www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Gay Marriage

I'm on a roll--

After we look at the question of what type of society we want, it seems to me we need to take a look at who we are and what we are called to do as baptised Christians: Christ-followers. We are called to be salt, light, and leaven wherever we are. So once the greater group begins to decide what types of boundaries the society ought to have, we are called to be right in the middle of the mix influencing our society for Christ.

BOB

Bob, I'll have to respond to the rest later, but I just wanted to say that I meant "discriminating" in its literal sense (i.e., perceiving or constituting the difference in or between certain things), not its more common sense, which often connotes something as being unfair or unjust, which I wasn't necessarily implying.

Alexis

Sometimes I look into history and see chilling comparisons between the end days of the Roman Empire and our own times. They had homosexual relationships then, it was actually (if the evidence is to be believed) more than tolerated, but even there, they recognized that marriage was between men and women, not men and men or women and women. So to get around that, people often "adopted" other adult men and women to allow for things like inheritance. Oh it is so stupid, and there is nothing new under the sun.

I am really not concerned with whether or not the civil government allows same sex marriage. The civil government allows a lot of un-Christian things to happen ,a nd as Christians, we just don't take part in that to whatever extent we are able.

I don't think the Church has any reason to be concerned about a civil recognition of "gay marriage". Civil governments come and go, but the Church endures forever. And the more fuss religious people make over it the more mud gets on us, it's stupid.

As other people have already said -- teach our own how to have successful marriages, how to choose wisely in selecting a mate, how husbands and wives can create strong families. Give support to families so that we can offer help and proven strategies for facing common life issues. Let's not worry about who government is giving a permission slip to marry. Let's worry about the people who have subscribed to marriage under our definition, and support them, and let the fashion of "gay marriage" blow over and go away.

I finally got through the whole thread and what a fascinating discussion. I do not have a strong opinion on this matter but I would like to point out a few things that I think are significant:

1) We cannot talk about gay marriage in general or worldwide. We have to limit our discussion to gay marriage and civil unions in a particular country, in this case, the United States. The reason is that in addition to our everyday moral reasoning and religious reasoning, we must also take into account the constitution and our legal tradition.

2) Even Thomas Aquinas (especially Thomas Aquinas) makes a distinction between the legal and the moral and he maintains that it is not always prudent to make everything that is immoral, illegal. He uses prostitution as an example of something that is gravely immoral, but perhaps is better off remaining legal for prudential reasons.

3) The United States is founded on the idea of limited government, freedom of religion, separation of Church and state and allowing the maximum amount of liberty compatible with the liberty of others (a fundmental principle of liberal democratic society).

4) Though our legal tradition has roots in English common law and has presupposed Judeo]Christians values, it is now the case that without question we are a religiously and morally pluralistic society and that the government cannot and should not consider religious reasons in making law. Whether we like it or not we are a secular society and so we must make laws according to secular reasons.

5) Related to the last point, Christendom is dead and it ain't coming back. And we must realize that in a sense the Church is now back in the position of pre-Constantine times. We must render unto caesar (pay taxes, obey the law, fulfill our civic duties) but we cannot claim that our nation, or any nation is a specially chosen Christian nation.

6)Certainly, there are reasonable natural law arguments that can be made against gay marriage, but we have to recognize that there are multiple systems of natural law and that natural law, in and of itself, does not support heterosexual monogamy alone. In fact, one could argue even on evolutionary grounds that polygamy is preferrable to monogamy. Polygamy is as ancient as monogamy and was originally accepted even in Israel. The argument for different-sex monogamy is a specifically religious argument, not a secular argument.

7) The use of the slippery slope argument is a fallacy (e.g. the argument that we can't legalize gay marriage because then people will be marrying their pet goats, their children, and perhaps robots!). On all questions we must draw limits and we can give reasons for those limits. For example, marriage cannot be between humans and other animals because other animals do not give rational consent. Humans cannot marry close relatives because of the significant risk of major deformities in offspring. Perhaps it is the case that homosexual relationships should not be sanctioned because they are not procreative. However, it is not obvious that procreation is a given reason for the current state's view of marriage. Many stoics thought that homosexuality was in accordance with natural law because the love of man for man is a natural desire (perhaps superior to love of man for a woman).

8) And so when all is said and done, current marriage law (and adoption law as well) must be based on legitimate state interests. The state has a legitimate interest in regulating relationships that involve the sharing of offspring, property, and inheritance. This does not a priori eliminate polygamy nor does it eliminate homosexual marriages, since polygamists and homosexuals can share offspring, property, and inheritance. This also holds for adoption. It is not the place of the state to consider religious, "moral" reasons for giving a child to a home, other than what is necessary for the physical safety of the child. The state cannot determine whether homosexuality is moral or immoral and so it ought not consider the issue in adoptions. Also, if the Church is going to act as an adoption agency, then it must abide by the laws of the state. if the church doesn't like it, the Church can get out of the business (same thing with hospitals).

I have to confess that I've come to a view that is probably a minority among Christians. I do not believe that it is the Church's responsibility to build "family values," to create a "Christian society," or to promote world peace. Jesus came and said that he would break up families, that he would bring not peace but the sword, that His kingdom was not of this world, and that we should not expect a world in which morality and world peace would reign (the bringing of world peace is the job of the antichrist). Without getting overly apocalyptic, we need to recover the primitive Christian outlook that we are just sojourners in this world and that it is our job to spread the Gospel and save as many souls as we can, while realizing that the form of this world is passing away. I believe that this is why God let Christendom fall. Because Christendom became an idol and it still is an idol to those who think that the United States is "a city on the hill," "the world's greatest hope," "God's chosen nation," etc.

So I don't really care whether the state recognizes homosexual unions or not. I can even understand why there are good, practical reasons for doing so (by the way, I don't believe that marriage is a right for anyone).

Joe

Dearest sister in Christ,

While I understand your many valid points, our youth as I have seen it, and as many priests can tell you from hearing confessions, is being influenced by what is 'civilly' and 'culturally' acceptable.

Because homosexuality was not acceptable or 'cool' when I was in high school, I knew of no gay students..infact, it was an insult to be called one.

Our schools today now have gay clubs and many youth think it is actually 'cool' to associate themselves with gay groups, and thus, at a time, when psychologically speaking, young people are grappling with their identity, the once unacceptable starts to appeal to them. Students in some instances are also taught the particulars of homosexual mating in schools.

Read the examples I have shared earlier in this thread....there are many, many more...smart kids I know from nice, stable, Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish families, kids who grew up in their religious houses of worship and communities, with involved and loving mothers and fathers.

Recently, another girl from church youth group has decided to become a lesbian...after many years of dating boys. As I said, the number of former classmates, churchmates, dormmates, etc. of my children grows and grows. In a majority of the cases, the parents are sadly unaware, and perhaps I know about them because my children share everything with me in discussion, because they know that I will not gossip about this confidential 'peer' information to anyone, and because they know that I do not judge, blame, or condemn other people's kids, as some other parents are quick to do.

For the ones I mentioned, most went morally awry after graduating high school and leaving their religious youth groups to go out into the world of universties, colleges and the dorm life. Are parents aware of what goes on in all college dorms--and in some of our most elite colleges and universities?

The worst thing we can do is pretend that society has no effect on children. That is simply living in a 'fool's paradise', and gives the devil more and more opportunity to morally corrupt more generations of children being brought up into the world.

This 'gay' marriage thing doesn't matter one iota to me or any of my middle aged friends--most of us are unlikely to be affected by it, and personally, I could care less, but our children, and their children, have, and will certainly be affected by it...they already have been, even with out the stamp of approval of 'marriage', so one can only imagine how much more it will be if civil 'marriage' is allowed for homosexuals.

In Christ,
Alice

P.S. BOB: I agree with your posts.

Whys should the Church which is a private institution have to give children to gay couples when it is against our religion? We are supposed to have freedom of religion. If a gay couple wants a child then they can go elsewhere. Does this mean nothing to you? Think of all the children that will be hurt by this madness.

Also a church has been sued in that state when they would not rent to a gay couple. They lost. A photographer in New Mexico is being sued because he would not do a gay wedding. That is still pending. When the parents of a young kid was taught about gay marriage in the schools and the parents sued and lost. They were told they had no right to object.

Finally all the Orthodox bishops in California supported Prop 8. They issued a joint statement supporting it. That should carry some weight.

MrsMW, I hear what you are saying and it is my hope that the courts will straighten things out. The Church should not be required to accept gay marriage (or any particular kind of marriage). I suspect that in the long run, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on these kinds of things and will rule in favor of religious freedom.

Joe

If our Chrsitianity has returned back to pre-Constantine times, then I do not see how Christendom could have "fallen" except to say that Christianity is no longer has any pre-emminence among governments and peoples.

In regards to the Stoics, I think that we must also examine what "natural law" means in terms of the Church. Stoicism is a particular philosophy, and can certainly be found in Christianity, but just because the stoics may not have considered homosexual realtions to be contrary to antural law, does not mean that they were correct in this idea.

Alice,

I really do agree with everything you're saying. The thing is, what legal, constitutional grounds have we for making the entire nation abide by our religious code of ethics? This is my hang up, not with the content of your message.

Alexis

Joe, I guess I will have to disagree with you on this one! In this country, we are allowed a very wide degree of latitude when our religious convictions conflict with the law. Wine was allowed to be had at Catholic and Orthodox churches during Prohibition, for example. And today, Catholic hospitals or doctors are allowed to refuse to participate in abortions or giving out birth control. This, to me, seems constitutional, since these hospitals and adoption agencies are not, by any means, the only ones people who wish to gay-adopt or get birth control have recourse to. There are plenty that will be more than happy to meet their requests. I do believe it is enshrined in our Constitution and our laws that people cannot be forced to violate their religious conscience when it doesn't bring harm to someone else.

What are your thoughts?

Alexis

ALEXIS:

I think the problem is that what we have we have inherited. No one in either Alice's or my lifetimes have established the marriage laws that we live under and that are under question. They derive from English Common Law, earlier Roman law, and the Church's influence going back centuries. The code we live under is not something specifically established by the Catholic Church or even a consensus of Christian bodies in the past decade or century (and having them get together for a consensus on anything after the bitterness of our divisions prior to the past forty years is laughable to even think about). It's much older than that.

The problem is that as it is being questioned, the accusation has been made that our religious code has been imposed on others. Well, it hasn't. It's something we have from our past, going back centuries in Western civilization. Those who want to change all this are beginning from the idea that it all came about within our lifetimes from the nastiness of the larger group "discriminating" against a downtrodden minority--which just ain't the case.

Maybe the answer is to do away with all inheritance and property laws. Now that might hit non-working women really hard--remember that the whole of the 20th century has seen a movement to protect this very class of people--but this, too, is an arbitrary set of rules established by government for a specific social purpose. It sure would make many a man being divorced happy if he could take all the property and money he'd earned and accumulated with him, leaving his spouse out in the cold. And you'd be surprised how many "Christian" men espouse that: mostly bitter ones.

You ask what legal, constitutional grounds do we have? Well, the federal constitution gives those powers to the states where they are not delegated to the federal government and it is all predicated on the idea that the majority rules in this country--not judges who have decided to be black-robed dictators or who have decided to interpret the constitution according to the latest fad thinking.

BOB

Alexis,

You and MrsMW are right and I am wrong on this; so now I agree with both of you!

Joe

Which Church? The United States is not governed by the doctrines of any Church, much less any religious theory of natural law. This is why I said that in our current public discourse, we need to have solid secular reasons for our views and for the policies we want to see enacted.

Joe

Wow, Alice, what a leap from gay marriage to youth who choose to be gay! My comments were completely concerned with the civil legality of marriage/civil union/whatever they want to call it between same sex persons.

I don't follow the slippery slope logic -- I went to college with a lot of gay people, and their gayness didn't rub off on me or make me want to be gay. I was hit on by women, that didn't make me gay. And I wasn't raised in a home that strongly promoted Christian values. And as to what *I* think makes people gay -- that's a completely different thread.

So no, I don't want the government to legislate things to protect my moral values, or even my kids moral values. That would be my job as a parent to teach my kids about appropriate sexuality, holy matrimony, and other things of that nature. If public school is a hotbed of moral licentiousness, then as a Christian parent I send them to a better school or homeschool -- I know a lot of homeschooling parents these days -- God Bless them all, and their kids are turning out just fine. And if I didn't do a good enough job with them to educate them about morality to save them from seriously sinful choices before I sent them to college, by then I think it may almost be too late for a parent to save them, or at least at that point it's up to them to work out their conscience with God, and for a parent to pray for their change of heart.

I totally understand and applaud your concern for youth, and we surely could have a long thread about how this culture exploits children --but I don't think gay marriage is a slippery slope issue.


love in Christ,

Halle

75 years ago December 5th 1933, prohibition was repealed in the United States.