Gay marriage debate raises questions of theology, justice

To be honest, I've thought for a long time that you'd tackle this issue, but you haven't. Maybe you're waiting for someone to ask. So I'll ask. What do you think about the controversy these last several years about gay marriage? Do you support it or oppose it, and why?

-- C.A., Henderson

Words matter. Language is the fundamental way we shape and apprehend meaning. It is in fact not true that words mean whatever you think they mean. If that were true, then words would have no meaning at all.

Justice matters. All men are created equal? Self-evident when convenient, perhaps. But even more self-evident is the proclivity of the human heart to decide some people are more equal than others.

At the root, significant arguments for and against gay marriage are a collision of concerns about meaning with concerns for justice.

My personal opinion is that significant arguments on either side aren't all that common. Arguments against strike me more often as hysteria disguised as religion. Arguments for tend, for me, to be more social propaganda than critical thinking.

My forays into this discussion regularly frustrate both sides. In fact, that's one of the ways I decide I'm on the right track.

REGARDING MEANING

Marriage is a powerful symbol emerging to contain powerful forces. Chiefly, the power and mystery of sex.

Sex is the power of intimacy and fertility. And, like any power, it must be respected and contained or it creates chaos in the tribe. No matter how deep archaeologists dig, no matter how far back anthropologists ponder, rites, rituals and symbols always have surrounded sexual relationships between men and women.

The power of intimacy and fertility are the chief things contained in western civilization's predominant religious views of marriage -- a theology of marriage, if you will.

Jews, Christians, even Muslims (those religions are historically related) more or less, share the following worldview: God creates us in God's image. Ideally, in Eden, the man and the woman stand together naked and are not ashamed -- a picture of intimacy and peace emerging from the union of dynamic differences.

The theological conclusion is obvious: The union of male and female symbolizes reconciliation, a union of opposites, a picture of the wholeness of God. And, not coincidentally, this union makes babies.

Which is not to say there are not countless meaningful symbols for God. Nor is it to say that you must get married to know God. Just that, for Jews, Christians and Muslims, the marriage symbol traditionally carries uniquely powerful symbolic import to this end.

Does gay marriage threaten heterosexual marriage? Depends on what you mean. Are my gay neighbors any relevant factor in my ability to thrive in a faithful and meaningful marriage? Of course not. Don't be silly.

But this is hardly the issue. You can't saunter up to a 12,000-year-old universal human symbol and simply conscript it willy-nilly without creating some dissonance in that symbol. The resistance is a reaction to a largely unconscious crisis of meaning.

I have said nothing about better or worse. All I'm observing is that heterosexual relationships are not homosexual relationships, nor is the latter the former. They are different. Symbolically, archetypally, psychologically, socially -- different.

HOWEVER, REGARDING JUSTICE

The moment a theological understanding of marriage gets in bed with the government, we have a problem. We can't have it both ways. We cannot simultaneously insist on preserving the specific theological meaning of the word marriage, but then proceed to attach that same word to tax codes, pensions, public trusts, group health insurance plans and hospital visitation rights without advancing a decidedly un-American bigotry and injustice.

If they made me king -- and let me be clear, no one is clamoring to do so -- I think religious folks should get out of the wedding business. Leave that contract to the state. Thus, gay couples who sought to enter that legal contract for both its benefits and responsibilities could do so.

Religion's job is holy matrimony. Thus, a specific meaning is preserved. Your religion also could decide to shape and develop a theology -- and ceremony -- to solemnize a lifelong, religious-based commitment of a gay couple, and use a different word to describe it. Or, your religion would be free to decide that gay relationships do not qualify for God's ceremonial blessing. Or, if you must, you would still be free to insist that God doesn't think gay people qualify for much of anything at all.

But those same gay people would still be free to ignore your religion and participate equally in the economy and in society. And that's justice.

Originally published in View News, May 26, 2009.