On gay marriage

Remittance Girl has taken a swing at the gay marriage thing, and this is in partial response to her lovely post here:

Same Sex Marriage: Why Thumping Bibles at Bible Thumpers Doesn’t Work

http://remittancegirl.com/discussions/same-sex-marriage-why-thumping-bibles-at-bible-thumpers-doesnt-work/


I'm sure I'll have more to say about this; lots more.

I am not gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender, but someone close to me is; I know, my opinion here doesn't quite count---won't stop me from carrying on, though.

In America, the marriage ideas are tied up between church and state. In truth, if it were simply a state function, there wouldn't be an issue. There is a bit of fear about homosexuals, given enough "special" rights, someone might someday be able to walk into some nameless government office somewhere, sit down and say "I'm gay, give me money" and end up being supported by the state because they are an oppressed minority. It's a misinterpretation of what happens now with the poor and disadvantaged by people who are not poor, not disadvantaged, and don't think they know anyone like that, and why should they work so hard to support freeloaders. But that's a separate problem.

A civil union is not necessarily recognized by the churches, nor are they necessarily recognized by other states. In the states where we have civil unions of gay people, the rights that go along with that (insurance benefits claims, liability of debts, signing of leases and powers of attorney, who can the doctors talk to when one is unconscious in the hospital, etc) all evaporate when you cross state lines. It really gets difficult when your insurance company is in a state that doesn't recognize the civil union you have back home, so it all doesn't work quite as desired, but it's better than nothing.

Marriage, as far as the state goes, is unilateral and at the national level: everyone recognizes it, and we all have to play by the same rules in regards to it. Income taxes work differently if your officially married. So the whole national gay marriage thing that's going to be the deal breaker at the next election changes how the money works for gblt at the national level, and if it goes through, everyone has to play along with it. Money is the first core issue of marriage, real marriage in America. (sorry, not love, damn it).

Marriage, in regards to the church(es), is a different matter. Churches don't know and don't care about civil unions, they care about marriage. Getting all of the churches to come to terms with the idea that the country recognizes the relationship of these two people that some of them have issues with will be impossible, and that is the first core battleground in regards to homosexuality. Some churches' doctrines cannot work their way through that without disavowing huge tracts of other things they believe; it would require a redefinition of sin, and that is a nontrivial task, because that would require a redefinition of God and how He communicates to us. Again, not a small feat.

Not that that shouldn't be done.

It has been my observation of reading a Bible or a Koran or an Upanishad or a Gita or whatever, and by that I mean the whole thing, not the little snippets that people get fed to get by with, because, well, these are long hard difficult books that seem to have so much to say about things I don't care about and do I have to really go through it all I don't think I can I'm not that smart I don't really understand can't someone just please plain it to me in terms I can understand, that the first "gist" all these books seem to have in them is "put the book down; just do the right thing". And therein lies the rub: when the specifics come up, exactly what is the right thing? Do we make that decision based on love despite our gut reaction, or do we find some nit-picky-little-niggle we can stick to to justify how badly something makes us feel, how we feel which just must be right? Isn't that what God put into us that we call our conscience: isn't how upset we are when we think of two men or two women going at it the voice of God? How could it not be? My own hate of what I think about just can't be enough, it is so large and overwhelming it just has to be coming from The Big Guy Himself, and if it's from Him, well, it's open season.

And that, my friends, is the problem. Disavowing stupid obviously hateful things with a small handful of sentences ain't gonna fix it. To bring this about, we have to change damn near everything we think and have been taught our entire lives about right and wrong, good and evil, and how we should then get along with each other. And unfortunately, secularism and atheism aren't playing by the right set of rules to pull this off. Religion is currently (actually, for a powerful long time here: seems to be hard-wired in our DNA) the only thing big enough to conquer the problems of some other religion. To fix all this, we might to have to actually hear from God.

Now, all of the religions take a swing at trying to get us to love that which we do not love, but that little lesson tends to get glossed over by the myriads of other more exciting less troublesome topics. Which is unfortunate, because this is the one lesson that actually matters.

So how can we get God to point this out to us again?

-Brewt-