Got Milk? Equal Protection for "Gay and Lesbian People"

The newspaper headlines this morning said, "Iowa's Gay Marriage Ruling Today" and the editorial page invited readers to "Share your thoughts on the gay marriage ruling."

OK, I will.... Easier said than done. For me anyway.

How do you go about "sharing your thoughts" on "gay marriage"? Where do you start?

After reading the newspaper I looked up a couple of passages in the Bible (The Message by Eugene H. Peterson). Leviticus 18 is entitled "Sex."

Verse 22 says, Don’t have sex with a man as one does with a woman. That is abhorrent.

Then in Romans 1 Paul talks about people who knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

Part of what makes this whole "gay marriage" issue so controversial is the debate among religious scholars (the guys Jesus was so fond of) as to what the texts say & what they mean. Don't get me wrong. The proper interpretation and application of Scripture is important and not always easy to figure out.

On the other hand, some of the debate about the Bible's teaching on homosexuality may be like the disciples wondering what on earth “rising from the dead” meant. (Mark 9:9-10)

(Peter: "James? You think he actually meant he was going to die and then...?"
James, "C'mon, Peter! Are you KIDDING!")

In spite of what certain mainline folk would lead us to believe, the Bible (thus I believe God himself) is clear. Homosexual behavior is sin. This by no means ends the theological debate for many but for me it's clear. Problem is that a lot of newspaper readers with whom I might venture to "share my thoughts on the gay marriage issue" either don't see it the way I do or don't care what the Bible says.

So I read some more in order to say something other than, "There shouldn't be no gay marriage because God says so." Or, like the guy with the poster...

I went to Darrell Bock's blog and read his quite lengthy interaction with a 2008 Newsweek article on gay marriage.

http://blog.bible.org/bock/node/439

As I'm reading all this I kept wondering if I really understood what had actually happened at the Iowa Supreme Court so I went to the Des Moines Register online. Everybody was excited. People were twittering like crazy.

It was hard enough to understand what the article said (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090403/NEWS/90403010)

much less the 69 page opinion of the Iowa Supreme Court.

More websites looking for arguments...

I liked Maggie Gallagher's Institute for Marriage and Public Policy http://www.marriagedebate.com/
and Dinesh D'Souza's site, To The Source, http://www.tothesource.org/)

Before I knew it I had cut and pasted my way to an 18 page Word document. It's a lot easier for me to find articles, copy them and paste them into a document than it is to "share my thoughts" on gay marriage.

I kept coming back to the Court's opinion to understand what they had actually said.

Here's what I sent to the Register. These are my "thoughts" on "gay marriage" that I will "share" with you.

The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously decided that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The Court says “civil marriage” should not be limited to “a man and a woman” and that “gay and lesbian people” should have “full access to the institution of civil marriage.”

I agree with the intent of the ruling to give gays and lesbians equal protection under the law.

I don’t agree that "gay and lesbian people" should have “full access to the institution of civil marriage.”
I don’t agree because this requires changing the definition of marriage.
I don’t think you can broaden “civil marriage” to include “gay and lesbian people” without eventually including “three to five gay and lesbian people” or “polygamous people.”
Other laws could be written to give “gay and lesbian people” “equal protection” as couples without changing the meaning of marriage.
There are good reasons for limiting marriage to one man and one woman.
(How does homosexuality fit into Darwinian “survival of the fittest”? Would there be as much disease or poverty in the world if the only sexual activity was in a marriage of one woman and one man?)

I think there are moral absolutes.
I think, for example, that racism, genocide and rape are actually wrong for everyone everywhere.
I think homosexual activity and adultery are also wrong.
I think every human being deserves love and respect.
I think labels such as “gay,” “lesbian,” “straight,” or "homophobe" conceal as much as they reveal.