From Newsweek:
Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. “It is better to marry than to burn with passion,” says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.
Click here to read the rest…
14 responses so far ↓
1 Hillary // Dec 13, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Hypicrosy is the story of religion.
2 Hillary // Dec 13, 2008 at 10:19 pm
*hypocrisy
3 JML // Dec 14, 2008 at 9:04 am
Most institutional discrimination has historically been on religious grounds. Let’s take a stand against religious based bigotry.
4 solarity // Dec 14, 2008 at 10:22 am
How about we leave the Bible out of the debate and just agree to continue with the definition of marriage that has been accepted by all civilizations from time immemorial? This isn’t hard folks, EVERY culture of consequence in the past 2000 years understood that marriage involves people of the opposite gender. Why do the current advocates of changing the definition of marriage feel that are so much brighter than all of their ancestors? Talk about hubris!
5 Nick // Dec 14, 2008 at 12:21 pm
So, solarity, you believe marriage is between one man and one woman. Fine, more power to you. Embrace that definition, even preach it; I don’t care, and I won’t argue with you (even though I think the anthropological scholarship on which you base your belief is seriously lacking). But why do you want to give government the authority to define what marriage is and what it isn’t? It may be that one day the predominant definition held by the powers that be doesn’t match yours exactly – maybe they don’t believe in divorce, and you do, or they don’t believe in marriages between people of different races, and you do, or any number of potential differences – and if government has that authority, then your marriage – or that of your child or grandchild – is potentially at as much risk of government intervention as the marriages of those dastardly homo-sekshyooals.
I would think that, no matter what we think a marriage is or isn’t, and no matter what our religion is or isn’t, we could all embrace the principle that government has no right to regulate personal relationships between consenting adults of sound mind – why people on either side of this debate would want to give that authority to Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Steve Beshear or Jerry Abramson or anyone else is just beyond me. I would think that the more religious you are – the more religious your definition of marriage – the more you would want to defend this principle, because getting government in on the act is not only an encroachment on individual rights, but on the authority of your church and your God, as well.
We need other mechanisms for conferring the sorts of legal and civil rights and privileges that currently are bundled up with marriage – mechanisms that don’t grant government more authority than it’s due. There’s no reason these rights and privileges need to be connected to romantic love, any way – why couldn’t close siblings share these rights, is so desired? Or why not close friends who have no other family?
Of course, that’s all very pie-in-the-sky, and probably won’t happen any time in the next 1,000 years or so….
So, pragmatically speaking, never mind any of that. I now do an about-face and wholly endorse including same-sex marriages in the legal definition of marriage. Despite solarity’s protestations to the contrary, this definition has never been fixed – it’s gone through very significant changes many, many times throughout history. Now, in deference to the principle of the equality of all people before the law, it’s time to change it once again.
6 kentondem1 // Dec 14, 2008 at 1:03 pm
It used to be in the good ol’ days of Solarity’s that you went to papal court to get a divorce.
Another great religious leader of millions of people had a another idea on marriage(s), his name was Joseph Smith.
Any chance for a compromise here?
7 solarity // Dec 14, 2008 at 7:56 pm
>>Despite solarity’s protestations to the contrary, this definition has never been fixed – it’s gone through very significant changes many, many times throughout history. >>
What utter tripe. You haven’t a shred of evidence to support this nonsense and you know it.
>>we could all embrace the principle that government has no right to regulate personal relationships between consenting adults of sound mind
8 solarity // Dec 14, 2008 at 7:57 pm
>>we could all embrace the principle that government has no right to regulate personal relationships between consenting adults of sound mind
9 solarity // Dec 14, 2008 at 7:57 pm
. . . .we could all embrace the principle that government has no right to regulate personal relationships between consenting adults of sound mind.
Your personal relationships are your business and I couldn’t care less who you choose to partner up with. But when you ask the state to legally recognize your “marriage” why are you so shocked that they would ask you to comply with your forefathers notions of marriage? Were your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, ad infinitum just ignorant and uninformed? Are you The Enlightened One?
10 solarity // Dec 14, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Please excuse my duplicate posting. I’m a newbie.
11 jake // Dec 14, 2008 at 8:37 pm
solarity: I’ve yet to see you make a coherent argument.
So why not read the article I linked to and then tear it apart here?
12 smiteme // Dec 14, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Does anyone else think that Catholic priests are God’s way of slowly committing suicide?
Bishop of Tenerife blames child abuse on the children…
http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_14332.shtml
13 Newbie // Dec 14, 2008 at 10:29 pm
What a wonderful article. Thanks for posting this, Jake! I’ve shared it with some of my friends that I know will appreciate reading it.
14 Bruce Maples // Dec 14, 2008 at 11:29 pm
You need to be careful about invoking generally accepted conventions of the past as obvious guides to the future. Slavery has been a generally accepted practice of every culture of consequence since at least the 18th century BC, for example — yet we finally decided that all those cultures were wrong.
Perhaps it is time to decide that those cultures are also wrong about this issue.
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