Are These Things Really Equal?

Way back in the 1980s I was a proponent of "gay marriage." Interestingly, my progressive friends, at the time, were against the idea of marriage as a whole and opposed gay marriage. They saw marriage as an enemy of the state and promoted the multi-partner gay lifestyle as a model for a new utopia.

I believed that if a same sex couple wanted to share a commitment of marriage, then more power to them.

I turned against gay marriage after going to a lecture in which a lawyer explained that, by giving legal status to marriage, they could then use the Equal Rights Act and gay marriage to attack the Christian Church and Western Tradition.

During the lecture, a radical professor explained to us how they intended to frame the gay marriage issue in a way to attack the ideals of sanctity of life at the heart of Christianity.

After that meeting, I turned against gay marriage. Oddly, my progressive friends flip-flopped as well and became big proponents of gay marriage.

To understand this blog post, you must understand the difference between "gay marriage" and "marriage equality."

"Gay Marriage" simply means that a same sex couple calls their relation a "marriage."

Marriage Equality demands that all marriage be treated the same by all people at all times, and that the state must close entities that treat gay marriage differently from heterosexual marriage.

Specifically, Marriage Equality means that churches must extend the sacrament of marriage to same sex couples.

This is problematic because the Christian Sacrament of Marriage is not about sex or financial benefits.

LDS Experience

The LDS Church was one of the first groups to experiment with redefining marriage for political ends. Early LDS Patriarchs not only experimented with polygamy, the claimed that polygamy was a duty. Patriarchs with massive clans with hundreds of children are able to take political control of local communities.

The effort to redefine marriage was extremely fun for the first generation of Mormons. It gave a few patriarchs extreme wealth and power. Polygamy has had many unintended consequences for subsequent generations with young girls kept in ignorance and forced to marry old men, to be knocked up and become dependent.

The FLDS simply cast aside boys (The lost boys) who have terrible times being outcasts and vilified by the clan.

The LDS experiment with polygamy was a failure. I applaud the LDS Church for their defense of traditional marriage. Since the LDS Church had bad experience with experiments in redefining marriage, I believe that its comments on the subject are highly relevant and should be heeded.

The Christian Sacrament of Marriage is about the sanctity of life.

Most multi-cellular forms of life on the plant earth propagate through a system of sexual reproduction. This process has been going on for hundreds of millions of years. The method of sexual reproduction is used by  most plants as well as fish, reptiles and animals. Yes, there are boy pine trees and girl pine trees and pine trees know the difference.

Sexual reproduction involves combining the DNA of males with DNA of females to produce offspring with a slightly different DNA mix. This process of combining DNA appears to be fundamental to evolution of higher life forms on this planet.

Animals in the Mammalia Class of the Animalia Kingdom have the distinguishing trait that females have glands for feeding off spring after birth.

Caring for off spring is not just something dreamed up by some evil pope. It is trait that is inherent in animal life. This is most notable in mammals which have sexually specific physical adaptations for this trait. Both sexual reproduction and caring for offspring are fundamental to human life and many other species.

The Christian Tradition holds human life as sacred and uses the term "procreation" for the reproduction of human life.

Other cultural and religious traditions have similar ideas. Progressive are specifically attacking the Christian tradition; so, I am concentrating on Christian terminology..

The Christian Sacrament of Marriage is about the sanctity of life. Marriage is not about sex or government benefits. It has every thing to do with procreation. Marriage sanctifies the natural process of procreation. The It is about holding birth and the relation of parents and children sacred.

A state claiming that a coupling that results in procreation is equal to one that does not is problematic.

If there were some clean way to have "gay marriage" that was considered distinct from the Sacrament of Marriage, then I might still be for the idea.

Sadly, this is not the way culture wars work.