On LGBTQ Rights and Why Christians are Mad
A few years back one of my peers asked me about gay rights, should gay people be able to marry. I though for a few moments and said “yes and no, because its a religious…” and she preceded to cut me off and not speak to me for a few months. Now gay marriage is legal and my peers and I are happy we all can get married. Let me be clear I firmly support marriage equality. But in the back of my head I feel I need to at least explain why our parents generation is uncomfortable, and our grandparents generation is outraged so this stops being an emotionally driven unwinnable argument. Along with divorce this effects me rather personally.
Christians cite that marriage is blah blah blah, and the LGBTQ community cites “we are being oppressed.” I just thought to myself if you could get married where would you? I am a heterosexual male, at the time Christian, in my own religion when I got married I did not conform to the believe system of that religion so I could not get married on its premise, its ministers would not marry me. In fact they questioned my decision, and choice for a mate to the point it drove me into a depression. So even if my peers could get married the only place they could get married would be at the judge’s office. And that is an equal place that should not deny a right to anyone. But marriage is not a right, its a religious practice, and that is what people either do not want to admit, or grossly misunderstand.
Think to yourself who defined marriage for you? Your parents, family, and they did it via what vehical? Then the media and entertainment fluffed it up a bit for you. Either flushing out the reality or making it more into a fantasy. Our bodies themselves have a need be around for a while, and have some around as long as possible and marriage is the institutionalization of that emotion.
When you take a religiously homogeneous community and ask them to make laws, they just right down their religion, maybe slightly modified for culture. (and that becomes the next religion). That is not a particularly hard to grasp, a religion is just a bunch of rules you live by, and in America you are allowed to practice any religion of your choosing.
The Christians have a religious practice where a man and a woman legally bind each other in that religion’s family and sex rules via outside legal context, and have lobbied to have laws to enforce that. Taking an aside marriage is pretty damn un-american, forcing someone to practice your religion for the rest of their life with stiff legal consequences if they do not.
The Christian religion forbids you from having a same sex marriage, so you cant do that, that’s the very clear problem, but if you are trying to do that you arent practicing the religion anyway, so who gives a fuck it willing excludes 10–20% of the population. At that point you are making utility of laws that allow the freedom of religion, which is constitutionally protected, and undefinable by state.
This argument is stupid in the vein that you cant be cremated, buried at sea, or buried in a mausoleum due to someone else’s religion. Or that Christians cant meditate or do yoga.
I personally think there needs to be marriage reform. A new set of loose laws that mimic marriage you can pick and choose, like filing taxes, or lawsuits. I’d love to be “married for 3 years at a time,” or seven, or even to multiple people that I have a healthy relationship with. I’d love for my children and grandchildren to have those luxuries. I mean if you object with anything I say you have to admit, “well that is your religion, and I cant enforce mine on others.” Not in America at least.
Many of my close friends, including the aforementioned, are not married. They have some of the most stable relationships I have ever seen. For myself, I’m long divorced, and I do believe that religion had a role in it looking back on it, it made it hard to be what we needed to be for each other. When your heart is in something so deeply you do need a bit of an insurance policy to protect not only yourself but the person or people that you love, regardless of sexual orientation.
