Why the church fears gay marriage

November 26, 1:53 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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Same sex marriage opponents offer several standard objections; the impact on children (either by learning of gay marriage in school or direct exposure within the family), the faith based objection (Biblical condemnations of homosexuality), and the detrimental effect on heterosexual unions (if we start letting gay people get married, straight people won't want to get married anymore). 

It's fairly simple to rebut the impact on children argument (if children's gender roles were determined by their parents, there wouldn't be any homosexuals), impossible to argue the faith based objections, and lots of evidence that heterosexual marriage isn't impacted in societies with more tolerant same sex marriage laws.  

Gay, Catholic, Mexican-American author Richard Rodriguez, in a very interesting article in Salon, addresses what he believes may be a big issue behind conservative churches opposition to same sex marriage.

American families are under a great deal of stress. The divorce rate isn't declining, it's increasing. And the majority of American women are now living alone. We are raising children in America without fathers....The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women.

Monotheistic religions feel threatened by the rise of feminism and the insistence, in many communities, that women take a bigger role in the church. At the same time that women are claiming more responsibility for their religious life, they are also moving out of traditional roles as wife and mother. This is why abortion is so threatening to many religious people -- it represents some rejection of the traditional role of mother.

In such a world, we need to identify the relationship between feminism and homosexuality. These movements began, in some sense, to achieve visibility alongside one another. I know a lot of black churches take offense when gay activists say that the gay movement is somehow analogous to the black civil rights movement. And while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the women's movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves sexually -- even form our sense of what a sex is -- sets us apart from the traditional roles we were given by our fathers.

Proposition 8 news:

  - State election officials are investigating whether the Mormon Church violated state law when it failed to "disclose the value of non-monetary campaign activities, including alleged phone bank operations from Utah and Idaho that targeted California voters".

  -  California's Supreme Court is considering three lawsuits challenging the legality of Proposition 8.

  -  There's plenty of self analysis (and some recriminations) going on in the gay community over strategy for the No on 8 campaign.