Friday, October 31, 2008

Prop 8

I want to be very clear about what I am about to write because it will, no doubt, offend at least one of the four of you who read this blog. But I don't care. This is my blog and I can write whatever I want. :)

I have issues with Proposition 8, and since I have already voted, I am proud to say I said YES on Prop 8. I think we absolutely need to abolish gay marriage and the concept of teaching about this "alternative lifestyle" in classrooms.

The arguments for prop 8 are very persuasive--everyone deserves a right to love, marriage is abused by heterosexuals, and only right-winged redneck fundamentalists are dull enough to gouge a hole in the logic that is progression in society.

I agree with this; everyone deserves a right to love. Marriage is abused by heterosexuals. Fundamentalists are radicals that are afraid of change.

This is what I do not understand: if marriage is a failing structure that is so abused, why do homosexuals want to be a part of it? What does love have to do with marriage in this postmodern world where anything goes and love is the most abused word in the English language? For once, I am on the side of the radicals because I believe that it is my duty, responsibility, and homage to my integrity, convictions, and God to not give way on the only gift God has provided people with that I should experience as He planned it.

What I mean is that I think it is more important to uphold God's standard of what marriage is than to pacify the small populace of homosexuals.


God calls his followers to be a light to the world, to be the salt of the earth, and to uphold His laws as well as we are able. I mentioned that love is already an abused word, and that may lead to more understanding about what should be a universally-accepted position on this amazingly controversial topic.

Language has evolved, there is no doubt about that. Words, especially in this postmodern era, have no meaning. Virginia Woolf said that "the meaning of words live in the mind, not in dictionaries." Without a basic understanding of words, there can be no definition. In fact, there would be so communication without definitions for words. Definitions give context and I think the only kinds of words that can function under this subjective mentality are slang words (see Urban Dictionary). Words must have meanings in order for anything to make sense because if you do not understand what "subjective" means and you define it on your own, not only are my words misconstrued, but you cannot make an argument against me.

Words must have meanings that are universally accepted because communication is vital and society cannot afford subjective communication. The problem with being subjective is that I can make anything fit into my world view. When people begin to manipulate context and word definitions with their own subjective interpretations, they inject their beliefs, opinions, and convictions into another person's beliefs. If you do not see the problem with that, you cannot be helped.

Therefore, it is vital to have a solid definition of what love is. There are 28 definitions of love in the dictionary and about as many synonyms:

Tenderness, fondness, predilection, warmth, passion, adoration. 1, 2. Love, affection, devotion all mean a deep and enduring emotional regard, usually for another person. Love may apply to various kinds of regard: the charity of the Creator, reverent adoration toward God or toward a person, the relation of parent and child, the regard of friends for each other, romantic feelings for another person, etc. Affection is a fondness for others that is enduring and tender, but calm. Devotion is an intense love and steadfast, enduring loyalty to a person; it may also imply consecration to a cause. 2. liking, inclination, regard, friendliness. 15. like. 16. adore, adulate, worship.

Because love is an emotion, it seems to be impossible to define. It is, absolutely, a subjective word. What is love for one person could be slight indifference to another, and it is this concept that makes a solid definition necessary.

When people begin to understand that love is not lust, when they understand the enduring, powerful, and complete authority of love in its true form, they will stop associating love with the shortcomings of lust, want, hunger, need, and desire. They will stop associating love with fleeting emotions because love consumes everything it touches.

When love is part of an equation, that is the outcome. Love equals love because it does not fade. Beauty, talent, wit, lust, desire, ambition, strength, everything. Everything. Every thing that is not love will fall. It will fail. The only word that might be slightly synonymous with love is stamina because it endures.

Not only would this understanding of love solidify what it means to be in love but it would reestablish marriage as the perfect union of a man and woman as God planned it.

The reason I advocate for marriage to stay between a man and a woman is because I am a Christian and as such, I am convinced that everything God created, He has power over. I also believe that as a Christian, I will be held accountable for the decisions I make, the laws I vote for, the people I support, the groups I am associated with, and the words I speak.

More than ever, people who hold convictions that there is a God who will judge us in the end need to uphold His laws. God directly commands us to keep marriage sacred, that the bond between a husband and wife are not to be broken by manly tools. Already, we have condoned divorce. Already we have condoned annulments. Already, we have joined people together who have lived together before marriage. Already, we have promoted premarital sex. Already, we have joined people together with shotgun weddings. Already, we have allowed people who do not understand the eternal nature of love to enter into the covenant that requires love to stand. Already, we have tainted the sanctity of marriage to accommodate society's standards and I have had enough.

God calls us to a higher standard. We have been scarping at the bottom of a barrel in a grave for morals that will guide us into what we think will result in universal happiness. We think we know what is best for us instead of looking to the authority on everything.

When we were kids, our parents gave us boundaries so we would know what was appropriate and what was forbidden. This kept us safe because left to our own devices, we would have stuck our fingers in sockets, dropped electric equipment in tubs, and shoved our bodies in dryers.

We need boundaries because contrary to this postmodern world, everything is not ok. What makes you happy can have consequences for other people, and society needs to wake up and realize that there is an end to the tunnel, even if it is man-made.

I fear that what will happen is that in the process of searching for morals, we will grasp the hands of Hell, and they will tell us, "Yeah, you really fucked up."

It is time now to enforce God's law, not man's law.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmm, interesting argument but some would say that the way God is calling them to be salt and light on the earth is to vote no on 8 and pray for change from the inside out by the holy spirit and not by blocking equal rights to homosexual couples.

Jesus was a radical lover of sinners, I think we should follow in his footsteps.

remember, marriage is not just a religious insitution but a social institution that has been practiced in every culture and religion across time, seems kind of silly to claim it for ourselves. what we can do is preserve God's definition of marriage within the church. we can't force people to be aligned with our beliefs.

ConglomerateBeauty said...

Thank you, anonymous reader, for your comments. I hope you give as much attention to my reply to your comment as you did to the comments I made in my blog.

First of all, I want to point out that because you commented anonymously, it is more difficult to respond because if I do know you (which I suspect I do because this is not a widely-circulated blog), I would know how to speak to you with more direction. As it is, please excuse my assumption that you are someone who wants to vote No on Prop 8 and are not a Christian. I make this assumption to cover all basis because I am sure, even if you aren't the person I've just described, someone else may be who reads this and thinks the same as you.

Anyway, I think that you do not understand the dynamic of how people change. For example, if you have ever had an alcoholic in your family, you would know that the only way that person will even consider changing his or her habits is by force. Please understand--I am responding to your suggestion that homosexuals should be prayed into being straight.

If this is the case, it is an impossible mission to pray for a genuine, dramatic change in a person's identity while allowing that person absolute freedom in expressing, exercising, and living in that lifestyle. If actions are condoned, no change will happen. Like the alcoholic, prayer is a great tool to encourage the Holy Spirit to work in the person's life, but ultimately actions speak loudest.

A person will never change if his or her actions are encouraged.

Your second comment is that "Jesus was a radical lover of sinners, I think we should follow in his footsteps." My response to this is that Jesus did spend time with radical sinners and he loved them because regardless of their lifestyles, sins, and everything, they were (and are still) God's creation and children. I also think it is wrong to associate "love" with "accept".

I am not a theologian or a scholar so I cannot tell you if there is a specific form of "love" that is used in that passage because (I think) this passage is in Greek, and they had four different types of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape. Storge is human affection between parents and children, philia is love between friends, eros is erotic love, and agape is more divine or supernatural love (see 1 Cor 13). [this information was taken from Richard Foster's "Streams of Living Water" p. 204]

Jesus' love here is probably the supernatural love He gives everyone, but if you know anything about the salvation, you must know that there is a line. People cannot love God and love man. I think this commandment to love people who life lifestyles contrary to the Bible deserve love only from God because people are biased and worry about perception; today, society preaches that everything is to be tolerated except intolerance, and that is as hypocritical as a Christian who supports gay marriage.

As for your last comment, I regret has taken me this long to comment about because it bothers me so much. I think it is a ridiculous argument to say that "we can't force people to be aligned with our beliefs" because no matter what a person believes, this is not going to resolve anything. No matter what, someone's beliefs must lose. If proposition 8 is passed, the belief that homosexual marriage is OK is forced upon me. If prop 8 is abolished, homosexuals have to live with that.

But you are right--marriage is practiced in every culture and religion across time. I will not argue with that. However, I will point out that being homosexual is not a culture, nor is it a religion.

I would like to ask you though: how do you propose to keep God's definition of marriage in the church when homosexuals would demand to be married within those walls? This acquiescence to homosexual marriage is not a minimal advance--it is an all or nothing move. Homosexuals will not accept marriage in certain areas, states, or locations. If homosexual marriage is permitted, it must be permitted everywhere. With that in mind, how is this all-encompassing, radical acceptance supposed to promote what you suggested--for homosexuals to change via prayer?

oohgravity said...

sorry, this is sabrina :) forgot to mention my name

oohgravity said...

i hope you know who i am, i live upstairs :) i found your blog on other people's...i hope thats ok. and this is just a friendly discussion on my part, i hope it is the same for you.

i personally don't think a person needs to be prayed straight, but i was operating on the level that most christians equate homosexuality to a sin like alcoholism, which is a relational offense.

which in the case of homosexuality, it is not my place to "change" them.

also, you can only go so far in "forcing" an alcoholic to change, after confrontation it is up to them to choose to change, which a denial of certainly has consequences, such as cutting ties with that person, but they still will not be changed unless its from the inside out.

i don't think its hypocritical for me to allow homosexuals to get married. again, this "force," aka, not letting them get married, will not change them. you can call me a hypocrite, i can handle it, but just know that i am sincerely responding to what i feel God has taught me and called me to do, just as you feel you are doing the same.

you and i are both sinners so to judge other sinners as deserving only of God's love and not anybody else's is stepping outside of our boundary and claiming the judgment of Christ for our own. who am i to say that at the end of all this i will be in heaven and they will not?

also, i believe to love God is to love people. it is a natural and necessary result. there is no separating it. in fact, this is the very reason Christ came to start his church, to be his body of love and truth on the earth. truth cannot be apart from love. love cannot be apart from truth, the truth is Christ's love.

you won't be forced to believe homosexual marriage is ok. you just won't be allowed to stop them from it.

personally, i believe my lifestyle as it stands is not perfectly aligned with the bible. do i still think christians should love me? yes.

as for your last point, i am not sure how to separate it from the church. i also don't know how to separate non-christians from getting married in the church, but they still do. i would love for God's definition of marriage to be upheld by all christians but unfortunately its not. i guess the ideal would be that everyone can get married by a certain person under the law (not a minister), and christians would get married under the law and under the church by a minister. (again, no idea how to make this happen!)

ConglomerateBeauty said...

No problem, I love blog browsing!


How is it not hypocritical of you to be a professed Christian and say that homosexual marriage is OK? In this matter, the Bible clearly talks about who marriage is meant for, so you cannot be following what "God has taught and called" you to do because He specified that marriage be between a man and a woman. Period.

I think we are allowed to judge people based only on what the guidelines the Bible calls us to live by. This not only holds people accountable and keeps and encourages Godly living, but it monitors those whose behavior will end in self-destruction. In the end, we all will answer to God and I think the issue of homosexual marriages is way bigger than us; again, Christians need to support what the Bible says marriage is for. God never wrote about what would happen when people disobey this, but I think it is ridiculous to assume nothing will happen on the day of judgment. We are all allowed to have opinions, but God's rules and Kingdom comes first.

Also, you will know you are going to Heaven because the Bible stipulates that those who uphold His commandments and accept Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior will be saved. It's a basic guideline--believe in Jesus. Whether or not you believe in your heart this is true is the matter that will keep you from entering eternal bliss.

I absolutely disagree with this statement. You said yourself, I won't be allowed to stop homosexuals from getting married and that is precisely why it is forced on me. When a person is helpless to act against something they believe to be wrong, force has acted upon him or her. There is no way this argument makes any sense to say, on either side, that "you can't force your beliefs on someone else" because no matter what, someone's beliefs are violated, even if it is stated in the politically correct way you phrased it.

And your opinion that Christians should love you despite your personal foibles is your own business. I do not advocate God or Christians to not love others, but love does not dismiss wrongdoings. For your own sake, I hope you have people in your life who can point out the things that are decremental and against the Bible because, like I said before, as Christians, we are called to a higher standard. Just because Jesus spent time with radical sinners does not mean He dismissed their sins before they asked Him to.

Thanks for responding, too, to my question about marriage. However, I think your reasoning is flawed. I argued against subjective wording and I also argue against subjective interpretations, so to suggest that every person who gets married should be married as he or she sees fit, so long as it aligns with his or her beliefs irks me. This is the unsolvable problem: not everyone can be happy. As with gay marriage, either straight people are upset or the gay community is. In a democracy, majority rules and it is a futile mission to make everyone agree with one set of rules. Nevertheless, as the majority had ruled before, marriage should be between a man and a woman only.

oohgravity said...

well, i feel the same about your reasoning, so we will have to agree to disagree.

and yes, you actually did advocate for Christians to not love a certain group.

"people who life lifestyles contrary to the Bible deserve love only from God "

we are only allowed to hold accountable those who have made themselves accountable- we are not to judge. this is clear. Jesus' role is to judge, him and him alone.

i guess i just don't understand why we let people sin in all kinds of different ways but not THIS way. i don't see anyone setting laws that people can't have more than 2 drinks or that people can't overeat or curse. obviously its because this is a free country and people are allowed to do as they please. if the people don't see it as wrong, you can't force them to see it that way, thus, their laws will reflect their beliefs. someday soon a similar proposal will come up and it will be made legal again. obviously, there would be a point where you would choose to leave this country- if murder became legal. because that affects you. but finally, people define what is legally sanctioned by their beliefs. and many people believe it is not okay to discriminate against one group because of another group's beliefs. yes- one group will finally have their beliefs violated, but only one can be physically violated, and that is the minority group whom the discrimination is happening to. none of your rights are being taken away by homosexual marriage.

we can end this debate, i don't want it to keep dragging on. we both have our opinions and that's good.
have a good day!