November 9th, 2006
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Matthew 19:4-5
I have had that passage from Matthew shoved in my face more times then I care to count in the past couple of months. Yesterday I talked about how I suspect a lot of people were afraid to admit to others that they were voting for the marriage amendment and how they used the anonymity of the voting booth to show their true colours. Well, there is another shield people use to hide their bigotry. Religion.
Religion serves, I believe, as a shield to protect themselves from feelings of guilt rather then any real justification. It’s a lot easier to be bigoted and hateful when you have convinced yourself that you have God on your side. The Bible has been used to justify a number of great injustices in history: slavery, denying women the right to vote, the holocaust. Now it is being used to deny marriage for homosexuals. While I could go on for quite a while about how most of the passages dealing with same-sex relations in the Bible really don’t condemn homosexuality per se, it is irrelevant to the topic I wish to discuss tonight: hypocrisy.
We have all heard before about how a lot of people pick and chose the parts of the Bible they believe in, and this justification for the marriage amendment is no different. Christ never spoke directly about homosexuality, but that passage from Matthew does seem to give us an idea of what he thought marriage should be. Again, while I would argue that passage doesn’t preclude the possibility of gay marriage, it is not the point. If people think that Christ’s words here are justification enough to protect his ideal of marriage, so be it. They can have their opinion. But Christ didn’t just stop there. After all, the topic came up because the Pharisees were testing Christ’s opinion on divorce. Here are the next few verses from Matthew 19 that no one seemed to bother to talk about during this whole marriage debate:
6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
Well, what does all this mean? It means that Jesus was not talking about how marriage is only for one man and one woman, but rather that the sanctity of marriage is something that cannot be “torn asunder” by any man. In other words, once you’re married, it’s forever. There is no excuse for divorce according to Jesus, with the only exception being an unfaithful wife.
So, where is the amendment to the constitution to outlaw all divorce in the state of Wisconsin? Would these people propose one? Would they vote for one? A few might actually answer “yes”. Even fewer would mean it. Certainly not even close to 59% of the voters.
Therein lies the hypocrisy of all these holier-then-thou gay-bashers. They have taken a passage where Jesus, being asked about the legality of divorce by the Pharisees, states in no uncertain terms that marriage is basically forever, and have turned it into a definition of marriage to preclude gay people.
See, people really don’t care too much about what Jesus has to say on the sanctity of marriage when it might effect them personally. But when his words can be used to disparage a group of people other then themselves, suddenly it is the infallible word of God and is not up for debate. Hypocrites.
On a final note tonight, I might mention that Jesus always saw through the Pharisees, and had some choice words for them (Matthew 23):
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Jesus goes on for quite a while, but I think you get the idea here. So, those of you who voted “yes” on the amendment because you think Jesus told you too: see above. Think about it.
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