Many Christians: no gay marriage! Anti gay marriage argument: it's Sodom and Gomorrah! Mention gay marriage. A hot button is touched. What to do?
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Many Christians: no gay marriage!
Anti gay marriage argument: it's Sodom and Gomorrah!
Mention gay marriage. A hot button is touched.
What to do?
(Sorry - no video)
I recently wrote about politically correct Christians and Jews, who often support interfaith that does not ask tough questions: like, what do the core texts of the different religions show the beliefs to be? My position: in many ways, these people are brain wrecked. Loads of readers responded, agreeing with what I said.
Then I wrote about something that far fewer readers agree with. Gay marriage. I'm for. Many readers are vehemently against.
That's what I want to address. That vehemence.
My position (which you can read here): I don't see how permitting gay marriage threatens marriage.
A few people wrote comments like, brilliant! They were in the minority.
I also had a couple of thoughtful responses
against gay marriage. Again, these were in the minority.
The biggest thing:
I've never had so many people cancel - including people who had been subscribers for 3 years, since I started these updates. Several people cancelled with comments like: "God says homosexuality is a sin. Just what don't you understand?"
I could have answered that we don't all believe in the same god. Quite a few of us don't believe in any cosmic force.
But that would have been a response to the words, not to the emotion.
What I saw most was that my not being against gay marriage touched, for many people, what I might call a hot button, often a hot anger button. Game over. Get out now. No more updates ever.
Nothing else counted.
No gay marriage!! Sodom and Gomorrah!!
What comes to mind, for me, is the rage of some Southerners at the forced integration of white schools in the early 1960's. One incident stands out for me: hundreds of whites lining the sidewalk as 2 10-year-old black girls walked to a previously all-white school. The black girls only got safely to school because National Guard troops held back the taunting whites.
Note: as I mentioned when writing about gay marriage, I'm against forcing any religion to perform marriages it disapproves of. And I'm against destroying the livelihood of people who don't want to bake wedding cakes or provide flowers for gay weddings.
Right now, though, I'm thinking about that hot button. That NO GAY MARRIAGE!! This is part of the destruction of the family, of Christianity, of all we hold near and dear!
Some readers might wonder: if I'm for gay marriage, what am I doing standing up for people like Umar Mulinde, Christian pastor and bishop, ex Muslim, acid burned?
Some may ask: how does he stand on gay rights?
My answer: I don't know.
The motivation, for me, is caring about human rights and freedoms, including the human right to safety. I think it is utterly vital that we do that.
That also underlies my support for gay marriage.
But I still haven't addressed the vehemence of many of those who disagree with me.
It's as vehement as the cut-off one may experience by the politically correct if one challenges, say, the politically correct stand on the role of CO2 in climate fluctuations: "You vile climate change denier!!"
I don't have an answer re the vehemence. I do know it's something important.
Comments welcome.
To life and to love - l'chaim and l'ahavah,
Elsa
August 29, 2015
PS. By the way, here's the video with which most readers agreed. In this case, I might get the same kind of vehement rejection from politically correct Christians and Jews:
Many Christians: no gay marriage!
Anti gay marriage argument: it's Sodom and Gomorrah!
Mention gay marriage. A hot button is touched.
What to do?