Posted on 04/17/2015 7:34:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Senator Marco Rubio, one of our most attractive and charismatic leaders in the rising generation, just announced he’s running for president. So naturally he’s being peppered with the one question uppermost in the minds of American voters: What do you think of gay marriage?
Rubio is getting this hit, in part, because he’s trying to negotiate a Third Way: He’s for traditional marriage but will “respect” the rights of states to disagree. He thinks states should have the right to decide the definition of marriage, but (unlike Ted Cruz) he refused to sign onto an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to leave the definition of marriage to the states, and he says he will “respect” whatever the Supreme Court decides.
Sensing weakness, the mainstream media like nothing more than to swarm around his third-wayness. So now Fusion asks Rubio that question that is always so urgent for a president of the United States: Would you attend a gay wedding?
I kind of wish he had pulled a Senator Rand Paul on this reporter. Do you really think people shouldn’t have the right to keep their jobs if they oppose gay marriage? Do you believe in live and let live, or do you believe in using gay marriage as a club to hurt ordinary Americans who happen to disagree?
But he chose to answer the question with great dignity and kindness.
“If there’s somebody that I love that’s in my life, I don’t necessarily have to agree with their decisions or the decisions they’ve made to continue to love them and participate in important events,” he told the interviewer, Jorge Ramos. “Ultimately, if someone that you care for and is part of your family has decided to move in one direction or another or feels that way because of who they love, you respect that because you love them,” Sen. Rubio said.
Rubio compared it to attending “second marriages” after divorce, which the Catholic Church teaches are attempts to consecrate adultery. “If someone gets divorced, I’m not going to stop loving them or having them a part of our lives,” he said.
Senator Rubio is not the only one who feels that way. Other Catholics I respect, from Ross Douthat to Eve Tushnet, have spoken about accompanying friends on their gay-wedding journeys, even if they disagree. I think most Christians and other traditional believers are going to end up in a similar place, because to do anything else is so hard. Not to celebrate with our friends, neighbors, and family members — to do that is not so much to exclude them but to exclude ourselves from their lives. Love, caretaking, commitment: These are all good things, right?
Yes, they are. Christians are going to be increasingly asked to explain what sounds inexplicable, irrational, bigoted, and hateful to the powerful, creative, vibrant secular community that surrounds us.
So I would sit down with my friend and tell them this:
"Here’s what I think. We are born male and female, and marriage is the union of husband to wife that celebrates the necessity of the two genders’ coming together to make the future happen. I know you don’t think that. I know the law no longer thinks that. But I have staked my life on this truth.
The problem for me in celebrating your gay wedding, as much as I love you, is that I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt not only to commit yourself to a relationship that keeps you from God’s plan but, worse, I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt to hold the man you love to a vow that he will avoid God’s plan. To vow oneself to sin is one thing, to try to hold someone you love to it — that’s not something I can celebrate.
And I would be party to the idea that two men can make a marriage, which I do not believe.
On your happy day you should be surrounded by people who can honor your vow and help you keep it. I can’t do that.
“Porneia” is a word in the Bible that has been much mistranslated. But I think it means a sexual relationship that cannot by its nature become a marriage. That’s why Christ said that marriage is forever, unless it is porneia.
I understand that you might well want to rupture our friendship over this, my honest view. I choose to love you both and keep you in my life.
But let us somehow against all odds find a way love each other as we are, and not how each of us would wish the other to be."
— Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project.
If a friend or family member invited you to a crack party or ask you to go with them while they got an abortion....
That would be fine for a citizen to talk that way, but not a candidate for President. First off, these people are prominent people and get invited to a lot of functions. No doubt they attend many functions by or for people who are not good people in one way or another, and still they (candidate and spouse) grace the event with their presence. It would be rude not to grace a gay friend’s event.
It does not mean you condone gay marriage to attend. It means you are being kind to someone, or doing the socially right thing (if you went to one employee’s event, how can you not go to the other employee’s event?).
There is no way to get nominated for President in 2015 if you refuse to attend a relative or friend’s gay wedding.
People, please don’t forget that everyone sins. There are so many worse sins than loving the wrong gender. Please don’t place hierarchy on sins by putting the personally “yuckiest” on top. Cheating, lying, gossiping, stealing, murdering people are worse. And you’ve attended their events because you can’t always see those sins.
IDK, I have young children, and my wife has health issues, so it would be a hassle to travel long distances.
Some people don’t have “boundaries” around their relationships. I worked with a young woman years ago who invited everyone in the office because she thought it’d be rude not to invite everyone, or to invite some but not others. Similarly, she had an open invitation to her entire church congregation.
The wedding and reception were at the church and church hall, respectively. Women from the church did the catering and apparently thats the way that congregation operates. Some of us prefer smaller, more intimate affairs. Different strokes and all that.
Do you think it would be permissible for a state to prohibit remarriage after divorce?
It would be better if government was not involved in the religious rite of marriage at all. It isn’t reasonable in a pluralistic society. States having their own laws about marriage cannot work in our present system, as was found when miscegenation laws were found to be in conflict.
I don’t like the question as it doesn’t go far enough. Would you go to a gay wedding with a male gorilla as best man and a female rhesus monkey as maid of honor, with a chimpanzee as the ring bearer? Well, would you? Would you? Would you? If not, are you a transspeciesophobe? Bigot! Bigot!
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