Many proponents of gay marriage cite it as a “victimless” crime—an arrangement between two consenting adults which should have no ramifications whatsoever to the outside world.
That is not entirely true.
If anyone would have cause to oppose gay marriage, it would be the guy whose wife left him for another woman, causing plenty of intentional and collateral damage in the process. Especially if that guy were raised Southern Baptist, although he’s just a garden variety Christian now (we’ll get into that in a bit).
Here’s the thing, though. I support gay marriage. Whatever homosexual inclinations my ex-wife has, that’s not the thing that caused the end of my marriage—her infidelity was not a function of her sexuality, but rather her preference for novelty and adventure over responsibility and integrity. Even if it were repressed homosexuality that led to my divorce, better to have my ex-wife living without fear of discrimination and judgement. Had my ex had the freedom to take up with the person of her choosing, it could have saved me many years of anguish.
I suppose your stance on gay marriage is tied to your stance on marriage. Is it a partnership, an arrangement based on a mutual commitment to support and care for one another forever¹? Or is it a means for one man to subjugate one (or in biblical practice, many) woman? If the former, what’s the big deal about letting same-sex couples make the same commitment?
If the latter, really? Really?
As a Christian, I am commanded to love my neighbor as I love myself, and told, through a pretty clear example, that “my neighbor” is someone that the established religion tells me is a pariah. Jesus didn’t say anything (to my knowledge) about who you sleep with, or whether you eat bacon cheeseburgers. In fact, he went out of his way to defend adulterers, saying explicitly that we, as humans and sinners, weren’t qualified to make decisions on how other people live their lives. By condemning homosexuality, and supporting laws that would deny gays the same privileges that I have (although I have no doubts that many gay marriages would ultimately be as lousy as my “traditional” one), I am disobeying the commandment of someone I profess to follow. Woe unto those who would commit harm in his name.
Sure, God and I aren’t on the greatest of terms at the moment, what with the divorce and the suffering and all. That doesn’t mean that loving my neighbor and showing charity towards the less-fortunate are suddenly bad things. It disturbs me that there are lots of “christians” who claim that gay marriage will ruin whatever “sanctity” their own marriages have. The sanctity of your marriage is your responsibility—and if someone other than your spouse can destroy that for you, then you clearly need to be looking at how seriously you take those vows.
I have more than my share of atheist, single friends and acquaintances who can argue this all day from an intellectual standpoint, and I don’t want to discount their take on the subject in any way. The fact remains that opposition to the love of two people for one another, no matter the circumstances, and the ability to do good for each other, is both fundamentally non-Christian, and does more to damage the institution of marriage than a whole gay pride parade of folks who believe in trying to do what’s best for themselves and their partners.
¹ For my liberal activism, I’m pretty old-fashioned when it comes to the “forever” part of marriage; it’s not ever an arrangement I’d ever consider entering lightly.
