Homosexuality and Marriage
I just read an article on the Catholic Answers website (www.catholic.com). I recommend the site if you're looking for interesting articles that explain the faith. The reference for the article on homosexuality and marriage is http://www.catholic.com/library/gay_marriage.asp. I skimmed the article yesterday and had a chance to read it today.
Let me begin by stating I'm a lifelong Democrat with a overwhelming desire for fairness and equality. After just skimming the article, I was ready to really go off and rant about the unfairness of limiting the benefits of marriage on anyone. I beleive it isn't the role of the government to legislate morality. My sense of justice was outraged by the fact that we were being exclusionary on the basis of sexual orientation. Everyone deserves the same rights, etc, etc, ect.
Then I read the entire article. Now I must say that it opened my mind and I'm looking at the issue differently. I don't agree with everything the article said. It tried to present more of a social arguement to back up scripture than dwell on soley on scripture. It talked about studies that show the health benefits of marriage, finanical benefits, the effect on the well being of children, and threats to marriage. One section talked about sexual complimentatity stating that only between a man and a woman could sex be fully unitive physically and spiritually. It then dabbled on contraception and how that frustrates this unity and destroys marriages. Talking about that would produce a different rant on my part.
One of the parts I disagreed with initially is that the article states that humans desire an exclusive relationship with another person to be fully happy and that it can only happen between a man and a woman. This doesn't seem right on the surface. Why can't a gay couple be exclusive. The problem was that studies show few gay people stay in exclusive relationships. Another thing I didn't agree with is that the development of "no fault" divorce resulted in an exploding divorce rate because it made it easier to get out of a marriage. It' more complicated than that. I think it hits it more closely later on. It mentions that divorced people usually don't have successful second/third/fourth/etc marriages because whatever issue caused them to be unhappy in the original relationship weren't resolved.
So where am I going with all of this? The crux of the article is that men and women that are married and stay married live longer, have heathier lives, are financially better off, and have healthier, more well adjusted kids than people (gay, straight, whatever) than are not married. This includes single parents. My personal belief is that many of our societal issues (abortion, gang violence, teenage pregnancies, etc) are all related. I've never really known how to address all the problems. Now I think I've found the answer. Marriage appears to be the solution. What we really need to do is teach our children (and our adults for that matter) that marriage is very important and that it's hard work. We need to have the resources available for couples/families to resolve their issues. It needs to start in our churches. I know there are ministries out there addressing these issues, but truthfully, I don't see the Catholic church doing a lot to promote it. Maybe it's just my church, but I'm wondering if we're doing enough to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of our congregation. I'm seeing more and more people become disatisified with the Church, which is a bad thing. However, that is another post in and of itself. Perhaps I'll reflect on that one and come back to it.
Hopefully I made some sense here, but as the title states, this is Rambilings and Musings. So please excuse the rambling and stream of consiousness writing style.
Let me begin by stating I'm a lifelong Democrat with a overwhelming desire for fairness and equality. After just skimming the article, I was ready to really go off and rant about the unfairness of limiting the benefits of marriage on anyone. I beleive it isn't the role of the government to legislate morality. My sense of justice was outraged by the fact that we were being exclusionary on the basis of sexual orientation. Everyone deserves the same rights, etc, etc, ect.
Then I read the entire article. Now I must say that it opened my mind and I'm looking at the issue differently. I don't agree with everything the article said. It tried to present more of a social arguement to back up scripture than dwell on soley on scripture. It talked about studies that show the health benefits of marriage, finanical benefits, the effect on the well being of children, and threats to marriage. One section talked about sexual complimentatity stating that only between a man and a woman could sex be fully unitive physically and spiritually. It then dabbled on contraception and how that frustrates this unity and destroys marriages. Talking about that would produce a different rant on my part.
One of the parts I disagreed with initially is that the article states that humans desire an exclusive relationship with another person to be fully happy and that it can only happen between a man and a woman. This doesn't seem right on the surface. Why can't a gay couple be exclusive. The problem was that studies show few gay people stay in exclusive relationships. Another thing I didn't agree with is that the development of "no fault" divorce resulted in an exploding divorce rate because it made it easier to get out of a marriage. It' more complicated than that. I think it hits it more closely later on. It mentions that divorced people usually don't have successful second/third/fourth/etc marriages because whatever issue caused them to be unhappy in the original relationship weren't resolved.
So where am I going with all of this? The crux of the article is that men and women that are married and stay married live longer, have heathier lives, are financially better off, and have healthier, more well adjusted kids than people (gay, straight, whatever) than are not married. This includes single parents. My personal belief is that many of our societal issues (abortion, gang violence, teenage pregnancies, etc) are all related. I've never really known how to address all the problems. Now I think I've found the answer. Marriage appears to be the solution. What we really need to do is teach our children (and our adults for that matter) that marriage is very important and that it's hard work. We need to have the resources available for couples/families to resolve their issues. It needs to start in our churches. I know there are ministries out there addressing these issues, but truthfully, I don't see the Catholic church doing a lot to promote it. Maybe it's just my church, but I'm wondering if we're doing enough to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of our congregation. I'm seeing more and more people become disatisified with the Church, which is a bad thing. However, that is another post in and of itself. Perhaps I'll reflect on that one and come back to it.
Hopefully I made some sense here, but as the title states, this is Rambilings and Musings. So please excuse the rambling and stream of consiousness writing style.
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