This week’s letter comes from Rob Murray and marks the latest installment in our “Gay Marriage: Is it for you?” series. Thanks for the letter, Rob. You can pick up your winnings, a bag of Strictly Organic Coffee at our office. 704 NW Georgia.
I can only assume you highlighted the sermon by Rev. J.A. Matteson as your letter of the week to provoke response. It worked! Here is my response! It seems the good Reverend is yet another in a line of Christians who feel the major theme of The Bible should be ‘ban gay marriage’, and not ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you’. Does any thinking person need to read The Bible from Genesis to Revelation to know that is totally wrong? There is no doubt that there are passages in The Bible that condemn homosexuality, along with eating shellfish, touching a woman during her period, touching the skin of a pig, working on The Sabbath and not rotating crops. What the Reverend fails to understand is that the marriage equality movement is not asking for his or his church’s blessing. The issue at stake is the rights and protection offered in the civil contract of marriage by the federal government. He challenges us to find one example where The Bible endorses gay marriage. I have one for him: find me a passage in the U.S. Constitution – the actual law of the land – that allows the government to favor one class of citizens over another. Lotsa Luck!He then goes on to what he calls “obvious” points regarding marriage (Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve….Hilarious!). Apparently, 1) God wants marriage to be between a man and a woman because it will produce godly offspring. Yet, curiously, elderly and infertile heterosexuals can get married. 2) Survival of our species depends on these offspring. Seriously? The human race is close to the tipping point of being able to feed itself, and there are more than enough sperm banks and egg donors out there for anyone who wants to produce a child without a member of the opposite sex in their lives. And 3) God created man in his own image. If so, then He made me too. I’m more than happy to stand in front of Him, knowing that I lived the life he intended for me. Do you really think He made you to deny me that life?
Rob Murray, Bend
This article appears in Dec 31, 2009 – Jan 6, 2010.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Excellent response Rob.
“godly offspring” – I can’t imagine why such offspring should be called “godly”… first one of them murders the other then, by some shenanigans thankfully left unclear, they all went on an incest spree and begat a multitude of inbreds. Not long later, at YHWH’s urging they got themselves involved in orgies, human sscrifices, capital punishment, invasions of other lands (Christians seem to like invasions!) and a fair bit of Genocide. Hardly “godly”!
Then we had the usual churchly conceit “male and female together represent a complete picture their Creator, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27)- well it seems obvious to me that Man creates God in his own image. I might just be able to take US Christians seriously on the subject of the sanctity of marriage if they were to have huge demonstrations in Washington DC against DIVORCE – but no.
Finally, the expected “My daddy is bigger than your daddy so there” argument: “God who has defined marriage as between men and woman. I suggest you lodge your grievance with Him”. I re-iterate… the US is a secular nation and God’s alleged definitions of marriage or anything else are therefore irrelevant. I suggest you take this up with the Constitution.