Gay Marriage

This week has been an odd week as the concept of gay marriage has been brought up over and over.  Normally I state that I support it and that is all, but I keep hearing arguments that are filled with fallacies against gay marriage. So I feel I need state why I so passionately find the argument frankly not only illogical, but actually makes me lose respect for those who use it. 

My biggest ethical dilemmas normally revolve around religion. I was born and raised Catholic. My mother and grandparents are very devoted, with pictures of the pope up and everything. I use to attend church regularly, but I walked away quite literally when I was asked to sign the Ohio “Save Marriage Act” petition back in 2004 in the vestibule before mass. I haven’t been back since. And this issue causes all sorts of issues within the family.

Working in healthcare, I read scientific journals all the time and I see have found the gene on men’s DNA that if not “switched on” makes them gay. I find it amazingly illogical to think anyone would choose to be gay. Why would someone purposely choose to be treated so horribly by society, to be a source of ridicule and to be treated as a lower level human being by so many people? Occam’s razor throws that argument out the window, not to mention all the science. To me it’s like saying I chose to be female and a Latina and therefore I should be sexually harassed and prejudice against because I chose that for myself.

I also find it odd to say that two people getting married of the same sex would somehow destroy us morally. If marriage is the cornerstone of a moral society, then how is excluding a segment of the population that is exactly like everyone else except that they fall in love with the same sex going to protect not destroy it?

Then there is my favorite, it goes against God. Though I hear some references to Corinthians and Romans, the main argument comes from Genesis and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But there are two issues with this. One, if you actually stop and read the story you realize it isn’t about homosexual love, but about rape. The men surrounding the house were not courting the angels or asking them out on a date, they were there to rape them. And yes, they turned down the daughters, but that is because rape isn’t about love or even sex. It is about proving dominance over another being. And what would make a person feel more powerful than to prove dominant over a messenger of God? It astounds me that rape victims don’t point this out. All other arguments claiming the Bible is against gay marriage is actually even weaker than this example. So I don’t really find this argument useful.

Then there is the history part of this argument. This was the same argument that put marriage laws on the books in the first place in this country, except it was to prevent others from marrying, different races. Up until 1967, in over a quarter of the states it was illegal for two people of different races to be wed. This is a personal matter for me because my maternal grandparents are of two different races. They had to leave the state of my grandmother’s birth to get married. The fact that the government is going to back what is in essence a religious belief astounds me.

My mother and grandparents disagree. One of my mother’s favorite sayings concerning this is “ I don’t have any personal issues with gay people, I just don’t think it is right to allow them to marry”. To me that is the same as saying “I don’t have any personal issues with Puerto Ricans, I just don’t think they should be allowed to live here” or “ I don’t have any personal issue with women, I just don’t think they should be allowed in the military”. Those are all personal beliefs. To me they are neither wrong nor right because they are personal. But to apply them to others stops making them personal and instead becomes policy and that is wrong.

So I now no longer go to church because of an ethical decision. And I get to live with the consequences of it every week when I visit my grandparents or my mother. But I can at least look my son in the eye and know I am showing him through example how to look at things ethically, and not just go along with group bias because it is the easy thing to do. And what is funny is that I learned that ethical lesson straight from the stories of Jesus in the Bible.

When you look at the teaching of Jesus they boil down to two things, don’t be a hypocrite (ranging from stone in eye, judge less ye be judged, etc) to do not question authority/think for yourself (best example is the rumble in the temple). Yet consistently all I hear come out of people’s mouths are words they are parroting from religious leaders. I have a problem with anyone doing that simply because I have yet to get any response to the question “why?” other than a variation of “because Pastor, Reverend, Bishop, etc said so”. Now I understand that trusting experts in a field is important, and they are experts. But there is a bit of a problem here with that logic. I have never done a DNA study, so I am dependant on reading results from those performed by experts, but I look for multiple sources. And this means not just reading 3 papers from 3 different scientists all using the same sample set. So why would just blindly follow what is being said by three experts in the same field all reading the same section from the same Bible (there are many variations)? What I find to be astounding is that when I talk to people normally it isn’t even 3, its one person. So if that person told you to jump off a bridge and God would catch you, would you do it or would you question them? Then why wouldn’t you question in other instances?

At the end of the day, if I am wrong I can stand before St. Peter and explain exactly why I believe what I believe, giving evidence from various sources to explain the conclusions I made. Whether that is enough, I actually think it might be given everything else both Jesus and the Saints state within text. Because let’s be honest, there are so many contradictions in the Bible that if you are following one, you might be breaking another. But if you get up and state that you were doing something because your Priest, Bishop or even Pope told you too, never questioning why, well is that enough? Or are you the same as those that were bought by the Council of High Priests to demand Barabbas’s release and yelled “Crucify him!”. Are you the same that allowed any guilt for owning another human being to be wiped away in the pre-civil war era because your Minister stated they were made that color so we can know them as the children of Ham and therefore to be punished?

If I end up in hell based on the decisions I make, I can live with it, but if you end up in hell because of the decisions you allowed others to make for you, can you handle it?