Matthew 19:4 “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
That seems pretty explicit, don’t you think? Shouldn’t
If I wrote an article that cheese is wonderful, you couldn’t surmise from the article that I believe eggs are the devil if I didn’t mention eggs.
Of course, you’re prejudiced form the start, so you’ll read whatever you need to in order to bolster your own hateful attitude.
Oh the times, they are a-changin. Get with the program or get left behind. Either way, it’s only a matter of time before you people don’t get to tell we people how to live anymore.
I can’t say I’m not a little giddy over the prospect of all of you apocalyptic weirdos huddled in your basements freaking out over “Teh Gay!!!111one!~”
Enjoy that.

Of course, you’re prejudiced form the start, so you’ll read whatever you need to in order to bolster your own hateful attitude. ( I would say that anyone who choses to follow their lust over their anatomy is probably pretty biaed too,wouldn’t you think?)
Oh the times, they are a-changin. Get with the program or get left behind. Either way, it’s only a matter of time before you people don’t get to tell we people how to live anymore. (I think the Nazis, and definitely the Stalinists had the same approach. Ar eyou advocating that Michelle get with the new homofascism or get off the air, so to speak? And I don’t know exactly what you mean about not “you people” telling “we people” how to live… as fgar as I know, you’ve been free to do whatever you want to with whomever you want to for quite some time now. As to that marriage argument, I’m a woman and I can’t marry another woman either– so as a heterosexual I have pretty much the same rights as you do…)
I can’t say I’m not a little giddy over the prospect of all of you apocalyptic weirdos huddled in your basements freaking out over “Teh Gay!!!111one!~” (Just because you’ve come out of the closet doesn’t mean we’re going into one.)
Enjoy that.

Actually, I think the gay marriage issue is about economics and equal status under the law – hospital visitation, de facto power of attorney(rather than requirement of legal documentation), death/survivor benefits, maintenance of rights to under-age children, etc. If a church does not wish to acknowledge such unions as sanctioned by God, that is their perogative – but that should not allow discrimination within our society. How does the marriage of the gay couple down the street in any way damage my marriage – or yours? If we truly want to advocate for a smaller government, perhaps the first thing we should do is get out of our citizen’s private life.

Superficial knowledge leads to misunderstanding of the Christian viewpoint, which is to hate the sin, love the sinner. This is the ideal to be aware of, even when Christians fail to measure up. (That’s why they need a savior.)
Gays shoud be careful to whom they ascribe hatred. If I want to be equally superficial, I could accuse a lesbian couple of hating men, or two gay men of hating women. I bet there are cases where this is true.
So many of us have this idea that what we do can never affect anybody else. If a fellow with divorced parents proposes to my daughter, she needs to wonder if he could know what a good marriage looks like. That divorce affects her marriage. Within a generation, gay marriage will affect heterosexual marriage in ways that we cannot yet foresee.

As my fictional heroes Denny Crain and Alan Shore demonstrate, gay marriage isn’t all about sex. And if you didn’t have your head so far up your Reformed rear, you’d realize that.

… and Christian opposition to gay marriage isn’t all about hate!

The conceit of the article–acknowledged in the very first paragraph–was that it was going to be a rebuttal to the argument that the Bible supports some sort of “traditional” marriage and that there is no room for supporting same-sex marriage. So why are you upset that they didn’t talk about the arguments that can be recited by memory about “traditional marriage.”

Awwww, but reading the bible is HARD. It’s a big book with small print! Plus, they don’t have to actually KNOW anything about what they’re denigrating, they just have to be able to hurl absurd slurs and lies. It’s much easier!

The passage from Matthew seems to be more about divorce than anything else. I’m not quite sure how this fits into the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, since Judaism and Jewish Law and all those 613 Commandments that Jesus claimed he would “fulfil” allow divorce. Unless you’re interested in banning divorce completely (since it’s contrary to God’s will, according to J), then leave off this hypocritical stance against gay marriage. Or maybe you should be for same-sex marriage but against same-sex divorce.

KarenA -
Doesn’t matter, sis. On a long enough timeline, the survivability rate of everyone (including Chritianist bigots) is zero.
The revolution of demographics is in full swing. The younger generations are already behind us.
Can’t legislates no hates from behind them pearly gates.
Enjoy that

Look, even I am not going to contend that a fundamentalist reading of the Bible would endorse gay marriage. The author was silly to try.
That said, she did center in early on the key issue (and then dissembled away from it) — the confusion between civil and religious marriage. Under religious marriage, discriminate against gays all you want. But extending that discrimination to civil marriage, in a society with a 220-year tradition of continually extending civil rights to repair the original flaws of the Constitution, is simply wrong. **That’s all gays are arguing.**
As I see the fight, those who say religious marriage should be extended to civil marriage rules (to discriminate against gays) already have what they want in most states — in violation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. Those who say civil marriage would be extended to religious marriage rules if gays were allowed to marry (the threat cited by traditionalists who say they have nothing else against gays — cue the violins) are speculative at best and, even if they are correct, such a move would also run into an ironclad Constitutional bar — in the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.
(Those Founding Fathers had their own issues with prejudice; but legally speaking, they were smart.)
The one good theological argument in the article is the comprehensive refutation of the idea that if the “Biblical definition of marriage” changes from one woman/one man, the world will end and we will have to worry about polygamy, bestiality, etc. Seems to me we have a lot more to fear from the Old Testament definition of marriage (Abraham and Hagar and Sarah; Jacob and Rachel and Leah; David and Uriah and Bathsheba and maybe Jonathan, etc.).
Traditionalists condemn gays for “fornicating,” then deny them any legal mechanism to end such a state. What complete hypocrisy.

Have you seen the movie “Henry V” with Kevin Branagh; it may even be an improvement on Shakespeare’s play. Henry V is the leader of a Christian society. The Scottish Covenanters believed that governments as well as families and individuals are to acknowledge Jesus as King. After all, the Bible says “And the government will be upon His shoulder.” So for a government to acknowledge Jesus is just to admit reality.
We Christians believe that the New Testament supercedes the Old, so the arrangements which Solomon, Abraham, David, and others had are superceded by one man and one woman in marriage.

And we Jews – who share this country with you – don’t give a crap what your bible teaches. It doesn’t apply to us.

Nor does it apply to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to anyone’s particular flavor of mythology.

Surely in a country that allegedly offers freedom of religion to all its citizens, what “the Bible sez” or doesn’t say is immaterial to secular laws. We don’t all go to your Church; why ought we be forced to abide by its tenets? That’s just absurd.
Meanwhile, why isn’t this discussion about the rights to freedom and the pursuit of happiness? OR about liberty (again) and justice for all (not just for the betterosexuals)? Why does America “promise’ these lofty ideals and then sh!t on them for some citizens? I never understood that.
Lastly, a hint/clue for Michele: that Matthew passage you pulled to refute – that was the answer Christ gave as to whether or not D-I-V-O-R-C-E ought to be permitted, and clearly His answer was “NO!” Yet we disregard His teachings on that very topic (it wasn’t about gay marriage, it was about the dissolution of heterosexual marriages). More selective fundamentalism, imo.

No reply/rejoinder from Michele? Typical.

1 – Just because you believe it’s true, doesn’t make it so.
2 – Quit pushing your religious beliefs down my throat
3 – Get out of everyone else’s bedroom
4 – I say we turn this around and start checking out what you religious people do in your bedrooms. It should be open to scrutiny and judgment just as you have done.

Scott said “And we Jews – who share this country with you – don’t give a crap what your bible teaches. It doesn’t apply to us.”
You should care. Half of the book (which also denounces homosexuality) is at the core of your own faith’s belief.

Shooting Star,
You make it sound like an entire half of the Bible is devoted to “denouncing homosexuality” when, at best, one passage in Leviticus denounces what is in effect bisexuality (or maybe just str8s messin’ around (to whit, “lieing with a man – as with a woman” – hint: gay men don’t lie with women in any manner, hence the bi claim or horny str8s messin’ around to get their jollies). And it has the exact same ‘denouncement’ (“abomination”) as it does for eatinng shrimp.
The passage also only pertains to the Levite tribe, a nomadic tribe wandering in the desert for whom lack of procreation would have meant inevitble annihilation. Today’s society has so over populated, that’s not an issue.

For a quick detailed essay on how Lisa Miller has failed the case for gay marriage, you should check out Kevin Lewis’ article from the Biola website:
http://www.biola.edu/news/articles/2008/081212_newsweek.cfm
And I also want to make a quick reply to what someone posted previously,
“Lastly, a hint/clue for Michele: that Matthew passage you pulled to refute – that was the answer Christ gave as to whether or not D-I-V-O-R-C-E ought to be permitted, and clearly His answer was “NO!” Yet we disregard His teachings on that very topic (it wasn’t about gay marriage, it was about the dissolution of heterosexual marriages). More selective fundamentalism, imo.”
Fine. You don’t like that verse. How about,
“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.”
-1 Thessalonians 4:3-6
“Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.”
- Hebrews 13:4
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
And in case you aren’t familiar with first century Jewish Palestine, homosexuality was condemned as “sexual immorality”.
The Bible doesn’t, anywhere, at any time, promote or support homosexuality, much less gay marriage.
-adamryan

Adam Ryan,
Nor is gay marriage about male prostitutes. (Or thievery, swindling, drunkenness, slander, etc. for that matter.)
“And in case you aren’t familiar with first century Jewish Palestine, homosexuality was condemned as “sexual immorality”"
Um, the word “homosexuality” wasn’t around in first century Jewish Palestine. It was invented in the late 1800s. Perhaps the passages refer to (nominally) heterosexual men on the down low – lieing with men as they do with women. Certrainly doesn’t seem to be talking about homosexual relationships as we know and understand them today.
Sorry, but I’m not going to dignify your ‘biola’ link with a response. It is clearly biased to begin with.
Bonnie,
You cannot in one post say, “Christian opposition to gay marriage isn’t all about hate!” while in another you insist “Christians” are supposed to “hate” the “sin”. You’re entitled to your beliefs, but according to my faith, my committed, loving adult human same-sex relationsip isn’t a “sin” to begin with.