27 February 2004
Marriage and/or Marriage
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Don Fox has some interesting comments about gay marriage and civil unions. "In fact, this would be a good time to make the real distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage," he suggests.
I've tried to make that point many times in the past, and mostly got blank stares. I don't think most people have even considered the notion that the typical "marriage" consists of two things: a legal contract and a religious rite. Sure, it's fairly obvious to those of us who think about - and care about - the distinction between church and state. But when you've got ministers droning on about the power vested in them by the State of Fillintheblank, and nobody even cocks their eyebrow in puzzlement, people are clearly taking it for granted that it's all one thing.
It's kind of like orgasm and ejaculation. We (and by this I mostly mean "men") tend to think of them as the same thing. They usually happen at the same time, give or take a heartbeat. We tend to like them both. But they're actually two entirely different phenomena. One's the mixing and pumping of semen from your glands out through your dick. The other is a neuro-electric discharge that makes your brain register intense amount of pleasure. You can have an orgasm without an ejaculation - ask any woman with a libido. And you can have an ejaculation without an orgasm - I've had that happen on several occasions myself.
Likewise, you can go get a marriage licence and have a civil ceremony without involving any religious rituals. And you can have your religious authority figure perform a joining ceremony, with no state certificates of any kind. (The local Metropolitan Community Church has done them for years.)
I don't think the American public get this, and they probably won't until some of these nasty amendments go into effect, and there's a court case in which a government official tries to apply such a "ban on gay marriage" to religious ceremonies... ones without any civil dimension to them. At that point it'll be obvious that the government is trying to stick its nose into religious matters, and the public will finally catch on. It won't directly fix the bans on gay civil marriages, but at least it'll teach them the terms of the debate.
# 2004-02-27 04:42 PM | TrackBackActually, you're way off. The whole institution of "marriage" itself is a biblical institution put into place by God.
The word "marriage" and all it entails was created by God as stated in the Bible.
"Civil" marriage and "Religious" marriage are the same thing. People only make the distinction because our country's law-makers need to see it "on paper" for the purpose of property ownership and such.
"Civil" government was also instituted by God as stated in the Bible.
God also clearly condemns any sort of homosexual relations as well and has in the past condemned and even destroyed entire cities for this practice (remember Sodom and Gammorah?).
The only reason people in our country are even considering these sorts of "unions" is because of their moral decay due to their being sinful. These are people without respect for or faith in God.
Our country was founded on a belief in God. I'm sure our country's forefathers would be just sick if they could see where our country is today with these sorts of "unions" going on. Our country's moral compass is definitely way off.
If the decision-makers of our country that God has allowed into positions of power decide that our country needs to define on paper in our laws what God has had defined on paper in the Bible for centuries, then so be it.
Posted by: Anonymous at December 3, 2004 10:47 PMThat's a really interesting perspective... interesting mostly because it's so incredibly ignorant, and just plain incorrect.
If marriage only existed as an institution created by God, how is it that for countless millennia, Godless pagans in various parts of the world... were getting married? These are people who had never even heard of God until the last several centuries. Even if we accept the silly notion that they all descended from Adam and Even in the past 6000 years (mutating wildly in that time to look so different), most of them had obviously rejected that God, instead worshipping Zeus or Osiris or Buddha or Coyote or Queztlcoatl or Muluku or Brigit or Shiva or Odin. It makes no sense that they would incorporate God's institution of marriage into their pagan rituals. No, people all over the world get married because marriage is something people all over the world want. Same with all of these civil governments (Chinese dynasties, Roman empires, American tribes, etc.) that obviously weren't instituted by God.
Oh and the bit about Sodom and Gomorrah is pretty laughable, because there isn't a competent Biblical scholar who really believes that those cities were destroyed for homosexuality. Ask anybody who actually graduated from a respected seminary about that passage, and they'll tell you that they were destroyed for general godlessness and especially for their inhospitality (at least that was Jesus' take on it, if you consider him an authority). They'll also tell you how to spell it correctly.
Bottom line: Instead of just regurgitating Sunday school lessons, learn something about history and theology. Then you'll look like less of a dolt when you try to debate these topics with someone who actually has.
Posted by: God's ex-Boyfriend at December 4, 2004 09:23 AM
