Saturday, June 4, 2011

Pride and Marriage


So I have been thinking a lot lately about the topic of Gay Pride and the issue of same sex marriage. Recently the town I live in had its first pride festival and it drew some local criticism from people accusing us of flaunting our chosen lifestyle in their faces. In addition to that civil unions are now legal in the state I live in and there has been controversy surrounding that. As there always is when the subject of same sex marriage comes up. First let me address the pride issue. For Springfield this was a first, it lasted one day and over 1200 people showed up. For Springfield this was phenomenal. But for 1 day out of 365 gay people were out and proud, not afraid to kiss, hug, and be themselves in public. My question is how is this flaunting? Every other day of the year are gays and lesbians not subjected to the flaunting of heterosexuality? Everything from advertising to depictions of relationships is designed to flaunt a heterosexual favoritism. So my response to those who complain of flaunting is that for 1 day I think we are entitled. For 1 day members of the LGBT community can be who they are and show the world they are proud to be that way. Now onto the subject of same sex marriage. A post made by a family member to facebook spurred this, a post she has sense deleted all opposing comments from. She argued that marriage is between a man and woman for the purpose of creating a child and that is all that is biblical acceptable. She also argued that the separation of church and state should be maintained and protected by enacting legislation that limits “marriage to one man and one woman”. I have several arguments on this. First is that the institution of marriage is not solely and institution of faith. If it were this would not be an issue as I believe every church has the right to choose for itself that it will marry and set its own criteria for doing so. But it is not that simple, first a “marriage” can now be conducted by a judge meaning you never have to step foot in a church or involve religion in anyway in order to be married. Marriage is also a vehicle by which over 1,000 federal benefits alone are based. This makes marriage something that transcends the confines of just being and institution of the church. It has a dual purpose and a dual existence. Again I don’t think a church should be forced to perform a marriage for anyone that does not conform to the teachings of that church, that right is guaranteed by the 1st amendment separation of church and state. But I also find that by banning gay marriage you are saving marriage and preserving the separation of church and state to be absolute BULL SHIT. You want the government to pass a law that tells churches who they cannot marry and that is preserving the separation of church and state, yet passing a law say who they CAN marry is a violation of the separation of church and state. More telling is what religions are behind this. In Illinois and other states the Methodist Church, the Episcopalian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, and several synods of the Lutheran Church have all said they will marry same-sex couples who meet all other requirements of the faith to be married in the church. It’s the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) as well as the southern Baptists that are pushing that in order to save the separation of church and state you must blatantly ignore it. This logic is not only dangerous, it is stupid, and the sign of an ignorant argument that is the sign of a mind so weak that it cannot process anything other than the dogmatic bullshit fed into it by a church that wants to blame its decline on the gays rather than its own problems. The decline of the Catholic Church has nothing to do with gay marriage. It has to do with years of cover-ups, greed, and a refusal to move progressively forward. 

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