("He's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot")
Source: Washington Post
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60180-2004Dec12.html
Title: "Marriage Rites and Wrongs"
Date: December 13, 2004
C.S. Lewis, the British essayist, author and cleric, died 41 years ago, so he wasn't writing about same-sex marriage in America. No, his subject in his book "Mere Christianity" was divorce. Still, his observations may shed some light on our "values" controversy today.
"I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused," he wrote. "The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question -- how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws.
"A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. . . .
"There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."
Washington Post
When I was in elementary school, I was an odd duck for not having read Lewis'
Narnia tales; I once owned a Martian trilogy by Lewis, and was ultimately surprised when, in high school, I found out folks looked to him for religious definition.
How times have changed.
Even since the advent of Sciforums (Exosci), we've seen arguments from the flock that look to C.S. Lewis, yet here where Lewis' ideas are inconvenient to contemporary sentiment, they are ignored. That suggests something about the paucity and insincerity of the Christian-derived traditionalist argument.
Or so says me. William Raspberry considers Lewis' words in his December 13 column:
But marriage isn't only sacrament. It is also the basis on which we decide who may inherit in the absence of a will, who may make life-or-death decisions for loved ones, or who is eligible for the advantages of joint tax returns. And because it has these secular implications, the state has a legitimate role in determining who is married and who isn't.
The church has no interest in joint filings, and the state no interest in declarations of love or religious affiliation. To the one, marriage is a sacred rite; to the other, it is the sanctioning of a contractual relationship. The church may care whether he is a philanderer or she a gold-digger, or whether there's too great a gap in their ages. The state's interests run to the validity of the contract ....
.... Maybe if we can get past such churchly considerations as God's will as expressed in Leviticus, we can make peace with the bifurcation Lewis urged in his 1952 book: Let the church handle the sacrament, the state the contract.
If we could get there, we might even calm down long enough to ask ourselves what would really be the risk in same-sex marriages .... We believe it's a good thing for heterosexual couples to commit to fidelity. Do we think it's a bad thing for homosexual couples to do so?
Washington Post
One of the problems in the Gay Fray is the long-running practice common to political Christians whereby an asserted Biblical perspective is held as self-evident. Many people who call themselves atheist remember developing that notion after finding it impossible to discuss "God" with their Christian neighbors and family; it is similar to the attitudes that call Hinduism "atheist".
The difficulty that arises then often comes because liberals, given to compassion, recognize that they owe their neighbors' frustrations fair consideration. Since the 1990s, however, liberals have been trying to keep up with the hyperactive tantrums of conservative talk radio and contempt for American people and institutions.
I understand that someone who believes God will hurt or reject them if they allow people in love to get married would want to meddle in other people's lives, but that's just the point. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, for this American Caesar (e.g. the Constitution) also renders unto you what is yours. The government can't, at least as I see it, force churches to honor and endorse what they call adulterous (e.g. homosexual) marriages any more than it can force churches to
not honor and endorse what they call adulterous (e.g. second marriage of divorcees) marriage.
However, neither can a church force its policy on the political public. The citizens of the United States are governed by the Supreme Law of the United States Constitution. The churches answer to the Supreme Law of God. While I won't go so far as to call these assailants of the Constitution traitors, I would wonder why they would seek to obliterate the social institutions that protect their deviant, defiant, Biblically-violative religion.
What's so offensive to Christians about marital fidelity, anyway? As Raspberry noted, is it really a bad thing for gays to be committed to one another?
Additionally, is it really so offensive that people should receive equal protection under the law?
It would seem that the answer on both counts is yes: The traditionalists argue that fidelity is bad and equal protection is violative.
Rather than advising, "Love it or leave it," I'll simply receive these Christians with hope:
• Welcome to America. Get to know it.
My question to the traditionalists: "Why is equality of gender so damnably offensive to you that you would reject the U.S. Constitution?"
Osama bin Laden is at least decent enough to admit he wants to wreck America. In that respect, he's one up on the traditionalists.
Come on, traditionalists, stand up and be counted. Be
proud of your hatred. Sure, I'll still hold you in contempt for that, but at least the charge of "cheap, hypocritical, liars" will come off the list.
Traditionalists are shown to be charlatans.
Another question worth asking is, "What respect do traditionalists think they deserve?" After all, as they strive to reduce people to second-class citizens based on their gender, I don't have a whole lot of respect for them. However, that doesn't trouble me as it does in other cases. This lack of respect is exactly what they ask. After all, we gotta be fair, right?
So as traditionalists continue to compare people to rapists and dogs in order to carry out their assault on the Constitutional core of American equality, what general respect are they owed? They are neither rational nor even civilized.
"Separate but equal" does offer a solution. Christians should vote on their church affairs that pertain to the Supreme Law they choose to answer to, and leave the Supreme Law of the Land in America to the people who choose to answer to it. Separate, sure, but equal, and reflective of an affirmation of the social contract.
After all, reality requires a rational approach lest the species opt out of life. Let rationality prevail in this life, and traditionalists can be secure believing they'll be rewarded with all the irrationality they could dream of and more in the next life.
Christians used to look up to C.S. Lewis. What happened?
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