How Did this Happen? Why Same-Sex Marriage Makes Sense to So Many

Why does same-sex marriage make sense to so many people? The momentum toward the full legalization of same-sex marriage seems to intensify with every passing month - or even faster. The moral divide in this nation is now seen most clearly in the distance between those for whom marriage is exclusively heterosexual and thus a settled issue and, on the other hand, those who honestly see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a moral mandate required by justice.

Given the venerable status of marriage and its universally established heterosexual character - at least until very recently - the burden of argument falls on the need to explain how such a movement for a moral revolution gained credibility, cultural mass, and momentum. How did this happen?

A culture does not consist only of ideas and ideologies, but no culture exists without them. Given the complexity of any culture, a comprehensive map of these ideas, moral intuitions, and philosophies is impossible to create. Nevertheless, some patterns are clear enough. We can trace the acceptance of same-sex marriage to at least three major ideas that have been shaping the modern mind for some time - and are held to some extent by both social liberals and conservatives.

One of the ideological engines of our social revolution is the idea that history reveals a progressive liberation of peoples who have suffered oppression. In this view of history, one prejudice after another has fallen as we have come to terms with the demands of justice. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In other words, history reveals an inevitable, though tortuously long, arc toward justice and fairness. Over the course of history, innumerable superstitions and prejudices have been discarded. Slavery, once considered a social and economic necessity on both sides of the Atlantic, was overcome in Western democracies. Women demanded and were granted the right to vote. The world of Jim Crow gave way to the world of racial integration and civil rights. The mentally disabled are no longer put away in asylums. The Irish and Italians, once oppressed as the unwashed and unwanted immigrants of the Gilded Age, have risen to prominence in every arena of American life. America has elected its first African-American President. History marches on.

For obvious reasons, the movement to normalize homosexuality attached itself to this idea of historical progress. This was a natural and inevitable development, and those who formed the strategy for this movement used the most powerful tools at their disposal. The progressivist vision of history was there for the taking, and the gay rights movement took it up with enthusiasm.

Americans are naturally drawn to this understanding of history. It plays to our belief that our generation is in some way morally superior to the generations who preceded us. Liberals feast on this understanding of history and make it their main argument in any number of debates. But conservatives are shaped by this narrative, as well. Conservatives accept the undeniable fact that history, both long and short, tells a story that we should celebrate at countless turns.

But the problem with the progressivist understanding of history is that it cannot stand alone. It cannot be the only narrative. There has to become means of identifying what is truly a manifestation of oppression and what is a structure necessary for human flourishing. If the only story we have is the narrative of liberation from oppression, then, as Karl Marx understood, all that remains is an unstoppable revolution that dissolves all bonds of relationship, kinship, tradition, and moral order. Should children be liberated from the authority of their parents? Should all prisoners be liberated from their cells? Should human beings be liberated from the obligations of family and kinship?

The progressivist understanding of history must be checked by a recognition that liberation from oppression is not the only true and compelling narrative. The affirmation and preservation of moral obligations and commitments must be the companion narrative. But, in order to understand why so many among us see something as morally revolutionary and socially subversive as same-sex marriage to be something to demand and champion, consider the fact that many of our friends and neighbors see same-sex marriage as only the next logical step in overcoming prejudice and discrimination. It is the only story they know, and it is powerful.

Paired with the progressivist understanding of history is a vision of individualism that is virtually unprecedented in human experience. An affirmation of the importance of the individual is written into the fabric of modern thought. Our understanding of human rights, of individual liberty, and of personal responsibility are central to the American self-consciousness. Add to this the fact that the rise of the therapeutic worldview has recast human experience as a continuous project of individual self-discovery and self-definition.

But, if individualism was central to the American experience from the beginning, the current form of this idea is far more radical than previous generations could imagine. The current form of individualism includes the claim that we can define ourselves even in terms of gender and sex. This individualism is titanic in its reach, producing what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton once described as the “Protean Man.” We demand the total right to define ourselves.

Once again, we must recognize that the opponents of same-sex marriage have also been drinking heavily at the springs that feed this powerful idea. Many conservatives have bought into their own form of expressive individualism, taking refuge in the structures of social order only when convenient, bending moral codes to our own individualistic demands, forfeiting moral obligations when they conflict with our favorite project - ourselves.

The control on the destructive force of expressive individualism is the reality of moral obligation and the goodness of true self-knowledge. As Christians know - and must always remember - we are known before we ever emerge to know. Our Creator knew us before we even came to be, and he established our identity before we came to know ourselves. True happiness can come only by embracing with gratitude the identity we are given by the Creator. This idea - now reaching even to sex and gender - is anathema to the modern mind.

Throughout most of human history, moral principles were considered to be objectively true and inviolate. The universe was understood to be ruled by a moral law established by a divine Lawgiver and Judge. That understanding has given way to the belief that most, if not all, moral principles are the products of social construction - we make them up as we go along.

While most criticisms of moral relativism are directed at individual conduct, on the larger scale, the entire society is increasingly convinced that moral principles must give way to new understandings, findings, and insights. When this idea is added to the progressivist understanding of history and the radical form of modern individualism, we have a recipe for moral revolution.

And, as with the other ideological factors we have considered, this one is also affirmed, to some degree, by both liberals and conservatives. There can be no doubt that some understandings of moral principle were indeed shaped by prejudice and ignorance, leading to great human suffering. Laws against interracial marriage were prime examples of this prejudice, and there are many others. Fear of minorities, including homosexuals, has led to scapegoating and hatred, cloaked in the language of moral rectitude. These things must give way to moral progress and be denounced with moral fervor.

But, once again, not all moral principles are examples of oppression. To the contrary, human life is only possible within the context of enduring moral laws and principles that liberate all human beings to their true humanity. This is where those who support same-sex marriage and those who oppose it face each other across a huge gulf of understanding. One side sees a moral mandate to liberate marriage from its heterosexual limitation. The other side sees natural marriage as a liberating, God-given institution for human flourishing. There is precious little shared ground in this debate.

Same-sex marriage is not an idea that emerged from a vacuum. The project of normalizing homosexuality has deep roots and ideological momentum. The elites, the entertainment culture, the news media, and the educational establishment celebrate all three of these ideas as central to the modern experience and as ideological propulsion into a better future.

So, when we wonder how it came to be that so many among us now favor same-sex marriage, we must remember that, to some extent or another, virtually all of us have embraced the ideas that make such a moral revolution thinkable. And ideas, as Richard Weaver famously reminded us, have consequences.

--- R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky

Why does same-sex marriage make sense to so many people? The momentum toward the full legalization of same-sex marriage seems to intensify with every passing month

The very first sentence is a gross misinterpretation of recent history.
In an environment where the immature believe as a matter of faith that history, indeed the world, began when they reached pubescence it is natural that this should happen. And their voices are considered as valuable and useful as those of people who who are older, have experienced at least a bit of historical perspective, and who actually know what they're talking about.

One needs only to consider the relatively brief period of what I call pervert activism. It began in the late 70s. That's only 35 years ago, but forever, for anyone under 40.

No one is likely to bother going back and actually looking at the debate in the press and the media. The actual progression leading to today's absurd assertions is all there.

Societies have been riddled with perversion forever. It was held in check with explicit borders demanded by all civilized societies for millennia. Certainly for the last hundreds of years in western civilization. But there were costs attached. Practitioners were shunned, could lose their standing in society and even their jobs.
The crack in the dam began with a plea for tolerance.
Once society yielded an inch, it was only a matter of time for the dam to break.

Of course, once the dam broke, it had huge negative effects on all of society. The closet contingent that had previously existed, now aimed at power, negatively affecting not only the tiny pervert segment, but all of society, including, of course, heterosexual behavior.

The results speak for themselves.

What remains to be seen is simply if there is any "going back." Although the number of deviants is still relatively small, their influence is overwhelming, they have infiltrated every source of power, politically as well as socially.

The only thing I look forward to with amusement are federal laws, with serious penalties, for calling them perverts, and choosing to disassociate ourselves from them in any way we choose.
Enforcing that would be amusing.

I have never been to a gay wedding of any kind, nor do I ever expect to. It would be like going to a unicorn or fairy "marriage."

Marriage always has been, and will continue to be, in my universe, between men and women. Anything else continues to be a damaging perversion.

Dr. Mohler, as always, makes some excellent points. They gay refvolution has been brought upon us by:

the strong "progressivist" bias ("the latest thing" has GOT to be better than the "old" things that civilizations always thought were important, simply becauze it's "the latest thing";
radical individualism, to the point of "I don't have to be a male or a female, a mammal, a vertebrate, a creation of God; I'm my own creation, play-doh in my own hands"
moral autonomy: "I am my own law: there is no other."

But I'm surprised he didn't mention the complete redefinition of sex which came through contraception: the fact that the dominant culture (which is a heterosexual culture) doesn't think there's any particular connection between sexual intercourse and procreation.

Contraception has convinced this glittering but collapsing culture that sex is basically about (1) a stimulating sport, or at best it's about (2) people in love --- the two sexes (at the very least, two; at the very most, two) and the 1,000 generations comprising the unbroken chain of your ancestors and your descendants.

Contraception leads to both abortion and homosexual "norming": the first, because contraception convinces people that pregnancy is a freakish thing to happen as a result of intercourse, and one has a right to dispose of freakish things; and homosexual "norming," because homosexual are doing exactly what contracepting heteros are doing: re-defining sex to suit their coupling preferences.,

You wouldn't in a million years have an absurd re-definition of marriage, if you hadn't antecedently had an absurd re-definition of sex.

And tt was the straights who did that, not the gays.

I think it is just because people know it is wrong but they are just trying to go with the flow. This herd mentality in American Society takes place when people’s moral values are diluted with a liberal moral value/idea that nothing is wrong and everything is relative.

The headline as well as the answers in this thread are unduly complicated. Too many words have been wasted on what is a black or white issue.

The reason is simple : Societal Fatigue" under relentless attack by the perverts. I still hold the opinion that most citizens simply want an end to the relentless attack on normalcy.

I really don't care if the Founders were all gay, so long as they were not overtly militant, loud, abusive and delusional gays. The record is clear. IF they were gay, they knew their proper place.

I would love to see the Constitution assembled by this perv clown and his friends...

They are partially correct. Christians should not judge unbelievers. That authority is God's alone. We are, however, absolutely supposed to judge other Christians.

I disagree totally and unconditionally.
I am free to judge anyone for any reason, so long as dogmatism of any kind NEVER forces me to take action for anything other than self defense.

Who's going to stop me, you?
Parroting words from God? Your peculiar version of what God says?

One pathological religion in the world is quite enough, thank you.

and no religious restrictions on state-approved cohabitation, divorce, and marriage, thank you very much.

So much anger, so much unreason, so little sense.
As far back as I can learn from history, cohabitation has never been a crime.
Why does cohabitation have to be state-approved? It doesn't; and I simply take that for granted.

However, breeding and assuming that the State (the working taxpayers) is obligated to support the little bastards from cradle to grave, is quite another matter.

You have gotten it backwards. Homosexuals are the one class of sinners who do not believe that their sin is a sin. Homosexuals want to be accepted as normal and do not want to be regarded as sinners. If a homosexual is "normal", and no worse than anyone else; then murderers, thieves rapists and adulterers are "normal".

No, I don't have it backwards. Of course hurting innocents, like rapists and murderers, are worse than sexual sins that do not involve coercing innocents. But people who gossip, in my Bible a sin akin to murder (which I don't like because I sinfully gossip sometimes!!! But I need to accept how heinous the sin of gossip is to G-d), don't see themselves as sinning usually, nor do the people who sleep around. If you pick up someone in a bar and sleep with them, they might have been married - you might not know. Then there are thieves who do not consider themselves thieves. Lots of them. Tax evasion, borrowing from the company's till, etc. PLENTY of big sinners will call names to gays but not call themselves out. You know this.

It's because hearing about someone sticking their fingers into the company's books is not abhorrent like hearing about someone sticking his fingers into, well, I will leave this unfinished! The yuck factor makes some Christians think they are morally superior.

As a Christian, what is your dearest loving goal for these people? I ask because these are people, on this planet, who have now been told for 20 or so years that they are OK just the way they are. And so they attempt to live a gay lifestyle, with the acceptance of the masses. That is just the way things are now, due to pop culture (and the ideas in the original article above). And now you guys come along and CONDEMN CONDEMN CONDEMN, which makes them hate Christianity and turn from it.

How is that Christian? Sorry, I just don't get it. Didn't Jesus spend time with the people the haughty Jews would dismiss and despise? Don't you guys want to be like him? He did not insist they give up whoring before he gave them love.

I have never seen evidence for a homosexual gene. There is evidence that sexual identity and orientation takes place in the 12th-14th weeks of gestation, when the sexes begin to differentiate. There are many factors in the maternal environment that seem to affect the baby’s development. The study of epigenetics is new but HUGE.

There is also a lot of evidence, in animal studies but some human as well, that the effects of plastics and hormones in our environment have penetrated our bodies and wombs to such a degree that our babies are affected. Some of the milder genital deformations are becoming practically epidemic (hypospadias in boys). Infertility in young women is a huge problem.

So maybe 95% of gays are not wrong when they say they just WERE born that way. If pollution and plastics can cause frogs to be hermaphroditic, why are humans immune from these things?

Let’s give these people the benefit of the doubt. No need to go along with any liberal libertine agendas. But let’s not mock and rip these people for something they did not ask for, nor for their going along with society’s endorsement of the crude boystown lifestyle, when these young kids don’t see any conservative alternatives.

For me logically the ultimate extent of individualism possible is true anarchy. That is to say to be bound by the laws of nature alone, not other men.
Such laws of nature do not permit the possibility of a marriage between two people of the same sex. It is therefore an act of self-delusion for the State to claim to recognize the existence of a union.
Regrettably this is a delusion that marks the beginning of the end for the institution itself. At least insofar as the institution is recognized by the State. For it is exactly this delusion that makes the State recognized and instituted institution meaningless. Unless you would argue that it merely the desire of the State that we all pair up for long (not permanent) terms, if that be the case then I would ask for what purpose does the State desire that we pair up indiscriminately for the long term? It is clearly not for the purpose of reproduction and family… Such a purpose could not biologically be served by two or more people of the same sex.
Nor is the purpose of “marriages” as they have long asserted it to be about “love”, we know form history marriages historically had little to do with love. Just as we know presently the idea of the State requiring a license for anyone to love anyone else is abhorrent to our sensibilities.
It is upon this lack of function that the institution of marriage as the State defines it must collapse.
But it is also upon this reasoning that it can and will be resurrected as it was historically and religiously defined by the Church. Believe it or not life and family must go on…

To this end we should reposition ourselves and our churches to take over the institution of marriage from the State. We will need to organize a parallel system of marriage certificates and documentations. (In order to prevent polygamy) that should be honored by all churches of as many denominations as possible provided each marriage meets the minimal of requirements.
This will require an organization of our greater denominations as well as open commutation channels with the other faiths be they Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, and even Muslim. We all share basically the same concept of marriage, and therefore we should all agree to recognize each others marriages.
Each Church/ synagogue /temple/mosque will establish a standard macro for the contracts in their jurisdiction to handle the legal side of marriage. (Wills, property rights, visitation, ect..) They will assist in the reestablishment of theses legal recognitions anyone who has a recognized and legitimate Holy marriage certificate from any other political jurisdiction.

God doesn’t like the practice of homosexuality and the marriage of same sex.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. – Mathew 24:37

As what was in the “days of Noah? Check what the Jewish teaching is. Can this be true?

Read more: How same-sex marriage points to end of the world http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=64769#ixzz1Fs3KFTIO

Jesus spent time with sinners because everyone who has ever drawn a breath is a sinner. You are yet another of these people who say "Jesus spent time with sinners" as if to say He validated their sin. Again: ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That includes homosexuals. If homosexuals are not sinners (and the Bible is clear that they are); then no one is a sinner, and Jesus is irrelevant if there is no sin and people do not need to be saved from sin.

You are correct that gossiping is a sin. Sure, people may do it and not take it too seriously. However, they do not celebrate it and ask for universal acceptance of their sin. Homosexuals do.

Wow, after complimenting you I must disagree.

Yes, homosexuals want acceptance, and indeed, glorification because of WHAT THEY DO. It’s not about “who they are” - simply because all of life is viewed through their perverted sexuality.

I dislike homosexuality because of its evil effects on its practitioners. Every teenage boy dreams of unlimited sexual contacts, with no negative effects. The dream is of a world of willing sexual partners, and fun sex without ramifications.

This is an idiotic dream. Once you stop masturbating and start interacting you find out that’s true. The sexual experience is far and away best when both partners love and care about each other. When they don’t, as in prostitution and “hook ups”, the result is little better than masturbation, and often worse. How often have you heard about “beer glasses” or seen heartache from “the morning after” ? The stories are legion.

The inevitable conclusion of that is a committed, loving relationship (aka marriage) is the premier relationship for a positive sexual life.

But because the poor male homosexuals stopped developing emotionally at the “I want to have sex whenever I can with anybody I can” teenage stage, they never come close to the ideal. The poor female homosexuals, who hate and fear men, are similarly precluded. Both live rather empty, sad lives. The males spend their lives pursuing promiscuity, while the women experience very high rates of domestic violence.

With “gay marriage” they’re asking you to acknowledge and approve these disfunctional relationships.

As a Christian, when one sees somebody hurting themselves and others, one might want to point out that what they’re doing is hurting themselves and others. That strikes me as the “loving” thing to do.

Acknowledging them as having an “equal” relationship seems idiotic. Or shall we see “love stories” where the “lovers” start their “romance” in a public restroom ?

“The moral divide in this nation is now seen most clearly in the distance between those for whom marriage is exclusively heterosexual and thus a settled issue and, on the other hand, those who honestly see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a moral mandate required by justice.”

How about those of us who see it from a different perspective?

I don’t view it in those sorts of terms. The marriage that we’re talking about here is what the state defines as “marriage.” Frankly, I don’t care if the state defines “marriage” as between two men and a blind goat named Bob. What matters is how it’s defined by the church. And that definition has stayed the same.

Those who are going to marry in the religious sense have a choice as to whether to obtain a license or not. You don’t need a license to get married in the religious sense. If you’re going to make the (unwise) choice to get your religious marriage ratified by the state, then you get to play by the rules and definitions they lay out.

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