The Hateful Passion and Gay Ignorance of the Same-Sex Marriage Lobby

Monte Kuligowski

It is helpful to understand that the same-sex marriage movement is not about equal rights; it’s about validation. No segment of adult couples in California, for example, has fewer rights than any other segment of unmarried or married couples, regardless of the private behavior of its members. Per California Domestic Partnership lawyer, Gene Kinsey, “Effective January 1, 2005, the rights and obligations of registered domestic partners under California law are virtually identical to the rights and obligations of spouses.” Allowing same-sex couples to “marry” confers nothing additional to their unions except for society’s final stamp of approval via the power of the state.

That, of course, is what same-sex advocates want.

And to that a traditional culture can never cede, whether the culture is based in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Chinese traditional religions. The U.S. is sort of a traditional country and is sort of a post-Christian culture. Traditionalists cannot accept the tenets of post-modernism anymore than post-modernists can accept the precepts of a traditional country – hence, the tension over California’s passage of Proposition 8. It’s a matter of defining principle.

I’m not saying all religious traditions are equal across the board. As Americans, we live in a land in which Christian morality produced the greatest country in world history in terms of military, economic and moral strength. Yet, it seems that a good portion of the country is ready to step into a new civilization based upon the failed ideals of secular Europe.

Those on the right will never view homosexual practice as acceptable; much less equate a same-sex union to holy matrimony. The left nation will never accept the teachings of traditional Christianity as anything other than absurdly wrong, misguided, harmful, irrelevant and outdated. When those characterizations don’t work, the left will turn to show how the Bible actually supports “gay” marriage after all.

Even though Prop 8 overturned no rights or benefits of California’s Domestic Partnership Act, the die-hard opponents of Prop 8 are trying to win public sympathy by force, coercion, ridicule and manipulation.

That’s what we are witnessing before our very eyes. The morally traditional people (and all who understand the necessity of preserving marriage) of California voted to keep the institution of marriage safe from redefinition. The “gay” marriage mob then went ballistic with accompanying hate speech and deeds, spewing profanity, vandalizing property, boycotting businesses and blacklisting individuals who dared to support Prop 8. One woman, 69-year-old Phyllis Burgess was reportedly assaulted as her cross emblem was snatched from her, thrown to the ground and stomped on.

The apparent source of their animus is the church and the holy God of the Christian tradition who, in no uncertain terms, condemns homosexual behavior as sinful.

Thus came the sacrilegious skit, “Prop. 8: The Musical,” through which the homosexual lobby highlights its biblical ignorance by equating Old Testament dietary laws of Israel with the universal condemnation of homosexual acts. The “Jesus,” played by Jack Black, says that the Bible says homosexuals are an “abomination,” but goes on to say that it says shrimp cocktail also is an abomination. The “gay” point (even though the Bible does not single out one class of sinners as being an “abomination”) is that both alleged biblical pronouncements are equally absurd and just as Christians are free to eat coconut shrimp, they should also be free to approve of homosexual practice and, of course, homosexual marriage.

The already-infamous Newsweek piece, “Our Mutual Joy,” of Dec. 6, goes even farther in the promotion of “gay” theological lunacy.

Lisa Miller begins her piece by posing a rhetorical question to her post-modern readers: “Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple . . . turn to the Bible as a how-to script?” We are supposed to answer in unison, “Of course not.”

You see, “no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes.” Why, Abraham, “the great patriarch,” slept with his female servant. And his grandson, Jacob, was quite the womanizer, having fathered children with four different women. And don’t forget, many of the fathers of faith, “Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel,” were polygamists. I’m impressed that Miller knows of the distinction between Israel and Judah considering that she believes the Apostle Paul of the New Testament viewed marriage “an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust.” (Perhaps Miller could research the historical context of pending persecution when the apostle advised the unmarried to remain single.)

In her bleak assessment of what the “Bible describes,” Miller fails to distinguish the sins of men from the ordinances of God. The sexual sins of the “fathers,” that are recorded in the Bible, whether fornication, polygamy, incest, etc., are neither prescribed nor authorized by God. Unlike the many self-serving narratives of history, the Bible is brutally honest in its narration of the lives of the patriarchs, judges, prophets and kings. No one gets a sugar-coated biography. Any traditional Christian could tell Miller that the sinful tendencies of the human heart are clearly established as a part of the Bible’s overarching theme of the need for a Savior.

Regarding the New Testament, Miller quips that, “Ozzie and Harriet” are nowhere to be found. According to Miller, Jesus was indifferent to marriage and Paul thought little of the institution. Well, actually, God said that a man shall cleave to his wife, becoming one flesh and Jesus reaffirmed that command from the Old Testament. In Matthew 19, Jesus reasserts that after God joins man and wife “let not man put [them] asunder.” Paul beautifully paints the marital relationship between husband and wife as a picture of Christ and His church. In the epistle to the Ephesians, Paul instructs married men: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Ah, now that’s better than Ozzie and Harriet. That’s a tender, self-denying love to which no equal is known. No one lives out the commands of biblical marriage perfectly, but an abundance of life-giving instructions are there nonetheless for all married couples who will actually “turn to the Bible as a how-to script.”

Even as Miller believes that the Bible is sort of vague on marriage, she fails to see any biblical prohibitions against homosexual practice. Yes, Paul was “tough on homosexuality,” she admits, but “progressive scholars have argued” that his condemnation was directed to the corrupt and violent practices of the Roman emperors and the specific sex lives of Nero and Caligula. So then, Paul was tough on those guys, but not on the virtues of monogamous homosexual love.

Interesting theory, but it is pathetically problematic in that Paul begins his contextual discourse in the first chapter of the epistle of Romans with universal words. The “wrath of God,” is to be revealed against all who suppress the truth of God. Refusing to submit to God they “became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (vv. 18, 21). Therefore,

“God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (vv. 26-28).

Without the help of “progressive scholars” one might conclude that homosexual practice is against nature and wrong universally.

Finally, Miller makes a statement to which traditional people can agree: “Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace.” The story of the woman at the well is cited as an example of “Christ's all-encompassing love.” Another, and perhaps better example is the story of the woman caught in adultery, of whom Jesus does not condemn. However, His final words to her are applicable to everyone who is caught in sin, even the sin of homosexual practice.

Upon departure, Jesus said to the woman, “Go and sin no more.” Yes, Jesus reaches out to everyone, but accepts no one on her own terms. All who come to Him must do so on His terms. Yes, same-sex advocates are demanding that society accept practice that is universally condemned. But they are demanding more than social approval, they are demanding that God accept them on their terms, not His. They seem to think that they can make the profane holy via the power of the state.

Marc Shaiman’s “Prop 8 - The Musical,” and Lisa Miller’s “Our Mutual Joy,” are two examples of the widespread biblical ignorance held by the same-sex movement. Interestingly, the driving force of the movement is not a perverse passion, but a hateful passion. Ignorance, hate and passion make a dangerous threesome.

Of all the misguided statements found in Miller’s article, the following evinces her demeaning intolerance and sheer disrespect toward traditional religious people and the holy sacrament of marriage perhaps more so than the others: “If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that.” Yes, that type of disjointed reasoning may be easily dismissed, but the statement ought to cause traditional religious people to weep for those whose hardness of heart is displayed against the Creator.

It used to be said that ignorance is bliss. Perhaps now we should say that ignorance is gay.


Visit Monte's blog at www.DuelingNations.com

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Monte is an attorney who writes on topics of cultural, religious and legal interest

columnist@cox.net