On why I imagine people who are against gay marriage are against it:

[xiphias]

Underneath the following cut tag are concepts which many people on my friends list may find offensive.

But who I'd REALLY like to hear from are people who ARE against gay marriage.

I'd like to put together an argument which, I suspect, may be a reason why people are against gay marriage. This is not an argument which I believe; rather, it is an argument which I can imagine which leads to the same conclusions that I perceive among people who are against gay marriage.

What I'd really love is if people who are against gay marriage would let me know if this argument is close to how you feel.

Anonymous commenting is on, and IP tracking is off. And I'm going to do something which I NEVER do on my LJ: if anyone gets nasty against people, I'm going to delete comments. I'm inviting people to say things which actually, in a real sense, are personal attacks against other people on my friends list.

In other words, if this works the way I hope it will, griffen, you, among other people, are not going to want to read it.

In Leviticus, gay sex is one of the ONLY forms of sex referred to as "an abomination". In Hebrew, it's a much stronger form of condemnation than any of the other things.

It is understood that people will, in their own private lives, make choices that you don't agree with. But to place legal government sanction on this act is to state that you agree with it.

Taking laws against sodomy off the books -- that's fine. By doing that, you are "agreeing to disagree". If it's an abomination, well, it's THEIR abomination, and you can live and let live. If they want to be public, and even have ceremonies -- that's, again, something where you can agree to disagree.

But by placing actual government sanction on such relationships -- that crosses the line between "not opposing" and "supporting". Allowing "abominations" to have the same status as REAL marriages, well, that gives marriages the same status as abominations. And THAT'S why it destroys marriage.

Even "civil unions" can be seen as a live-and-let-live compromise. But this -- putting a real marriage and an abomination in the same category? That calls into question the legitimacy of ALL marriages.

So -- people who are against gay marriage? Is this somewhat similar to how you think about it?

Comments

[brooksmoses]

If true, sigh indeed. Separation of church and state is important.

However, do you have a link to the results of that web search? The only case I can find references to appears to be the one discussed here, about halfway down the page, where a Methodist organization in New Jersey was successfully sued to require them to allow a pavilion they owned to be used for a same-sex marriage. The decision centered on the fact that the pavilion in question is part of a public grounds (also owned by the church) which was considered a "place of public accomodation" because it was normally rented out to anyone in the public who wanted to use it, for all sorts of non-church-related things. This judicial logic would not apply to churches, which are used only for church events and thus not "places of public accomodation". And it definitely wouldn't apply to requiring the church's pastor to take part in such an event. (Also, the fact that this was a state-recognized civil union, rather than an extralegal commitment ceremony, was not a factor in the decision -- it was simply about giving people access to the space. So prohibiting state recognition of such marriages wouldn't affect things.)

I did find a YouTube video from "Yes on 8" saying something about Methodists in Massachusetts getting sued; it had no details, and thus my inclination is to assume that it's referring to the same case after it's been through a few abridged retellings.

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, actually I'd read the Google summaries too fast (and was trying to post while someone was talking to me). Sorry about that.

The case I saw was the one in NJ, with commentary that the same was or would soon be happening in Massachusetts, but looking further at that blog was upsetting. If there was more detail I didn't get to it.

This: NPR article has pretty good coverage of the Methodist NJ case, and related ones.

[brooksmoses]

That was a rather thought-provoking article, yes. Thank you for finding and linking to it. (And no worries about the too-fast reading the first time; I do that too, and I can certainly appreciate not wanting to read upsetting blogs!)

I do think it's a fair argument that same-sex marriage is inextricably linked to legal enforcement of recognition of same-sex couples and prohibition of discrimination against them, and that this will have a lot of consequences that some people will find unpleasant and against their beliefs.

I would personally argue that that is going to happen regardless of whether it's "marriage" or "civil unions" (consider, for instance, that the NJ case wasn't marriage) or just same-sex couples with no legal recognition but wanting to adopt children, or anti-discrimination laws and same-sex couples merely existing -- and that allowing legal same-sex marriage at most hastens it along a little bit. But I do recognize that this is an argument and speculation rather than fact, and that it is reasonable to hold a differing opinion on the matter.