From Newsweek‘s article this week on gay marriage:
Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.
The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. “It is better to marry than to burn with passion,” says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.
Or, broken down another way, this list of how the law should read if we really wanted to have Traditional Biblical Marriages:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)
Ah, traditional, Biblical, Scriptural marriage. Ain’t it grand?
Not, of course, that the social conservatives who argue that gay marriage would be wrong because it’s not “traditional’ or “Biblical” probably don’t mean any of these things. Well, probably not. But it does raise the issue of why, then, they feel free to pick and choose what makes a “traditional, Biblical, Scriptural” marriage and what can now be safely ignored.
If your personal belief says that gays shouldn’t marry, that’s your prerogative. Feel free to not marry someone of the same gender as you are. But don’t wrap yourself up in Scripture and call yours the only truly Christian position; Scriptural description of what sort of relationships were not only blessed but prosperous in the Old Testament is nothing like the Ozzie & Harriet world that the Christian Right would have us believe we should be living in.
Transfer of highly sensitive documents to North American contacts.
As you will probably be aware that here in Canada we now have a law allowing gay marriage. This law to a large extent was pushed by an extremely large gay community here in Quebec, Canada, where I live. Montreal especially is becoming a very large center for sexual deviants. It is not for nothing that the first ever world gay games were held in Montreal. This was a financial disaster for the province of Quebec and the city of Montreal.
This has not stopped the flow of sexual deviants coming into Quebec and specifically Montreal.
The next step in their program is to change the law that limits marriage between two people. Yes, logically, I suppose they have some claim, once they have removed the religious aspect from the marriage law; it is difficult to argue against them.
The plan is quite simple; they want to form family units of four people. Two lesbians and two homosexuals. This family unit will then revolve around sex for pleasure and sex for reproduction! I will leave it to your imagination to discover how this family concept would be carried out.
Without marriage based on the religious premise of uniting one man and one woman, can anyone see any real legal reason why this should not come about?
Please tell me their plan will not be realized, please!
Wow. So how has having a large gay community in Montreal and Quebec been a financial disaster?
It’s not at all clear to me that the Great Gay Plan is foursome households (though the evolution from gay marriage to legalized polyamory of various types is not beyond the pale, e.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/why-are-gay-marriage-advo_b_155476.html).
By the same token, it’s not something I would lose any sleep over. I don’t know how many people live in the house across street, which adults may be sleeping with which, or what they might be doing when they’re not sleeping. If they are happy and healthy and keep their lawn tidy, more power to them. Kids raised in a household with four adults would benefit from the same sort of extended family structure of multi-generational family homes.
That said, from a practical standpoint, I suspect (gut feeling, not based on any research) such relationships would be less stable than duos, simply because of human nature. That would raise increased issues of property division and child-support in the case of divorces.
But that’s just being pragmatic, and heaven knows a lot of even current straight two-person marriages don’t pass the pragmatism test.
So, again, I’m not particularly alarmed.
Dave, the post above strikes me as some sort of anti-gay robo-spam. FYI.
Yeah, but it was amusing enough to leave in place. And it wouldn’t be actually robotic with the TinyTuring protection, and there are no links in place, so …
I’d also not heard before that Montreal was a hotbed (so to speak) of gay conspiracy.