A Thought

Imagine if there were states in the country which refused to recognize your marriage. It was risky for you and your family even to travel through such states because, in the event that one member of the family was hospitalized, the others could be forbidden to visit, and would not be consulted on the types of treatments to be applied. Now, what type of marriage is specifically called into question in the so-called bible?

The re-marriage of divorced people.

Mark 10:2-12
2Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

3"What did Moses command you?" he replied.

4They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

5"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'[a] 7'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8and the two will become one flesh.'[c] So they are no longer two, but one. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

10When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Now imagine that some of the states in the U.S. refused to recognize the validity of second, third, etc., marriages. There is prominent support for their attitude to be found in the "bible." On the other hand, the prohibitions against homosexual behavior (which are only ever implied) are in rather out-of-the-way places. No where do they receive mention in the "gospels." In fact, some will argue that Jesus implicitly endorsed a gay couple.

Gay couples face the situation I described above the fold every bloody day. They can be barred from visiting their partners in hospital (not "technically" family); they can lose children that they've cared for since birth if the birth parent is killed. There's probably a lot more that I don't know about. If you think that disallowing gay marriage is about protecting families, you're an idiot. It's about destroying existing families, because they don't measure up in some fashion. Exactly the same arguments were made against mixed-race marriage some fifty years ago. Why are you still making them?

And why, when Jesus himself called "remarriage" a form of adultery, are remarried couples recognized nationwide as genuinely married, yet gay couples are in most cases not allowed to marry, and have no recourse should their marriage not be recognized from state to state? Imagine if remarried couples were treated in the same fashion, if they could lose their children without any legal recourse, if they had no guaranteed hospital visitation rights if they crossed a state line. If it's not right for them to be treated this way, why is it right for gay couples to be thus treated?

(discussion of biblical divorce here and here)