porn". Sausage fingers.
ReplyDeleteThe Torch
"Definition of a bigot: a conservative who is winning a debate with a liberal.'
ReplyDeleteI like it!
Spending millions of dollars and man-hours to pass laws and amend constitutions to ensure a minority population does not receive the same rights as the majority goes way beyond mere “disapproval”. Everybody is entitled to and free to express their opinion, but when those opinions turn into action meant to control the lifestyle choices of a particular minority I can’t see how that intolerance can be called anything but bigotry.
ReplyDeleteYou have a responsibility to work against sin, fine, but let me remind you that sin is a purely religious concept, and people that don’t share your particular religious convictions should be under no obligation to live as if they did.
There is no secular reason to deny marriage rights to gays; if anything studies show that children of gay couples do better than average. Gay couples never ever have children by accident; every child of a gay couple is a child that was wanted and planned for. That alone gives the children of gay couples a huge advantage over many of the unwanted children born to heterosexuals.
-KW
[There is no secular reason to deny marriage rights to gays]
DeleteThe observation that marriage is heterosexual is common to all societies in human history, until very recently. These societies have been everywhere on the spectrum of 'secular-religious'. All have affirmed the heterosexual nature of marriage.
Your argument that respect for heterosexual marriage is just a "religious" view is historically ignorant. It has been the view of all of humanity since humanity started having views.
How do you feel about polygamy? Should blood relations of the same sex be allowed to marry (brother-brother, mother-daughter, etc)? How about inter-species marriage?
You can't use "ick" arguments and you can't use natural law arguments to deny marriage to anyone, because you implicitly deny natural law arguments to those who defend marriage.
On the other hand, your argument for 'marriage equality' invokes natural law, which you reject to define marriage. Your ideology is muddled crap.
"Gay couples are going to get together. It's been happening since ancient times. Legal prohibitions didn't, couldn't and would never stop it. Isn't it better that gay relationship conduct their relationships within the context of a well-defined marriage law, same as heterosexual couples?"
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that those who believe eating pork is "a sin" do not feel the need to work against it, and publicly condemn it (while piously pretending that this doesn't make them "anti-pork-eater").
ReplyDelete"Historical precedent" is not a secular reason to oppose same-sex marriage. "Historical precedent" opposed the enfranchisement of women, and supported the enslavement of Africans. I have yet to hear a valid secular reason for denying marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Marriage of closely related people can make it more likely that recessive traits will be expressed in the children they have, and can be opposed on that basis. Polygamy magnifies imbalances of power, tending to create unions which are either exploitative or unstable, and can be opposed on that basis. "Inter-species" marriage implies a non-human species which possesses the mental capacity to enter into a contractual relationship, something which does not currently exist. Such marriages can be opposed on that basis.
Until someone presents a similar secular reason for opposing same-sex marriage, I'll continue to suspect that the real reason is simply a desire to discriminate against homosexuals.
I believe you completely missed his question. I'll quote: "Should blood relations of the same sex be allowed to marry (brother-brother, mother-daughter, etc)?" He specifically asked Blood related unions of same sex. This is a legitimate question and should be a simple yes or no.
Delete