Matrimony Redefiners Deny That Matrimony Is Real! Kneeling Catholic dives into same-sex-marriage debate

Hello Friends!

While I hold my breath to see if Pope Francis appoints a  Homosexual Union Advocate as Prefect to the CDW (in which case, I will switch my mantra from 'now is not a good time to panic!' to 'now is a good time to  panic!').. Speaking of advocates of homosexuality.I thought I would cut and paste a little dialogue I have been having over on First Thoughts Blog.

One of the contributors, a Mr.L, believes that Man-and-Man could easily be exchanged for Man-and-Wife.....  Mr. L's posts are in red.  Mine are italicized. Please feel free to contribute to the discussion!



Mr. L>>>>>I believe that a reasonable development of doctrine concerning homosexuality would be to accept homosexual practices, as long as they exist only in a monogamous relationship between two consenting adults<<<

Hello Mr. L! 
but where did you come up with that rule? could two consenting adults be brother-brother, father-son, gramps-grandson, mother-daughter?

Don't you think you need to come up with alot more strictures than just '2 consenting adults'?
btw, where did the number '2' come from anyway? If the goal is pleasure and companionship, why not '3' or '4'?

Your view seems, to me, to be that there is no such thing as a real definition of marriage, so let's just make one up!
Instead of answering my torrent of above questions, please try to refute one of the following:
1. Real Matrimony does exist
2. Real sexual perversion does exist
If either of the above is true, then 're-definition' is kind of like re-defining oxygen. Discovery is what we need!

Mr. L>>>I’m not trying to re-define marriage. I accept that marriage possesses essential properties, as those who believe in only opposite sex marriages do. Therefore, I reject the postmodernist nonsense that we can define things however we like. in my view, after engaging in careful study, is that both homosexual and hetersexual marriages are marriages, just as apples and oranges, although different, are both types of fruit; or cars and planes are both forms of transportation<<<


Dear Mr.L!
In your passage above, I can't find an application, pro or con, to either of my statements. ((I did invite you to comment on them, or at least to vote on them!)) recall…

1. Real Matrimony does exist
2. Real sexual perversion does exist

Obviously we are miles apart, where we end up, but perhaps we could start this journey together?
Maybe, just pick one, and say how it strikes you.

 You can see that my position must affirm both the above. I.e. I believe that both Matrimony and the marital embrace are God-given and Holy.
 
I do not think that it is a coincidence that the impetus for redefining and rewriting comes from the atheist crowd who ridicule the idea of anything being a gift from God. hence they believe there is no such thing as 'real matrimony' –and we are simply collections of urges, assembled by no-one, and according to no-plan. Such would necessarily argue against both above theses if they had the honesty.
where do you fit in to the spectrum?

 

June 29th, 2013 | 3:06 am

Hi Kneeling Catholic,
Thanks for your insights into this difficult issue. i would agree with you that real matromony exists, and that real sexual perversion exists. It’s my view that marriage does really have essential properties that make it a marriage, as opposed to, for example, a close friendship. These properties would include love, (romantic, companion love, sexual love, ) profound friendship (your marriage parter is your best friend, a life long commitment, and two consenting adults, of either the same or opposite sexes. (The need for consenting adults, of course being that we’re free beings who have the right to enter into the relationships we choose, the necessity for being an adult, so that we have the maturity to know what we’re doing, but why just two people? Because one could not give one’s full love and commitment to more than one person, without losing something in the process. One is only human, and if one has more than one partner at a time, as in polymamous unions, one cannot get one’s full love to every partner, equally).

With respect to sexual perversions, they certainly exist, unfortunately. As I mentioned in one of my comments, sexual morality is something that all humans must adhere to. What precisely is contained in sexual morality can be debated by decent people, but it must include the following: only sexual relations with consenting adults. The latter, all decent, moral, secular, as well as religious people accept. Christians demand more, that it be only in monogamous marriages.
With regard to marriages being from God, would this mean that all heterosexual couples, who are atheists, or agnostics, don’t have real marriages? And if so, should we end calling them marriages? Perhaps re-define nonreligious heterosexual “marriages” as just unions? Maybe hae a constitutional amendment to prevent them from being called…
 

Knelling Catholic,
I think my previous comments exceeded the limit. I’m sorry about that. My point is, if atheists don’t have real marriages, since they’re unions don’t involve God, then perhaps we should ban them? If marriages are God given and holy, then the unions that atheists have, whatever else they may be, are not God given or holy.
Thanks for your intelligence and respectful comments, Knelling Catholic, it’s great talking with you.

Dear Mr. L!

You say you don’t want to redefine matrimony, and yet, IMO, that is just what you have done.  You have added in homosexual copulation, and subtracted out the natural result of heterosexual relations—procreation.  The only way to add the latter back in is to insist that ‘designer baby’ technologies are also moral and what God intended from the beginning—piling one unnatural act on top of another unnatural act and hoping they can somehow combine into something natural. Perhaps this is only a hope that the concoction might reach some close imitation of the real natural thing: children, with both a mom and a dad to nurture them. i.e. Matrimony.

 

Christianity is not the only homophobic Faith.  All world religions are, with the exception of those who ‘reformed’ wings who have redefined Holy Matrimony into something they themselves did not believe in ten years ago.  Please correct me if you know of an ancient Faith which advocated marriage of a man and a man.

 

All my artillery is simply directed at your insisting that your definition of Matrimony is not a re-definition . You have given it a new definition, probably one that you yourself did not hold to until recently. 

 

>>>>>With regard to marriages being from God, would this mean that all heterosexual couples, who are atheists, or agnostics, don’t have real marriages?<<<<
 

No. it wouldn’t mean that.  Ingratitude does not negate a gift, nor the generosity of the Giver.  The ingredients are a woman and a man, promising and giving themselves to each other.  That’s what Buddhists have always believed. That’s what Hindus have always believed.  That’s what Zoroastrians and Muslims have always believed. 
 

I’m afraid that you have slipped over into the ‘there is*no* such thing as real Matrimony’ crowd.

Hi Kneeling Catholic,
Thank you for your response. If marriage is inextricably linked to God, and his holiness, those who claim to have marriages, and deny God’s existence and therefore his creation of marriage, would seem to not have a real marriage. Perhaps one could say that, marriages have essential properties, and something that we would correctly refer to as a marriage must have all of these properties, or it’s not really a marriage? (e.g.,it has to involve the opposite sexes, it has to be holy)One might be that it’s holy, and the holiness comes from God. But if atheists have a ceremony, that they call a ”marriage ceremony,” where they don’t recognize God, indeed they explicitly reject Him, would it be correct to say that it’s a holy ceremony?