A friend asked about a biblical worldview perspective on civil unions for homosexuals, and so here goes.
1. When involved in discussions about things like this, it is crucial that we think three chess moves ahead. Does anybody seriously think that adopting civil union legislation would make the pressure for homosexual marriage decrease? If we accept the legitimacy of civil unions, have we granted any premises that would make it impossible to deny a pending conclusion that we would otherwise want to deny? To ask the question is to answer it.
2. If limited like marriage (say, to a maximum of two people), then civil unions are a mockery of marriage, not marriage itself. In that case, why would any recipient of that status be satisfied with it? Homosexuality runs on envy, and you don’t make envy disappear by creating a second class shanty right next door to the nice house. And if civil unions are made utterly unlike marriage, so as to include up to six other people, say, then what would prevent heterosexual “polygamous” civil unions from springing up overnight?
3. I’ll tell you what would prevent it — the cost of the benefits packages to employers, that’s what. Health insurance, full coverage, for a man, his wife, and four concubines, would be way more expensive than the current set up.
And this brings us to one of the hidden sources of all the mischief, which is governmental regulation of the economy, including our Byzantine tax law, and excessive entanglement in things like insurance, health care, and so forth. That is what this fight is over — remember the point about envy. Homosexuals are fighting for the term marriage, but they are also fighting for the swag. And Christians, who would otherwise just let them have the civil term, and who would come back to the faithful portion of the church in order to have their “covenantal marriage” solemnized, do not do so because that would involve walking away from the benefits. In order to have the benefits at all, we are being told we must share the term marriage with homosexuals. And this means that another name for what is happening is extortion.
But the good news is that this benefits system of ours is bankrupt already. In the long run, stupidity never works. King Canute could not make the tide stay out, the Supreme Court cannot make an anus into a vagina, and Congress doesn’t have enough dye to turn their ocean of red ink black. When all is said and done, the world is what God made it, and not something else. A perverse insistence on declaring the world to be something other than what it was created to be is the prelude to catastrophe. That is where we are right now. The good news is that, like hurricanes, catastrophes pass. Those who were prepared for it (living in the brick house of biblical marriage) will be in a position to help with the rebuilding. Those who built their gay marriage grass hut on the beach will not be.
4. I will finish with a few cryptic statements, in the hope that I will be able to develop them later. Economics is sexual. Everything is connected. To accept perversion anywhere requires the acceptance of perversion everywhere. To pretend that Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes are sovereigns of distinct realms is to capitulate to the fundamental pagan illusion, the illusion of compartmentalization.
This might be a tangent, but your comment on going to the faithful part of the church to have covenantal marriages solemnized raised a question.
You have argued before that the State does not get to define or ordain marriage, but that the State does have a legitimate role as a witness to marriages (to protect property rights, for example). If the witness is unfaithful, does that negate its legitmate role as a witness at all? Are there still “non-swag” reasons for Christians to ackowledge the State’s role as a witness?
Thanks.
Doug, I’ve heard it argued that perhaps the best solution would be to call all the unions-with-swag “civil unions”, and then let religious bodies solemnize marriages as they see fit. Thus giving all two-person legal unions the swag, but reserving the term marriage for the religious sphere. Thoughts? Or, in another vein, what do you think of the idea of ministers who stop signing marriage licenses (allowing the State to codify the swag-side), and who then perform a solemnizing religious ceremony to marry people “in the eyes of God”? There are, obviously, all kinds of attenuating circumstances to both scenarios,… Read more »
Hey Moor,
Why limit it to two? Or two adults? Or two humans?
Tim
As long as the Church continues to worship the Lord Jesus Christ, in a same sex fashion in the sanctuary, then society will be given over to reflect the same. Change worship, and you change the culture around you. You cannot discard 1900 years of church teaching and practice, without grave consequences. What the apostle Paul taught and the church consistently practiced through out the century’s has been silently cast off. Each Lord’s day, as we are lifted into the heavenly s, into the presence of the angles, there is only one “Priestly” vestment required in worship, which has been… Read more »
@ Steve Perry – I am not tracking you. Please explain.
Hello bbrewer71. Paul explains this practice over 15 versus in 1 Cor 11. Verse 6 explains that if a Woman does not practice this, having her head covered, with a scarf or hat during worship, “let her also have her hair cut off.” Without this vestment we all come to the table spiritually with short hair. An all male event, with man’s glory shining ever so brightly before our Lord. Either there has been 1900 years or so of uninspired teaching and practice on this subject, and we are the one’s with the correct spiritual understanding, or we in this… Read more »
I wouldn’t bank on #3 being a detriment because when polygamy becomes law, it will be due to court decision. The question that will have to be determined is, when the crash happens, how will the church respond to the polygamous marriages in our community. Scripture teaches that, though orginating is sin, polygamous marriages are real marriages. The children are not illegitimate.
Just to clarify, the vast majority of homosexuals in America seem disdainful of anal sex. Jests made in ignorance — willful, coy, or genuine — may weaken your credibility.
Then again, those you from whom you seek credulity are already ironing their choir robes (ordered from the Canon Press Gap), so any attempt to guide you to look beyond your self-published indices may be a waste of time for both us.
Apologies, enjoy the slouch to shuttered gates at the new Jerusalem.
I’m not in your league as a writer, but may I suggest that the line about “anus into a vagina” would ring better as “cannot convert a colon into a womb”? And that connects better with the biblical idea of marriage involving a fruitful love.
Tim,
For the sake of argument and a simple example. I think I understand the pitfalls of changing the definition of marriage, but I’m also assuming that there is simply going to be a season in our nation’s life where the definition is changed in many states, and that the ministers in those states will have to do some thinking about they’ll respond.
I value Doug’s thoughtfulness and perspective, and wondered what he might say. Obviously the first example isn’t going to happen, but the second is a real-life question.
Hope that helps.
Dear Thomas,
From whence the assertion that “the vast majority of homosexuals in America seem disdainful of anal sex”?
I’ve never heard such a thing…
Bro. Steve. Excellent.
Going kinda hard on the Byzantines there, aren’t you?