While at work yesterday, I had a young Asian man come up to me asking for help with copies. I took the document from him, only to see that it was tear-out postcards for Focus on the Family's campaign to pass the anti-gay marriage amendment.
At that moment, I had a great desire to send him away. The last thing I wanted to do was enable this prejudiced garbage campaign that diverts attention from the real problems of life. But, two reasons kept me from doing so. One was corporate policy, the other was a desire to engage him. Perhaps I could open his mind up.
You'll see how successful my efforts were after the jump...
I started the conversation while showing him how to make the copies himself on a self-serve machine. I asked him how he could be part of such an effort, how he could deny a group of people their civil rights when marriage is a civil function.
The response was so Santorum-like that I wasn't at all surprised, except for the mind-numbing lockstep of it all.
"If we allow gay marriage now, then where do we draw the line? What other types of 'marriage' do we..."
That's the point where I cut him off and noted his Santorum tendencies.
I pointed out that if a church wants to deny gay people the right to marry because of religious reasons, that's fine. We don't interfere with the free expression of religion in this country. We also don't enshrine religious beliefs into our Constitution.
I told him instead of a gay marriage ban, why not pass a law in Congress giving gays the right to marry in any civil function of their choice (justice of the peace, Gavin Newsom, etc.) and the right to churches to grant or deny a religious marriage based on their First Amendment rights. Such ceremonies, though, would be marriage, not civil union or some other such term.
"Well, who are we to make that decision? What if two men and a women want to marry in 25 years and say that marriage can be that too? Where do we stop? If we move the line now, where does it end?"
I said that you can do a survey of five, five hundred, five thousand people and get the same results: virtually every single person would define marriage as between two people.
"You should do that survey then. Show me the results."
You know, if I had the time and/or money, I would. But I don't, so I can't, but it's an obvious answer, and he knows it. (By the way, I used my last break at work to have this discussion with him).
We also got into the alleged degradation of families. He asked me if I wanted my children to think it was okay to have two mommies or two daddies, and I shot back that they already did know it was okay. We teach our children tolerance, we explain it in basic terms, and they understand the basic premise of what it means to be gay. They're only five and three, but they are very smart, and they will probably be some of the most tolerant people ever. We have friends of all stripes, different colors, gay, straight, etc. We don't discriminate, and it bothers me there are people who want to keep loving, healthy couples childless and marriageless because of their private religious beliefs.
At this point, we reached the climax of this debate. I asked him, does he really believe that it is all worth it, all the millions FOTF is spending on this, when there is rampant hunger, poverty, war, and disease in the world. Shouldn't we spend our time and money on those problems before dealing with a wedge issue? Shouldn't we be focused on taking care of others? I quoted Scripture from Jesus, passages about the poor and the sick, the hungry. I said there is one verse always used about homosexuality, and that's it, but there are many, many verses about the problems I ticked off, and doesn't that show where faith-based efforts should be focused? I pointed out that FOTF's website is shockingly devoid of links on these important issues.
His reply actually shocked me. He said that gay marriage was subversive to society's underpinnings, and while the effects may not be shown now (I brought up Massachusetts' teeming normality after two years of gay marriage), it will 'destroy us' later.
I responded that two, soon to be three wars in the world, along with a massive African AIDS epidemic, will surely kill us before gay marriage makes a minor dent on our 'normality.' It would be far better to be alive and dealing with the unlikely chance of gay marriage somehow subverting society, then to be dead because we fought to deny rights to a minority and ignored the much larger problems in the world.
The conversation ended there, because I had to go back, but he said he wanted to continue the dialogue, and we probably are both thinking we can change the other's mind, but I have facts and reason on my side, and he just has misguided beliefs. I am a Christian, a Catholic, a person who spent many years studying the Bible, and I think that the dearth of passages relating to gays, as compared to the mountain of passages about helping your fellow man, says everything one needs to know about Christianity. This effort perverts it. We have not only a civil obligation to stopping the Dobsonites, but also a moral and religious one for any of us who are progressive Christians.
