Christians End the War - The Sanctity of Marriage and the Myth of Civil Unions

I've not posted recently about my feelings about the Gay Rights issues. I've written but in reviewing my drafts I felt like I was just rambling. So rather than trying to say everything, I'm going to have to organize my thoughts.

I want to talk about the idea of the Sanctity of Marriage. I've had a chance to talk to several of my fellow believers and one argument that is brought up is the idea that why do gays have to use the word Marriage to describe their relationship.

I'm told that we've given them Civil Unions, isn't that enough. It seems Civil unions is basically Christians saying, "alright we won't let you use the term Marriage, but we'll let you have a civil union which is pretty much the same thing. Cmon gays isn't that enough?"

Then then discussion is concluded, why do they have to touch "marriage"?

The Sanctity of Marriage

As a Christian, I believe that marriage is a serious commitment to my spouse/partner. When I got married, I made a spiritual and legal commitment to my wife. Everything I own is ours and everything I earn is ours. When we have kids, we are committed to raising our child together.

I also made a commitment to be faithful to her as well. I got married at my wife's church and the service was performed by ministers that we respected. We asked God to bless our union and we know He has.

I believe Christians view marriage more highly than any other group. I say this because I understand why Christians hold marriage in high regard and does not want to see this understanding tainted in anyway.

As admirable as this is, you can not expect a non-Christian world to hold marriage to this standard. My position is that a marriage is the union between two consenting adults, both emotionally and legally. You'll note that I dropped the spiritual part, because you can not prevent two consenting adults who do not believe in God from getting married. Nor should we.

If we expect to uphold the sanctity of marriage legally, we would need to require all couples to be married in churches by ministers or pastors. We would also require that couples take part in pre-marital counseling, so they can work out issues such as money, and raising kids. And if we are going to follow the Bible, we can't allow any Christian to marry a non-Christian.

I'll be honest, these are good things that everyone who wants to get married, should do. Let's face it, that pre-marital counseling could probably save a lot of marriage and prevent a lot of bad marriages from ever taking place.

My point is that you can't legislate the Sanctity of Marriage. You can not expect the government to insure that a marriage is being formed for the right reasons and that the participants have thought through all of the issues before entering this legal union.

As it stands today, we will also any man and woman to get married. We'll allow athiests and muslims to get married. None of which can be classified as a God-honoring Christian marriage. We'll allow a Christian and Non-Christian to get legally married, even thought they are unequally yoked, and you know that's against what God said in the Bible.

Worse, we'll allow two teenagers to get married only because they had pre-marital sex and the girl is pregnant. As honorable as that it, what a train wreck of marrage this will become. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for this to be a God-Honoring marriage.

What does it take to get married in the State of California? All it takes is that you go down to the clerks office and fill out an application and then have a officer of the court or minister to legalize the marriage.

In Conclusion

As a Christian, I'm glad we don't enter the union of marriage lightly. The problem is that we can't expect the rest of the nation to follow suit. It is not up to us to legislate this either.

In speaking of Gay Marriage, my position remains the same. Marriage is the union between two consenting adults, even if it is a same sex partnership. To me as long as two people love each other and are willing to commit themselves to each other, it not up to me as a Child of God to pass judgement and say you can or can not get married.

Why can't "Civil Union" be enough? It's not enough, even if legally a civil union provides all the legal rights that marriage has, it does not provide the emotional rights or the spiritual rights either.

As Christians, if we believe that "Civil Unions" are enough, then I dare you to call your marriage to your wife or husband a "Civil Union." Christians are not and should not be the final decide on what marriage is in a non-Christian world.