In thinking about contentious social issues like gay marriage, it’s very important to keep in mind the distinction between personal holiness and public virtue. For instance, though many Christians believe it’s wrong to drink alcohol, use profanity, or neglect church-going, few of us want these behaviors criminalized. That’s because these are matters of personal holiness, not civic necessity, and the impulse to legislate them is called totalitarianism.
To avoid this, our opposition to gay marriage must explain how granting gay relationships full legal status will either adversely affect them or the rest of us or will at least fail to help society enough to justify the benefits granted. This is generally much more difficult to do than the emotion surrounding the issue would indicate, but it both can and should be done.
Nonetheless, we must constantly check that that both our real motives and our stated reasons are properly leading us to legislate morality rather than improperly leading us to legislate holiness.
2 comments:
I thought it was interesting in reading the California Supreme Court ruling that one of the reasons they cited for redefining marriage to include homosexuals was that they already had "domestic partnerships" which already included all the rights and responsibilities of marriage. What more "full legal status" is necessary?
So how do alcohol, cigarettes, profanity, pornography, etc. do anything but "adversely affect [those involved] or the rest of us" and "fail to help society enough to justify the benefits granted?"
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