Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor HOMOSEXUALS, nor SODOMITES, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. (1 Timothy 1:8-10)

26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their 9 women exchanged the natural use for what is against naure. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the 2woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (Romans 1:26-27)

So, do you still want to spit on the Bible?

Leviticus also prohibits the wearing of clothes of mixed fibers or the consumption of shellfish, among other things. So, are you a shrimp-eating, poly/cotton-wearing sinner?

I love how the gay activists have tried to name this a civil rights issue and it is not. It is an attempt by a group to mainstream their lifestyle. Lets get a few facts in order.

1. The first and most important consideration is that God said that it is an abomination for a man to lay with a man and that those who do so would have blood on their hands and their life would be forfeit. Leviticus 18:22 “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

2. The scientists have discovered that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed exactly in the manner that the Bible said it was. If you look at a satellite photo of Sodom and Gomorrah, you will see that a white dot shows up around these two cities, evidence of the intense amount of ash covering them. Also, perfectly round balls of 98% pure Sulphur (brimstone) are embedded in the remaining structures. First of all, there is nowhere on earth that Sulphur is found in such high concentrations, the most is 40% and that only when there is geo-thermal activity, of which there is none in that area. Also, Sulphur is NEVER found as a round ball. It was compared to every single piece of Sulphur at the Smithsonian Institute and none of them match this kind of Sulphur, either in shape or color. The evidence is clear that something out of the ordinary happened over there and the few remaining structures show signs of intense heat and melting. In other words, Sodom and Gomorrah was DESTROYED and then PRESERVED as a reminder to people as to what can happen when you live outside the will of God. This lie that the gay community is telling is that it was destroyed because of a lack of hospitality is bunk. The word clearly says that ALL the men were homosexual and wanted to have sex with the two angels that God had sent.

3. Back in 1973, gay activists led a hate campaign against the psychiatrists because up until then, doctors with years of clinical experience and who made observations and assessments, classified homosexuality as a deviant, psycho-sexual disorder. Because of this hate campaign, they were able to intimidate the medical community into deleting the diagnosis. Not based on new clinical observations or new information but based on violent activism against the psychiatric community.

The fact is, gay marriage is wrong and against the will of God and the people of God need to speak up or they will be teaching it to our children.

I guess when little boys come home and want to have gay weddings with their little male friends; maybe then parents will see the dangers here.

Where are the Priests, Pastors, Ministers, Rabbi’s and people of God to speak out against this?

I have also found it effective to argue that, given that the elementof the consent of the community is always implicitly present, there is a massive violation of conscience in the legalization of same sex marriage, because the implied consent of those who oppose that agenda is being assumed, thus the legitimization of same sex marriage compells such consent by force from those who would not give it willingly.

“Gay men and lesbians are being made to pay the price of our society’s moral incoherence not only about sex, but about most of our moral convictions. As a society, we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what goods marriage ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but in fact we are at best serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having children.”

Hauerwas’ essay is really about Christians and their ready acceptance of state-sponsored violence. He wonders if Christians would be subjected to something like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy if they took justified-war criteria seriously,that is, if they were willing to die rather than engage in unjust violence. In any case, his point presages Mr Deneen’s: current arguments over the dry husk of marriage are the latest stage of a much longer process of cultural incoherence.

I think I get it now. I’ll have to do some more reading (maybe do a graduate degree or two) before I’m quite ready to have an informed opinion on your big-picture thesis. It does seem to me, though, off the top of my head, that there’s no particular reason, granting that we need some kind of restoration of these pre-liberal wellsprings, that gay people (some of whom would be married) couldn’t be a part of that.

It also occurs to me, granting your thesis, that if the horse is already out of the barn, then shouldn’t we look to what are, perhaps, second-order claims about equality and fairness in order to determine whether gays should be allowed to marry. Maybe you don’t find the case for gay marriage all that convincing because it rests on a mis-apprehension of what marriage is, but isn’t it still more convincing than the case against gay marriage?

Dan

(*laughing while shaking head*)

John… “Schadenfreude” ??? ;)

It’s happened already. I saw in the news that a woman in New England (can’t remember which state) who married her partner in another state (Calif.?) now wants to be “free.” However, she can not sue for divorce in her state.

What’s that old saying? Oh yeah!” Marry in haste, repent in leisure.” ;)

Getting married is the easy part; making it work is another story! My late (first) husband and I were married twenty four years before he passed away. I don’t know which one of us did the most “growing up” during that time. My current husband and I have been married 13 years. Being remarried in late middle age was a bigger adjustment than the first time around! :P

Given your analysis, isn’t the real question that ought to lie at the heart of the homosexual marriage debate something like this: Is there a role for homosexuality to play in our communities? Or this: What is the function of homosexuality in a community?

If the answer is simply “no”, then I would wonder what the paleoconservative (or Agrarian or whatever) movement proposes to do with 10% of the human population that is homosexual. But if it is “yes”, or “yes, but that role does not consist in marriage” then I would ask if you could talk a little more about what you think that role might finally consist in.

There is misanthrope of course and degeneracy and they are forms of individual action and choice but I think these are dysfunctional forms, not the more productive form of an Individual-Community balance.

As to transient populations having the preponderance of divorce…I’m not quite sure that is correct and I seem to recall that communal Utah has both a high gay population and a higher than average divorce rate….very puzzling given it’s status as essentially a theocracy within an isolated Western stronghold.

Being the grateful and stubbornly proud participant in a marriage of 28 years…….as one of my clients once said “If I woulda murdered Morty, I’d a been outa jail by now”…..I am a believer. It is an institution of shared trials and victories , of the gift of parentage and the doorway to widening familial connection…the portal of community. Having had Gay friends and associates both richly admired and simply endured, I cannot get too exercised about their desire for marriage as a threat to my own sense of marital identity. I even have to deal with a kind of Gay Cosa Nostra in the design professions that seems to sanction the idea that gays are the most “creative”…kind of ironic given their choice or compulsion to abandon the most creative thing we humans can do but….it is not as though homosexuality sprung fully formed in the modern era . Many different cultures throughout history have dealt with it in a variety of acceptance, sanction and aversion. I have known enough Gays to tell me this life has been less one of choice than something that quite naturally occurred without concrete reasons….and furthermore, was a source of intense anguish and inhumanity. Frankly, I would be more concerned about a Gay Anti-Marriage crusade.

This is, I believe, except for the medical and common property issues, another manifestation of not wanton individualism but the wanton group think that is balkanizing our community into here today, gone tomorrow fads that can only endure within a rather flighty concept of community that has replaced individual strength with insecurity and a kind of chameleon-like quality of blowing with whatever decorated and adorned wind comes along. The American Bar Association must love the idea. Identity Politics continues to distract us from the more disciplined course of life the Framers left us to bollocks up with frenzied abandon.

I think you’re on target with the above remark.

At this point of time, in the USA, “marriage” as a public act has become a middle to upper class institution. The majority of those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder fare better economically as “single, head of household” (with a partner on the side…who’s income is not included) than married couples of the same stated and verified income level.

It would take the wisdom of Solomon and a non-activist judiciary to reverse this trend. In the process somebody’s “rights” would become secondary to the idea of something that strengthens the male-female-offspring bond within an economic unit. (e.g. the concept of a “family wage” or guaranteed annual livable income per person, irregardless of household size).

I’m having a hard time (perhaps because I’m not yet that familiar, as a new reader, with your paradigm) figuring out exactly how far your argument is meant to extend. If it’s simply the “seriously-meant assertion that much of the gay marriage movement shares a resemblance to other movements seeking autonomy,” and that such movements tend to deepen “the fundamental illegitimacy of marriage as an institution in which the claims of individuals are subsumed to that of the community,”
then I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I agree or not, having not mulled it over very much, but I can see where the outlines of the argument lie.

What’s vexing me, though, is when you say things like this: “What can it possibly mean to defend marriage when one cannot also defend or even conceive of a culture in which individualism is not the reigning basis for self-understanding?” Or when you write that “We debate over a dried and dead husk.”

A dead and dry husk? Really? It’s one thing to suggest that marriage has been diminshed, but another to suggest that it’s been entirely sucked dry of meaning. Do you really believe that, or am I misreading you?