Seriously, I think you’ve touched on a key issue in this whole discussion. I didn’t get married because of anything to do with legal rights; I got married because I loved (love: present tense!) my wife, and was willing to make a lifelong commitment to her. The legal rights are great, of course, but I didn’t have those in mind at all when I got married. Of course, we didn’t have to think of those things 23 years ago.

Now…as I said at the beginning of this post, I have certain libertarian leanings which separate me in some ways from some of my “Religious Right” friends. I don’t think that it’s the state’s business, for instance, who gets to be at a person’s bedside when they’re dying. But my challenge would be that a.) marriage wasn’t instituted by God as primarily a “legal institution”, to grant “legal rights”; b.) most married people—well, okay, I’m guessing a little bit here—but certainly myself and many, many married folks don’t do it for the rights; c.) if rights are the concern, then pursue the rights without changing millennia of recorded history (and plenty of other things) in order to alter the very basic meaning of marriage.

I maintain that we all have equal rights before the law when it comes to marriage; every American may marry any other eligible American. What the gay lobby (sorry if that term offends; tell me the right term and I’ll happily switch) wants to fundamentally alter the terms of marriage itself, and utterly redefine it…and as I point out, once that’s done, the slope is very slippery—again, the point of the post in the first place, and one that no one yet has countered, by the way.

If, on the other hand, it is certain legal rights/protections that are desired, then make the case for those in some other “wrapper” than marriage, and on at least some, maybe many, of them, you’ll find an ally in me; as I said, “don’t ask, don’t tell” strikes a reasonable balance which allows people the right to serve in the military irrespective of sexuality, without at the same time harming military preparedness, as some fear that open homosexuality would (and I really don’t want to get into that one way or the other, except to say that when it comes to the military, whose job it is to defend our country, I’ll go a long way to make sure that military preparedness is paramount).

So…I won’t sign off on your contention that “marriage today…is more legal than anything else”, because I have never, ever seen it that way, and my opinion is that most married folks don’t.

Maybe the whole housing issue is one for another time; you won’t like my conclusions, but you won’t find my reasoning offensive, I promise…

Now, to other posts, I don’t really grasp what Jeremy was driving at either; maybe some clarification?

To Fleetguy, I haven’t read of any other pastor taking the stand you describe regarding performing legal marriages in a state that allows “gay marriage”, but that is my stance exactly (maybe you read it here, many months ago?). I will marry any couple (that meets my relatively strict criterion); I will not sign any legal documents recognizing such in any state which legalizes “gay marriage”, meaning Massachusetts at this point, but any and all others in the future. Ironically, I have done exactly one wedding in Massachusetts, and it was about a week after their new law went into effect! I did it because I agreed to do the wedding many months before the law went into effect; if I were asked today, I’d make it clear to the couple that I’d perform a wedding, but if they wanted it to be legal, they’d have to arrange for that in some other way, because I will not be the instrument of any state that so alters the meaning of marriage. Some folks won’t understand that, but that’s my principled position. Effectively, then, what you suggest is exactly what I’d do: treat the two as separate completely.

I like that comment. I think you are absolutely correct that a clear distinction must be drawn between marriage in a Christian sense; and marriage in a societal sense (whatever names people want to hang on it).

I actually applauded the minister in whatever state who stopped performing legal marriages because of the law against gay marriage. Kind of the reverse of my opinion, but he was making a clear distinction between his view of the religious and the secular.

Of course the economic aspects of marriage cannot drive the spiritual ones. For instance, what if Christian churches married whom they chose with whatever spiritual contract they couple wrote up. What if they simply ignored the marriage license from the state – and couples could persue that if they wished (the minister could sign it if they had it). Gay couples have established legal documents for years guarding child, property, inheritance etc issues. Why can’t “straights”?

You are right. The secular/church team-up on marriage has not been broken yet – but in many states it will get bent.

Byron, I do agree there are people in this world who still revere marriage as a sacred institution. But Marriage as we know it today is more legal than anything else; it is the legal aspects we want. If my significant other needed me then there’s not a force on this planet that could keep me from being by her side. And if I were to be called home before her, I would want to know that she’d be taken care of. Did you know that it is still legal to discriminate in most states against gays and lesbians like me in employment, housing and services? Here in Arizona, I’ve lost three jobs after the employers found out I was a lesbian. That’s not equal rights.

I can understand your perspective; five years ago, I would have thought it unconscionable to believe gay marriage was okay. It took an epiphany for me to realize how wrong I was.

There is one response to the slippery slope argument that you shouild be aware of. The economic issues aren’t the same for gay marriage and polygamous marriage. Gay marriage provides benefits to one partner. Polygamous marriage has more. This is an important issue if marriage entails economic benefits (as our laws currently have it). If somehow we undid all that, and we kept marriage and the civil union sort of benefits completely separate, then this response wouldn’t be fair. But as things stand, we have civil unions that just provide benefits and marriage that provides benefits plus the name ‘marriage’. If we removed all benefits from marriage and required people to get civil unions from the government but the name ‘marriage’ only from certain sorts of social organizations but with no legal impact, then this argument could easily be sidestepped. That’s in fact what I’d like to see happen, and then there will be no chance of the government telling churches who they can and can’t declare married. But I don’t think it’s very likely that this sort of situation would come about before gay marriage takes effect. That means the economic benefits of marriage will provide the exact difference between gay marriage and polygamous marriage that’s necessary to show that the arguments for gay marriage are consistent with opposing polygamous marriage for economic reasons.

Since the Bloke hasn’t returned, I’ll fill in the details. The standard liberal view of sexual morality is that there are no moral issues related to sex itself. Barring other considerations that might make any act immoral, there’s nothing about sex itself that would make it immoral. If it’s without consent, then it’s immoral, but that’s true of most things without consent. So rape is out. If it’s causing harm to another who hasn’t consented to that harm, then it’s also wrong.

Incest that might lead to reproduction thus gets ruled out because of the effects on potential children. Since animals can’t consent, bestiality is wrong. But masturbation can never be wrong on this view, unless (1) it causes harm to yourself and (2) it’s wrong to harm yourself (different moral theories give different answers to the second issue). Adultery is wrong (assuming it’s wrong to break promises, which most people would agree with).

Prostitution is wrong only if it harms someone in a way the person hasn’t consented to or if it takes advantage of the prostitute’s desperate situation (which wouldn’t be true of all prostitution in principle but just many cases). If polygamy inherently causes harm, then that would be out too, though some would say that it depends on the circumstances. What this allows for is that gay sex can be wrong if it can be shown to be harmful in principle (and therefore not because of things like AIDS), but very few people with this general view of sex will think gay sex is inherently harmful. It does leave a space for such a view, though.

The most intriguing thing about this view is that it allows incest in the case of an adult brother and sister whose reproductive potential has been completely eliminated. If you want to argue that brother-sister sex is inherently harmful, you’re probnably going to have to make a similar argument as the argument that gay sex is inherently harmful. I don’t think someone can easily maintain that incest is always wrong while saying gay sex is generally ok. That really does seem to me to be an interesting result