Making Marriage "Gay"?

Okay, warning: If you're not into socio-political dialogue, skip this one. The topic has been so prevalent on my FB page that I had to answer at length, and FB doesn't really allow for that...

Before we can talk about "Gay," or Homosexual marriage, we must first define many other words we take for granted, for which we all have different meanings. I begin to see Wittgenstein's dilemma when I approach this, because some have defined a word like "love" so loosely that it can mean pretty much anything anyone wants. Some reduce it to just a feeling, which leaves it vulnerable to sudden appearances and disappearances. If someone said they loved me, but then didn't, then did, then didn't, I would hardly call that anything but a self-centered and self-serving love, and thus, for my definition, not love at all. Many marriages today engage in this kind of love. Some say love is merely a choice - we choose to love and we choose to do so despite advantage or disadvantage to oneself. This is a much better definition of love, as one of my favorite Scriptures points out: "God demonstrated his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

For my definition, love must be a choice, but it must also be a saving, redeeming love. In marriage, Paul gives us this definition: "Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her." (emphasis mine). A godly example of love is self-sacrificing, not just for the heck of it, but toward a goal, as the verse goes on to state: "...so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless." (From Ephesians 5:25-27, NASB) Even if you take the "religion" out of this statement, I believe it gives the highest definition of love for mankind, the one we ought especially to strive for in marriage.

Given this definition, what is marriage? Is it culturally-determined? Does government define it for us? Or do we all get to choose for ourselves? To answer this, we must first ask the question everyone dodges: Who gets to decide on morality for society? Many of my friends, whose opinions I respect but vehemently disagree with, state that relgion is out. "Separation of church and state," they say. Despite the ignorance of that phrase displayed by those who use it to toss out all vestiges of religion in the public square (ask me, if you dare), I'll go with that because, quite simply, that is where our society is at. We have kicked God completely out of public discourse, primarily so that we may become our own gods, determining for ourselves what is right according to our own whims.

Now before you attack that, let's examine it. Put simply, if we take God out of the equation, and therefore all references to Scriptural morality (of any faith), where does morality come from? The ONLY answer you can rightly give is that it comes from societal fiat. Our culture, our society, our peer groups, our government, get the final say in what is and is not moral. Now (especially you, AK), remember that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You cannot throw God out and then act as if there is a higher morality to which you can point to save your bacon in an argument. You cannot say that what today is right is always right! Gay rights may be okay today, but society may reject them tomorrow. If society decides morality, then that defines truth. If truth changes according to societal whim, you must also agree that it is okay for it to change, even if you don't like the changes.

If there is no moral law-giver, God, then there is no moral law, no fixed place in the universe from which morality derives. So where does it come from? Again, the only place the atheist, agnostic or advocate of church-state separation can go is to themselves and to society at large. You cannot point to a transcendent Truth if you take away the concept of God, and ergo, religion. Our country has decided to take the path of least resistance, i.e., no God, therefore no Truth, and has been stuck with the constantly flailing whims of truth that man, through his societal structures, namely government, forces on us to some degree or another.

Now, given that we are at the point of whimsical, day-to-day morality, let us look at marriage anew. Since no God decreed marriage is okay, society must decide (in his stead) who may marry and who may not. Anytime you make a law of inclusion, you automatically make a law of exclusion. If, for instance, society determines that gays can marry, as well as heterosexuals, then why not polygamists? If we end up including polygamists, why not pedophiles? After all, 12-14 year olds used to commonly marry many years ago in various societies. Who will society include or exclude today?

And while we are legislating inclusion, let us look at the Civil Rights debate, since it is so heavily relied upon to support homosexual marriage - because we all know that gays are being kicked out of restaurants, denied jobs, expelled from schools, and hung from trees, just like African-Americans during their struggle for rights. And we also know that gays are genetically predisposed (lack of evidence to support it be damned) to their state of being, just like African-Americans. Let us ignore the fact that blacks cannot "decide" not to be black. Let us ignore the fact that many people are genetically predisposed to many dysfunctions, such as alcoholism, violence, cancer, etc., and let us therefore say that gays don't truly need to seek whether or not their predispostion, despite all historical and medical evidence to the contrary, should gain consideration as a dysfunction, rather than a proper function. Let us ignore that fact that everything in nature, which would be the only other avenue toward which one could look for moral example, screams against permanent union between two men or two women. In fact, nature has far more evidence that polygamy is a proper function than it does for homosexuality, so the person supporting gay marriage, but not polygamist marriage, is stuck in a logical fallacy. (I would call it hypocrisy, but that would imply a transcendent morality.)

Now, it has been suggested that polygamy is somehow given license in the Bible. I will dismiss that quickly by pointing out that in every case of Biblical polygamy there have been dire, ugly consequences to the obvious example given us in Genesis of the one man-one woman marriage covenant. In fact, in every case in which God speaks of marriage in the Bible, He speaks of it as a one man-one woman union, and never in any other sense. Those wishing to address this to debunk religious moral arguments are not on solid groung, especially if they don't wish to tangle with the obvious exreme prohibitions against homosexuality in any form found in Scripture. But, alas, we are left without an argument against polygamy because we have tossed out religion out of hand, denying that, even leaving God out of the picture, it might contain historical evidence that shows us both polygamy and homosexuality are illogical (again, we cannot say immoral).

So then, what is marriage and who can do it? Well, taken to a LOGICAL conclusion, any consenting adult can do it, and really can do so in any number or combination. We could have a communal marriage, with multiple males and females in such a contract, in this case. Who has the moral right to stop them, if there is no true morality? It will take time for this group to get their voice heard amongst all of the Civil Rights causes out there, but who could honestly stop such an arrangement, if they all love one another? If commitment is the key to marriage, then shouldn't ANYONE willing to commit be allowed to do so? Shouldn't we get our laws off their bodies, keep the government out of their lives and let them live as they have decided? Logically, the pro-homosexual marriage advocate has no voice in this debate.

So, if ANYONE can marry, how about if we define that arbitrary word, "Adult?" Who is an adult? Is there a test we take, like a driver's license test? No. It's an arbitrarily chosen number, typically 18. Why not 10? Why not at the point at which the body is able to produce children? Why not 5? Who will decide? Society, at their whim, apparently. There are groups out there right now sponsoring legislation nation-wide to get the "age of consent" reduced to 14. They would go lower if it weren't so universally intolerable right now, but how long will it take to change that tolerance level? A generation? Two? So, what today is thought intolerable may yet be practiced tomorrow. And it won't be "wrong," just considered illogical by past (and therefore defunct) generations.

Ravi Zacharias tells of a time when he was confronted at a symposium with a complete denial of the existence of a transcendent morality. In shocking reply, he asked the young man if he, Ravi, brought a baby on stage and mutilated before the audience, would that man believe what he had done to be immoral. The young man replied with good logic from an amoral perspective: "I would not like what you have done, but I could not say that it was immoral."

There are no two ways about it. We are fighting a war in our own country, not against radical Islam or creeping Socialism, but between those who believe morality comes from a fixed point in space versus those who, whether they know it or not, believe it does not. On the one hand, there are those who believe in Truth, meted out only in the form of religious writings from a God it is claimed we can know. On the other hand are those who believe they know morality when they see it, but who in one generation will define it and in the next completely redefine it. One group stay true to one set of mores no matter what our whimsical and lascivious desires bring, while the other may easily be bent toward their lusts, because it is now within their power to define morality for themselves. In the latter, if you can just get enough of the population to agree that what you are doing is somehow harmless to them, you change morality entirely. In the former, there is a fixed place whence morality comes, and all the caprice and impulse of man cannot change it - and we must adopt laws that more or less conform to that standard, rather than setting our own.

From the excesses of Greek Philosophy, to the corruption of the Roman Senate; from the abuse of children in northern Thailand to the slavery of children in China; we see the results of the passing fancies of man's law. The killing fields of Pol Pot, the Stalinist purges, even Hitler's final solution, all come from a mind devoid of God or His decrees. We believe we can put a leash on the beast, contain it, manage it with our strength, but Pandora was unable to gather again what she had released, and we will also suffer the consequences of our own, arbitrary morality in this decision to call good what for millenia has been pressed back into the dark corners of disgrace. Our limited understanding of the whole, tainted because someone we "like" is gay and we desire happiness for them in their life as they define it, has made us impotent to truly love one another. For love does not let another travel a destructive path. Sacrificial love does not bend fixed morality so that someone may enjoy the darkened mind and hardened heart that has reduced itself to wading in its own dysfunction.

Marriage is a fixed idea in Truth, with a fixed definition and a form and function that only works when practiced within that truth. Every deviation will fail to bring about the fullness of true Marriage. Our biggest problem started decades ago when we decided that Marriage was a contract, not a covenant. A contract is not love, it is demands, or self-love. A covenant is love. A covenant loves selflessly, claiming, "I will do my all in this relationship, regardless of whether you do yours." "...and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her...." This is the eternal model we have for Marriage, for Love, for Truth. If we toy with it, with our own lusts and fancies, it will die where it is wrongly practiced. Only that Marriage, fixed before God and acted upon as a covenant, will stand the test of time and eternity.

I pray your Marriage is a covenant, standing against all odds because it is fixed in a Truth that transcends your momentary emotions or societal trends. I cannot pray that for those who redefine Truth to fit their own desires.