Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases challenging the constitutionality of laws restricting same-sex couples from marrying. While recent polls show increasing support by Americans for granting same-sex couples the right to marry, there is still a significant percentage of the population that is opposed to the idea. Why are so many Americans opposed to same-sex marriage? Based on reader’s comments to various news articles on the subject, I think it boils down to two main reasons. Many are opposed on the basis of their religion. The other reason seems to be that allowing same-sex unions would negatively impact our society by undercutting “traditional family values.” What does this mean? I think some people are concerned that if our society condones same-sex marriage it will send a message to young people that it is completely acceptable to be gay. If that happens, they fear that everybody will want to be LGBT. Just imagine people parading through the streets like that scene from Disney’s Aristocats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI7cIYcnTRU. But instead of singing, “Everybody wants to be a cat,” they’d be singing, “Everybody wants to be L-G B-T!”
Regarding the religious basis for opposition, Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians will point first to the Biblical book of Leviticus. However, Leviticus prohibits many things modern society doesn't consider sinful, such as planting your fields with two kinds of seed, wearing clothing woven from two types of material, getting a tattoo, and ordering your steak medium rare. So perhaps the Levitical prohibitions should be examined in the context of Jewish society around 3,000 years ago. These were hard times when war and famine could wipe out thousands of people. In such times it was imperative to produce lots of healthy offspring. Even then, the dangers of inbreeding would have been empirically observed making the Levitical prohibitions against marriage between close relatives understandable. At the same time, any union that planted a man's seed where it could not grow would have been viewed as an offense against a community that placed a high value on having children. This would explain the prohibitions in Leviticus against relations with animals and heterosexual relations during a woman's monthly period when she is infertile. It also would explain why Onan's apparent act of birth control in Genesis, Chapter 38 was "wicked in the Lord's sight" resulting in his being struck down by God. Assuming that men were viewed as the source of life because they provided the seed that merely required fertile ground to produce a child also might explain why Leviticus prohibited relations between men, but did not contain a parallel prohibition for women.
In the Christian New Testament, Paul's Letter to the Romans and his First Letter to the Corinthians contain passages that echo the Levitical prohibitions against same-sex unions. However, Jesus was entirely silent on the matter through the four New Testament gospels. In contrast, Jesus was extremely critical of divorce. So why is it that Americans willingly accept the prevalence of divorce, yet are reluctant to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry?
I think it all comes down to the idea of choice. The Baltimore Catechism teaches that sinning requires a person’s choice to do something that is wrong in the eyes of the church. So classification of same-sex relations as sinful relies on the premise that being LGBT is a choice. In other words, we are all born to be heterosexuals, but some individuals for various reasons choose to desire members of their own sex. This is the view that has prevailed for thousands of years. If being LGBT is truly a choice, I wonder why people have continued to make this choice despite being publicly ostracized and in many cases prosecuted as criminals? If it were a choice, such measures should have long ago eliminated LGBTs from the world. So why are they still here and demanding equal rights no less?
I believe it is because they have no choice. Though researchers have not yet discovered a "gay gene," it is beginning to look like sexual orientation is a matter of how some individuals are wired and not a matter of a "lifestyle choice." I am not a scientist but have observed a number of cases where young children appeared to be gay long before they had any notion of what sex was about. Not surprisingly, they came out as gay men many years later.
So would our society fall apart if same-sex couples had the right to marry? Would Everybody want to be L-G B-T? Despite the fact that same-sex marriage is still prohibited in 34 states, most people would agree that the negative consequences associated with being openly LGBT have decreased significantly in American society in the past 25 years. Nevertheless, in exit polling taken during the last two Presidential elections, the number of respondents that self-identified as LGBT remained very low – less than 5 percent. That says to me you’re either a cat or you’re not, and your rights should not depend on how God made you.
I heard a spoken word piece recently where the woman said that "gender" and "sexuality" are two different things. I had never thought about it this way. FDR hit the nail on the head when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Opposition to equality almost always comes back to fear...people are scared of what they don't understand.
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