Equality and Gay Marriage?

Gay MarriageSomeone said the other day: “How dare anyone say that I don’t deserve access to marriage and all it brings? How dare they say I, and my relationships, aren’t good enough?” … While I have no problem with even a federal law allowing for full civil benefits to any couple, I have to say that the definition of marriage (not the civil aspect, but the traditional/religious aspect) says so. Her decision to be united in a different manner says so. It’s not that she doesn’t “deserve” it. She chose otherwise. The “good enough” valuation is irrelevant. One thing her relationship is definitely not good enough for is reproducing shared offspring naturally.

If I choose to work in a public sector job and accept the benefits of that, but then complain that my friend in the private sector gets stock options, and frame it as “i deserve that too” … Wouldn’t the first question be, give up the benefits of the one, and you get the benefits of the other, but having your cake and eating it too is just not possible? I have been told by gays how wonderful their relationships are, how they could never be heterosexual, and so should I complain that I don’t have that? I didn’t choose that, they didn’t choose this. Kudos for her not jumping on the evolution bandwagon, but I did not appreciate her willingness to ignore any existence of benefits to her lifestyle that heterosexuals do not gain, while claiming to be some kind of victim for the benefits we have. Again, an underlying “born this way”/”have no choice” theme.

That “born this way” theme is also ridiculous. We are not animals that have no choice. I choose, and we all choose. In fact, I find it outright offensive and harmful to claim that people are “born that way” as though they did not choose their partner, but were rather coerced by genetics and psychology as was stated earlier. Though I know this line of reasoning is popular with atheists because they don’t really intend to fight for gay rights, they intend to attempt to invalidate the Bible by making it seem that nature (and directly God Himself) do not agree with our Bible. All at the expense of the dignity of the people they claim to defend. We religious nuts spend plenty of time discussing why God allows things to happen the way He does. The very existence of satan leads to some big questions, but again there is no point in discussing this with non-believers.

If you do not believe in God, do not believe the Bible, then don’t make excuses. I’m not your judge. The strong argument for federal regulation, is that civil union is an important factor in federal laws, and therefore a federal jurisdiction does exist on the civil aspect, but NOT the religious aspect. There are plenty of religious organizations that allow it, and plenty who don’t. Just like there are some that expect women to cover their heads, and others that don’t. Religious liberty.

My only other concern on the matter is children who are not able to consent to being denied a mother or father, and is summed up nicely here: http://factsaboutyouth.com/posts/are-children-with-same-sex-parents-at-a-disadvantage. Especially concerning adoption. Remember, if gay couples want “equality” we must redefine what is an ideal parenting body to ignore the presence of a mother and father. I’ve never met a single mother that claimed her situation was ideal.

So to sum it up. 2 men as parents cannot be said to be the equivalent of 1 man and 1 woman without denigrating the role of mother. The same is done to the role of father by equating 2 women to a heterosexual couple. There is no way to make this parental equality argument without redefining the terms mother and father. There are criticisms that compare this to interracial marriage, but the connection is absurd. Interracial couples can reproduce. Interracial couples include a man and woman. Mother & Father. We do not have to redefine those terms to support interracial marriage. However, given the breath and width of civil unions already established, the gay community can only be looking for one other thing. Complete equality in all aspects, including parenting, despite their inability to produce offspring themselves.

Imagine this… equality is pronounced, and then a gay couple and heterosexual couple are both looking to adopt a baby. Baby becomes available, and the state representative chooses the heterosexual couple. The baby has no choice, the state honestly thinks the traditional couple is a better fit, BUT… prepare to defend that decision. No two families are equal, but one that lacks a mother or a father must be recognized as lacking from the start. As is already true in single parent adoptions.

Leave A Comment, Written on May 17th, 2012 , WWJD?
The Phony Theology of Mike Lux

Liberal FaithIn his article on the Huffington Post from 2/21/2012 entitled “What Bible Is Santorum Reading?” Mike Lux takes his unique “quantity” over “quality” approach to drive-by theology.

I do not want to reinvent arguments. They are all over the place. The “don’t judge me” line is thoroughly worn out and frankly about as phony as theology gets, as Bob Enyart explains rather thoroughly here: http://kgov.com/judging … or Leslie points out here: http://compost-blog.com/2011/09/16/judging-one-another/ … So I’ll ignore his almost stuttering reuse of the word “judge” and focus on a few other theological anomalies.

In fact let me zero in on the doozy that his article hinges on: “That is a lot of verses, 258 by my count, where Rick Santorum’s savior and George W. Bush’s favorite philosopher sounds like a tried and true, solid to the core, far-out, lefty liberal. And all those where Jesus sounds like a conservative?” … Rated “Pants on Fire” by yours truly. Let me start with this:

Matthew 19:21 – Jesus answered (to the rich man), “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Notice my quoting the whole verse. Something too inconvenient for Mr. Lux. Mostly because it would require admitting that there are words before it, and words after it… those surrounding words demonstrate context. The above example, entirely within context, demonstrates a VERY conservative Jesus. You see, the “liberal Jesus” that Mr. Lux claims exists, would have insisted that this man follow him, and would have lobbied for political reforms that would cause him to do so. Of course that would make Him no Jesus at all, but a deceiver an “anti-Jesus”. The Jesus of the NIV Bible, and every other version I have used, says something similar to this:

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

… Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

So take special note of “he went away sad” … because the Jesus of the Christian Bible doesn’t force anyone to do anything. In fact, while pointing out that a rich man will find it nearly impossible to voluntarily do the right thing; “with God all things are possible.” Which is where this story concludes. It is possible with God that the heart of a rich man will choose rightly. I suppose liberals suspect that it is the job of the government to choose “rightly” for all of us?

Almost every example that Lux rips out of context makes Jesus look very conservative when put back into context. The context is almost exclusively Jesus to the individual, because Jesus was “about” personal responsibility. “Turn the other cheek” is not a lesson for governments, it is a lesson for individuals. If you are looking for lessons for governments you have to go to the old testament, and not ignore the less than G rated parts. It’s a whole different story. As far as quoting Leviticus as some sort of shame against the “pro-death-penalty” conservative, well that makes me wonder if he even read it at all. The list goes on and on.

The Bible says in Mark 14 that:

“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

One of the slippery slopes of perceiving and understanding is whether or not we take personal responsibility for the words of scripture, or attempt to delegate our responsibility to government or our neighbors. If our purpose is to make other people responsible for real justice, or charity, or healing, then that is the anti-Jesus. The wrong understanding. For instance, when I cast my vote for Santorum, I will not expect him to be generous for me. That is my job. I will expect him to be personally generous, but politically just do his constitutional job. I expect him to get out of my way. I will give to the causes that I believe in. If he tries to take my money, and then give it to people he wants to, I will look for a new person to vote for who will not do that, and allow me to give it to those I choose to. That is charity that’s WJWD. That’s what Jesus DID do.

Mike Lux has a very lucrative niche. You see he is among the very rare liberal practicing Christians. This is an important niche. Seeing as the non-religious are almost exclusively liberal, as would be expected of those who wish to shed all personal responsibility via the government rather than the blood of Jesus, they often sound ridiculous trying to teach us about our Bible. That’s where the “don’t judge me” line fermented. However, Mike claims to know and love Jesus, and we are left with his word on that. Of course we are supposed to, contrary to the Gospel According to Lux, “Judge a tree by its fruit.” So, by order of the Christian Bible, I will. Bad apples Mr. Lux. Bad apples because you teach a fake Jesus that removes personal responsibility in favor of delegating it away via legislation. Bad apples.

8 Comments, Written on February 25th, 2012 , WWJD? Tags: , , , , , , ,
Who’s right? Whose rights?

Obama thinks he's pope.A guy on the news this morning was commenting on the new rules the President has been pushing for concerning birth control. He basically wants to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control to all employees. Of course the Catholic Church’s position on birth control, is that it is immoral. While I’m not personally opposed to birth control, I have plenty of friends who have taken this position and can understand the desire to allow God to choose when we have children. Also, it is important to point out, that it is actually more expensive for the Catholic Church not to provide birth control because of the number of child births and future dependents they have to cover as a result. So this really is a matter of personal conviction.

What struck me about this interview, is the man supporting Obama, probably said the word “rights” about a dozen times. Woman’s rights, reproductive rights, … and so on. It struck me that America was built on a foundation of precisely 3 rights. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  While it could be argued that birth control falls in there somewhere, the “right to life” ends up contradicted by extending the government’s role in reproduction. Think of that, “government’s role in reproduction”, it just seems too “Red China” to be for real.

As a computer programmer I am fairly skeptical of the ability of anyone to juggle other variables in with these foundational 3 rights without risking contradiction. In data analysis we have a great term, it’s “granularity”, it basically refers to how general or specific data is. At a very high degree of granularity the data is very specific. As it becomes less granular it becomes more general. Mixing different levels of granularity is a sure way to confuse the issue and often employed by spin-doctors hoping to twist the data to make a point that it does not support naturally.

Rights can be seen as general, or specific as well. The founders very wisely avoided very granular rights. They spoke in simple and general terms. However, by elevating a term like “Woman’s rights” (more specific) or “Reproductive Rights” or “Minority Rights” to compete at the same level of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, we are faced with almost certain contradiction. These are not such general terms as “happiness” and if we attempt to treat it as such then we’ll almost certainly end up confused and likely end up with a scenario where literally any argument can be made and that argument would stand in stark contradiction to other valid arguments based on the same data. It’s not the logic that’s flawed, it’s the data that is flawed. It has been skewed to support a bias, no longer analysis, just spin doctoring.

So I walked away pretty disappointed in how far we’ve gotten from the beautiful simplicity of the Declaration of Independence, of the Constitution, and of the principles that have guided our country for 235 years. The government is now contradicting the Catholic Church and has itself decided that its own opinion trumps that of the organization on a very specific point. Nobody is saying that an employee may not buy their own birth control, the government is forcing the employer to pay for it. I must assume that this government has justified its role, as establish-er of morality, based on some skewed version of the Constitution. However, this is a major FAIL for those of us that believe that socialism has failed and our founding principles have succeeded over and over again. For those of us that believe that 1 in the hand is better than 2 in the bush, and that application trumps theory.

For anyone that believes that this issue is minor. For those that believe that the Catholic Church is making too much of this. I hope you’ll consider the severe change that it demonstrates. A type of change that has been tested on multiple occasions and has failed on multiple occasions. In fact, even Europe has yet to become so arrogant as to defy institutions of faith to this degree, even the tyrant kings of old would hesitate to do such a thing.

For those who find the right of the Catholic Church to provide health care plans to their employees that are in line with their moral values comparable to radical Sharia law, I leave you this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum. This is a severe deviation, and IMO not just about birth control. I suspect that abortion is at the root of this, as for many it is “just” another form of birth control. The federal government is subtly attempting to require that anyone who would employ anyone and do business in the United States of America be required to pay for the abortion of unwanted babies. Starting with “the Pill” they go to the “other” Pill, and so on. Eerily reminiscent of an ideology that could lead to:

Revelation 13:16-18
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (666)

Maybe a stretch, but not so far as the whole Sharia Law claim.

2 Comments, Written on February 13th, 2012 , WWJD? Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
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