Jew Faggot Atheists: Gay Marriage vs. Traditional Power, Authority

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

"You got to dance with who brought ya... "  --CSR    

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Gay Marriage vs. Traditional Power, Authority  (Normalcy --CSR)  

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide  August 2, 2009

Gay Marriage vs. Traditional Power, Authority Christian Right opponents of gay marriage recognize that it may be one of the most important cultural issues that has faced America in quite some time. Like contraception, abortion, and no-fault divorce, it could restructure social and power relationship on a wide scale. They are right to fear it because if they lose, they will lose in more ways than one. Gay couples actually marrying is far less important than how the nature of marriage and social relationships may begin to change as a consequence of gay marriages.

According to Agape Press:

The definition of marriage is a weighty issue, and Liberty Counsel's spokesman asserts that the moral direction of the entire nation hangs in the balance. "Once you start breaking apart the family and say that marriage is really not necessary for procreation, you have even further escalated the issue of abortion and cheapened the sanctity of human life," [Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver] says.

Hello? Mat?    I hate to break the news to you, buddy, but procreation happens outside marriage all the time. Procreation is biological; marriage is social. There's no necessary connection. It can be argued that marriage may help ensure that children are raised better, but it has nothing to do with the "sanctity of human life." That's just a red herring tossed out there to help capture the anti-choice constituency and make sure they are on board for bashing queers.  

    Also, Staver points out, just as life is at risk in this battle, so is liberty. If the battle for marriage is lost, he predicts that Christians will gradually lose the right to openly acknowledge biblical truth and will eventually even face legal penalties for speaking out against homosexuality.

Well, another group of bigots lost the "battle for marriage" when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prohibit interracial unions. Let's see, is it illegal anywhere for someone to proclaim the "biblical truth" that God separated the races and, therefore, interracial marriages are immoral? Not that I've noticed. Is it illegal for anyone to preach the importance of segregation or the inferiority of blacks? Again, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Divorce has been easier to obtain for quite a long time now, despite the fact that most Christian denominations teach that it is wrong. Is it illegal anywhere to teach that divorce is immoral and that married people must stay together for life, no matter what? Nope. Come to think of it, just how many Christian denominations make nearly as much of an effort to oppose divorce, which is already legal and which affects millions of people, as they do to oppose gay marriage, which isn't legal (in most places) and which would affect a much smaller number of people? Hardly any.

Why, then, should anyone imagine that there is any necessary connection between the legalization of gay marriage and prohibitions against preaching that gay marriage is wrong? It is true that the latter could happen — there is no logical barrier, even though there are significant constitutional hurdles. It is utter nonsense, however, to argue that it is likely to happen since we have so many examples of big changes in marriage norms/laws without anything similar happening.

Of course, when have little things like facts and reason stopped members of the Christian Right from making outlandish claims? You can't raise lots of money from your supporters unless you can put a good scare into them about how the sky is falling, civilization is crumbling, and the commies/pinkos/homos are taking over. You also can't get them to donate much money to you if you focus on opposing things which they have probably taken advantage of and/or don't want to see disappear — like divorce.  


Changing Structures of Authority  

One thing which all of the above advances have in common and which we should keep in mind is how they have been part of dramatic shifts in deep social structures. The legalization of divorce has been part of deep shifts in the relationships between men and women and the right of women to real equality in society. Interracial marriage has been part of deep shifts in the relations between the races and the ability of racial minorities to achieve equality in society.

Divorce and interracial marriage have been in part a product of those developments — they didn't just occur out of nowhere — but they have also played an important role in pushing those developments along. No-fault divorce, for example, has made it easier for women to escape abuse or loveless relationships so they could pursue their own interests. Interracial marriage has helped break down traditional taboos about people from different races simply being together.    

We should expect legal gay marriage to be similar. It will be a product of d   amatic shifts in attitudes towards gays, but it will also help move those attitudes further along. We should furthermore expect gay marriage to alter how we view marriage because in a marriage between two men or two women, it's impossible to assume that one adopt what traditional religions teach is the "woman's" role while the other adopt the "man's" role. Gay marriage may thus further undermine religious, patriarchal attitudes towards how men and women relate in the marital context which, in turn, might impact how men and women relate in the rest of society.

This is what the Christian Right fears so much. If you pay close attention, you'll notice how many of them argue against gay marriage by insisting that unions between people of the same sex violates some sort of natural order in the universe. Unfortunately, they aren't able to point to the existence of any such order — they just keep insisting that it exists. David Shedlock wrote a couple of years ago (his site is gone now):

First, I believe some have ignored the religious foundation of marriage. Marriage between only a man and woman is not the traditional view. It is the universal and eternal view. This is so because God made it so at the beginning of creation: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife."

0:)

Even if this were true, it wouldn't be relevant — the law can't be written according to the desires of a particular religious group or particular religious scriptures. The fact of the matter is, however, that marriage between one man and one woman is not the only or even necessarily the dominant view through human history.    

What David Shedlock writes is not the "natural order," it's simply the political and social order which conservative, traditionalist Christians wish it would be. What they insist is a "natural order" based on "natural law" is an amalgamation of western Christian traditions that they can't defend through reasoned arguments, so they try to remove them from all debate by placing them on some higher, untouchable plane. Whatever they fear might be undermined by social progress can easily be transformed into "natural law" instituted by their god. It's a last-ditch argument used by those who have run out of arguments and know that they have no substantive arguments left. Just watch for it.              

http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/08/02/b ... iberty.htm

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

Gay couples actually marrying is far less important than how the nature of marriage and social relationships may begin to change as a consequence of gay marriages.

Hit the nail on the head there.

Also, Staver points out, just as life is at risk in this battle, so is liberty. If the battle for marriage is lost, he predicts that Christians will gradually lose the right to openly acknowledge biblical truth and will eventually even face legal penalties for speaking out against homosexuality.

Staver is correct. This is already the case in Canada. You can't publicly criticize homosexuality. You can't even say "fag."

This is kind of a confusing post though, There are multiple people being quoted here