Kurieuo wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 11:13 pmNonetheless, Byblos is essentially correct as I see matters, and so I'd not quibble much with him. Because, what Ed has in mind is a civil union and not "marriage" itself (like we understand) -- marriage being a real metaphysical construction beyond humanity and regardless of what any human thinks. Society has taken "marriage" if you will, and redefined it, such that people don't even know what it truly is. Ed would I'm sure think marriage is simply a human social construction rather than a real intended framework, something with a real purpose, rooted in the very design of nature itself. There is a
telos to marriage, that can't be removed irrespective of what any of us think. Marriage is a design found in nature and biology as such that humans fulfill, when a man and woman come together - this provides the natural foundations for children to be had and raised within. Yet, if materialism is true, than marriage is nothing more than a human construction so it becomes more like whatevs, nothing has any real meaning or design other than what we assign.
How is marriage rooted in the design of nature?
If we look at the Animal Kingdom as a whole we some instances of mating for life, but we also see males that do the deed and hit the road. Among mammals that stay to guard their offspring the males are typically polygamous. We also see all kinds of abhorrent practices. For example, cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests, then when the cuckoo chicks hatch they pushes the hosts' eggs out. Botflies lay eggs in the skin of mammals, where the larvae feed on the hosts living flesh, then tunnel out at maturity. One male and one female in a lifelong bond isn't even the norm, much less the rule.
Among humans there's plenty of variety as well. Child brides, polygamy, and arranged, transactional marriages have all been common and in some places still are. Marriage predates Christianity, and it obviously exists outside of the Christian faith, as well. Calling a love match between one man and one woman "traditional" only works if you ignore a whole lot of traditions.
Marriage means different things to different people, and those meanings have always changed as society has changed around them. Same-sex marriage is just another change.
Kurieuo wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 11:13 pmNow then, I don't believe people who view marriage as something more than a social construction -- for example, that marriage is a real archetype embedded into nature and given to humanity by God serving an important foundation to raising a family -- I don't believe such people should accept two people of the same sex can be married. It isn't a matter of morality, or religion, marriage just doesn't make any sense when understood as something much deeper than a human social construction. So, I think Ed (and all others like him) are being a bit disingenuous here in thinking Christians are just being uncharitable and not wanting equality for all.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that "Christians" oppose marriage equality. Here's a snippet from a piece from the Guardian:
In our slow learning process, Christians are increasingly asking, “Why shouldn’t our LGBTIQ+ sons and daughters, siblings and neighbours be included in one of our society’s most treasured institutions? What good reason is there to not do this?”
What people are finding is that the reasons being offered are not strong. Having rightly jettisoned older and harsher understandings of homosexuality, conservative Christians are left with much weaker arguments, such as: “One shouldn’t change the definition of marriage” or “this will violate longstanding church doctrine” or “society will unravel and children will be harmed” – or, most weakly and irrelevantly, “our religious freedoms will be threatened”.
These essentially backward-looking and defensive arguments don’t appear to be changing many minds, except in the other direction perhaps as support for marriage equality continues to rise, even among conservative Christians. In the US, for example, , 62% of Americans now say they favour civil marriage equality, with a mere 32% opposed. That compares with 48% in favour and 42% opposed in 2010. What is remarkable is that these rapidly changing attitudes are happening right across social and religious spectrums. Republicans are now almost evenly divided. Sixty-seven per cent of Roman Catholics are in favour, 68% of white mainline Protestants are in favour. Even among white evangelical Protestants, support has grown from 14% a decade ago to 35% now.
You may not agree with the opinions being offered there, but the polling is pretty clear - the majority of Americans, including American Christians, support marriage equality. Those who oppose it do not speak for all Christendom, or even for most Christians. They speak for themselves as members of a steadily shrinking conservative minority.
It's a bit uncharitable to assume that all of those Christians who accept and support same-sex unions do it because they fail to understand marriage as anything but a social construct. You're correct that that's how I see it, but the majority of American Christians?
Kurieuo wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 11:13 pmThe way around this, is for the government to simply butt out of it altogether. Let such private affairs be between individuals. If the government wants to incentify what they see as good for society however, then do so. Otherwise, I don't see what role the government has in private affairs of what happens in the bedroom between two adults. Certainly not in defining something outside its jurisdiction like "marriage".
It's tough to keep the government out of it when we're the government.
The reason that marriage equality is now the law of the land in the United States is that conservative Christian voters backed conservative Christian politicians who passed conservative Christian legislation aimed at legally defining marriage in conservative Christian terms, and at allowing states that banned same-sex unions the freedom to discount marriages performed in states that did. The Supreme Court found that those laws violated the Constitution, and here we are. When local and state governments use the law to push their religious views on their neighbors they risk getting burned at the Federal level, and boy did the "traditional marriage" activists ever get burned.
