"stop being human" ? I think that's a bit of a stretch. I don't think that denying yourself the acts of homosexuality turn you into a different species altogether.
Then you should be denied the right to love someone, the right to express that love. You should feel exactly what you want to impose on others. You should feel the heartbreaking loneliness, until you break down and cry, and you should feel it every day of your life until you die a broken mess, begging for some kind of human warmth that you can't have because some uncaring, selfish ideologue was too interested in where
you put
your genitalia.
Umm but they can do that anyway, right now. You don't need marriage to have that with a companion. What does that have to do with same sex marriage? I certainly have no right to stop two people of the same sex from spending time together in a warm embrace, or living together, or having a relationship together. That is your choice, and that is a freedom I cannot take away.
Note I have no hatred for homosexuals. I just feel they are lost, and want to help them. But I can't condone them getting married, God doesn't see a homosexual marriage in his eyes as a marriage to begin with. But I can't stop two same sex people from having a relationship. You don't need marriage for that. Heck, you can even have a civil union right now! I think a lot of states offer that already.
1. The problem with this is that, while it could be made to apply to the regenerate person, it really has no application to the unregenerate person. To say that the can choose not to act on their sexuality is to say that the person who desires to tell a lie cannot tell a lie. No, he will lie, because his nature is that of a liar. Sooner or later all sinners will sin. That's because, according to Scripture itself, we act according to our desires or inner natures. That's made explicit in both John and James among other places. That should not even have to be said to you, but apparently you need to be reminded.
With respect to the Christian, the Christian still has to deal with the noetic effects of sin, and God "having a way out" of temptation (1 Cor 10:13) if you'd bother to exegete it, refers to apostasy itself.
Even Exodus teaches now that the only thing that can really be done for this person is to suppress their orientation. So, really, unless you're an advocate of the perfectionist heresy this line of argument gets you nowhere.
I'll add here, once again, that the two locii classicus texts (Lev. 16 and Romans 1) index homosexual behavior to the first table of the law, and in the first case it's referring to pagan idolatry (just as the text on mixed fiber clothing refers to sympathetic magic) and the one in Romans 1 comes not as a blanket condemnation of all homosexual behavior, rather it depicts the Roman bacchanal related to Cybelene worship, and comes as part of Paul's discussion of Gentile idolatry. To draw a direct correlation between that an homosexual orientation as we understand it today is to read a bit more into the text than either can support.
All you can really say is that in all cases homosexual behavior that is rampant is a general indicator of the fallenness of mankind and specific conditions related to the world as a whole, and is part of the fallen created order itself. That's it. It's a result of the fall, as are lots of other things. Really, that's all that Scripture really can deal with.
3. With respect to marriage, the problem we have in our society is that marriage has been indexed to the state and the church/religion. At the time of NT inscripturation, this wasn't so. So, if you're going to advocate against gay marriage, then perhaps it would be better to also advocate separating marriage from the state qua state and religion qua religion. Allow for both. In Roman days, couples married themselves. That's was it. That's why this was never an issue. What the Bible would prohibit if it did prohibit gay marriage would be a gay marriage within the covenant community itself. It may not approve of it outside, but I don't think it would extend that posture to licensing the covenant community to use the state to impose that standard on the pagan world via state means. It would license it via Gospel means, which is what I've said all along.
4. In general, your position results in a problem for gays about which you may be unaware. For years, a few generations, gays have been accused of many things, including heavy duty licentiousness of many kinds. To some extent I think it's fair to say that's warranted - but it's also warranted toward the heterosexual community, and that often gets overlooked in these discussions.
That said, there's a big difference here. Gays have, for years, had to rely on their own means, their own social constructs, etc. They've gone so far as to create whole communities with their own subculture, economy, even language, and social norms. These are things, by the way, that a gay man or lesbian who is confronted with the Gospel is being asked to leave - that's the cost of discipleship in many cases, and the easy breezy way that many such as yourself seem to approach that issue is often what others, underneath it all, find objectionable. Christians are to count the cost, but the average person in the pew doesn't really realize what he is asking of the gay man or lesbian in that regard, so the "homosexuality is a choice" is often loaded with that additional baggage, and more Christians need to understand that. Gays and lesbians, particularly in "ghettoized" gay communities are being told, in that simple statement" to just leave all of that, and it's as easy as changing their clothes or moving into a new apartment or as easy as it is for a heterosexual. That's not true at all. It's not just about individual behavior, it's about so much more. It's systemic in that regard. It's also about their very
identity as a person. You can make grand claims about "homosexuality is a choice" here, but, I'll say it again, even those with groups like Exodus will stipulate to that much about the identity of the person being indexed to his or her orientation. Really, evangelicals need to get on board with the groups to which they point gays for "help" these days, if you guys don't believe your own propaganda and keep up with it, why should anyone else?
These things: This cultural, social, and economic community and the indexing of sexual orientation to the an individual's sense of
identity as a person - these things that even Ex-Gay groups say are true of homosexuality and homosexuals in general - are the very things that lend to making homosexuality the equivalent of race, nationality, or ethnicity, for those things are equally true of them, the last two in particular. I will also add here that even if we go with only the choice elements here, we still set aside religion, which is a choice qua choice, as a protected class in secular society. So, excluding the issue of marriage for a moment, when it comes to housing, employment, and public accomodation, that is reason enough to protect homosexuals as a class. If we sever the religious argument, it would be reason enough to allow them to marry as a purely secular matter. Which gets us here:
Heterosexuals don't have that baggage with respect to marriage, they do carry it with respect to their sense of identity as persons, but not due to the additional baggage of distinct social, economic, etc. structures in the way that homosexuals have them. They
do have a model institution that confers social benefits and has high moral norms and values attached to it - like fidelity and monogamy, and mutual protection etc. These have been institutionalized for thousands of years. While in some respects our society is lax in many ways in their execution, at its heart, when people say "marriage" that's what they have in view. Homosexuals haven't had that.
They may have that model at a distance and aspire to it, but really, they don't possess that in an institutionalized fashion. So, when they are criticized for their immorality, etc. on the one hand and denied the right to marry on the other, that presents them with a Catch-22, and the easy breezy, "well they can do that on their own" mantra just rings a bit hollow, because one of the reasons that gays collectively want to marry is provide for future generations of their community an institutionalized model of fidelity, loyalty, monogamy, protection, etc. like that of heterosexuals. They feel trapped by the criticisms of people on your side of the aisle, because the denial of this will, in the views of many gays, trap the next generations in the place of those who experienced the 70's and 80's when many of these criticisms ran rampant. What you may not realize is that, among the leadership of the community, it's that group that was left behind, the group who has grown more conservative about sexual values, for example, that has pushed the most for gay marriage, because they, to some extent, agree with some of the criticisms leveled and see being granted the right to marry as a means to keep the younger set from falling into the mire in which many were trapped in days gone by. This is one of the reasons why they wish to, I think correct, sever the argument from the religious argument. Yes, gay marriage is an issue with a religious dimension, but it is not simply a religious issue. It is also a legal, Constitutional, and a wider social (secular) issue.
