I have taken up causes, as you probably figured out I am rather opinionated. But they are generally not my own causes. Where my personal cause would directly contradict scripture is the point at which I need to look at my cause more closely. Homosexuality is labeled as sin in both Old and New Testament. I am not about to argue the matter with either Paul, or Jesus Christ. Lying is also labeled as sin, and I would not try to have that legalized either.
On Simply Home Remedies I wrote a post about the dangers of soy in the diet. Lots of people eat it, the government says it is o.k…but the fact is that it is a dangerous substance that should be pulled from the shelves. Should I all of a sudden agree with the government that soy is o.k. to use despite the fact that I happen to know that it can kill you? I won’t, nor will I concede that gay marriage should be accepted by society as a whole. I think it is a dangerous lifestyle, if not physically then spiritually.

How would you feel, though, if you were married only in the eyes of those who agreed with you and your husband in your specific church only. Socially, you were viewed as a union of nothing and nobody significant, your claim to be married questioned and disrespected, and legally, you had no joint rights whatsoever, because your relationship with your husband was viewed as sinful by the ruling faith and therefore unfit for, or unworthy of, marriage?

Would you be OK with that? Would you be content? Would you expect that because you were, all others in your situation should be as well?

More importantly, would you not fight to change it?

Stepford- I am actually nondenominational. So my thoughts and opinions are not based on denominational beliefs but on what I read in the Bible. I do assume that the Bible is the ultimate guide to life and i make no apologies for that. Muslims, Jews, and Christians have the same basic root in the Old Testament. If I was denied the right to marry my husband in the law I would still have covenant with him..Again, what I have realized is that some see marriage as a legal union and some see it as covenant..It is a different world view.
I am going to back out of the comments now, because I don’t think I have anything new to add, but y’all keep the conversation going..it is awesome.

You bring up some interesting points, and I enjoyed the story of your friend. I personally think that is the mark of not only a true friend, but a true example of being a living witness to your faith. I’m sure your friend knows your faith, and knows that if they need anything that you guys are the ones to come to. Your support in being present, holding your beliefs, but putting that aside to continue to be a model to your friend is really selfless and frankly, a model I wish others could follow in this whole debate on homosexuality.

In the end, I think this issue is like any other when it’s about deveating from the core beliefs of any particular faith. One can be a Satanist, we don’t have to agree with it. One can not believe in God, we don’t have to agree with it. One can be gay, we don’t have to agree with it. But our agreeing with it or not agreeing with it shouldn’t impact their own personal rights. The Satanist we don’t agree with still has a right to be a Satanist. The person who doesn’t believe in God has a right to that belief, even though we don’t agree with that philosophy. The person who’s gay we don’t have to agree with, but they still deserve basic rights. Part of living in a free country means that everybody deserves basic and equal rights, not just the people we agree with who are doing the things we like.

If a gay person wants to marry, I think they have every right to. If a church doesn’t want to marry them, I think the church has every right to refuse. Homosexuals can still legally marry, just marry elsewhere, and the church maintains it’s right to believe and practice in a way they feel is Godly. This other alternative, where gays can’t marry, and the churches and religions that don’t have an issue with it can’t perform them, it only protects the rights of the people who disagree with gay marriage, not the other religions, and not homosexual community. I think that’s inherently biased, even if it’s unintentional, or if some believe they’re doing it in the best interests of somebody.

However, people from a variety of faiths, a variety of beliefs, a variety of non-beliefs, with a plethora of creeds, spiritualities, and dogmas are allowed to get married, and representatives from all of these groups, including ones who’re just governmental and not representatives of any entity other than the government, can perform them. And the government regulates both the conditions of marriage (all of which supercede church regulations… For example, a church can have no objection to marrying 11 year olds to 55 year olds, but our government has laws against such a marriage, and so if it were to occur, it wouldn’t be legal), as well as the benefits of marriage like tax breaks, spousal rights, etc, and the legality of its contract, as well as the ability to dissolve that union. So marriage is clearly both legal and spiritual.

So marriage isn’t one or the other, it’s both. The fact that it is both is what gives us all the ability to get married, and not only the followers of one faith, and why we can have it performed by so many people, not just representatives of one faith. It’s also why churches have the right to refuse to marry specific people if they so choose… Because it’s their right to do so, but also because to do so doesn’t exclude a group from the institution of marriage. They can simply get married by somebody else.

If we were to decide that marriage was simply a religious standing, then there’d be no legal benefits to it. So the government has every right to outline who can and can’t marry, just as the church has every right to marry or not marry people or groups of people. Just because a church says its wrong does not, and should not, mean that the government obeys that church’s belief. The government regulates everybody, not just those who follow it. It protects your right to believe as you do, your churches right to act as it does, and it protects the rights of everybody, including those who don’t follow your faith.

I might add, there are a lot of faiths out there. Government regulation reflecting religious ideals is only wonderful as long as the religion that is being used as a basis of regulating laws is your own. For those faiths who have no issues marrying homosexuals, a law made to reflect the leanings of another religion that specifically prohibits your practice isn’t such a great thing. I’m sure you’d agree that if our government regulated its laws based off of Muslim ideals, or Satanist ideals, or fundamentalist Mormon ideals, you wouldn’t be so pleased either. If there was a law that was created in accordance of another faith that expressly prohibited the expression of your faith and denied your church the right to marry you and your husband based off of the premise that your marriage would be sinful and an affront to God, I’m guessing you wouldn’t find that such a great thing. It shouldn’t be OK now just because it’s your particular denominational belief doing the regulating.

Stepford, I agree with a lot of what you had to say. There are plenty of heterosexual marriages that don’t even come close to Webster’s definition.

My husband and I met in the summer of 1979 at The Rocky Horror Picture Show… now there’s a story that is fun to tell when someone from church asks how you met ;D LOL! We ran with the “elite” group that went in costume every week… in fact, I was dressed as Columbia when I met hubby… the one and only time that they covinced me to go in costume… LOL It was an interesting group of people. I don’t regret one minute of that time of my life. I believe that all your life experiences contribute to who you are. There were valuable lessons learned… both positive and negative… and a couple of very valuable relationships made… married one of them, best friends to this day with another .

Hubby’s best friend, who was also his best man at our wedding, was/is gay. He is also a now a Wiccan, although he wasn’t at the time of our wedding.

We lost touch with him after we had been married for a few years only to finally find him again several years later. We visited him and his partner after we got back in touch with him. We were ecstatic to have found him again. We had a nice long visit. We caught up on what we had been doing in our lives, remembered old times, laughed a lot. We had a good time.

After we left and took the long trip back home, we emailed a couple of times, but our friend seemed distant. I finally emailed him and asked him point blank if something was wrong. He said that he was worried because hubby and I had changed so much. We were Republicans… conservative… Christians… military. He was gay, liberal, Wiccan. I asked him if during our visit we had done or said anything to make him uncomfortable. He said no, it was afterwards when he was thinking about all the differences. I then pointed out that we actually had not changed all that much. We had always been the most “conservative” of our group of friends and in fact, by the time the wedding came around, we were pretty much out of that circle of people and we had gotten married on Sunday morning during our regular church service and for goodness sakes he was there so he should remember! He laughed and agreed that we had already been well on that road by that time. I told him that while we might not agree with everything he believed that we would never, EVER judge him or preach to him or try to change him… but that we might pray for him to be happy, healthy and all that God wants him to be… . We just wanted to be friends and to love him.

That was about 10 years ago and he has finally realized that it’s safe to be in our lives and talks to us regularly over the computer. We don’t hide our Christianity with him… we share stuff that happens in church… like the time our pastor was baptizing a baby girl named Victoria Rose and when it came time to do the baptism he said, “Victoria Secret, I baptize…” in stead of Victoria Rose ROFL!

We truly do love him. He is no longer in a relationship with anyone, but is still gay. It’s okay. It’s really between him and God. We can’t do anything to change him. We just live by example by trying to live the best we can. Our pastor often says that we should be living our lives so that people come up to us and ask what it is we have that makes us so different and how can they get some too How you live is sometimes the very best witness

If we were to ever get a wedding invitation to a wedding between this friend and another man, I will be honest and say that I can’t say for certain what we would do. I tend to think that it would be our higher calling from God to continue to love him and to witness to him through our lives and not to damage the relationship.

I still don’t believe that gay unions should not be called marriages. I believe, like Marye, that marriage is a covenant… it’s a sacrament in my denomination (Anglican). I don’t have a problem with civil unions with all the legal rights. I actually think that heterosexual marriages that are not religious in nature should be called civil unions also.

Stepford, thanks for stopping by over here! I appreciate your comments. The issue seems to be, as Charles said, whether or not marriage is something that was defined and instituted by God. If you believe it is then your definition will be different than if you believe it to be a legality.