Same-sex marriage

For those of you who may be wondering, this is what caused the four judges to allow same-sex marriage (this is from the Wikipedia website) :


The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.[1]" The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that "all men are created equal[2]" by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause

I believe that we, as Americans, should allow the equal right of any two consenting adults to get married. For some people marriage is for religious reasons. Like me, for example. It was more important to me to have a religious ceremony and say the oath before God, led by a pastor, than it was to get that piece of paper from the state that says I am married. Its an important piece of paper, and a good thing for us to have, but the reason for me getting married wasn't to gain that piece of paper. And I take that oath of marriage before God as a VERY serious thing, and I don't take my vows very lightly. For others it is about legal rights and getting that piece of paper, and the religious ceremony is not important at all. That's why many gay and lesbian couples (as well as straight) will just get a civil ceremony performed by a judge. (I am not denying that there are Christian Gay people out there as well that will want both the validation of a religious ceremony and the piece of paper from the state) but for my purposes here I want to focus on the legal rights of people, and as a church or as Christians why we should allow that. I want Christians to see how this is an equal rights issue, an American citizen issue. I want you to see why the Gay community is calling it an equal rights issue.


God's view of whether a person is married or not is not dependant on a piece of paper issued from the state. However, the state does require a piece of paper to recognize a marriage performed by a pastor. For God it is simple, a person becomes "One Flesh" when they consummate their relationship with someone. They are already married in his eyes. That is why in the Bible it says that if a man were to sleep with a prostitute that they are as "One Flesh" (I Corinthians 6:16). Even if they are not the ideal joining of two bodies, they ARE joined in God's eyes. But in the state's eyes a man that has sex with a prostitute is not recognized as being her husband... that would be messy, wouldn't it? Could you imagine? My point here is this... we should give everyone the legal right to marry if they are two consenting adults, 18 or older, even if they are both of the same sex. To deny marriage to any two people is to deny "equal protection under the law" as the clause states above. That is their 14Th amendment right! We can continue the debate within the church as to whether or not same-sex marriage would be honored by God, blessed by God etc. But this is a state issue, not a church issue. And that is why I agreed with the man I quoted in my previous post that this should be considered one of those "separation of church and state" issues and not voted on as a moral issue. I know, some of you still have a problem with it, even after reading this. But I thought I would share the thinking behind the judges decision to make it legal for same-sex couples to marry.


Here is a brief story of why the Supreme Court made their decision, if you wish to read it (This is also from the Wikipedia website):
On May 15, 2008 the Supreme Court struck down California's existing statutes limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples in a 4-3 ruling.[29] The judicial ruling overturned the one-man, one-woman marriage law which the California Legislature had passed in 1977 and Proposition 22. After the ruling, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement repeating his pledge to oppose Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would override the ruling. The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, cited the Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp where the state's interracial marriage ban was held unconstitutional. It found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution. Associate Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Werdegar, and Carlos R. Moreno concurred.[3] It is the first state high court in the country to do so.[30] The Massachusetts State Supreme Court, by contrast, did not find sexual orientation to be a protected class, and instead voided its gay-marriage ban on rational basis review.[31]