I don't spend a lot of time talking about boys and girls here at Cobb, but I'm at about that point in my career as a father when I will have to as a matter of course. I haven't spoken much about abortion here either. It's obviously a fruitful topic. But I want to set a direction here and I'm taking a cue from Mirror of Justice. Them say:
First, Christians in general have been much more outspoken about SSM than about non-SSM threats to the sanctity of marriage. Last summer I spoke to a group of conservative evangelical Christians about SSM, and this is the image I used to convey the GLBT community's distrust of Christians on this issue:
Imagine that marriage is a house, and the Christian is sitting on the front porch. The house is engulfed in flames. A gay person is walking down the sidewalk, lighting a cigarette with a match. The Christian stands up and yells, "Hey, don't throw your match near my house -- that's a fire hazard!" Viewing the scene, the gay person can't help but conclude: "This isn't about marriage. This is about me."
So right. But a couple years ago I went down that highway towards a more defensible defense of marriage:
If I haven't said it before, I think there's something radically wrong with boyfriends or girlfriends that hang around in 'relationships' for years although I will admit that it's more radically wrong for young people. I think that the idea that marriage offers nothing more is the primary cause for the preponderance of these strange affairs, and yes I want to get into that from my own arrogant perspective. Although I don't listen to morning radio I've heard enough of the advice shows to know that there's a big market out there for 'relationships'. Me, I like Lykis and Dr. Laura. They are on different sides of the same coin. Lykis slams young people who slide down the slippery slope of live-in relationships and Laura slams wedded people who can't keep their heads on straight about the rules and the consequence of breaking them. Both are in their own way very pro-marriage. They establish a high standard by debunking every half-assed and failing relationship that people rationalize their ways into.
In my defense of marriage and these standards I do not do so to revile those who don't. I will talk smack about you just as I would people who have no sense of style. I will cop a superior attitude when it suits me. I may be above making anything out of it, but I am not above thinking it and I do believe it's reasonable to make social hay out of such. Still there is the formal definition of hubris which is the arrogance to punish people who are already failing. This is what I don't do. I note the failure and I move on. You will notice at Cobb that I don't spend a lot of time talking about relationships and all that. But in this regard, that is to say the extent to which respect for marriage itself and the actions required in preparation for marrying well affect the behavior of single men and women, I do think there is much to be said.
I'm not sure how much causality there is in marrying well when it comes to the Old School project. It's certainly significant but I don't know how much. So I'm not sure whether it's a big deal to talk about it politically.
Yes. Tom Lykis and Dr. Laura are two sides of the same coin and they're both right. However since I am admittedly not a 'social conservative' I don't feel any obligation to be the kind of scold both of them are. But what troubles the proper Christian vis a vis MoJ's recognition of this default by Christians forces us into a defensive position. I'm not defensive, really. I have very strong ideas about what a proper marriage should be and it is informed by a great deal and initiated by the fact that my Catholic schooling forced me to reckon with it on a moral basis at an early age, which was admittedly strong negatives about the sins and little championing of the positive.
That leaves us with something of a dilemma. Right now I think I know how to split the difference but I am eager to see how the proper Catholic deals with it. You see I am convinced that there in an extrinsic sin in some homosexuality which is identical to hetero promiscuity. It is, quite simply, promiscuity. So splitting the difference, I think there may ultimately be some blessing of homosexual union, and I believe that it comes from somewhere in the social negotiation.
So do I think that there is some fraction of Christian love in gay sex? There has got to be, somewhere. And although I'm tempted to say "you're asking the wrong person", I could absolutely see that there is the homosexual man who does not believe in pre-marital sex, is saving himself for the right person and wants with all his heart to be blessed by the church. There is certainly some dispensation for that man within the body of Christ. But how the Church woks that out is all in the details. Again, we're faced with a lot of negative presumptions about homosexuality which are difficult to disentangle from the reality of any individual, and the Church shouldn't be presumptive but clear and firm.
To wrap this up and be clear, I've always said that the best case scenario is that the society should work out 'the rules' for homosexual relationships in such a way that the mainstream has a moral intelligence about them. I feel that the Church has some forward role in this process and can do things that the State & Hollywood cannot and should not.
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