Also know that there are more arguments and points to be made that I did not include as an attempt to keep this from being 100 pages long. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to limit myself to the points I made below.
Finally, I respect you as a person and your opinions, and I would ask that you please show the same respect. If your thoughts are different than mine, I would urge you simply to consider these ideas:
"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them... The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."
When you call out a woman in a crowd or to her face by calling her a "murderer" because she had an abortion or supports abortion, does that change her mind? When you try to scare, shame, or bully someone into being "politically correct" and to see your side by calling them a bigot, intolerant, sick, homophobic, mean, hateful, or uneducated, does that change minds? People only seem to be tolerant of other people as long as they share the same opinion; and when someone else has a different opinion, suddenly they are intolerant or discriminatory. Don't be hypocritical by being intolerant of people that you think are intolerant.
The Religious Argument
Marriage is self-giving love to another person. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church.” What did He do for the Church? Sacrificed Himself. He gave Himself completely. Through His Resurrection, He gave us Eternal Life. He is the Giver of Life. He gave life to His Church, His spouse. Marriage is self-giving and life-giving.
Family and marriage have always been under attack. They are sacred and Satan hates the sacred. He hates that which brings joy, brings sacrifice, brings love that is directed to good and not to evil. Now let’s use our common sense to make another point. Satan is a fallen angel—an angel. These are special entities in Heaven, but God gave His humans something that angels do not have. Something that we can do that angels can’t. We can procreate. Through God’s will, we can reproduce and bring more life into existence. This is a gift that even His faithful angels do not have! Satan is jealous and he has been working forever not only to destroy life, but prevent it. The best and most fruitful place to make new life is in a family—and look especially in recent history, the attack on marriage and family! Divorce, cohabitation, pre-marital sex, infidelity, selfishness, and the complete sterilization of the marriage act. Abortion, contraception, voluntary sterilization—what a threat to families! Following our own will instead of God’s! Isn’t that Satan’s purpose? Satan continues to create a society where self-giving love and life are eliminated. Even heterosexual marriages have become selfish and sterile. Next are “marriages” that are sterile from the beginning. Total self-giving, reproduction, and the consummation of marriage are physically impossible with same-sex couples.
Furthermore, from a Christian perspective, a child who is not raised in a stable family environment, in a Domestic Church, will have a hard time grasping and accepting God. The mother-father marriage yields “fertile soil” that Jesus spoke of in order to understand God. To understand the love of an earthly father is to understand how our Father loves us. To understand the gentle nature of an earthly mother is to know how the Blessed Mother loves us. When you distort parenthood and make mothers and fathers interchangeable and obsolete, then you make God obsolete. You make His will obsolete. You make the Domestic Church obsolete: 1.Christ (husband), 2. Church (wife), and 3. us (children). Can you say that Jesus is obsolete? Can you say that the Church that He died for, that we even refer to as our Mother Church, which teaches us and guides us, can you say that she is obsolete? Can you say that we, God’s children, are obsolete?
Finally, to my gay Christian brothers and sisters, I oppose same-sex marriage because I love you. I can’t condone the sin of sexual abuse (sterile, self-gratification) outside of the true meaning of marriage any more than I would want you to condone my sins. I want you to love my soul and not my feelings, which is how I feel about you. We are brothers and sisters who have been called to hold each other accountable (“Am I my brother’s keeper?”) to help each other attain Heaven, instead of misguiding each other to thorny, dark roads.
Please, I urge you to read these two blogs from the perspective of a young, gay Christian. There is more to life than sex and there is a greater joy than a marriage can provide.
"An Open Letter to the Church from a Lesbian"
"To those of you who would change the church to accept the gay community and its lifestyle: you give us no hope at all...You are willing to compromise the word of God to be politically correct. We are not deceived. If we accept your willingness to compromise, then we must also compromise. We must therefore accept your lying, your adultery, your lust, your idolatry, your addictions, YOUR sins...We do not ask for your acceptance of our sins any more than we accept yours. We simply ask for the same support, love, guidance, and most of all hope that is given to the rest of your congregation. We are your brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not what we shall be, but thank God, we are not what we were. Let us work together to see that we all arrive safely home...." Read the rest here
"Gay, Catholic, and Doing Fine"
"Is it hard to be gay and Catholic? Yes, because like everybody, I sometimes want things that are not good for me. The Church doesn’t let me have those things, not because she’s mean, but because she’s a good mother....So, yes, it’s hard to be gay and Catholic — it’s hard to be anything and Catholic — because I don’t always get to do what I want. Show me a religion where you always get to do what you want and I’ll show you a pretty shabby, lazy religion. Something not worth living or dying for, or even getting up in the morning for." Read the rest here
The Secular Argument
Does everyone have the right to get married? Is it truly a “right” that when denied for certain reasons, is unjust discrimination? Are all of our “rights” the same, even when nature, genetics, or logic disqualify us to things we may want? Do we all have the "right" to get what we want, when we want it, and how we want it? For example, do we all have the right to play in the NFL, even if we may be a female or we have no athletic abilities? Do we all have the right to receive Native American scholarships for college, even if we are not Native American? When we are excluded from such things, is it true discrimination, or is it just reality? And must we be so all-inclusive for the sake of being “politically correct” that nature, rules, history, and guidelines mean nothing? When we seek to be so politically correct that, for instance, anyone can receive a Native American scholarship, doesn’t that degrade the original meaning and intent of the scholarship? Isn’t the scholarship now meaningless if I can receive it, even with no Native American blood in my body?
What is marriage? If we can't even agree about what marriage is, then how can we have a meaningful debate about "marriage equality?" In all this time, I haven’t heard any real answers from same-sex marriage supporters. Although, one answer that I did hear was, “Whatever they want it to be!” (Sad.) I have also heard of marriage defined as “a legal institution with legal rights and legal responsibilities.” So, the postal service is a marriage? A business is a marriage? That definition doesn't hold up. Finally, I have also heard of it simply described as “a bond between two people.” So, I have a bond with my parents. Does that make us married? I have a bond with many people. Does that make us all married? The government is not in the business of signing off on romantic or emotional feelings of two people. When will it become more than two people? And when will it become a "legal bond" between close family members? Who is to assume that it will remain solely between people? When you can’t face the true definition of marriage, then marriage truly does become “anything you want it to be!”
Redefining marriage redefines parenthood. Marriage creates the stable and self-giving bond of two adults for the rearing of children. Marriage is about the children. But when I say that marriage is about the children, it is for them and them only, and not for the adults to have some sort of "experience" or using children to fill some sort of void in their life. That is the selfish raising of children. Saying that two men or two women can marry and raise children is not right. As a sperm from a man and an egg from a woman are needed to make a child, it follows that every child has a mother and a father, and biologically they need both. Just like the strange argument for abortion comes from people who have already been born, so too do I see so many people support gay marriage who grew up with a mother and a father. Could you look to either of your parents and tell them you didn’t need them? That you didn’t learn anything from them? That you learned nothing specifically masculine or feminine from your father or mother? That nothing in your life would be lacking if you had only two of your mom or two of your dad?
In a world that is so hell-bent on “gender equality,” perhaps we have lost sight that what makes men and women different is beautiful and necessary! Men and women generally think differently, love differently, act differently, and teach differently, but in the end, together, they are balanced. A true marriage is one where the husband and wife look at each other and say, “You complete me.” Each knows that the other makes up for what lacks or what is flawed. This makes for the right environment to raise children. Marriage is for the children, not the adults.
Are there a lot of parentless children out there? Yes, unfortunately. But we know that because the parents gave life to the children instead of resorting to abortion, that they want good for their children. They want their children to be raised in a normal and happy life that they can’t provide themselves. They want each child to be with a mother and a father. And an orphan child will also tell you that they dream of having a “mommy and a daddy”--that is their right and it trumps anyone's right to be selfish. Unfortunately, even many heterosexuals don't get this, but still, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Why are children the afterthought? Does it not dawn on folks that the government’s primary interest in the “romantic relationship between a husband and wife” is because of children? Because of the prolongation of a nation? Because of the benefit of society? Because of the economic benefit from ever-replacing the workforce? The government does have a vested interest in a marriage because of its procreative and economic benefit, because a family is an essential cell of society, best-suited for raising children that will be good, contributing citizens. When you purposely change the cells, then you change society. The government is not interested in acknowledging purely romantic relationships between any persons because in the eyes of the government, for example, a boyfriend-girlfriend romantic relationship in junior high does not benefit society. The romantic relationship of a cheating husband and his mistress do not benefit society. The romantic relationship of man-boy love does not benefit society. Our capitalist government is interested, primarily, in one thing: money. Economic benefit. We are already running into the problem in America where people are not having enough children (you heard me, overpopulation theorists). Think about it. When families have limited themselves to zero or just one or two children, there is not enough replacement in the workforce, and not enough man-power and taxpayer money to support the aging population. (No wonder so many support euthanasia.. you’ve killed off or prevented so many of the young that there’s no one to take care of the old, so just get rid of them too..). Children are the primary concern in a marriage.
As I stated at the beginning, there are many more points that I did not address, but this blog covers a few of those points. In particular, and I will quote it here for those who always cry "hypocrisy!" over sterile same-sex relationships and infertile heterosexual couples:
Some say that infertile couples are an exception to the rule just as same-sex couples are. False. Infertile couples prove the point of natural marriage. An infertile couple is naturally oriented toward procreation and something is medically wrong. The reason a same-sex couple cannot procreate is because nature is working correctly.
God love you.
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