Why do some have a problem with Gay marriage? I don’t understand…
I recently re-watched the movie “Red Tails” which tells of the incredible courage and honor of the African-American Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. The movie opens on a provocative and shocking quote from a 1925 US Military Study:
“Blacks are mentally inferior and by nature subservient, and thus are unfit for combat.”
It’s shocking. Sad. And shameful. That we could have actually thought that way. That we could actually engineer a real “study” to prove our bias. That this was something our ancestors and forefathers embraced as fact.
We shake our heads in wonderment, but in reality, isn’t the gay marriage debate just history repeating itself? The history of the world is one of discrimination. Against different races. Women. Varying religions. Any differences, really. And like the Red Tails example, history shows us that with the passage of time, society comes to realize how inequitable it was, how brutally unfair, and with shame in their hearts, wipes out the injustice.
Today we look back at the Red Tails example, or our outright discrimination against women, and we shake our heads in scorn. How could we have thought that way?
It’s inherently obvious that history repeats itself. The latest discrimination has moved past the physical for the most part and now into lifestyle. Now it is gays and their right to marry. And someday, like these other examples, we will look back in 10 or 20 or 50 years, and people will shake their heads in shame on us, that we would even debate this, discriminate like we do. We’ll be scorned like I scorn the authors of the 1925 Army study.
I keep hearing the opponents to gay marriage saying platitudes like, “It threatens the sanctity of my marriage”. I don’t get it. Marriage is a personal subject. I have my marriage, and you have yours. What goes on in another person’s marriage has no bearing on mine. Whether two gays decide to marry has no impact on my marriage. Just like when Brittney Spears runs off to Vegas and after a day of drinking, drugs and sex decides to marry the guy, doesn’t impact my marriage. In fact, when I look around at the gay couples I know, living in loving relationships and raising beautiful and wonderful and well-adjusted kids, its abundantly clear the fears are ill-founded….particularly when looked at in comparison to outright repudiation of the sanctity of marriage done by people like Kim Kardashian and her sham 70-day marriage. So let me get this straight—Kim Kardashian can run off and do a made-for-TV wedding and divorce 2 months later, and it’s “OK” because it is a man and a woman; yet, 2 gay men living in a loving relationship and deeply committed, are suddenly a risk to the sanctity of marriage simply because both have a penis? It’s nothing but rubbish and flawed thinking.
I can tell you right now—some of the nicest and well-adjusted couples I know are gay couples. Better than the average heterosexual couple. Why would I want to deprive them of the right to marry? What is our problem? How does depriving someone else, help me? It’s ludicrous.
My favorite though is the biblical argument. When people say, “Marriage is solely between a man and a woman, because the bible tells us so. “ And then they go off and quote some verse, somewhere, which allegedly states in black and white, in God’s terms, that Gay Marriage is off-limits.
Again, what a joke. Where is the consistency? It’s nothing more than selective hypocrisy.
Since when did religion become so hateful? Really. I look at the tea party today, and it is basically a modern day KKK. They take religion and warp it and leverage it to find ways to hate people. I mean who does the tea party like? They hate the president. They hate liberals of all types. They hate gays. They hate immigrants. They hate Muslims. I mean let’s add it up. They hate basically 2 out of every 3 people in the world. Yet somehow they are “God’s chosen ones” along with the Fox News team. They have God’s direct cell phone line while the rest of us are lost. They know the “truth”. At least that’s what they think. It looks to me like the Klan all over again, just replacing the robes and pointy hats for a membership card in the Sarah Palin for President Fan Club.
If someone is going to use the brain that God gave them, and think for themselves, and CONTEXTUALIZE the bible in light of when and how it was written, that is fine. That’s what I have chosen to do. I don’t turn the brain God gave me “off” when I open a bible. I think, I reflect. I contrast versus my own experiences. I use it as a guide, not a dictatorial weapon. And anyone who approaches the bible in this way is going to contextualize the comments in the bible relative to homosexuality, or women’s rights, or many other provocative areas, and either soften or in fact disregard the literal translation.
However, there are people who PROFESS to take the bible at face value, as the direct word of God and not one word can be questioned. Or do they? See these are the people who piss me off the most. Because they are hypocrites. They say this, but in reality they are no different than I am—they go and cherry pick from the bible what they want to believe, and disregard the rest they don’t like. They are, in fact, no different than I am and my approach to the bible, but act like they are “more holy” than everyone else. Hypocrisy in its sharpest form.
Let’s take an example. Here is a quite famous quote from the bible, from the Apostle Paul:
Do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
Now, that is quite black and white. Clear as can be. So if someone chooses to use selected biblical verses to try and deny gays the right to marriage, I hope they are being consistent in the application to this biblical verse. After all, this is the word of God, right? So I hope you are ushering every single female teacher and college professor out the door. They can’t teach to men! And how about those women bosses? Can’t have that either! Or how about a woman who even dares open her mouth? No way! In fact, if you wife works, you better just keep her home, barefoot and pregnant like she should be!
Here’s the point. If you are going to choose to pick a biblical verse out to damn another person’s right to marry who they want, then be fucking consistent about it. Don’t be a hypocrite. You can’t pick and choose from the bible, right? Live the whole bible, including the verse above. At least you’ll be consistent. Barbaric, some may say, but at least consistent.
I realize this subject is a fairly contentious issue that splits my country, the USA, about 50-50 down the middle. And hence it likely is not going to change one way or another on a biblical debate. So let me end this with one final point, what I will call the “Greek Logic”. I named this after my former boss. Let me digress for a moment.
A couple of years ago, when I was running a large multinational in Nigeria, my boss, a Greek National, had flown in and we were doing our annual performance reviews of the top managers in the company. We were all sitting in a room, discussing one sales manager, and this particular manager’s boss, after outlining the business results, went off on a tangent about how this manager, he suspected of having “girlfriends” in every key city, and how he was suspected of sleeping around behind his wife’s back at night on business trips. This manager was going on and on about it, clearly upset and clearly suggesting that this might, or should, have an impact on the performance rating.
We were all listening and being polite, letting this man finish, when my boss piped up with one of those sentences that you never forget:
“Excuse me, but why do we care where he chooses to put his dick?”
END OF DISCCUSSION. It was dropped and never a word again. Sometimes simple is best. Often simple is best.
So here’s the deal to borrow from my bosses wonderful and simple logic. Why do any of us care where someone else chooses to put their dick? And furthermore, why does any of us care who someone else chooses to marry? It’s not our marriage—it is theirs. SIMPLE.
Let it go. Let go of the hate. Be open minded. Or end up being scorned for generations to come for the closed mindedness. Just like the authors of the Red Tails study. Or the men who banned women’s right to vote for centuries. You are on the wrong side of history. But it’s not too late to wake up…….and use that brain God gave you.