Today’s Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage will undoubtedly cause all kinds of emotions from people of all walks of life. Some will celebrate, and some will not.
I, for one, will celebrate with my family members and friends who now enjoy the same liberties and protections under the law that my wife and I have enjoyed for the past 18 years. Next of kin/survivor benefits, property laws, housing rights, medical benefits, and many more are now extended to anyone who is married, regardless of who they’re married to or which state they were married in. They will also be protected in things that are unfortunately part of our society that they were previously not protected in. Spousal abuse and divorce between same-sex couples are problems that before today many states had no answers for because the couples were not recognized as being married. Not anymore. I’m for 100% equality when it comes to legal matters and now we’re one step closer that that being a reality.
To my religious friends who see this as a major defeat to morality in our country I’ll say this: today’s decision isn’t about belief, religious freedom, or morality. You (and I) are still allowed to believe whatever your conscience allows. My marriage is in no way invalidated because of this ruling. My marriage is between me, my wife, and God according to our beliefs. As LDS members we are taught to “Be in the world, but not of the world”. There are many things that are legal that we don’t agree with or believe in. Alcohol, tobacco, coffee are all things that are 100% legal that we choose not to participate in as church members. Same-sex marriage is just one more item on that list. The Church still has the right to teach the Gospel as it sees fit, which is marriage should be between a man and woman. The Church can, and will, refuse to perform marriages that don’t subscribe to those teachings.
Civil law is the lowest common denominator for us as a country and as a people. The law should be a baseline. It’s not a limit or guide to our religious beliefs. It’s not the highest goal to strive for, but the starting point for how we actually live our lives. Laws should exist to protect as many people as possible. If your religious beliefs don’t allow for same-sex marriage, that’s fine. No one is asking you to abandon what you believe in. What we can ask of you is to embrace the idea that we can respect other people’s beliefs without disrespecting our own beliefs.
Now…I have some friends to go celebrate with!
_____________________
Cris Balmanno
Treasurer/Executive Board Member of the LDS Dems Caucus (Utah)
*These statements reflect the thoughts and feelings of the author individually and do not necessarily represent the LDS Dems Caucus.
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Precisely and exactly. Regardless. Anyone. “Marriage,” in its traditional civilzational, social, moral, Judeo-Christian and gospel sense, no longer exists as a matter of national, state, or local law. The concept "marriage’ has been erased as the fundamental basis of civil society and of a viable, stable social framework. Marriage now means, as we will shortly see, by logical implication as well as be legal precedent, anything, and hence, nothing.
“I’m for 100% equality when it comes to legal matters and now we’re one step closer that that being a reality.”
I’m not. “100%” equality in anything save in the realm of potential, opportunity, and possibility, is pure fantasy, and no less a fastasy in the legal world in which, for many, that which is legal is tantamount to that which is right and in which the legal often trumps both the moral and the rational.
Don’t worry, the author of this piece doesn’t really think that ten year olds should be allowed to drink or go to strip clubs (but never, ever underestimate the progressive mind in these matters), or that pedophilia is a “sexual orientation” deserving of understanding, compassion, and legal protection, or that the dungeon at the end of the street, just across from your children’s bus stop, run my Mistress Amazonia, should not be zoned into a more appropriate area, he just believes that there should be 100% equality in legal matters (which, even at our present cultural juncture, means in just about everything) between everyone at all times and under all circumstances.
Trapped in the box canyon of total equality of condition, one must then accept the inherent constraints upon one’s intellectual and moral options.
“To my religious friends who see this as a major defeat to morality in our country I’ll say this: today’s decision isn’t about belief, religious freedom, or morality.”
Of course, anyone with the slightest degree of intellectual honesty knows perfectly well that it is, on both the Left and the Right. To claim otherwise is, to me, a dereliction of that very intellectual honesty who’s purpose – to mask and deflect attention from the real meaning and aims of the homosexual marriage movement itself – could not be more transparent.
“You (and I) are still allowed to believe whatever your conscience allows.”
I must always crack a faint smile when leftists admit that they will still, for the time being, allow non-progressives to think and believe what they want. How comforting.
“My marriage is in no way invalidated because of this ruling.”
1. Straw man.
2. Your “marriage” no longer has any specific meaning, bounds, conditions, purpose, demarcation lines, or coherent conceptual boundaries in relation either to itself or to all other forms/practices now open to the designation “marriage.” It is now, as it is now within the law of the land, only a marriage in a highly fluid, unstable, shifting, volatile, lycanthropic sense in which you “marriage” has now become no more than a shimmering, arbitrary construct among a variety of sexual/marital constructs, each with its one dynamics, conditions, and rules, and each 100% equal with yours morally, socially, spiritually, and ontologically.
You have just defined your marriage out of conceptual existence and logical association with the core meaning, purpose, and underlying principles governing this institution, and therefore, without meaning, there can be no equality, as equality can only exist between definable, stable concepts or states of affairs.
“My marriage is between me, my wife, and God according to our beliefs.”
True enough, in a sense, but it is also deeply relevant and critical to the life, health, and viability of your community and society, and cannot be separated from them.
“As LDS members we are taught to “Be in the world, but not of the world”. There are many things that are legal that we don’t agree with or believe in. Alcohol, tobacco, coffee are all things that are 100% legal that we choose not to participate in as church members. Same-sex marriage is just one more item on that list.”
This is the same Simple-Simonesque libertarian argument one often encounters with both drug legalization and now, gay marriage. Its critical error lies, of course, in two places, the first being that non-participation in drug use does not alter the consequences of coming into contact with people who do do use them (our personal behavior has effects well outside the strictly personal) and, in the case of homosexual marriage, it is not just a matter of non-participating in homosexual relationships (and we already, I must remind folks again and again and again and again, have a body of legal precedent going back a number of years, including the recent case in Oregon, indicating that the Left and the gay rights movement has every intention of forcing anyone who crosses them ideologically into direct complicity with their lifestyle choices) but of a radical and vast alteration in the core fabric and temper of society as a whole.
Marriage and the natural family, defined in a very specific, demarcated way, are at the core and foundation of civil social order, not heroin, cocaine, marijuana (no matter what you may have heard), or alcohol.
“The Church still has the right to teach the Gospel as it sees fit,”
Still? I see. Freudian slip? I wonder for how long?
“The Church can, and will, refuse to perform marriages that don’t subscribe to those teachings.”
Two or three years, Max.
“Laws should exist to protect as many people as possible. If your religious beliefs don’t allow for same-sex marriage, that’s fine. No one is asking you to abandon what you believe in.”
This is a bald, flat-footed lie. I’m not saying the author is lying knowingly, only that he is telling one; telling the lie of the progressive Left and of the political and cultural Gaddianton’s and combinations and their puppet master, Apollyon, who is laughing himself sick as he watches us hop around like ants on the hot LGBTQ skillet while men and men and women and women – and new genders and gender combinations yet to be swept up by the social justice net – “marry,” many times with the blessing of Christian ministers.
“Now…I have some friends to go celebrate with!”
“And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God” (2 Nephi 28:8).
Your mistake is in assuming there was inequality found here. All people have the equal opportunity to fall in love with the opposite gender (unless you are going to tell me that love is nothing more than sex), and to live with their loved one for time and all eternity. God wants us to be happy and be with and love our spouse forever, not just in mortality.
Homosexual unions will end upon death (but let’s be realistic, probably sooner. Stats show that gay men have shorter unions, and are far less likely to be monogamous).
In short, your definition of equality is God’s definition of the destruction of society. So way to miss the mark.
Bottom line, if you’re going to try to justify sin, don’t try to twist God’s love to do it, because you will always lose.
Embrace it, accept it and learn to deal with it!