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03/02/2011
Segue, Genesis: Maggie again pits our civil equality against personal prayer
Maggie Gallagher writes to USA Today:
Commentary writer Tom Krattenmaker sees the issue as "On gay rights, keep fighting or adapt?" But for those of us who are Christian, a better headline would be: "Genesis: continue fighting for it or adapt?" (On Religion, The Forum, Feb. 14).
The idea that God made us male and female, and that men and women are called to come together to make and raise the next generation (i.e. "marriage") is not an exclusively Christian idea. But to abandon it is to abandon any credible claim that Christianity is true.
This is not some subtle "interpretation"; it is at the core of Christian teaching on life, sex and marriage.
Marriage core teaching [USA Today]
Okay, so you probably think our big beef is with Maggie yet again positioning her personal religious belief above civil equality. And yes, that's a huge problem. A prevailing problem for the thoroughly Catholic-entrenched National Organization For Marriage.
But actually, the bigger problem here is Maggie's "abandon" claim. Her idea that in order to support the idea that men and women are part of God's spectrum means rejecting the idea that LGBT people made the cut as well. WHY?! By what logic? Isn't there enough compelling real world evidence suggesting that reproduction is a sustainable plan, even with the gay and lesbian people who have existed throughout time? How can Maggie seriously say that simply giving CIVIL recognition to the kinds of people who do exist, always have existed, and always will exist somehow threatens the heterosexual's role in society?
Nobody is asking anyone to "abandon" his or her personal interpretation of Genesis. Nobody is stopping heterosexual couples, Christian or otherwise, from going full-on Duggar with their personal breeding choices. The marriage equality fight is not about the core of Christian teaching in Genesis or any other book: It's about the core of the Constitution in regards to Equal Protection and Due Process, here in a supposedly church/state-separated nation.
Maggie does everyone a disservice by stating the stakes in the way she does. If more people would take the time to challenge them, then perhaps her lines would not be fruitful and multiply in the way that they do.
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*Not that this is anything new:
Aug. 2009:
*AUDIO SOURCE: Janet Parshall's America [Moddy Radio]
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