You hear a lot from the religious right about how marriage is under attack and how Christians need to band together to defend marriage. And yet, nobody is really attacking people’s right to get married—except people like Jayman.
I don’t view marriage as a civil right (i.e., it is not like the right to life, the right to free speech, and the like).
Pardon me whilst I attach my own Defense of Marriage Amendment to that particular argument.
I got a lot of good comments on yesterday’s post about the definition of marriage, but not everybody was happy with my description. In particular, Jayman777 wants to take me to task.
It makes sense, therefore, to define marriage in terms of what the relationship between those individuals is and/or should be.
Which is it? What marriage is or what marriage should be?
I think he’s missing an important point here. There are many definitions of marriage, some good and some bad, and some of those definitions describe what marriage is, and some describe what marriage ought to be. By what definition of “marriage” has Newt Gingrich had 3 wives? By the definition of what marriage is, or the definition of what marriage should be? By what definition of marriage did King Solomon have 300 wives (and 600 concubines)? Is marriage a union of one man and up to 900 women? Should it be? Well, we could talk, but the point is, if you have a definition of what marriage is, that does not preclude you from having a different definition of what marriage should be.
That’s why it’s silly to talk about anyone “changing THE definition of marriage.” There is no one, single, exclusive definition that covers all the cases. Even in purely heterosexual relationships there’s frequently (if not inevitably) a gap between what it is and what people think/want/expect it to be.
The other day I was listening to yet another Christian conservative parrot the tired mantra about how liberals are trying to change the definition of marriage. My first thought was that if marriage equality changes your definition of marriage, you’ve been using a bad definition of marriage. And that got me thinking about the various definitions of marriage, and how they compare with one another.
So President Obama has finally come out in favor of equal civil rights for gays. About damn time, and kudos to him for having the courage to do so ahead of the election instead of waiting until it was “safe” to take a stand. He should have done so years ago, but still, credit where credit is due. This takes a fair amount of courage. He’s taking a genuine risk here by making gay marriage a campaign issue, because the right is looking for something they can use to build up a backlash, and this could be their best bet.
My advice to the Obama campaign: focus on the theme that it’s wrong to discriminate against people just because they fall in love differently than you do. The right is going to harp on the idea that he’s “changing the definition of marriage” and promoting immorality. He needs to undercut that and challenge the assumption that there’s only one “correct” way to fall in love, and that the government ought to deny equal rights to those who are different. Marriage, as an institution, belongs to everyone, and not just to those who fit the majority’s self-serving definition of what constitutes “normal.”
I have to confess, I’m a bit skeptical of this story about St. Serge and St. Bacchus. But it is interesting.
While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that “we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life.” More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St. Serge is openly described as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus.
In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple who enjoyed a celebrated gay marriage. Their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers. Furthermore, in an image that to some modern Christian eyes might border on blasphemy, the icon has Christ himself as their pronubus, their best man overseeing their gay marriage.
I have no doubt that gay relationships go back to long before there was a Judeo-Christian faith, but I have a hard time believing that the medieval Christian Church openly accepted and celebrated such relationships, let alone elevating the couple to sainthood with Jesus as their best man. I’d expect any gay love between them to be strictly in the closet.
There is a major human rights bill under debate in Canada. You’ve probably never heard of it, which is a bad sign, because it’s important.
It is about what happens to actual human beings. Human beings whose rights are being denied, identities being invalidated, ability to participate in our society being hopelessly compromised, ability to live without fear of assault or harassment being taken away, and pursuit of simplest forms of happiness, fulfillment and life’s rewards being rendered untenable, impossible. Real living, breathing Canadians being denied their chance at anything resembling a full, rewarding and safe life by the complacency of an uninformed public.
Read the full story at Sincerely, Natalie Reed.
God’s definition of marriage, according to a lot of people today, is given in Genesis 2:24: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” But there are a few problems with that. For one thing, the word “wife” does not appear in the original text. The word used there is “ishshah,” or woman–the same word Adam uses in the previous verse when he says, “She shall be called woman (ishshah), for she was taken out of man (ish).” There was no license, no priest or rabbi, no vows, or in short, no wedding. Eve was a woman, and Adam just took her and started sleeping with her, without marriage. If you want to find the earliest Biblical reference to actual marriage, you have to go to Sodom.
This is old news by now, but the passing of time has only made it even more outrageous. A white vigilante named George Zimmerman has shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, and hasn’t even been arrested.
Zimmerman, 28, claims he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month in self-defence during a confrontation in a gated community in Sanford, Florida.
Zimmerman spotted Martin as he was patrolling his neighbourhood on a rainy evening last month and called the police emergency dispatcher to report a suspicious person. Against the advice of the emergency dispatcher, Zimmerman then followed Martin, who was walking home from a convenience store with a bag of Skittles sweets in his pocket.
via guardian.co.uk.
As the Guardian reports, this has now led to an investigation by the US Justice Department, joined by the FBI and the US attorney’s office. But he still has not been arrested. If you happen to be passing by the Action Request form for the Sanford police department, you might want to ask why not.
Writing for Mail Online, one Simon Heffer spews:
I believe that the only people who should be able to marry and have a wedding are those of different genders.
Well I believe that people should only publish opinions that do not make them look like narrow-minded twits, but you don’t hear me calling for the outlawing of Simon Heffer, now do you.
Sheesh.
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows, but this one seems a bit stranger than most.
David Coburn, the openly gay spokesman of Great Britain’s U.K. Independence Party, claims that Prime Minister David Cameron is “picking a fight” with the religious community over same-sex marriage, insisting that pushing such legislation “shows a lack of toleration towards others who look on marriage as a holy sacrament between man and woman.”
Coburn and UKIP made their opposition to the same-sex marriage legislation known last week, arguing that civil unions are a superior alternative that would not hinder religious freedom.
via the Christian Post.
Allowing everybody the same rights is a lack of tolerance? I suppose it is, in the same way that allowing McDonalds to sell hamburgers shows a lack of tolerance for vegetarianism.