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by Peter A. Belmont / 2009-01-20
© 2009 Peter Belmont
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Some who oppose gay-marriage say, the Bible said “Adam and Eve”, not “Ada and Eve”. But they forget that Adam and Eve were a paradigm of reproduction, not of marriage.
Marriage is about making or confirming nuclear families. Many who get married today do not intend to reproduce.
And why should the “The Bible” (or the Koran) or any other religious text regularly subject to varying human interpretation be considered determinative of social issues in a society not governed by any single religious interpretation of it?
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I favor a legal marriage for any two adults who want to be married. Marriage is for societal celebration and confirmation (and authorization) of a particular nuclear family, two adults who wish to live together.
There is no need to impose other qualifications.
They need not promise to intend to have children. Even old folks (beyond childbearing) do get married, today, and no-one would be heard to complain.
”The” Bible (not everyone’s Bible, by the way) proscribes a lot of things. It may even, for all I know, proscribe gay marriage. But it surely proscribes eating shellfish, and a lot of people eat shellfish. Legally. And no-one is heard to complain that they should not do so because eating shellfish is an “abomination.”
If people are going to “pick and choose” among Biblical prohibitions, and “give themselves permission” to ignore some of them, then they have no business imposing other putative Biblical prohibitions on others. Let everyone “pick and choose” his/her own Bible, if any, and his/her own prohibitions, again, if any.
”But how could we be moral people if we are not guided by the Bible?” someone asks. Many are not guided by “The” Bible, or by any bible, and manage quite well.
Anyone who wishes to abstain from entering a gay marriage (or less formal gay relationship) because of what they perceive as a Biblical prohibition, or for any other reason, should be allowed to do so. Abstain away. Pushing everyone else around is another matter.
Anyone who wishes to enact broad prohibitory social and legal mechanisms “because” of a selective reading of a text, such as the “The Bible”, which has not been universally adopted within his/her own society (I write of the USA) even as a Deeply Respected Text much less as an Authoritative Text, which exists in many translations, and which, moreover, is a text subject to human interpretation—so that even the “meaning” of the text is a socially-determined thing—should ask themselves if they would wish to be compelled to live in a fundamentalist Islamic society where the rules come from a different “bible”, the Koran, as interpreted by those who rule, for instance, Iran or Saudi Arabia.
I don’t want to be ruled by anybody else’s fundamentalist reading of any text, whether Bible or Koran.
In America, if not in the rest of the world, let us be free of religious prohibitions. Please.
And if Adam and Steve, or Ada and Eve, want to get married, throw rice, not stones.
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