Marriage is a institution outside of the bounds of government. People who live on a desert island with no government can marry and respect the marriage of others. God invented marriage, not man.
Government was happy to get into the marriage business because when we gave tax exemptions based on marital status, or when we taxed a person’s estate upon their death, or when the State stepped in to direct the disposition of an estate, or when we used the State to enforce marital fidelity, we had to allow the State to define who was “married” and who was not.
And with all things Statist, the secular State’s definition of marriage came to have more weight in society than God’s definition.
God defines marriage as being between men and women. While many men whom God called righteous in the Bible practiced polygamy, Jesus said is quoted in Matthew chapter 19 that from the beginning of humanity, it was God’s intent that marriage would only be one man and one woman.
God defines sexual relations between people of the same sex as sin, that is immoral. In Revelation 22:15, a book dictated to John by Jesus, God tells us that anyone who practices sexual immorality will not be granted eternal life.
But these are ecclesiastical considerations that are outside of secular government, that is unless we want government to police sexual behavior between consenting adults based on the standards of the Bible, that is if we can agree what those are. Do we want Congress to have that debate?
Maybe it is time to get government out of the marriage business and to return it to the private sphere. The problem for me today is that people who want to call themselves “married” against God’s law (as I read it) are willing to use the State to force me to recognize that marriage, which I cannot do. The want to have the State’s public education system indoctrinate my children that homosexual marriage is “normal”. They want to force me to subsidize the homosexual marriage in the tax code just like the godly marriage is subsidized.
If the State must force me to acknowledge its power to declare two men to be “married”, then I must support efforts to remove that power from the State. If people who don’t want God defining their personal morality demand a separation of church and State then let us also have separation of marriage and State as well. If those people don’t want any displays of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, they cannot hide behind the Commandments that protect marriage when it comes to homosexual “marriage”.
If you run a business that could provide services to the public, you will be sanctioned if you decline to treat gays as non-gays. For example, if you run a wedding photography business, you will be sanctioned if you decline to photograph a gay wedding. This has already happened in California and New Mexico [1].
You may lose control of your own property. [2]
You might have to go out of business to stay true to your principles, so as to avoid being fined or sued into bankruptcy. [3,4]
From the article:
“Wedding vendors elsewhere who refused to accommodate same-sex couples have faced discrimination lawsuits — and lost. Legal experts said Discover Annapolis Tours sidesteps legal trouble by avoiding all weddings.
“If they’re providing services to the public, they can’t discriminate who they provide their services to,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel for the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. The commission enforces public accommodation laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, sexual orientation and other characteristics.”
To advance the legal case that a marriage between two people of the same sex is no different than a marriage as God defines it, the US Justice Department will base their arguments before the Supreme Court that a child does not need, nor have a right to a mother. [5]
In short, gays will demand that non-gays accept them as moral equals, which they are not and cannot be. When the State says they are equal it is forbidden for a private citizen to dissent from that status. In doing so, they seek to force me to give them approval for something that I will never approve of. It is that last point that galls gays the most.
Curiously, when advocates of gay marriage are asked if their policy also would allow polygamy or polyandry, they recoil in horror and insist that it does not. However, logic demands that it does. I would ask how same-sex parents are going to react in the future when, for example, Utah public schools officials require that teachers instruct the children that LDS-related polygamy is just as “normal” as same-sex “marriage”. The fact that this will be an issue will show yet again that gay “marriage” is not about marriage at all it is about forcing the rest of us to approve of repugnant sexual immorality, something that LDS polygamists never demanded.
After same-sex marriage causes polygamy to be recognized polyandry won’t be far behind. Brave new world!
[1] Refusing To Shoot Gay Marriage Is Discrimination, Says New Mexico Appeals Court
http://www.popphoto.com/news/2012/06/refusing-to-shoot-gay-marriage-discrimination-says-new-mexico-appeals-court
[2] Judge Rules Christian facility cannot ban same-sex civil union ceremony on its own premises
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/judge-rules-christian-facility-cannot-ban-same-sex-civil-union-ceremony-on
[3] Opposed to same-sex marriage, company ends wedding business
Trolley owner says move made to avoid potential lawsuit
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-ar-annapolis-trolley-suspends-wedding-servic-20121225,0,7100399,full.story
[4] Baker refuses to make wedding cake for lesbian couple and ‘calls them abominations unto the Lord’
Aaron Klein, owner of Sweet Cakes in Gresham, Oregon is the subject of a state investigation after one of the brides-to-be filed a complaint
[5] DOJ: Children Do Not Need—and Have No Right to—Mothers March 3, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/doj-children-do-not-need-and-have-no-right-mothers
The state was happy to put force behind marriage licenses when they decided to prosecute polygamy. The effective way to prosecute polygamists is to make it criminal to be living together and having babies together without a marriage license. That was the state’s rules for a while, until they pretty much gave up enforcing those laws. But now, when you consider the state’s important need to protect homosexuality, and who knows, perhaps polygamy, if not at least decriminalize it down the line, then you can get a look at how over time, the government has flip-flopped on it’s crusade for making marriages “good marriages”