Posted on 04/04/2015 6:53:25 AM PDT by lqcincinnatus
At the simplest level, there are seven questions central to the debate over same-sex marriage that rarely if ever gain public review. I have written on them below, and what you read here has been refashioned for proper presentation before the United States Supreme Court when it reviews four cases on the matter April 28, 2015. 1. What is the Source for Unalienable Rights? 2. Is Marriage a Right or a Liberty? 3. How Does the Creator Define Human Sexuality? 4. God-given Rights or Human-defined Rights? 5. Is the Declaration of Independence Honored Anymore? 6. Can a Healthy Social Order be Rooted in Pansexuality? 7. Is Homosexuality a Fixed Trait?
(Excerpt) Read more at virtueonline.org ...
My question is : What business does government have meddling in what is either a religious issue or a social issue?
My answer: none.
Government should stay out of marriage altogether. It is none of the government’s business if I am married. I should not be taxed more or less because of it. And I should not have to tell the government on a tax form (or any other form that I can think of) whether I am married. .
And I should not be forced, as a private citizen, to recognize someone else’s perversion of marriage.
Marriage, as it has been recognized by Christians and Jews and most societies in the world for thousands of years is one man and one woman. Redefining words that up until now everyone understood seems to be a tactic of the left-wing fascists who are hell-bent on destroying America and its culture.
(Ironic, isn’t it, that they try to mimic the heterosexual culture and practices that they so despise?)
If homosexuals want to have some sort of official committed relationship, there is not much I can do to stop them. But whatever it is they have is not a marriage.
I don’t disagree at all with your suggestions. I just don’t think they are likely to be very effective.
I do not claim that conservatives should avoid all discussion of the morality of homosexuality, although I think (sadly) that such discussion is for the most part ineffective. It’s been undercut by the cultural revolution of the last 25 years or so by which homosexuality has been innoculated against moral arguments.
What I am saying is that quote the Bible, as in “Leviticus says XXX” is not only unproductive, it’s counter-productive. Using these arguments, even when they are only one of your arguments, not only causes the Biblical argument to be rejected, but generally creates a revulsion by the majority of listeners that causes them to reject out of hand all associated arguments.
I hasten to add that this is not MY POV, just one that I have repeatedly seen in others.
It is of course possible that I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong many times before, and no doubt will be in future. But it seems to me that when a particular line of argument is not only rejected for its own merits, but tends to cause any other line oF argument you might propose to be rejected simply because of its association, it’s a good idea to stop bringing up that particular line.
Not because it’s in and of itself invalid, but because it works against your desired result.
or, IOW, when most of your listeners are idiots, stop bringing up lines of argument the idiots automatically reject. Not because they aren’t valid, but because you want to convince others, not score debating points on some hypothetical scale.
I wish I could explain what I’m trying to say more clearly.
I'm not entirely sure the "most" part ic accurate. Many, many societies have allowed for marriages which consist of one man and one or more women.
Including the early days of Judaism.
Historically, CC’s have been gaining and losing ground both politically and culturally since this nations beginning; but this has especially been oscillating downward since the Roosevelt years of the 1930’s. A case can be made that his choices in the SCOTUS created laws (which SCOTUS is not designed to do) that were contrary to the culture of society, and thus politics changed the culture, not the other way around. I think the most damaging decision to American culture came when SCOTUS judges appointed by Roosevelt decided to “erect a wall of separation between church and state” that is not in our constitution; this lead to other SCOTUS decisions that negatively affected students in our government school systems during the 1960's till even today.
The examples above are not to say that culture cannot affect politics. Quite the contrary; historically, both have been intertwined since this nations beginning. For most, it is like the old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” But I do believe culture came first. A better example/question of this theory is similar to the argument of what came first in any country; its economy or its government (economy relating to culture, and government relating to politics)? Do you see the correlation? An economy must come before a government, or else a government cannot be funded. But I digress.
Let’s tackle a single issue, the issue of this post and thread – homosexuality, and how to confront it. Hopefully, you will see the same tactic I use here can be used in the public arena at large.
Religious freedom laws aside (in which there is no mention of homosexual discrimination), when did we lose the premise that homosexual behavior is a deviant lifestyle (really a deathstyle)?
Even without these religious freedom laws; we should have the right to “discriminate” against any deviant lifestyle. Don't people non-violently discriminate against pansexuallity, polyamory, bestiality, pedophilia, etc.? Non-violent discrimination against deviant lifestyles is a good thing!
And when did the word “discriminate” become derogatory anyway? To discriminate is to choose; liberals are the one who created the premise that it is derogatory, and we should not accept that premise. But for the sake of expediency, we should just take back the word “choice” and ask liberals, “Don't you believe in an individual’s right to choice?” But I digress again,
True, Americans have as a whole been culturally indoctrinated to the point of acceptance of homosexuality in their personal and business practices, but we need to fight back, and we need to know how. We must win back the hearts and minds of people politically and culturally, as it was during the times this good policy was accepted as the norm. It was accepted for centuries until just the past couple of decades.
Nobody is born being homosexual; it has never been scientifically proven. In fact, just the opposite is true – there is a greater preponderance of evidence that it is a choice! We have not only lost this premise, now people are beginning to believe the premise that bisexuality is “normal. Soon, we will lose the premise on polysexuallity, polyamory, bestiality, pedophilia, etc.
Frankly, IMO, we started to lose the premise that it is good to choose to be against indecent behavior when Americans began to accept sexuality outside the bond of a monogamous heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman for life. In fact, it is hard for anyone to argue against this as it has been proven that anything outside a monogamous heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman for life will have a greater chance of problems. It ain’t perfect, but it is the best.
There is a time to be harsh and a time to be gracious. I have had (and still have) friends that are homosexual; and they know me as a man of peace. But they also know that I know why their lifestyle is wrong. It is true that graciousness will win over a person's mind more than harshness; but those persons MUST be receptive to it. Some have been receptive to the point that they have chosen not to act on their homosexual proclivities any more. Some have even married the opposite sex.
Yes, society as a whole has accepted this change of acceptance of homosexuality; but true CC’s have not and will not, culturally and politically. What needs to be done is to pronounce continuously that the sexual norm is sexuality under the bond of a monogamous heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman for life. Anything outside that is deviation from this norm. First, pronounce it in a gracious manner; then in a harsh manner if need be.
It is very obvious why this should be, and it should be easy for people like us to explain why, in a gracious manner to those who may accept it. For those that would not, it should be used as a principle so any lurkers seeing the debate may hear/see and possibly come to know why it is true. But when someone is beating you over the head, do you just let them do it, or do you fight back? Is that the time to say, "I love you, and I want to help you"? Or is it a time to think, "This is wrong!” and fight back?
In any case, it seems CC’s do have someone in a position to eloquently express the position against homosexuality in the political arena; Ted Cruz. Watch how he does it, and watch how liberals receive it. Of course, the liberal of Jesus’ time crucified Him. But after His rising, he had the greatest following that anyone has ever seen. And why not make the comparison of Jesus and Cruz? After all, Jesus wanted us to be like Him.
ping
I actually agree. The majority of times in the NT where homosexuality is mentioned, it is in a list of sins. There is only one where it is implied that it is a greater sin than other sexual sins.
That is, of course, Romans 1. But even there it is implied that sodomy is one of a catalog of sins.
Many disagree, but to my mind the decline in the effectiveness of CCs, to use your term, being able to effectively fight back against homosexuality began as an obvious and logical outgrowth of the sexual revolution. CCs IMO have largely accepted the prevalence of premarital sex in our society as normal. While most still condemn extramarital sex, it is almost nowhere denounced as fiercely as homosexuality. And it is very rare indeed that I run across premarital sex being denounced at all, much less with anything like the vigor reserved for sodomy.
This makes CCs look like they are being hypocrites, which of course they are. We denounce those sexual sins we don’t personally have a tendency to indulge in, while glossing over other sexual sins more popular among our group.
Lots and lots of CC churches would, I assume, exclude a member openly participating in homosexuality. Not very many expel open adulterers, at least to my knowledge, and very few indeed kick out unmarried members who are openly “dating” in the modern euphemism. In one of the weirder contortions, I’ve read of churches disciplining unmarried couples for living together, as if the sin consists of where you sleep rather than who you diddle.
Your biggest problem here is that the cultural consensus has changed on the meaning of words. You refer to “deviant lifestyles,” to “indecent behavior,” and to opposition to sexual behavior that is not “normal.”
Sadly, the cultural consensus has rapidly moved from agreement with you to a view that these terms just don’t apply to homosexuals. For them, such behavior IS NOT deviant, indecent or abnormal. That POV has gone from being strongly held by perhaps 20% of the population 30 years ago to presently being over 50% and rapidly climbing. Soon the opposing view will be a small minority.
IOW, when you use these terms they sound strange and bigoted to your listeners. They just don’t think they apply.
Most people, most of the time, accept the cultural consensus because it’s the cultural consensus. Especially in a democratic society like ours, the “voice of the people” is generally accepted as the final word. It’s difficult and painful to oppose it, even when your POV not bring you into direct conflict with others.
A few years back on FR I gave my opinion that this is where we were heading. I was denounced for holding this opinion, and posters pointed to referendums (even in CA!) to support their view. Well, in the last election I believe every state where gay marriage was on the ballot it passed.
We are down now, I believe, to 13 states where it is still illegal. Most of those will doubtless change in the next year or so. I will be very surprised if in the next 5 years the Supremes don’t discover a Constitutional right for it.
So what to do? As I’ve said, heck if I know!
I do believe that a start would be to put homosexuality in its appropriate place in the Biblical categorization: one of many sexual sins. If we utterly oppose one, we need to utterly oppose the others in the same way. If we accept premarital heterosexual sex with a wink and a nudge as no big deal, which most CCs do in practice if not perhaps in theory, homosexual behavior by unmarried people needs to be treated somewhat the same.
IMO homosexuality is a somewhat greater sin than heterosexual fornication, because the act itself is intrinsically disordered, but not all that much greater. If we rate sexual sins on a 1 to 10 scale, I suspect many CCs would rate homosexuality as a 10, with fornication a 2. I’d give homosexuality a 6 and fornication a 4.
I make an exception to this rule for sex outside marriage by married people for fairly obvious reasons. Adultery adds betrayal, lying, destruction of families and a host of other evils to the underlying sexual sin. It deserves a 10.
I classify divorce and remarriage (without Biblical grounds for the divorce) as adultery, BTW, an even less popular PRV.
BTW, Romans 1: 32 applies very well today, and will do so increasingly in the future.
“And knowing the judgment of God, that those who commit such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but have pleasure in those who do them.”
Wow!
Amen
They might be if enough people got behind them, but not likely in the "gotta have the latest tech", entertainment driven society we live in. For that reason alone you may be right.
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