Thursday, June 19, 2008

It's Sort of Like the Crusades All Over Again!

A group calling itself the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property has taken put up a very long advertisement in major newspapers opposing the right of same-sex couples to marry. In true hyperbolic overstating-their-case fashion, this group scarily writes:

"[T]he battle for marriage in America is the clash of two worldviews. On the one hand, those Americans who still defend a moral law. On the other, the homosexual revolution and its secularist allies. The stakes are also clear. This is a battle for the soul of America. The so-called Cultural War is gradually becoming a Religious War."


Yeah yeah yeah. God would probably hate it if we just framed this all as a disagreement rather than all-out war and clash between good and evil.

Read the whole she-bang if you like, but if that scary warning didn't automatically discredit it for you, I can save you a lot of time by merely reading you the first tenet of this "document": "The Acceptance of Same-Sex 'Marriage' [sic] is Incompatible with Christianity." See, in order for such an argument to be legitimate, it is necessary for us all to accept the premise that our laws should be in accordance with "Christianity." The problem with such a premise, of course, is that while many people in our nation are Christians, many people are not. But more importantly, as much as one conservative Catholic group believes it knows the inerrant word of our Supreme Being, that doesn't make it so. I know I'm not the only one in this world who has difficulty believing that the Supreme Being would be coincidentally as imbued with human bigotry as the leaders and followers of some religious sects are.

I'm not opposed to Christianity. I'm opposed to those who use Christianity not to transcend their human flaws but to justify them. Show me a god that has not been created in the image of "man" and then we can have a serious discussion as to whether "he's" worthy of devotion.

As a fun argumentum ad nazium alert, this group's advertisement also irrelevantly says:

"History is a great teacher. In the twentieth century, Nazism and communism showed the world that, when society loses its moorings in the natural order and gives itself over to utopias, the inevitable result is dictatorship. This dictatorship can take many forms and be exercised from the halls of government, party headquarters, judicial chambers, or media outlets."


Yipes!


I'm sure vigilantly defending tradition, family, and property is super-serious business but let's try to get a grip, fellas.

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