I guess I'm not terribly surprised. I am still trying to sort out how I feel about this issue. I am not terribly concerned with the government defining what marriage is or isn't. According to James Dobson, in an interview, he argues that "the legalization of homosexual marriage will quickly destroy the traditional family." Dobson sites evidence from "Scandinavian countries" that
when the State sanctions homosexual relationships and gives them its blessing, the younger generation becomes confused about sexual identity and quickly loses its understanding of lifelong commitments, emotional bonding, sexual purity, the role of children in a family, and from a spiritual perspective, the "sanctity" of marriage. Marriage is reduced to something of a partnership that provides attractive benefits and sexual convenience, but cannot offer the intimacy described in Genesis. Cohabitation and short-term relationships are the inevitable result. Ask the Norwegians, the Swedes, and the people from the Netherlands. That is exactly what is happening there.
But doesn't this sound a lot like the state of marriage here in America?
Next Dobson argues for a slippery slope, that "the introduction of legalized gay marriages will lead inexorably to polygamy and other alternatives to one man/one woman unions." Yet the legalization of polygamy for generations as described in the Bible didn't destroy the "traditional family". How quickly we forget that the heroes of the faith had a very different understanding of what a traditional family was. Abraham, Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, and Hosea all practiced polygamy and yet the Judeo-Christian ethic of monogamy came from this polygamist heritage.
Finally, Dobson argues,
With marriage as we know it gone, everyone would enjoy all the legal benefits of marriage (custody rights, tax-free inheritance, joint ownership of property, health care and spousal citizenship, and much more) without limiting the number of partners or their gender.
Though he overstates the number of partners based on his slippery slope argument, I find it difficult to object to giving these rights to homosexuals. Homosexual couples can already adopt children, so custody rights should naturally follow. I don't really care about tax-free inheritance, joint ownership of property, and spousal citizenship. Health care would seem to fall into the relm of social justice. Who doesn't need health care today and who couldn't stand to have better health care?
Is this really what's at stake? If it is, we've already lost the most profound portions of this battle.
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