Wisconsin legislators - Republican, I presume - have introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in this state. I've been kind of wondering: is this really necessary? On my list of thing that I would like them to handle, this one has never made it to the top hundred. I don't care. I think any gay that wants to get married should be able to and God bless them. Nobody is saying that I have to gay marry anyone so I'm alright with anybody else volunteering to do it.
I've always been puzzled as to why people care so much about this. It's not going to cost us any money or if it does it's going to be so little that it's not worth worrying about because even if gay marriage were one hundred percent legal in Wisconsin very, very few people would actually do it - I'd guess like a fraction of one percent of the population. I know, if we allow this the next thing is that we will have marriage between people and animals.
So? That doesn't affect me, either. Let them marry animals if they want to. But, of course, nobody should have sex with an animal, because that's just sick.
In Jesus's time, nobody was gay. There were homosexual acts, of course, but that didn't make you gay. The Romans, who ruled the Western world, didn't make such a distinction about the act itself, rather the important thing was whether you were the active or the passive partner and the social status of your partner. In other words, it was okay to pitch, but not to catch - and anything you did to a slave was just fine and the age or gender didn't matter since they were slaves.
Jesus never said anything about gay marriage, so we don't know have any solid guidance from him on that. In fact, Jesus didn't say much about marriage, period - which is why at weddings the selection of gospel verses to read from is pretty slim. The Lord said something like: ... therefore a man shall cleave with a woman ... and some more stuff. That is usually taken to mean that he has sanctified the current bond of matrimony that we believe in an practice. However, monogamy really was a Roman practice. In the Middle East at the time it was the custom for well-to-do men to have multiple wives.
In my youth homosexual acts were illegal. It seems hard to justify that in this day and age, but at the same time segregation of the races was also legal. This is such a stunning societal change, but I suppose the fact of the matter is that the men who made and enforced those laws are all dead now and we have more important things to worry about than this.
When you ask what the rationale is for gay marriage in America you are also forced to ask what the rationale for any marriage is. Marriage, for one thing, is for the creation and fostering of children so that we can replenish our population. Gays don't reproduce so they don't need marriage, right?
Well, no. Heterosexuals reproduce at a rate of 48% and self identified gays reproduce at a rate of ... 46%. So, yeah they have children, too and almost at the same rate as heteros - and this is before you even factor in adoptions and such. And, think about this: Not every heterosexually married couple has children. Children simply don't make a marriage. Sometimes they destroy a marriage.
My view on this is that gay marriage is a good thing. It's a good thing because it encourages love and isn't more love in the world a good thing?
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