tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post5189838686905555314..comments2023-11-05T06:39:46.156-05:00Comments on 1st Corynthians: Repost: Self-Interview about Same-Sex MarriageAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-70555265962206035982012-05-18T12:40:34.737-04:002012-05-18T12:40:34.737-04:00I think your method is excellent, Dave. So, as you...I think your method is excellent, Dave. So, as you can see, I've identified my givens, or at least the ones that seem apparent to me. Would you mind stating (or restating) your givens?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-33890531379921376692012-05-17T17:40:58.145-04:002012-05-17T17:40:58.145-04:00Thank you for the explanation. While I'm certa...Thank you for the explanation. While I'm certain you and I will not be able to convince one another of our respective points of view, I can always appreciate an open dialogue that lets me identify the specific points at which we differ. I call it "looking for the givens." In logic, if you start with one set of givens and I start with another, we could both be perfectly logical yet never arrive at the same conclusion. I've often found that when someone has a viewpoint I just can't understand, if I look for the givens, I can at least figure out the starting point, and that always helps me disagree without ranting.<br /><br />(It also means that once I've identified the givens, I can search them for flaws -- my own givens, and my "opponent's". Failing to find a logical flaw, I am comfortable chalking it up to a "given by faith" -- my own term that just means that it's a fundamental building block of someone's worldview which can neither be proven nor disproven.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-79449853971984664852012-05-15T17:45:48.434-04:002012-05-15T17:45:48.434-04:00One last comment. Please understand that in no way...One last comment. Please understand that in no way do I believe that a same-sex marriage is not a marriage because a gay spouse is a bad person while a hetero spouse is a good person. The morality of the spouses has absolutely nothing to do with it. The issue isn’t that a gay spouse is bad; it’s that he isn’t a spouse. It’s not that a hetero spouse is good. It’s that no matter what a foul person he or she is or how ill-matched or ill-prepared the couple is, if they pledge themselves to each other in a marriage covenant, however vulgarly or foolishly, God joins them together—the two become one flesh.<br /><br />God knows that all of us without exception, hetero or homo, are moral failures who have fallen short of his glory. None of us deserve marriage, but all of us are given it as he invented it by his common grace for our common good. And all of us, hetero and homo, equally and desperately need the reality that true marriage so imperfectly and mysteriously portrays—that the Son of God, our Groom, has come to win the heart of humanity to himself and gave his life so that hetero and homo together can be one with him forever (Eph. 5:22-33).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-23650494966919497492012-05-15T17:45:00.364-04:002012-05-15T17:45:00.364-04:00The second issue you presented has to do with equa...The second issue you presented has to do with equality under the law. First, I want to clarify the issue of the legal rights of married couples with a few points.<br /><br />(1) Not being a lawyer, I don’t know all the details, but I know that some rights that a spouse has automatically by virtue of marriage may be granted by any individual to another with the proper legal instrument. Inheritance rights are one example. If I am legally single and I want to leave you all my property, I can. I just need to draw up a legal contract to do so since it isn’t automatic by marriage.<br /><br />(2) Nevertheless, I am willing to believe that some legal rights automatically held by a spouse may not be assigned to any individual someone chooses. Hospital visitation is the one brought up most often. Again, I can’t speak to details since I’m not a lawyer, but I am open to the idea that many of these rights should be granted by a person to anyone he or she chooses. I mean, for heaven’s sake, if a patient can’t designate a mere one person to visit him or her in the hospital at any time, who is that protecting? Why not let a gay person visit his partner in the hospital after hours if the patient chooses? Why not let a best friend for that matter?<br /><br />(3) However—and this is key here—the argument that same-sex marriage is necessary because of legal rights that those couples should gain is misleading. Because in every state that has established civil unions to bestow those rights, gay rights activists have always come back saying, “We’re still not equal; we want marriage.” Though there are relevant questions about the legal rights of gay couples, that’s not what this is about, even (or especially) to gays and lesbians themselves. What this is about is for same-sex marriage to have identical social status, not just legal status, in the eyes and organization of the society.<br /><br />Now, I think you’re on to something with your “pipe dream” solution of making governments effectively agnostic when it comes to what a marriage is. There is a certain cleanliness and consistency about it, and like you I strongly believe in the separation of church and state. But that’s what makes marriage so difficult to handle. The separation of church and state only works if we can sort every issue into either the “church” category or the “state” category. But marriage is probably the only issue that just defies our attempts to do that. Marriage has enormous religious meaning, especially in Christianity, and is a regular part of religious practice in many religions—for Catholics it’s even sacramental. But on the other hand, throughout human history all societies and individuals of all religions and no religion have recognized the concept of marriage and practiced it. Even within the Jewish and Christian traditions, though we claim marriage to have been invented by God at the very beginning—you don’t find a more religious claim than that—centuries passed before religious clergy were regular officiants at weddings. Before that weddings were essentially “secular” (to the extent that anything was strictly secular in those days).<br /><br />It makes sense for the government to recognize marriage in its policies, because it is a universal human relationship. In addition, since marriage is established by God as the basic building block of human society, social good flows out of policies that not only acknowledge it but nurture it. So for the government to pretend that it doesn’t exist or that it exists everywhere by any individual’s definition as much a departure from living according to the definitions of God as same-sex marriage is—maybe even more so.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-9711476965736586002012-05-15T17:44:14.476-04:002012-05-15T17:44:14.476-04:00Dave, thank you for engaging with my post so well....Dave, thank you for engaging with my post so well. I’m glad for the dialogue.<br /><br />I’ll start with your first point, where you critiqued my argument that you summarized well as “We shouldn’t change in case it’s bad because we can’t change back.”<br /><br />I grant that that argument, standing alone, is not strong enough to convince us not to legitimize same-sex marriage. As you rightly pointed out, that argument could be used indiscriminately against any social change, including good and just social change. However, even standing alone, that argument does give us reason to be cautious. One thing that greatly disturbs me about the current debate is when some who deem themselves progressives openly disdain those who disagree as bigoted idiots, because anyone with half a brain should be in favor of same-sex marriage. I could accept that a tiny minority of all human beings who have ever lived might be right and the rest wrong. I cannot accept that the other 99+% of humanity are automatically idiots for not agreeing or having thought of it. The hubris of that attitude staggers me. It is not idiocy to say, “You’re proposing something truly novel here; let’s think this through. And the burden of proof is on you.”<br /><br />Nevertheless, you are correct that if that argument alone were to keep us from legitimizing same-sex marriage, then we would not be following logic but fear. However, as you read in my post, that argument does not stand alone for me. It is not even my primary argument. My primary argument, stated at the beginning, is that God invented and defined marriage, is the only Maker of marriages, and revealed his definition through the mouth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I argue that when societies function along the lines of God’s definitions of things, they do better than when they don’t.<br /><br />I included the subsidiary argument for people who reject the bases of my main argument—namely that there is a God who created all things and who revealed himself in Jesus through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. For those who reject those premises, that subsidiary argument that I presented is not as strong. It doesn’t by itself form a stop sign for same-sex marriage; it’s more like a speed bump.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-83733349961141368282012-05-14T10:03:37.699-04:002012-05-14T10:03:37.699-04:00Later on, you talk about the equality under the la...Later on, you talk about the equality under the law. For me, that's the biggest issue involved in this debate. Right now, we have citizens who are allowed, for example, hospital visitation and inheritance rights because of their status as married couples. That is often disallowed to gay couples. In very simple terms, we are providing rights to one group of people that we are not providing to another group of people, and the only difference is their sexual orientation.<br /><br />We would not do this based on any other demographic (other than, potentially, when age is a critical factor -- two-year-olds generally don't have the competence to know when their hospital visit is a good idea) -- or, if you subscribe to the idea that homosexuality is a choice and a sin, we also would not do this based on other choices or sins. We don't stop people from visiting their loved one in the hospital because they're liars or adulterers or blasphemers. We do it because there is a legal system in place that refuses them rights.<br /><br />To me, the issue is one of defining marriage in relation to the government's rights and responsibilities. If marriage is purely created by God, then the government should not be involved in determining who is and who is not married, or how a married person should benefit in a way that a non-married person cannot. If marriage is strictly a spriritual or religious thing, I don't want the government touching it. If, on the other hand, we're looking at the practical and non-religious aspects of marriage within our society -- the benefits and rights and responsibilities that are CONTRACTUAL IN NATURE in our society, regardless of whether or not that marriage is one that God intended (we all know HETERO couples who should never have been married), then I want the government granting us equality.<br /><br />Marriages in our society are made up of two parts: the purely civil matter, which is ultimately a contract that can be formed and dissolved through specific legal means, and the spiritual or religious matter, which is defined by God.<br /><br />My personal preference on this issue -- which I recognize is a total pipe dream -- would be that the government would basically say, "We've decided that either we have to call NOTHING a marriage (resorting to the term "civil union"), or we have to call EVERYTHING a marriage so that we aren't drawing a divisive line between one group of citizens and another when it comes to conferring legal benefits. Churches are free to perform ceremonies and can call them marriages or civil unions or whatever else they please, in non-legal terminology, and no church is required to recognize anyone else's ceremony as binding."<br /><br />Religious organizations might object, I suppose, to paying for health benefits to a same-sex spouse or something like that. I can understand how that might happen. But those same organizations are already required to pay for benefits to opposite-sex partners that might be horrible, evil people with very little redeeming value. But no, not to a gay partner. That would be icky. (?????) I guess my take on this would be that religious organizations should have absolute freedom to decide who they employ, what benefits they provide, and what restrictions they will put on anything. If it results in public backlash, well, that's just how religions works sometimes.<br /><br />I think I've gone slightly off the rails of the discussion I intended, but I think I've hit my main points. Really, I'm mostly curious about the first part -- the part that feels to me like you're suggesting we should avoid progress because we don't know if it might be bad. Can you help me understand the viewpoint any better?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-39435334699966302702012-05-14T10:02:44.189-04:002012-05-14T10:02:44.189-04:00Divided into multiple posts due to length...
I ca...Divided into multiple posts due to length...<br /><br />I can understand much of what you say, even when I disagree -- and really, that's all I'm looking for here, is understanding.<br /><br />Two sections I'm quoting, to start off:<br /><br />It is possible that legitimizing same-sex marriage is a further evolution that will enhance our species' chances of survival. It is also possible that this would be a harmful mutation that hurts our chances. The only way to know will be many generations down the line when we can compare the strength of societies with the mutation and those without. Of course, by that time it will be much too late to do anything about it if this evolution of marriage turns out to be the devolution of marriage."<br /><br />"...we just don't know what the results of same-sex marriage would be. But it is safe to say that if we tinker with the fundamental social unit of human civilization, there will be enormous and profound consequences. Few if any of us will be around to see those consequences, but it is also safe to say that if our descendants want to undo our decision, they won't be able to."<br /><br />Please correct me if I am inferring incorrectly here (and I am certainly attempting to simplify), but it seems as if the main thrust of the argument here is "We shouldn't change in case it's bad" with a secondary point of "...because we can't change back."<br /><br />I can't draw an exact analogy between this and, say, interracial marriage or any other social cause that has previously been considered to be against nature or God or societal benefit, but the idea of refusing change because the consequences are unforseeable doesn't seem to be based on logic, but instead on fear. (In an attempt to be clear, let me add the side note that I'm not suggesting that you're scared of gays or anything like that. I'm referring to fear of future societal degeneration.) At one point, it was considered a threat to society when women wanted to vote, and there were Biblical passages quoted at great length to quash the idea. It changed, and I'm not prepared to suggest that the result has destabilized our society.<br /><br />Again, I'm not saying that giving women the right to vote and giving homosexuals the right to call their relationships "marriage" are identical, or even terribly similar in most ways. But what I am hearing here, and what I would like to try to understand, is "CHANGE IS SCARY OH NO DON'T LET IT HAPPEN OR WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE."<br /><br />One way in which the two scenarios differ, actually, is that giving women the right to vote actually probably had MORE impact on society than legalizing gay marriage would do in terms of practical effect. It's not like there are millions of gay people who have fallen in love with one another but decided that they shouldn't even think about maintaining a relationship or cohabitating simply because they can't call what they have "marriage" and have the government agree with them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-86580476016177861282012-05-10T17:27:49.116-04:002012-05-10T17:27:49.116-04:00Hit it.Hit it.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00436093074070856791noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-16091353453201986612012-05-10T12:32:48.505-04:002012-05-10T12:32:48.505-04:00Let me rephrase: I know you well enough to know yo...Let me rephrase: I know you well enough to know you're open to discussion. Are you open to public discussion? Or would you prefer private?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14452423.post-42887636118641543962012-05-10T12:31:55.103-04:002012-05-10T12:31:55.103-04:00Are you open to discussion?Are you open to discussion?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com