There's been a lot in the news lately about gay marriage...particularly with Prop 8 in California, and all the subsequent rallies and protests... I've been wanting for awhile to put my thoughts together on the subject in my own words, just to explain what I believe and why I feel the way I do about this. As most of you know, I have pretty strong beliefs on these subjects and I'm just going to explain them as best I can... well here goes.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the beginning was also Love, and Love was God. God, being Love itself, created the world out of love. We are created because God loved us into existence, to be his children, his beloved.
Male and female he then made us, two equal halves of the same coin, made in his image. And making us in his image, he also gave us the power to create out of love, as he made us, when we join together our two halves in the act of sex: sacred in the fact that it creates life, as God does, out of love for each other. Therefore children are meant to be loved into existence, to serve as the beloved of the two whose love was so powerful it brought a new life into the world. This act of creation is a mirror image of God's creating us.
That is why sex is so sacred, and should only be allowed within the bond of holy marriage, when a man and a woman are bonded together, combining their two halves into a single whole, committed to each other for life through this sacramental bond which God has blessed. And as the new life they bring forth is permanent, so should their marriage be, to nurture and grow that life with their love that it so deserves. Deny any part of this equation--love, marriage, or God--and sex is not as God designed it: as the vehicle through which God brings about new life through a bonded couple's love. This is what is meant by the "sanctity of marriage": a phrase that is repeated so often that the meaning is sometimes unclear.
So when this design is corrupted, it profanes this gift which God has given us. We destroy the sacredness of this act of love and creation. And this can be done in many ways: denying the unity aspect by having sex outside of marriage, denying the creation aspect through the act of contraception, or disrupting the whole arrangement by trying to make two members of the same sex bonded in marriage. It just doesn't work. Two members of the same sex do not reflect God's image of love and creation; instead it tries to twist his creation to fit that couple's OWN idea of love, which God did not intend. God does not recognize this as a valid marriage, because it is not how he designed marriage. He created sex and marriage for us; they are not ours to twist and shape into our own molds and make them what they were not intended for.
Bringing children into this unnatural arrangement complicates things even further. The child is denied the right to a family as God designed it, with the special attributes that a man and a woman bring to a family. Instead they have two moms, or two dads, and are missing an integral part of the family body. Parents are supposed to be the first teachers and role models for their children; where is the role model for a little boy who has two moms, or a little girl who has two dads? Even for a little girl with two moms, if she grows up to be heterosexual, she is missing the basic foundation from which to model her own family on. A good family foundation inspires the offspring to want to model their own families on it, but for a heterosexual child of two gay parents, they have a somewhat limited exposure to how heterosexual family structure is supposed to work, not having grown up in one. Not to mention that all children should be raised to know God, and a homosexual "marriage" does not reflect God as he is.
It is so hard for modern society to understand why gay marriage should not be allowed, because it doesn't understand what marriage should be in the first place. But the fact is that we did not create love and sex for ourselves, so we cannot make them what we want them to be. They were made for a specific purpose, and that is so we can know God better. Just like everything he creates... all is to know and love God more.
Thoughts? Disagreements? Additions? Anything? I'm open.
