Father Thomas Euteneur, President of Human Life International expressed his opinions concerning gay marriage in a Life site News.com commentary titled "Gay Marriage and the End of Christian Civilization." (August 13, 2010)
In expressing himself so eloquently, he made references to current events on the west coast of America. After 52% of the voting population of California in 2009 endorsed Proposition 8 that restricted marriage rights to the pairing of a man and a woman, a solitary Federal judge overturned the "will of the people." This "activist judge" took it upon himself to rule that even a majority of voters do not have the right to tell other citizens whom they may marry.
While every church may independently or collectively decide whose marriages they will honor inside their temples, it is not their place to impose that limited authority on the population at large. Marriage, although sanctified by a church authority, is primarily an economic status sanctioned by the State, which ever that state may be. It is the state's recognition of the union that must be documented and recorded in order to have the remainder of our economic and legal system likewise recognize it.
This union of two adults conveys certain rights and responsibilities that enhance economic wellbeing . The union conveys the right to inherit property. It conveys the right to Social Security and survivor benefits. It establishes who is a spouse with respect to spousal and family health insurance coverage issued by an employer. It conveys the right to make end-of-life decisions on behalf of another person who no long is capable of expressing those decisions. The union permits two people to file a joint IRS Form 1040.
There is no place for a church, creed, faith, scripture or theology in those economic aspects of human relationships. No where in attainment of those rights is there any mention of how one must have sex or with whom. Any church may regulate those aspects within their walls, and require the swearing of an oath that the members only engage in certain sexual activities with their registered opposite-sex partners in order to maintain membership in good standing.
Fr. Euteneuer asserts that God decreed that marriage was only between a man and a woman based on "Genesis 1 (the marriage of Adam and Eve) to Revelation 21 (the marriage of Christ the Lamb with His Bride the Church) God has had only one model of marriage, and it is not gay marriage." His Bride the Church? This church was not a woman. So the Lamb, Jesus, marries an Institution. Let us not even go there.
"A close second to this is that gay marriage distorts the very concept of parenting as well as marriage. Even if you overlook the fact that gay marriage is by definition sterile, every child of a gay marriage has to be adopted or artificially inseminated, and that in itself is a violation of the whole concept of family." There are thousands of reproductively sterile marriages between man and women. There are thousands of adopted children by married couples who both have children of their own and not. Sterility and other reproductive barriers has prompted the development of artificial insemination. None of these institutions of Man are inherently detrimental to any child. The operative factor is love and caring parents. Marriage provided two of them as opposed to one. Euteneuer continues with the assertion that "Kids model their lives, their concept of family, their morals and oftentimes their whole worldview on their parents' attitudes and values." There is no disputing that. Divorce, spousal abuse, child abuse, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse likewise shape the minds of children and their attitudes and concepts of family. A read of the foster care statistics and the statistics on child and spousal abuse will open the eyes of any hardcore Christian who believes that Christian civilization might be doomed by allowing two men or two women, who love each other, to be united in economic unity. The incidence of dysfunctional family life far exceeds the numbers of couples who are homosexual and want to marry.
First, two homosexual people must want to become united in the eyes of the law. Second, the two people must be willing to "come out" exposing themselves to a bigoted world where Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jewish fundamentalists are called upon to "fight against it with our very lives." Third, this couple must want to raise children. All of these factors significantly reduce the numbers of family units where "These kids get a totally distorted view of all these basics." The basics cited here must be the bigoted view of people who seek to limits the rights of others.
While the realities of American and religious society makes marriage and/or civil unions difficult or impossible, restricting such recognition doesn't alter the number of homosexual people by even one person. Loving couples have survived decades without the state recognizing their couple-status. The lack of the ability to marry has not changed the sexual orientation of anyone.
Taking a stand against gay marriage might just be a last stand against the assault on Christianity by the rest of the world. For certain Christians have been persecuted for 2,010 years since the religion first embraced the birth of Christ. But so have they been the persecutors. They have been particularly brutal against factions within their own ranks. Heresy has not been the wholesale denial of Christ as Savior, but rather a disagreement over the relationship amongst the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit. More Christian lives have been taken be Christians over such disagreements than by any other religion. Whole congregations have been executed because they refused to renounce THEIR priest's teaching of the dogma and embrace the official one.
Today, Christian homosexuals are being persecuted by other Christians for their belief that they are Christians and homosexual too. One thousand years ago, Rome would have sent the Christian Knights to enforce the edicts of the Pope that they renounce, repent and atone for their sins or die burning on a stake or being otherwise brutally tortured and killed in order to make sure that God didn't punish all of Christendom for the sins of the few.
Fr. Euteneuer wraps up his comments with proof that he is still worried that God is still the wrathful vengeful Jehovah of the Old Testament. "We are called to be faithful and obedient to the Plan of God for our world, and within that, God will bring forth the victory. There is no doubt that, if it is not already there, gay marriage will be coming to your state soon. If we don't fight it, our souls, our families and basically, our very civilization, will find themselves at "the end" of the line in very short order.
The ancient superstition that the righteous and the sinner will perish together when God's might wrath sweeps a tsunami, or an earthquake or flood across the land is alive and well in the minds of the scared. A plague of locusts or just HIV will take the guilty and the innocent alike. When the end does come in the Apocalyptic conflagration surely it will be because of a few gay couples being allowed to have the same civil rights as heterosexual couples.
No comments:
Post a Comment