Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Protecting Marriage
George Bush has decided to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. According to cnn.com, Bush said in his Saturday radio address,
Now, I find his contention that marriage can't be cut off from its religious roots interesting for two reasons: 1) In the U.S., people can choose to have civil weddings that have nothing to do with religion. 2) Some Christian denominations allow gay marriage.
It's the second point that often gets overlooked in the media, when "Christian" is often treated as synonymous with "conservative." I was married nearly seven years ago in a Quaker Meeting in Central Pennsylvania. It was a religious ceremony without an officiant. (Traditional Quakers have no religious leaders; the congregation ministers to each other.) The State College Friends Meeting also allows gay couples to marry. As far as I'm concerned, those couples are as married as I am--same place, same process, same marriage certificate at the end. As far as the state is concerned, though, I'm married, and they're not. The government sanctions some religious marriages and not others.
I agree with Bush, though, that marriage provides the best environment for raising children. There's a reason I waited until I was married to raise a child. It makes me sad that children of gay and lesbian parents cannot experience the benefit of being raised within a stable marriage.
But people persist in believing that gay relationships will somehow undermine straight ones. As a straight married woman, I don't understand that. My marriage is strong because I'm committed to it, not because only people like me can get married.
In the gospels, Jesus does speak about a threat to marriage: divorce. He is unambiguous on this point: "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery" (Matthew 5:31-32); "And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery" (Mark 10:11-12).
It always mystifies me when I read these words, because it seems like everyone (except the Catholic church) completely ignores them. We have plenty of elected and religious leaders in the U.S. who have been remarried or who have married divorced people, and no one publicly calls them adulterers. I honestly don't understand: Why do people ignore those words and focus instead on something Jesus doesn't even mention? If people are so concerned about taking the Bible literally and preserving the sanctity of marriage, why are there no constitutional amendments to ban remarriage among straight people? Do most people tacitly acknowledge that marriage has changed since the time of Jesus? Or are they just not reading the Bible?
Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society.
Now, I find his contention that marriage can't be cut off from its religious roots interesting for two reasons: 1) In the U.S., people can choose to have civil weddings that have nothing to do with religion. 2) Some Christian denominations allow gay marriage.
It's the second point that often gets overlooked in the media, when "Christian" is often treated as synonymous with "conservative." I was married nearly seven years ago in a Quaker Meeting in Central Pennsylvania. It was a religious ceremony without an officiant. (Traditional Quakers have no religious leaders; the congregation ministers to each other.) The State College Friends Meeting also allows gay couples to marry. As far as I'm concerned, those couples are as married as I am--same place, same process, same marriage certificate at the end. As far as the state is concerned, though, I'm married, and they're not. The government sanctions some religious marriages and not others.
I agree with Bush, though, that marriage provides the best environment for raising children. There's a reason I waited until I was married to raise a child. It makes me sad that children of gay and lesbian parents cannot experience the benefit of being raised within a stable marriage.
But people persist in believing that gay relationships will somehow undermine straight ones. As a straight married woman, I don't understand that. My marriage is strong because I'm committed to it, not because only people like me can get married.
In the gospels, Jesus does speak about a threat to marriage: divorce. He is unambiguous on this point: "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery" (Matthew 5:31-32); "And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery" (Mark 10:11-12).
It always mystifies me when I read these words, because it seems like everyone (except the Catholic church) completely ignores them. We have plenty of elected and religious leaders in the U.S. who have been remarried or who have married divorced people, and no one publicly calls them adulterers. I honestly don't understand: Why do people ignore those words and focus instead on something Jesus doesn't even mention? If people are so concerned about taking the Bible literally and preserving the sanctity of marriage, why are there no constitutional amendments to ban remarriage among straight people? Do most people tacitly acknowledge that marriage has changed since the time of Jesus? Or are they just not reading the Bible?
posted by Tess | 8:24 AM
4 Comments:
I'm sorry if my comment comes off as too harsh, but I have lost patience with right-wing Christians in this country. Here we are facing an immoral war of choice initiated by a President that most of them supported, followed by a brutal occupation in which civilians are being massacred by our soldiers at Haditha and elsewhere. We live in a system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and even millions of working poor Americans cannot afford the health insurance they need to sustain their lives. In global warming, we are facing the greatest environmental catastrophe in human history, which will require that we truly love and care for one another all around the world to avoid mass starvation and homelessness. Poverty, materialism, greed, inequality, violence, and the slaughter of civilians--these are moral issues of the highest level that we are faced with in the world today. And yet, many right-wing Christians have supported a U.S. government that completely fails on every single one of them.
And then they have the nerve, the insufferable gall to turn around and start blabbering about "moral issues" by trying to ban two people who love each other from making a lifelong commitment? In the face of all the great moral problems in the world today, they want to scapegoat a marginalized group of people who already face rampant discrimination and sometimes even become the victims of hate-filled violence themselves?
This isn't morality, and it isn't Christian. I am tired of this charade and I won't take it anymore. Right-wing Christians who demand that America "protect marriage"--which sounds more like protecting some patriarchial version of marriage to me--have gone way too long bashing gays, feminists, and liberals to cover their own sins and complicity in the unjust economic system and immoral violence perpetrated by the Republican Party which most of them have supported.
And it's time for us to call them on it.
I find it frustrating that such a blatant Bible passage about divorce - in two different, equally clear verses - is given less credit than the considerably more vague wording right-wingers can find against homosexuality.
And by banning gay marriage, they intend to make it harder for the majority of gay couples who want to be in a committed, stable, pro-society sort of relationship (the kind the right extols as being the domain of straight couples alone) to do so.
I do not find gay couples offensive. I find bed-hopping serial divorcing straight couples offensive. Because, you know, marriage #4 is their one true love for all eternity. Sure it is...
CL, I agree--sometimes I have a hard time understanding the far-right Christian perspective. I'm trying, because I believe we need to love our neighbors even if they're on the other side of the political spectrum, but some rhetoric makes my brain hurt, and some of it makes me angry.
LS, as someone who wasn't given a particularly thorough Christian education, I find it very interesting to read the Bible. When, as a high school teacher, I taught parts of Genesis in the creation story unit, I was fascinated to see the differences in interpretation between the "churched" and "unchurched" students. Students who had been brought up Christian brought many extratextual ideas to the story--the fruit was an apple, for instance, or the snake was the devil. They tended to skim over some of the weirder stuff (the end of the Noah story, for example), while the "unchurched" students were very curious about those parts.
I was disappointed that none of my readers could give me the traditional Christian explanation for the divorce passages, because I'm really curious--why don't Christians consider remarried people adulterers?
Can't help you with that last point from a personal point of view because I am not a Christian. But based on human nature, I might suggest that few people want to take an unpopular, holier than thou attitude about the subject. And then there's the ominous tug that no marriage can be seen as 100% safe and sound. Who wants to go around making enemies of divorced people - insisting on referring to them as adulterers - when the scenario might take place closer to home some day... glass houses and all that. I might think it and find certain remarriages / relationships hypocritical and distasteful, but I rarely say so. They are not doing harm to me, personally, so I keep my mouth shut. I do speak up, however, when idiots point their crusading fingers at my gay friends or when they cite instances of gay couples who have broken up - as if one "divorced" celebrity gay couple justifies banning marriage for all homosexuals. Grrr...
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