Thank you to everyone that commented on my post about the marriage definition amendment.  I had not planned on doing another post about it anytime soon, but having read these comments I would like to address a couple of points before going on to something else because I believe that what people said was sincere.

I was always told (and taught in public school sociology class) that homosexuals were not distinguishable by any outward features, e.g. if a man talks soft or a woman has a haircut like a man’s that that does not mean they are gay.  Homosexuals are just like everyone else and anyone you know and even those you might least expect could be homosexual and you would never know.  This is true.  In fact, if I were a gay person I would find this latest advertising campaign that shows a dog walking like a cow and mooing, extremely offensive because it’s saying that you can tell by these outward signs what a person is.  It is meant to depict, by having a dog saying “moo,” that some people are “just born that way.”  But it’s still unnatural.  A dog saying “moo” is unnatural and the other dogs in the pack might or might not let it run with them, the normal dogs barking and chasing squirrels and eating trash, not ruminating.  This ill-thought advertising campaign was conceived by our former mayor who is now the president of the gay and lesbian society here.  She did a lot of stupid things as mayor, too.

Now, why should the rights of the God-fearing Christian majority be infringed by having to subsidize these unnatural unions?  Why are the rights of Christians always the first to be thrown out?  You are not seeing, aside from the larger problem of the overall moral decay of modern society, that the practical upshot is, in fact, that once you validate marriage as being anything other than one man and one woman, you have to validate all of the other types as well.  This is not taking away anyone’s rights.  Besides, many rights are taken away from us all the time by merely submitting to the rule of law.

Which leads to why the government has to be involved.  The government is already involved in everyone’s day-to-day life.  You cannot steal.  You cannot murder.  You cannot peddle child pornography.  These are laws of our land and we live by them every day.  You can murder someone, but there is a penalty to pay.  Life is sacred, the innocence of children is sacred and marriage should be sacred as well.  Go ahead and live in whatever sin you wish, just don’t ask me to condone it or vote that you should be allowed special privileges to do it.  I don’t feel sorry that the government doesn’t allow someone to steal my car (as if anyone would steal my car, but that’s another entry).  I expect to be protected.  45 states already have definitions of marriage as being a contract between one man and one woman, so really it is representative of the majority of the states.  When was Democracy ever “minority rules?”

The last thing is love.  I think it will probably shock almost every one of my readers to find out that I believe that gay people can be as much “in love” as straights.  Christians, Pseudo-Christians and Christian-Wannabes have allowed love and especially marriage to be cheapened to the point where this conversation is even necessary.  The big problem is Christians.  The harder-core the Christian, the more at fault.  “Umm…Herb, I thought YOU were a hard-core conservative Christian?”  I consider myself as such and I don’t think there is enough leadership in the basic Christian community in the area of instruction about marriage.  Christians have allowed divorce to become a rampant ill in our society by condoning it.  By not teaching, preaching and preparing people for what marriage is supposed to be about you have set them up for failure.

Love is not a twitterpated, giddy feeling of attraction to a person, although that can lead to true love.  True love is a decision.  It is a conscious, committed, decision that grows stronger and stronger the more it is tested; even when the “twitterpation” has been worn down by dirty diapers at three in the morning, the Bible lets us know that we can set our affections.  We can choose who and/or what to love.  It is deeper than a feeling.  “Oh, I just couldn’t help myself falling in love” is really not true.  You felt attracted to that person, maybe by their wit or looks or charm or the way they looked at you, and it led you to want to be closer to them.  Of course it is not always a conscious decision; a couple of lonely people are attracted to each other in some way and immediately decide then and there that if that person will have them, they will stay with them through thick and thin, but it is the commitment part that is love, the setting of affection on that one person forever no matter what, not the goosebumps you feel when their hand touches yours.  That all works into it of course, but the bottom line is that love is that decision to stay forever.  Christians are only allowed to dissolve a marriage in the event of adultery and Jesus even said that that was because of the hardness of an unforgiving heart.  Christians have made this teaching worthless by making all manner of frivolous exceptions.  While there can be situations where divorce is unavoidable, much of the divorce that goes on in our country could be considered frivolous.  For example, a situation where a man (I use the term loosely) sleeps around on his wife and abuses her emotionally is not, in my opinion, frivolous.

That being said, one person can, in fact, set their affections on another and commit to stay with them and be loyal to them for the rest of their life.  This does not mean that it is any less of a sin or that I have to condone it.  God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve or Eve and Louise or Adam and Eve and Steve and Louise.  When God made the first man he took a rib from the side of man, not from his head to be above him or his foot to be beneath him, but a rib from the side of him, to create a helper for him (and most men need help from a woman, believe me) to be with him.  It was only one rib and even after the fall of man, God did not create another woman for Adam.  They were to stay together, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”  In our promiscuous society we often forget that a woman and a man are supposed to “save themselves” for marriage and the act of consummation is supposed to bind the two together in the same manner, to become one.

Marriage between one man and one woman forever is what God intended; what is commonly called “The Nuclear Family” is how God created it.  Of course Hollyweird has tried to cheapen and mock this teaching by making everything okay and Christians who know nothing about their Bible or even their own religion fall prey to their machinations.  The Marriage Definition Amendment is only one step in saving our society from itself.  Christians need to re-learn their own teachings, what they are and what they mean.

Remember, the Good Book says, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Coming next, The Flag Burning Amendment