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- What I say to people who tell me I’m motivated by pride to question the Church
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- Catholics and Republicans on same-sex marriage and public reason
- Please don’t leave the Catholic Church!
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BustedBlog
April 29th, 2009
Catholics and Republicans on same-sex marriage and public reason
Two interesting bits here: (1) Republicans seem to care a lot less about same-sex marriage than they used to. (2) Catholics are apathetic about this as well, if not outright opposed to what their Bishops and leadership is saying about it. I think that this has a lot to do with the public role of reason. Honestly, there are compelling and logical reasons available to public reason about why abortion might be wrong. This is why plenty of atheist and non-Christians can jump onboard. This is clearly not the case about homosexuality. Let’s face facts: one is an argument, the other is an assertion. And assertions always wind up losing to better arguments.
I think it boils down to whether you believe the Bible is written by God or not. If it’s not written by God, then why would one think that there is anything wrong with the choice of same-sex marriage. Yet if it is truly written by God, then same-sex marriage is wrong according to Romans1: 24-26; 1 Corinthians 18;22; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13.
I don’t believe the Bible was WRITTEN by God but rather INSPIRED by God. The Bible was written by men pondering their relationship with the Divine. We are not even sure who wrote what books - so I don’t worship the Book - but rather the God Who inspired the writing. The Bible needs to be tested against itself but more importantly read through the lens of Jesus Christ.
I think the reason is completely different. The Church already refuses to call “marriage” a whole host of things that secular seociety calls “marriage”. Divorced people getting married, or people marrying divorced people — you know, Jesus called it “adultery.” We have our own independent marriage “industry” that excludes lots of people.
Or another way of putting it — you only get to march off in a huff once. Secular society has already taken marriage to a place that we refuse to go; since we refuse to go there, we’re not there to object to yet another place society is taking “marriage.”
Homosexual inclination, is objectively disordered. Homosexual acts, intrinsically evil. A culture where the majority contracepts loses touch w/ basic objective facts of natural law.
Jeff, this is simply not true. If you listen to the more eloquent opponents of same-sex marriage — folks like Robert P. George and Maggie Gallagher — you’ll notice that their appeal is ALWAYS to public reason. They’d argue, in my own poor paraphrasing, that for the law to recognize no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex bonds effectively sends the message that there’s nothing unique or socially useful about either motherhood or fatherhood. And that that’s a recipe for even more of the illegitimacy and family breakdown that are already causing so many problems. You may not find this argument compelling, but don’t pretend it doesn’t exist just because you haven’t looked. And there are plenty of non-Christians and skeptics who share this view, John Derbyshire and Heather MacDonald — both of the blog secularright.org — being two of the more intelligent.
What would the church think about the United States government having Civil Unions for all couples wanting to engage in co-habitation, insurance, taxes and so on? And leave it to churches to perform marriage ceremonies. A purer form of the separation of church and state. That way the church can ordain marriages by God and the state can ordain unions for the purpose of legality. The church would not have to compromise its beliefs and the government wouldn’t have to deal with elements of belief.
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