False Premises

South Carolina amended its state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  I am still not sure why this requires a Constitutional amendment - a dictionary, a world history course, or a biology textbook should any of them be sufficient.  But here - especially with that last - we reach a problem.

After fighting for "sexual liberty" and so forth for lo these many years now, the liberal left has reached the point where suddenly they cannot talk about sex within the one context it has always been approved because the biological facts of sex ruin the case for their cause du jour - "gay marriage".  Two men cannot have a kid.  At this point, the homosexual lobby is falling back on rhetorical silliness.  I have been told to "stop focusing on the sex" - what, are we to be repressed now?  I thought that was bad - and realize that marriage involves more than just sex.  Love, affection, friendship, and so forth are the keys.

Speaking historically, we could (sweeping generalization here!) say this is largely a legacy we owe to the ideals of the late Medieval courtly ("romantic") love affair - usually very much extra-marital, whether or not merely Platonic (and mostly not) - being co-opted by various people and applied to marriage.  This is not a bad thing by itself.  Even on Biblical grounds, we are told that, "It is not good for man to be alone."  (Yes, I am a bachelor.  Obviously I think the statement is a generality.)  Even without children, marriage is a good thing.  But when passion is the measuring stick and the expected number of kids is 1.4 or something, we see where the argument for homosexual marriage comes from.  Two children per family will not maintain the human race or the culture producing them; clearly something else has become more important.  (To say nothing of divorce.)

If this is the only criterion, that "two people love each other very much", then of course there is no reason to object to homosexual "marriage", especially as a civil institution.  It is little more than a formality, an affirmation, a legitimizing token - the $500 tie, as it were, to proclaim that here stands a wealthy man.

So I find it impossible to get extremely upset by the "gay marriage" lobby and its nonsense, because it is a symptom, not really a cause (and Paul's description in Romans of the progression of cultural decline and depravity is consistent with this view, if not specifically laying it out).  The other reason I find it hard to get upset about it is that I am still somewhat bemused by the phenomenon.  It is somewhat like arguing with a fifth grader, and not just any fifth grader, but the fifth grader who had somehow never heard the rhyme that runs,

First comes love, then comes marriage,
Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

Banal and terrible verse, of course, but at least it knows the order in which things naturally work - the order which makes homosexual "marriage" not an abomination so much as an absurdity.

Suspicious Looks at "Gay Marriage"

I have three main objections to homosexual "marriage", so called.

The first is that I believe homosexual activity is (theologically) a sin and (biologically) quite different from heterosexual intercourse - you know, in the part where it can't result in children.  The church institutional, I am confident, will continue to recognize (and even publicize) the distinction, but any time there are significant differences between the proscriptions of one part of society, and society officially as a whole, trouble tends to follow.

So stemming from that, the second is that I worry that, if the government recognizes homosexual couples as "married", the forces of Caesar will quickly be called on to try to force the church into line.  This possibility was always present, but has become infinitely harder for activists to disavow with the current administration's dedication to running roughshod over religious (and other) freedoms in the name of "women's reproductive health".

The last is that the language involved makes no sense.  If marriage is the recognition of a formal (and spiritual) union between a man and a woman, then talking about "homosexual marriage" is ludicrous, because of the bit where there's not a woman (or a man).  If marriage is merely the formalization of a sexual relationship between two people - which, to follow the modern fads, is not actually morally binding and can of course be dissolved at any point by divorce - then what is the point of marriage at all?  If you appeal to "family" - which is to say, children - that is not a point in favor of the homosexuals, because homosexual sex does not result in children.  True, such a couple could adopt or use some other method to, ah, acquire them.  But that doesn't need a marriage, that I am aware of.

In short, I am against homosexual marriage because the only possible purpose of such a policy would be to attempt to legitimize something I do not think is legitimate, and - even more of a concern to my logical mind - equate two things I do not think are equal.