Posted on 03/26/2013 1:25:49 PM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a landmark case that seeks to establish marriage equality as the law of the land, my thoughts turned to Kody Brown, David Epstein and Kenneth Pinyan.
Brown, who appears with his four brides and 17 children in the TLC reality show Sister Wives, faces prosecution for violating Utahs ban on polygamy.
Epstein, a Columbia University political science professor, was charged last year with one count of incest for his three-year consensual sexual relationship with his 24-year-old daughter.
And Pinyan, the subject of a documentary film, Zoo, which won an award at the Sundance Film Festival, died after having sex with an Arabian stallion at a Washington state horse farm.
If the nations highest court declares that same-sex marriage is protected somehow by the Constitution, it follows that polygamous marriage, incestuous marriage and who knows? maybe even interspecies marriage must be similarly countenanced under the law.
Because if justices embrace a secularist, laissez faire approach to marriage, if they accept the premise President Obama tweeted yesterday Every American should be able to marry the person they love the legal takeaway will be anything goes.
If a man loves four different women, like Brown, have a five-way marriage. If a man has the hots for his daughter, like Epstein, marry her. If a man is smitten with an Arabian horse, like Pinyan, who are we to say they shouldnt be wed?
That sounds absurd to those of us who continue to believe in holy as opposed to unholy matrimony. But know that there are defenders of even the most abberant relationships.
Indeed, Jenny Edwards, who runs Help for Horses, an organization that nurses abused and abandoned equines, arrived alongside police at the farm where Pinyan died after his sexual encounter with the stallion.
In Zoo, the documentary, she says she had a change of heart about man-horse relations. She came to appreciate zoophiles, like Pinyan, acknowledging, the love and care they give their animal partners.
As to interspecies sex? Im right at the edge of being able to understand it, she said.
Similarly, Matthew Galluzzo, attorney for Epstein, said there is nothing wrong with incestuous sex between consenting adults. Its okay for homosexuals to do whatever they want to do in their own home, he argued. How is this so different?
Brown makes his own same case. Let everyone, he said, including gays, including polygamists, including others in noncoventional relationships, Choose and define who you marry. Choose and define who you love.
If same-sex marriage receives the blessing of the Supreme Court, does anyone doubt that polygamists, incestuous adults, and who knows? maybe even zoophiles will be next to demand marriage equality?
For that is the unGodly path down which our fallen society is heading.
Marriage is now a government benefit distribution scheme. Conservative Christians asked for it to be so, desiring tax breaks, insurance discounts, and other government rewards for something they were already committed to doing for religious reasons. Marriage was sold off to government decades ago - cheap.
Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before every grifter in town wanted in on the scam. The word "marriage" (much like the word "gay", itself) is now destined for destruction. The concept, however, should survive relatively unscathed.
Marriage “as we know it” is an unstable modern invention, not even fifty years old.
“Traditional marriage” is now illegal in all 50 states. Contracts for fidelity and permanence have been ruled contrary to public policy in many courts. The marriage “contract” is the ONLY contract that is terminable at will by either party over the objections of the other party without payment of liquidated damages.
Marriage “as we know it” is finished. The fact that the state now will insist that two men or two women can be called “married” (to each other) is proof.
Last year, the New Mexico Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by the states Human Rights Commission that a Christian wedding photographer was guilty of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation because she refused to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony.
And just this month, a California Christian college was sued by a transgender student who was expelled after school officials discovered that he/she lied on his/her admissions application, claiming to be female.
Is there any doubt that, at some point, some church will be sued, under some legal pretext, for refusing to marry a gay couple?
**The End is Near For Marriage As We Know It**
I don’t think so. Are you on your knees praying? Where is your faith?
Nope. The Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage in 1967, but no church that objects to such marriages has ever been forced to perform one.
To be happy in a “Bi-Sexual Marriage” wouldn’t there have to be more than two parties?
And I'm not talking about trannies. I'm talking about contraceptors.
If sex is more desirable when it's sterile, homosexuals are absolutely into the program. Marriage--- why not? Straights have had gay marriage for 90 years (I'm dating it from Sanger.) Why not let the gays in, too?
re: “Nope. The Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage in 1967, but no church that objects to such marriages has ever been forced to perform one.”
That may or may not be true, but that was when America was still America. We have not been “America” as founded for the last 4 and a half years. Obamacare legislation has already created lawsuits against private individuals and religious organizations for refusing to pay for employees abortions/contraception in their medical insurance.
If the Supreme Court “finds” the right to same-sex marriage it will, of course, become part of anti-discrimination laws. I cannot imagine that churches, ministers, chaplains, etc. will be permitted to refuse to perform such marriages for very long. Churches who rent their facilities for weddings will not be allowed to refuse to rent to same-sex couples for very long. In fact, every person who offers a public service having to do with weddings - photographers, halls, musicians, caterers - they will have to also perform their services for same-sex weddings or lose their right to work in a public capacity.
Canada and the UK have already prosecuted ministers and individuals for speaking against same-sex marriage under “hate crime” legislation. We have hate crime legislation too, not the same as Canada’s but it is there and with the current climate of “tolerance” do you really think we are far behind in having the same kind of legislation?
You are correct that ministers and churches have traditionally not been prosecuted (because it’s against the Constitution), but if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the right to same-sex marriage, it will be a further isolation of all those who refuse to play along.
Churches, ministers, Christian schools, Christian hospitals, Christian adoption agencies, etc., will be permitted to exercise their “discrimination” against “loving gay couples” within the confines of their property, but not one inch further - but how long will that be permitted with the way the country is going?
As I said, you may be correct, but for how long?
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