8 Comments

Blake
January 5th, 2012 | 1:47 pm

“..But at the center—indispensable to the rest—is the service marriage does to the bond between a child and its natural parents….

.same-sex marriage, as courts in North America have made clear, is predicated on a denial of procreation or child-rearing as a definitive interest. Marriage is about adult bonding, and adult bonding is all there is to marriage.”

The argument for gay marriage relies on focusing on short-term emotional arguments, while the argument against it relies on long-term logical arguments.

Temptation vs. outcome.

Bob
January 5th, 2012 | 5:22 pm

Blake’s comment on same sex marriage is valid. I would add another, often overlooked, argument against same sex marriage: making gay sex legitimate will draw many into trying it and getting caught up in the compulsive addiction to it. Having spent most of my adult life trying to make one gay relationship after another work, and having had outrageous amounts of casual sex in the search for those relationships, I speak with authority. I have also been deeply involved in the gay subculture and seen very, very few apparently successful gay unions of any kind — possibly none because most people don’t talk very openly about what goes on in their relationship, and many lie.
The very idea that a gay relationship is better than alley-catting around is in itself seriously wrong. Openly gay unions of any kind give tremendous scandal and will tend to draw others into gay sex. They also serve to quiet the appropriate guilt for the fantasy based masturbation that all gay sex is. After a long, long struggle to clean up my own act this is what I now say…
Same sex attraction is what I’ve got/ Don’t call me gay because I’m not/I love all gays and wish them well/But if I do what they do I’ll be in Hell.

Gene Veith
January 5th, 2012 | 7:01 pm

Dang, Joe. That article at Front Porch Republic that goes on a tear over a comment you made is a good one, I have to say. Wouldn’t you admit that the guy makes some good points? I hope you respond to it.

He isn’t, of course, talking about Distributivism as you were, but he is taking the opportunity to criticize conservatives who actually work with liberal assumptions, which we all are guilty of sometimes.

Michael
January 5th, 2012 | 7:15 pm

Bob,

One problem with conversations about homosexuality is that so many of them turn into social science, which is all about statistics, averages, and norms, whereas Christianity asks us to expect to be surprised by what people of God can accomplish.

Your statement that you’ve tried lots of casual sex and haven’t seen successful unions is no doubt true, but I’ve heard lots of straight men and women say similar things about their experience. There is, of course, more than one gay subculture. Whatever may be true about your experience, you can be sure that others have had dramatically different experiences in other subcultures in other parts of the country.

I belong to a Methodist reconciling congregation that has many successful gay couples, male and female, all of them supported by straight couples like me, all of us seeking Christian perfection.

Some people, gay or straight, have been called to celibacy; others have been called to lifelong, faithful relationships. Both achievements seem miraculous. Both are difficult in any culture, but our sex-drenched culture makes the achievement of either very difficult.

Blake
January 7th, 2012 | 11:54 pm

I belong to a Methodist reconciling congregation that has many successful gay couples, male and female, all of them supported by straight couples like me, all of us seeking Christian perfection.

Christian perfection is not compatible with a gambling addiction, a substance abuse problem, or any other abuse of any of life’s pleasures.

Those pleasures exist for a reason. They are linked to specific functions. To try to isolate the pleasure for its own sake – while trying to ditch, distort, or pervert the function – is to be willful in a way that is materialist in exactly the way the Bible tells us not to be materialist.

It is natural for someone with desires that are in conflict with what you believe to be right and wrong to simply change right and wrong so that you don’t have to give up the desires. But it is not Christian. It is not out of hatefulness that the Christian is told to correct the sinner, nor is it out of hatefulness that the Christian is told not to tolerate sin in their midst. It is because Christianity is not about indulging in the material pleasures of this world. It is about something that is not necessarily compatible with a life of material pleasure.

If you must prioritize the comforts of sin over the Word of God, then I don’t think you can really represent Christianity – your faith appears to be more in the Enlightenment than in the Word of God; you are prioritizing the material pleasures of this world, and willfully distorting the clear-cut message of the Bible so that you can justify what the Bible clearly reveals to us as sin.

Christianity is a hard path. It is a mistake to think it can be otherwise.

HarrietJ
January 12th, 2012 | 3:31 am

Bob: “I have also been deeply involved in the gay subculture and seen very, very few apparently successful gay unions of any kind — possibly none because most people don’t talk very openly about what goes on in their relationship, and many lie.”

Unfortunately, the purpose of Michael and David Nickol (two commenters here) is to lie about all problems related with homosexuality.

Due to an obsessive misguided belief, they fail to understand that you were not born homosexual, nor do you have to live your life in ignorance about what has led you to sexualize men, much less never resolve the issue. I recommend Joseph Nicolosi’s books.

I also found this article a good read–so different than the typical dishonesty that is peddled around about desire always being a “natural” and “in-born” kind of feeling.

There are a number of psychological and emotional issues and experiences that can trouble and distort our innermost sexuality feelings. People who think that anything and everything that pops into a person’s mind is determined by genes are among the world’s most ignorant and harmful individuals, especially as it refers to sexuality.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/27/the-sex-addiction-epidemic.html

On “sex addiction:”

“For Valerie, sex was a form of self-medication: to obliterate the anxiety, despair, and crippling fear of emotional intimacy that had haunted her since being abandoned as a child. “In order to soothe the loneliness and the fear of being unwanted, I was looking for love in all the wrong places,” she recalls.”

“Where it used to be 40- to 50-year-old men seeking treatment, now there are more females, adolescents, and senior citizens,” says Tami VerHelst, vice president of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals. “Grandfathers getting caught with porn on their computers by grandkids, and grandkids sexting at 12.”

Obviously, this is the result of a liberal sexuality culture, which is obsessed in normalizing homosexuality, pornography, and promiscuity as “progress” and “freedom of choice.”

Michael
January 14th, 2012 | 12:50 pm

Blake,

Can you explain why you think homosexuality is similar to being addicted to gambling?

It seems to me that addiction is something that destroys your life, your ability to prosper, and your ability to relate to others. Some people, gay and straight, are addicted to sex, but I’m talking about people who have been faithful and loving to each other for decades. I wouldn’t call a couple that has been together for decades people who have “abused” one of “life’s pleasures.” If the couple was straight, you’d hold them up as a model, but there are some things you appear to have difficulty seeing past.

Michael
January 14th, 2012 | 1:08 pm

Harriet J,

I refuse to generalize about people I don’t know. I know gay people who are as deeply troubled as some of the straight people I know. But I also know gay people who are as exemplary as some of the straight people I know. A few weeks ago, a straight couple stood up during service and explained that they were celebrating their sixtieth wedding anniversary. They thanked the congregation for supporting their marriage even when they had struggled, and they singled out for special thanks three straight and one lesbian couple that had helped them through their hard times.