I don't care who you are [. .]

[. .] that's not funny.

Davezilla.com shares a video cartoon, an animated projection of Margaret Gallagher approaching Peter at the Pearly Gates to Heaven.


Now, Heaven, Saint Peter, and marriage are all religious concepts and teachings, and none are universal. Death itself, is mostly universal, and secular as well as a matter of faith. Other than that, this piece is satire aimed at one specific point of fundamentalist Christian dogma - "defense of marriage".

I thought some of the most potent arguments got left out. The famed biblical "Wedding of Canaan" specifies that there is a wedding - a religious rite - and a groom and a bride. One would have to overlook the rest of the bible to assume that no other wives or brides might be present in that groom's household, and that none would join later. Because the bible clearly states that that marriage - a rite of the Jewish faith adopted by Christian churches - had a bride and a groom.

[Robert Frezza's "McLendon's Syndrome" immortalizes another aspect of that Biblical story, "reminded of the Wedding at Canaan. They served jug wine until someone important showed up."]

The critical fallacies I see in the argument about whether "marriage" is about one man and one woman joining in "holy" matrimony - is projecting the religious rite onto secular governance. In secular - non-religious - context, a marriage creates a legal entity that then exists aside from the adults that make it up. Any intimation or explicit formula for genders and roles of participants is essentially religious, or at most secular whim. Laws of the land ought not to embody on religious interpretation (as the early Mormons in their bloody trail of persecution and violent clashes with other Christians from New England to Utah). Whim should be changed immediately when it is recognized to be wrong or inconvenient.

The right answer is for the state and nation to repeal legislation regarding marriage, or as a minimum, revise all statues to recognize all marriage ceremonies performed by any recognized religious organization. The issue isn't just gender mix - there are families living today in a multiple-adult household, in a just and disciplined fashion, creating loving and supportive homes for themselves, their children, and acting as assets of their communities. The Muslim entering America with several wives - are we to rewrite all our marriage laws to accommodate whatever arrangements exist between such adults, to allow or forbid?

Then there is the criminal side. People want laws against sodomy and "unnatural" sex applied to others - but have stopped prosecuting or reporting for criminal prosecution acts of adultery, fornication, and for the most part, statutory rape. Abandonment of family is seen as grounds for divorce - seldom is anyone leaving their avowed responsibility actually arrested and prosecuted for *gasp* foreswearing them selves. You know - like perjury? When in court you swear to tell the truth, then get caught in a lie? You swear to take this adult to you to have and to hold (a witnessed oath, recorded in a cognizant court) - at least, until you change your mind? In such a society where "the family" is often twisted by lack of discipline and lack of respect - and outright violence, substance abuse - and communities are apathetic or blocked by court rulings from intervening - how is anyone served (except perhaps by publicity-seeking church activists?) attacking a household of disciplined, respectful, loving adults doing their best to raise their children?

Don't criticize the mote in someone else's eye, indeed, until you remove the splinter from your own.

Some activists in San Francisco, a few decades back, agitated to forbid lesbian couples from raising children - because the children couldn't thrive in such an environment. The school board commissioned a couple of studies, and found that on average the children in lesbian homes did better in school, were better adjusted and happier, than the average "couple" parented home could accomplish.

Hate is a four-letter word. The long and bloody history of the Christian Church has proven that hate is still a vicious, double-edged weapon.

A family should be defined as adults agreeing to form a household with the intention of nurturing each other and raising and nurturing progeny. If the point of coming together is *not* to raise children, then calling a couple or group a family doesn't make it one - whatever the gender mix.

At least that is the way I see it. Your view?