The vicious rhetoric that one hears from the "godly Christian" crowd against gas and same sex marriage seems to know few limits. While we hear constant blather about "through history marriage has always been one man and one woman" the truth is that historically that claim is a bald faced lie be it from the lips of Mitt Romney who conveniently forgets his own family history and ancestors who had a half dozen wives (not to mention Brigham Young's 55 wives) to those who claim a "biblical basis" for monogamous marriage even thought in the Old Testament polygamy was the norm be it King David - when he wasn't lusting for Jonathan - to Solomon. A column in The Guardian to me sums up well the real anti-gay motivations. Here are some excerpts:
When Chris Sugden and Philip Giddings of Anglican Mainstream released their letter to the prime minister last week they cannot have understood just how foul-spirited and Pharisaical it makes them appear. They have been taken seriously for so long within the power structures of the Church of England that they have quite lost touch with the sanity of the outside world. They founded their pressure group to oppose the appointment of a celibate gay man as a bishop. Yet they claim in their letter that "those who experience the attraction" – they won't talk about "love" – "have always been fully welcomed".
Condescending and pompous to the end – they finish with the assurance to the prime minister of their continued prayers – this letter discredits all opposition to gay marriage. It's obvious that what they really want is for gay people to feel ashamed and to exist on sufferance. The only thing tending to acquit them of a rather unpleasant prejudice is that their smug condescension isn't only directed at homosexuals. Evangelicals of that sort want everyone who's not like them to feel ashamed of their existence. "We are all sinners", they say, but they think they know they and their friends are saved.
Catholic bishops, too, suffer a terrible disconnect from the ordinary moral sense of the world outside. When Philip Tartaglia's claim that a Scots MP (and former Catholic priest) who died of pancreatitis at the age of 44 did so as a result of being gay surfaced to general outrage last week, few people noticed that he was speaking at a conference on religious freedom."I can say with a concerned and fearful realism that the loss of religious freedom is now arguably the most serious threat that the Catholic church and all people of faith in this country are facing," he had said.
What's crazy about this "concerned and fearful realism" is that he gives every appearance of believing his own propaganda. He confuses losing an argument with losing the right to argue. There are actually genuine issues of religious freedom and toleration raised by some recent administrative decisions against opponents of gay marriage. But they have arisen because the argument about equality is already lost.
The argument about civil partnerships and fairness can't convincingly be put by people who have been unfair whenever they thought they could get away with it.
Pompous, condescending, mean spirited, Pharisaical, dishonest, bigoted - these are the words that sadly best define much of Christianity today. It's little wonder that the so-called millennial generation is leaving Christianity in droves. What truly moral person would want to be affiliated with such hatefulness and obscene self-congratulation?
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