Category Archives: Gay Marriage

The New Delusional Times

Rational people are pulling their hair out over the same-sex “marriage” ruling by the Supreme Court. It defies all common sense and law. The one thing about marriage that has always been true is that the two getting married were not the “same”. While its supporters celebrate as if the matter is finally settled the truth is that it has not settled anything. In fact, it has only served to stir the pot. It has started a war. All groups supporting natural marriage, and Christian groups particularly, have been galvanized in a way not previously possible. Heretofore, there was a glimmer of hope in the minds of some that SCOTUS might do the right thing so the issue was mentally sort of set aside. Those who watch the Court closely predicted otherwise based upon Justice Kennedy’s past actions and the expectations of the four liberal-Democrat appointed Justices. With the reality of the ruling, there is now no middle ground on which to stand. You are either for natural marriage or for the unnatural mockery that the Court imposed by judicial fiat.

“Welcome to . . . the show where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.”

While all of the sound arguments have been and still remain on the side of natural marriage, the wave of irrational and emotional thinking among the movers and shakers supporting SSM has gained the upper hand at the moment. We live in delusional times when the coupling of two men can be considered the same as the coupling of a man and a woman. It is an absurdity that boggles the rational mind since it defies natural biology, all of marriage history, all of common law history, and the Constitution itself (see my previous article). Even the fact that the states voted 32-2 to support one-man-one-woman marriage and the fact that polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans still think marriage should be between one man and one woman it simply didn’t matter in the wake of the political and media emotionally-charged onslaught.

Argue Not With a Fool

In light of these facts, I would encourage my fellow Christians to not waste much time in debate with supporters of unnatural marriage. For them, it was never about doing the right thing. It was always about pushing a twisted agenda. Had they sought legitimacy they would have respected the democratic process and gained victories where they could until the groundswell was such that all the states adopted their position. But legitimacy was never the goal. The goal was to get “gay marriage” by hook or by crook. The will of the people be damned. That is exactly what was accomplished. It took bullying tactics, lies, propaganda, distortion, circumvention of the voters, and a corrupt judicial majority in order to win. There is nothing noble about that type of perverse and intellectually vacant victory but the supporters do not care. Because of that, it is simply ridiculous to argue with them.

Argue Where It Counts

There are a few people on the margins that really had never invested much thought in this matter until now. It has become a topic that our church youth group wanted to discuss. This is a great time to explain that the Bible condemns homosexual acts as sins that lead to eternal damnation. It is a great time to talk about sexual restraint. That is a topic with which our world doesn’t want to deal. The world is all about sexual license, excess, and normalizing perversions. But the Bible teaches a very restrained form of sexuality. Sex is limited to only a husband and wife. Every other form of sexual encounter is considered “sexual immorality” and leads to the same sad fate as those who practice homosexuality. It is also a time to teach that God loves people with homosexual temptations and desires to redeem them along with everyone else. Homosexuality is not the unforgivable sin and the homosexual person should be allowed to join the church just like anyone else. This is a group with which the arguments can be persuasive and it is important to teach sound church doctrine on sexual ethics regardless of the SCOTUS ruling.

Similarly, there are immature Christians in the church who have never really faced this issue square on. Now they have to decide which way to go. Those are worthy conversations to have. But the guy with the rainbow flag; the lady who thinks it is about “equality”; the co-worker who says “love wins” or the Facebook friend who put a rainbow over their profile picture is not a good investment of your time and energy. The art of critical thinking and sound argumentation does not abide in such people. They are the emotional “sound bite” type who think with their feelings rather than their minds. In Transgenderism, New Coke, Snake Oil, and other Dumb Ideas I have suggested that other approaches are more persuasive to that audience.

Rational Solutions

Delusional times call for rational answers because reality is still real even if the population is deluded. A drunken man is in no less danger of death trying to cross a city street simply because he believes he is in possession of his faculties and using good judgment. We, the sober-minded adults in the room, still must attempt to constrain the deluded and shield as many as we can from danger. Like drunks, there is no doubt that they will continue to lash out at us as they have in the past, maddened with power, and emboldened now by their shallow victory. The truth is that those people engaging in homosexual acts are still engaging in sexual practices that are unhealthy for the body, mind, and soul. The Bible still labels it a sin, tells us it is the sign of a depraved mind, and it will end in divine condemnation. God made the human body and he has made his mind known to us regarding sexual activity. It is up to us to conform to his will. He is highly discriminatory and totally intolerant to unrepentant sin. That is truth. So remember that the next time you pray, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

God, injustice, and gay marriage

God Hates Injustice

One does not have to read very far into the Bible to understand that God hates injustice. Humanity is warned in the second chapter of the Bible not to eat from the forbidden fruit. Yet, in the very next chapter the fruit is eaten and God imposes His justice.

The prophets are quite emphatic about justice. It seems that the rich and powerful were corrupting justice (imagine that!). Merchants were using scales set to rob their clients. The poor, the widowed, and the orphaned were exploited and robbed.

 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

Isaiah 10:1-2

It is from passages such as these that we know that God hates the Obergefell v. Hodges gay marriage decision giving a veil of legality to the mockery that is homosexual “marriage”. This decision is in the category of “unjust laws” which Isaiah describes.

Against the Constitution

As the minority correctly noted, this decision had nothing to do with the Constitution. It was completely lawless. In fact, just two years prior the same court split the same way over the DOMA law (Defense of Marriage Act) where the majority argued that the Supreme Court had traditionally left almost everything about defining marriage up to the individual states. Had there been any consistency within the Court it would have dismissed this case as being unworthy of hearing on the grounds that the states have historically been left to define marriage on their own. In fact, 32 states had defined marriage on their own and decided it was between a man and woman. Two states recently had decided by vote to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples. The process was at work.

This ruling is judicial activism at its worst (see Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon’s insightful comments). It usurps the democratic process put forth by the states and it usurps the development and passage of law through the congressional branch and the legislative branch. As such, it is” legislating from the bench” which is fundamentally unconstitutional. Such bad laws have been overlooked in the past, such as the Dred Scott decision. Abraham Lincoln acted as if it didn’t exist. The Supreme Court is only one-third of the government and yet in the 20th century it has been granted the imaginary power of supreme authority. It was not so in the beginning and never intended to be so by our Founders. This is simply an unconstitutional decision in abeyance of the law which was made for the purpose of pushing a social agenda.

Against History

In addition, there is no support for homosexual marriage in any country in all of human history prior to the late 20th century. It is one of the universal truths that marriage has always been between a heterosexual couple or in the case of polygamists between a heterosexual male or female and their heterosexual wives or husbands. In either event it was a coupling of heterosexuals together. Marriage was not created in the United States. It was not created by any government. It developed as an arrangement between parents for their children and was simply recognized by governments over time. The number of people and the age for marriage have been somewhat fluid across cultures but the fact that marriage was a heterosexual affair was never questioned. So to flout all of human history shows the arrogance of the majority and their complete divorce from the evidence of the universal worldwide precedence. .

Against Biology

Similarly, the Court proclaimed that there is no fundamental difference between males and females. A male or female marriage partner can be interchanged at will. The idea that anal or oral intercourse is the same as vaginal intercourse is bizarre. Only one has procreative powers. Only one provides gender complementarity. It is even more bizarre than Bruce Jenner claiming he has become female with a few nips and tucks, some makeup, and a new wardrobe. This decision is an abomination of the biology of the human body on par with a man claiming that he is a deciduous tree. In any sane world this would be considered crazy and its advocates certifiably insane. There is a basic biological component to marriage that has always existed. Couples married with the primary intent and expectation of raising a family and providing themselves as models for future generations. “I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad” is a line from a song but it expresses the way children learn from their parents and shape their expectations and goals for the future. Homosexuality is a dead-end street in this regard. There is no “next generation” without heterosexuality. Such “marriage” is removed from the possibility of naturally producing any children which means that legal benefits and selfish sexual lusts are the only reasons remaining to justify the marriage. So the Court decided, without any biological credibility, to proclaim a rural dead-end street the same thing as an urban super-highway.

Against Religions

Marriage has historically been valued across every major religion. Why? Because they have recognized that the family unit was crucial to sustaining society. This has been so widely agreed upon that we can call it a fundamental and universal religious tenet. The Judeo-Christian religions and their offshoots have held that it was the Divine will of God since creation for men and women to marry. Religions that recognized the New Testament as authoritative have even limited marriage to that of a single man and a single woman. It is upon this model that Western civilization has turned. To turn away from the sound advice of such broad religious history is ill-advised at best and diabolical at it worst. In fact, with this Court, it seems that diabolical is the best description because it contravened Western civilization’s fundamental religious doctrine that homosexuality should not be practiced, drew it up from the gutter, glorified it, and raised it to the same level as traditional marriage. When religious people across denominations and theisms agree that traditional marriage is a good and noble thing the Court should pay attention. But attention is the last thing in which this Court was interested. Had they paid attention to the religious community, to the biology, to the heterosexual nature of marriage, or to the Constitution they would have unanimously ruled to support traditional marriage. Instead, the majority decided to legalize perversion. It’s not marriage. It is a mockery at every level and the height of injustice.  “Woe to those who make unjust laws.”  God is not pleased.

Of Wisdom and Foolishness

The realm of comedy for making political statements and shaping public opinion has long been dominated by the liberal left. It makes sense. Conservatives are more straight-laced and serious and therefore easy targets. But as Jay Leno demonstrated in the weeks before stepping down from the Tonight Show, heavily criticizing liberal politicians and social policy can draw exceedingly high ratings. So the sword cuts both ways; it is just that fewer people swing the sword leftward.

Comedic talents on the political right include Rush Limbaugh and his parodist cohort, Paul Shanklin, as successes but most other attempts have been weak or failed, whether they be in TV or movies. Nevertheless, it is a growing trend among those on the right to parody and poke fun at those on the left in an attempt to turn the tables to some degree. Where intellectual arguments are most often met with failure, the poignant punchline can prick the pickle, so to speak, sometimes.

Leftward logic and humor tend to be heavily dominated by mockery, derision, hostility, often lots of foul language, and a strong play on emotions. Shallow arguments based emotion and stirring rhetoric are called sophistry, a form of false wisdom. Rightward thinking people tend to use actual logic (like noting that men and women were made for sexual union and same-sex couples were not) but this escapes the leftward thinker. Rightward thinkers also tend to not play on emotions as successfully as leftward thinkers do, probably because they are less emotionally driven than their counterparts. We who engage in apologetics readily admit emotionally driven people are the most irrational we encounter. One person who commented on the cartoon below was happy to tell me that he hated Christians because of the Christian stance against homosexual marriage.  I asked him if he also hated Orthodox Jews and Muslims, but never got a response. Oddly enough, he said he was a Christian and somehow that allowed him to feel free to hate his fellow Christians.  Hate for fellow Christians isn’t a Christian value, but perhaps he’s not read the Bible yet. We can consider him logically challenged. His emotions clearly overwhelm his reasoning faculties.

So it is with so many who claim to be Christians and yet deny core church doctrines on marriage and homosexual sin. It’s doctrine à la carte day in Christianville!  “I’ll have a little sin please, but leave off the homosexual sin. I just don’t like the way it tastes. Too gritty or something.  A touch of adultery would be fine, though. And I’ll need a little drunkenness to go with that. Oh, and not too much Hell this time around either. Grace? Yes, I’ll have a heaping helping of grace! Pour it over the mashed potatoes and false doctrine, please.”

The cartoon below appeared on the Facebook page of a very liberal former student. It is sophistry.  It attempts to mock parental concern about homosexual marriage. The inference one is to draw from this is that children don’t care about homosexual marriage so no one else should care about it either. It is dismissed with a cookie as if the topic were utterly irrelevant. However, because a child finds things irrelevant doesn’t mean that they actually are irrelevant.  Thus, my muse was struck and I proposed a more witty and realistic follow-up conversation following the child getting a cookie. As a father of four, I have some experience in such matters.  But, shockingly, my liberal friend and his friends on Facebook (all but one) did not find my sense of humor all that amusing. Therefore, feeling under appreciated, as a humorist, I have posted the cartoon and my witty rejoinder here, where I trust it will be more highly valued (wink, wink) by a more general audience.

gay-marriageAfter the Cookie
Then, when the child gets his cookie he asks, “But how are babies made without a mommy and daddy?”

The biological father gets to answer, “Oh babies come from lots of places. Sometimes they’re found at a godless, secular adoption agency (because Catholic adoption services and those like them were closed since they had religious objections to homosexual marriage). Other times they are made in a lab test tube because gay marriage is unnatural marriage. It can’t produce children but sometimes people like to pretend there’s no difference! You’ve played pretend before haven’t you?”

The gender-specific-male child replies, “Yes! We used to pretend that there was a monster under the couch and it would eat me if I put my foot on the floor. But I’m too old for that now. Is it something like that, daddy?” to which the naturally male father who conceived the child with his naturally female mother says, “Something like that son. There’s also a cabbage patch option and a stork delivery system, too. But we can talk about that later. “

Glancing down at his cookie and 2% farm fresh milk from a cow naturally conceived by a male and female bovine, the son thoughtfully says, “But my friend Johnny says it’s wrong for boys to marry boys.” “Oh, really, son?” the natural father replies, “Why does he say that?” The young progeny replies, “Because his dad said that God says it’s wrong. And his dad says that God made marriage for boys and girls and that it’s a sin if you do it wrong.”

Dad (the male complement to a mom) replies, in his [note the use of the male pronoun “his” which is opposite of the female pronoun “her”] great wisdom, “Like I said, sometimes adults like to play pretend. Sometimes adults like to pretend boys marrying boys is the same as natural marriage – like when a boy marries a girl, the way Johnny’s dad said God designed it. And sometimes adults like to pretend that it isn’t a sin. That way they feel better about themselves.”

“Why don’t they feel good about themselves, daddy?” the boy asks. “Well,” says dad, “it’s because the Bible that Johnny’s dad reads says they will go to Hell if they don’t stop sinning.”  Puzzled, the boy asks, “What is Hell, dad?” “Oh,” adds the father, “it is a terribly hot place run by a bad guy and his army of bad people where people go when they die if they’ve not done what God said they should do. Kind of like, . . . Cuba. So if they pretend it’s not sin, then they can have all their fun and live guilt-free!”

The sexually conceived male offspring now replies, “I thought when you got big you quit playing pretend, daddy.” Wisely the biological father now says, “You should, son, you should.” The boy responds, “Gay marriage sounds dumb.” The conjugally married male parent responds, “I knew you’d figure it out son. Way to go! I knew your mother’s genes weren’t that bad. Have another cookie.”