[Vision2020] Crazy Train

[Joan Opyr]

> Ed Writes:
>
>  
>
> >> My example (in
>  gestalt form) was specifically meant to illustrate that when we began
>
> >> to accept homosexual marriage and relationships as normal, we 
> morphed
>
> >> from the idea of being a Christian or Judeo-Christian society based
>
> >> on biblical morality. And, of course, this is historically when
>
> >> societies get into trouble--the beginning of the end so to speak. My
>
> >> previous post laid out all the societal dangers for normalizing
>
> >> homosexual activity..... So, some say that there are so few, embrace
>
> >> them. The issue is not how any individual poses a threat to anyone,
>
> >> but how the normalization of homosexuality endangers the entire
>
> >> society.
>

And Michael replies:

> I think we have too easily dismissed this argument.  The problem is 
> not the inference; the problem is making the premises probably true. 
> Ed now has to tell us a short world history, focused on the causal 
> relations between acceptance of homosexuality and the general moral 
> break up of society, and the typical cultural result in the West when 
> the classical and/or Judeo-Christian framework is rejected. There is 
> still the possible problem of confusing appropriate law with 
> appropriate morality, but I think we could table that in order to hear 
> Ed out.  So, Ed, are you going to start in the ancient East or the 
> ancient West? If you can historically verify these claims I think you 
> would have one interesting argument.

Historically, marriage was until very recently an economic exchange of 
goods, and that exchange was made between men.  Women were chattel, 
property, and those worth exchanging brought with them real goods -- 
gold, land, a herd of goats.  What we have gradually come to accept in 
more modern times is that marriage is now a relationship between two 
people, not two fathers, or a father and a prospective bridegroom, but 
the two people who are actually to be married.  What those two people 
bring to the marriage contract (ideally) is a mutual regard or 
affection for one another and the exchange not of goods but of binding 
declarations of legal, ethical, and social responsibility for one 
another.  Why should same-sex couples not enter into that legal 
bargain?  Why should marriage be available to Anna Nicole Smith and  J. 
Howard Marshall but not to my partner and me?  And don't tell me that 
this is a religious issue; Melynda and I have had a religious ceremony. 
  We were married by the Rev. Dr. Kristine Zakarison at the Community 
Congregational United Church of Christ in Pullman.  Whether Ed likes it 
or not, a licensed minister and, more importantly, Melynda and I 
believe ourselves to be married in the eyes of God.  What we'd like now 
is the secular civil license and the legal obligations, thanks.

When we talk about the Judeo-Christian foundations of marriage, 
particularly in the fashion that Ed has chosen, we are essentially 
talking through our hats.  It is Ed, not my partner or me, who would 
open the door to polygamy.  Having multiple wives was perfectly 
acceptable to the Biblical patriarchs.  Hell, it was desirable.  The 
more wives a man could acquire, the better.  How far back is Ed willing 
to go in his quest for the ultimate God-sanctioned marriage?  Abraham?  
Moses?  David?  Solomon?  Or is that Judeo in there, as I suspect, just 
for effect?  Just, as Warren Hayman has suggested, to appear inclusive 
while tossing out the third leg of the Abrahamic religions, Islam?

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com


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