From the Federalist, gay marriage as a tool for subjugation of the individual to the state.
The theory behind gay marriage, in short, was the theory behind the entire secular left: society and the state are the all-powerful forces on which the life of the individual depends, and the most important political task—indeed, the most important task in life—is getting this irresistible power on your side. Once you gain social and political power, you hold on to it by making your preferred views mandatory, a catechism everyone must affirm, while suppressing all heretical views. In this case, to gain social acceptance of homosexuality, you make the affirmation of gay marriages mandatory while officially suppressing any dissenting religious views.
Exactly so. There is no reason to force ordained ministers to perform gay weddings, no reason to force bakers to provide cakes for gay weddings, no reason to force florists and photographers to participate in gay weddings… except to enforce the idea that individual must bow to whoever wields the power of the state.
But supporters of same-sex marriage/homosexuality (lifestyle, agenda, etc.) would counter that our legal system, laws, jurisprudence, precedence, and thus politics have upheld a limited view of marriage, i.e. that political power (the State) has been on the side of opposite-sex marriage for centuries.
There was no other side to consider being against, for centuries. Marriage has existed arguably from the beginning of man, as a promise made to that of the opposite sex that you will remain faithful in your duties to one another throughout life, and that child rearing will take place within the bonds of that marriage. The legal aspects of marriage didn’t exist until the state decided it should.
Saw this happen, actually, in the Unitarian Universalist church some years ago. UU’s specifically (at that time, anyway) did not go out and try to convert you. If you needed the church, the reasoning went, then you would find it.
Enter gays. The UU church is friendly to all, and doesn’t teach that the gay lifestyle is against God (since many members don’t believe in God). However, once gays were identified as being potential members, the church went all out to convert them. No other part of society (culture, whatever) was EVER courted by the UU church with the exception of gays.
And once it started, then it became more and more the foundation of the actual church (at least the one I used to attend). GAYS. We must fill our seats with GAYS. It became an insidious, multi-armed animal with tentacles everywhere.
As I have stated before, gays don’t want EQUAL rights. They want better rights than the rest of us.
The government can cram it down our throats. It doesn’t make it right. It is tyranny. Plain and simple.
Perhaps the UU Church has changed. I attended my local UU Church for a while 30-years ago while living in Philadelphia, and was underimpressed by their supposed-inclusion. And the congregation seems to in the thrall of a cabal of sexually-uptight militant-Marxist public union-types straight out the the Wobblies; the evils of Capitalism, all employers are oppressors, “Free Mumia!!”, etc…
It was still back in the AIDS crisis-era, and little mention of it, or of gay rights.
Just one crack-pot left-wing organization who needed support, anothe Marzist cause to collect money for, another protest to attend, another picket-line to respect — Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
I supposed the next step is to prepare a fiery furnace?
Craig Smith: I think so. If current trends continue it won’t be long.
“Has been” (implying “all the way up to the present”) might be the wrong verb tense here, Ignatius, since the nature of State support for opposite-sex marriage began to change well before the debate about SSM got under way. For instance, as laws against fornication mostly ceased to be enforced, the marriage “license” no longer gave literal “license” to engage in sex legally. And many of the “benefits of marriage” that gay people are squawking about are fairly recent inventions, and weren’t around for most of the history of marriage.