Marriage and California Proposition 8

There's a lot of passion in California about Proposition 8, defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. There's so much stupidity all around, it's hard to find any footing, and as usual, the problem is the stupidity of Christians, just as Jesus said: "You are the light of the world . . . but if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness."

First, let's dispose of the folly that gender is in the same category as racial or religious distinctions, as opponents of the measure speciously argue. It's been most exceptional in history to make "racial" distinctions in marriage, unlike in gender. No culture anywhere until today - including those like ancient Greece which were perfectly OK with homosexual conduct - ever imagined that marriage had anything to do with homosexuality. Only the modern West has considered blowing off the fundamental distinction of gender in marriage. In sharp contrast, "race" is really an artificial construct. Male and female are much more fundamental in humans. To equate these distinctions is preposterous, and can only be done by implicitly accepting the delusion that fundamental racial differences exist among humans.

The modern West has been most consistent the last 500 years in holding to preposterous racial theories to justify its plunder and slaughter in the rest of the world, so it's maybe not coincidence that precisely this culture, having found racial and gender distinctions equally fundamental in the past, now finds both equally insignificant today.

It's pretty clear that homosexuality is a consequence of brokenness. Homosexuals, for instance, have a far higher incidence of abuse as children than the general population, especially sexual abuse. To say this is OK is sort of like accepting accident arthritis as normal. You don't find fault with people for getting arthritis as a result of being smashed up in car accidents, but it doesn't do them a lot of good to decide that there's nothing wrong with that condition, even if you don't know what to do about it.

That takes me to my next point. Christians like to base their condemnation of homosexuality on the authority of the Bible, especially Paul's writings. But if they would read these, they would find that Paul doesn't rest his case on the Bible, so Christians should shy away from that approach today, following Paul's example. His evidence that homosexuality is a problem, when he wrote to the Corinthian church, is in no way based on the Bible.

Instead, Paul says, "Such were some of you, but you were washed . . ." Paul's evidence that his list of problems were problems - including other practices that Christians tolerate beautifully both in their churches and in the politicians they support - is that when people met God in their church, these problems were getting repaired.

In the churches today where noses are out of joint about homosexuals, do homosexuals or other people with problems actually get repaired when they show up? The biblical rule is clear: until homosexuality or any other problem is getting repaired in your church in the people who walk in the door, you need to shut up and instead find out why you have no good news to offer - speaking of getting problems repaired.