Is Same-Sex Marriage a Civil Right?

The reasoning goes this way. If sodomy can be labeled something that people don’t have a choice in, then they can equate it with civil rights. If I can get there, then they can demand that all of these different protections should be afforded to them like any other minority.

This is actually very cunning logic, but with a fatal flaw. But lets analyze why people figure that is should be a civil right and see how their arguments stack up:

I’ve heard the most racially militant blacks argue that the gay struggle is different from our own because we have no choice about being black while gays can choose whom they want to sleep with. This reasoning persists despite growing scientific evidence that people’s sexual orientation is innate and that they don’t choose it any more than they choose their sex or race.

So, the rebuttal to “it’s an activity instead of a characteristic” is “scientists are proving that that they don’t have a choice.” Excuse me? I have yet to find a black person that said, “You know what, I don’t think I’ll be black today. Today I’ll be white, but maybe tomorrow I’ll be black.” Yet this is exactly how some on the homosexual side of things have themselves set up– there are some that have either in a relationship with the opposite sex, have been in one, or believe that they should be able to be with both sexes! And, if that weren’t enough, they can choose whether to exercise this desire or not!

And I haven’t even begun the whole “each person was born a sinner, so the whole ‘I’m born with it’ doesn’t fly.”

The fight for gay rights is like our civil rights struggle, however, and it’s hypocritical for groups that have had to fight long and hard to win their own constitutional rights to turn around and try to deny them to the next group.

How is it equivalent? In the days of the civil rights movement, black Americans were not allowed the right to vote. Segregation was the law of the land. Separate but equal reigned. Mixed marriages were unheard of. Sodomites, on the other hand, have all legal protections that those with proper sexual desires have. They can marry– those of the opposite sex. They can have jobs, they can vote, they can sit on the same bus, etc. No one is stopping them from being the same as other people that they live and work with. It’s not like they are being exiled to live somewhere else (though some may argue that this would be preferable).

This hypocrisy was apparent to me as I was growing up in a black Baptist church. I routinely heard ministers condemn gays from the pulpit, even though half the male choir members, the choir director, the flower arranger and plenty of other male church members were obviously gay.

Obviously?! Is this woman judging people based on what? Stereotypes? Isn’t that something that she’s writing about that’s wrong to do? Isn’t that part of the whole civil rights movement– not basing our judgment of people based on their skin?

Nonetheless, the main argument used against same-sex marriage is that the Bible says it’s wrong. We point to the Scriptures, to the story of Adam and Eve (and the absence of Adam and Steve), to the retribution inflicted on the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah, and to depictions of male-on-male sex in Leviticus and Romans as being so perverse that it warranted death.

I won’t attempt to argue with the Scriptures, other than to say they reflect the mores and biases of the times they were written. And just as there are Scriptures ordering slaves to obey their masters, cautioning women to be silent in church and submissive at home, and applauding the persecution of the Jews because they killed Jesus, none of these positions is argued by enlightened people today.

I won’t dismiss the beliefs of blacks who believe that homosexuality is immoral, but I’d caution them that morality has often been used as a cloak for old-fashioned bigotry, fear and discomfort with people and behaviors that are different.

Ok, so here we have the plain admission of the author– she realizes that she cannot win an argument against the Bible (and for once it’s nice to see someone list that there are plentiful arguments against homosexuality in the Bible instead of passing them off as non-existent), so she switches to trying to say that the whole work is biased. Well, if you consider that it’s supposed to be God’s Word to man and that it’s His vision not ours it definitely is biased! Top it off with the concept that God’s ways are not our ways and that God desires us to follow Him and not the world, it would seem to me that this woman has no concept of what following God is really all about.

So, she tries an appeal to authority:

I asked the Rev. James Forbes, pastor of The Riverside Church in New York. Forbes is black, and his diverse congregation has gone on record as supporting same-sex marriages – and all other families that are based on the principles of love and justice. Forbes says acceptance might increase as African-Americans become more aware of scientific evidence that suggests sexual orientation is innate – and not a choice.

As for the Bible’s apparent disapproval of homosexual behavior, Forbes says it’s a matter of how one reads the Bible.

“What is clear,” he says, “is that the Bible says the highest principle is love. Once it becomes clear that our sexual orientation is more or less a given, I think black people will begin to recognize that including all in the family of God is a more righteous principle than the abhorrence of gay love.”

As I’ve said just this past week, those that believe that the highest principal in the Bible is love should check their Scriptures again. God is reference more in His holiness and justice than love. In fact, Christ came to pay a penalty, to declare us right before God judicially. It was God’s justice that was satisfied by His love offering. God declared absolutely that homosexual behavior is wrong. Regardless of what Sheryl McCarthy thinks, it’s still wrong and not a civil right.