Gay Marriage

Same-sex marriage has kind of been a buzzword again lately. I'm not sure why. It's been legal in Massachusetts for a while now. So far as I can tell, despite what James Dobson claimed, civilisation hasn't yet crumbled. But since some people still have their knickers in a twist over the issue, I thought I'd post this. It's an oldie but a goodie, straight from Kung Fu Monkey with love: Here's the problem -- and I really do believe that misunderstanding this is the root of many issue in America today: Your beliefs are not your rights. The government is in the job of enforcing your rights, not your beliefs. The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. It does not tell you who to marry, how to marry, who to love, what God to worship, what books to read ... that is not its job. The government's job when it comes to marriage is to make sure the legal mumbo-jumbo is observed. All the things that make marriage "marriage", all the emotional and religious context, that's up to the individual couples and their communities, be those communites Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish, civil ... If you belong to a church which is against same-sex marriage, fine. If this judgement stands, your church will not be forced to marry gay people. Do you know why? Because, and I will take this slowly, odds are gay people are not going to your church. Strange gay people are not going to paratroop in and occupy your vestry. This law will not make you have to look at gay people, or associate with them, or like them. You will not have to forgive them, or even agree with them. The special vows that make marriage a holy institution to you, they will not be saying them in your church, changing the meaning of those vows to you. They do not change what "marriage" means to you. You can continue to argue that gay people are bad or wrong or evil in God's eyes, and do so freely. Do you understand? Your. Life. Does. Not. Change. Your rights are not abridged. And so, your right to find them objectionable or icky or evil ends where their right to enter into a legal contract begins. You may have excellent moral, or religious, or personal arguments against same-sex marriage. But you do not have a single decent legal one. And that is the government's reach, and no farther. All that, of course, is me trying to convince someone with silly things like logic. For me personally, it quite simply boils down to this: Christianity survived the death of its founder, centuries of brutal persecution by the most powerful Empire on earth, Crusades, corruption, bad popes, multiple schisms -- and still spread and thrived, converting over the course of its history hundreds of millions of people from wildly diverse, often hostile cultures. It'll survive two guys sharing a life insurance policy.