Saturday, August 15, 2009

Gay Marriage

Many questions are asked regarding gay marriage. "Should gay marriage be legal?" "Why shouldn't two adults who love each other be allowed to be married?" Unfortunately these are the wrong questions to ask when considering the merits of each side of the argument.

I believe that engaging in homosexual sex is a sin. However, it is no greater than the sin that a heterosexual couple commit when they have sex outside of marriage. God's ethic of sex is that it ought to be reserved within the bounds of a monogamous life partnership between a man and his wife. Any other sexual desire pursued outside of these bounds are perversions of God's perfect design for our sexual lives.

Marriage has been perverted beyond belief. Advocates for traditional marriage frequently make claims that preventing homosexuals from marrying each other would be an action in defense of marriage. These well-meaning people unfortunately are attacking the symptoms of a disease rather than assaulting its cause. Far more damage has been done to marriage by heterosexuals than homosexuals could ever do. Marriage has become about "love", in the "feeling" sense of the word. Indeed, good marriages are typically full of good feelings. Feelings, however, are about all of the significance a non-Christian could derive from marriage. Christian marriage, however, is quite different. To give a rough, extremely basic, but workable, definition, Christian marriage is "a life-long covenantal imitation of Christ's relationship to his church entered into by a man and a woman, in which the husband provides servile, loving, leadership while his wife submits herself to that leadership." I am willing to add to that definition, but am convinced that the elements of the definition are biblically accurate and will at least serve as a roughly usable definition for the purposes of this essay.

I do not have any problem with saying that the state should not recognize homosexual marriages. However, I also do not think that the state ought to recognize any marriages. The state has no business requiring citizens to report their marital status or to pay for marriage licenses, or any other absurd marital restrictions which they place on us, most likely for the reason that it allows them to have yet more control over the most intimate details of our lives. Further, these licenses and requirements are likely an assault on first amendment guaranteed protection of free exercise of religion. The Church is responsible to recognize marriages. Whether they are Christian marriages or not is between the couple and God. Homosexuals ought to be legally allowed to live with one another in a cruel mockery of marriage in which many heterosexual couples now find themselves. I suppose they may feel free to call this arrangement anything they want, excepting Christian marriage, for which they cannot qualify. Any marriage which does not place God at the center of it cannot qualify as a Christian marriage. And the state ought to stay out of all of our business.

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