No. I did not say that I would concede that gay marriage is “correct”.
And I didn’t say you did. My point was this: your argument is completely dependent on the truth of a number of ideas:
- that God exists.
- that God instituted marriage.
- that God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman.
Take any of those elements away and your opposition to same-sex marriage can’t be justified.
I suppose I’m trying to get at the burden of proof. It seems odd to me that philosophers and scholars would debate at length about whether God exists at all without coming to any firm conclusion, but you apparently know
with certainty not only that he does exist, but how he feels about certain people’s living arrangements.
However, this issue isn’t just with your argument.
Sorry…I can’t separate civil from sacred. The civil part is man’s adaptation of the original sacred, which will exist forever unchanged. I only tolerate the civil definition right now because it does not distort the sacred. Granted, it does not fully and thoroughly define it, but it does not distort it.
Civil marriage is an agreement between two people and two people only that can be dissolved at will. “Sacred marriage”, if you’re using the Church’s meaning, is not only an agreement between two people, but an unbreakable covenant with God. The one isn’t a distortion of the other?
Civil must not distort the sacred. Gay marriage laws attempt to do that very thing. If that means gays don’t get the civil rights because they can’t get married, then so be it. I want them to have rights, but never at the expense of redefining marriage. And here’s why…it announces to the nation, (and for the U.S., that also means the entire world), that marriage is a relationship that is apart from God’s design of it.
Personally, I think the ship sailed on that issue a long, long time ago.
Ohio? You mean the state government? I thought you said there were Catholic entities involved.
Yes, the state government. I didn’t say that there were Catholic entities involved, except that the change to the state constitution was done at the behest of the anti-same-sex marriage movement, of which the Catholic Church is a part.
Tragically, you are correct. But whether or not God originally defined it is far from being of no regard. It is the very essence of why Catholics defend it as they do. Because man has changed the meaning over time has no bearing on the Catholic position. The original design is what we are fighting to preserve.
Why do you say “tragically”? I think it’s quite positive that marriage, which effectively began as the “change in ownership” of a woman from her father to her husband where the woman’s role was often little more than that of chattel, is now seen as a coming together of equals based on a bond of love.
Frankly, from what I know of marriage as it was practiced millenia ago, I want no part of it. I’d choose the modern institution of marriage.
I suppose I will just refer you to the
appropriate chapter of the Catechism, instead of explaining in my own words what the Church teaches about marriage. It does a much better job than I do.
AFAICT, that doesn’t touch on the issues of polygamy at all. It states that marriage is between two people, but doesn’t say why.
Again, sorry. Can’t budge on the concept. Marriage is sacred first. And really…even an allowance for a legal civil union of gays is somewhat inappropriate to me. And no, it’s not because I want to prohibit rights, it’s that I don’t want a national (if not, universal) proclamation that intimate gay relationships are normal. That will lead society down a dark path, IMO.
Do you have the same worry about what religious freedom “proclaims” about whether the more bizarre religions are normal?
Now, I wouldn’t travel to each local community that wanted to allow gay civil unions and grant them local (say city or county) rights, and try to stop that sort of thing. But on the national level, regarding federal law, I will always vote against it…because that sort of large scale proclamation is scandalous and threatens the morality on a universal scale. Have to vote against that no matter what.
If that’s the case, then you’re against gay rights, period. In the US, very few civil rights are granted at the level of city or county. The vast majority of rights are enshrined at the state and federal levels.
Personally, I think that
prohibiting same-sex marriage threatens morality. The rights of marriage are most important during crises, usually when people are at their most vulnerable, like when a spouse is incapacitated by illness or dies. In my mind, barring normal marriage rights from couples generally amounts to kicking people when they’re down.
I can’t imagine many actions that would be more uncharitable than tearing a grieving, newly-widowed person’s family apart and throwing them out of their home, and I don’t imagine that even many Catholics would do such a thing directly to a person… however, prohibiting same-sex marriage gives licence to do just that. In my mind, allowing this is almost as bad as handing a weapon to a violent criminal.
If you’re worried about the “message” that your country’s laws proclaim, I would worry about that one. If legalizing same-sex marriage declares that homosexuality is normal and accepted, then prohibiting same-sex marriage declares the same thing about hatred and
dis-charity (if that’s a word).
