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My Lawfully
Wedded Benefits
The Ottawa Sun newspaper in Canada
recently reported a new twist in the never-ending discussion regarding
the institution of marriage. 56-year-old Bill Dalrymple and his
65-year-old best friend, Bryan Pinn, have decided to wed each
other. In Canada, of course, it is now possible for same sex couples
to be legally married, and there have been a number of male couples
in that country that have entered the bonds of matrimony with
each other. However, what makes Bill and Bryan different is that
they both claim to be best friends only, and not “lovers”.
They are not homosexuals; they both claim to be looking for the
right woman to marry. However, they have studied out the tax implications,
and they have decided that it would be a wise financial investment
to marry each other to take advantage of the benefits. Pinn was
quoted in the Sun Media as saying, “I think it’s a hoot!”
I am actually thankful that the
story about Bill and Bryan came to public attention. I despise
the idea that two men would go through a ceremony of marriage
together, whether they claim to be homosexual or not. However,
the whole issue makes a very important point. You cannot redefine
marriage. Marriage is not a policy or platform determined by a
political party. Marriage is not a legal definition designated
by judges on a bench. Marriage is not a social arrangement subject
to the whims of a couple of partygoers. Marriage is an institution
defined by God and by the hard laws of humankind in the whole
of human history to be the publicly sanctioned union of one man
to one woman. To redefine marriage and make it inclusive for anything
different than one man with one woman is as foolish as redefining
a cat and making it inclusive for more than one animal. You can
take a dog and call it a cat, but it will still bark, and wag
its tail when happy. A zebra has stripes, a leopard has spots,
a fish has scales, a giraffe has a long neck, and a marriage has
one man and one woman bound together in matrimony. If you take
the woman out of the marriage and replace her with a man, or vice
versa, it is no longer a marriage. You may call it a marriage.
You may also call a daisy by the name “rose”. However,
no matter what you call it, a daisy will never be a rose. Two
men in a relationship with each other or two women in a relationship
with each other will never be a marriage.
If Bill and Bryan do what they
have announced, and enact a civil union as permitted by law in
Canada, they will call it a “marriage” in order to obtain
tax benefits provided for a married couple. If someone were to
ask them if they were really married to each other in a moral
or spiritual way, it would be hard to imagine they would actually
say “yes”, in light of the fact that they both say they
are looking for the right woman to marry some day. Will the authorities
permit this type of wedding in Canada? If they do, it will be
a slap in the face of the homosexual community, which insists
that same sex couples have the same bonds of love between each
other as a man and a woman who marry each other, and therefore
deserve to be married. If the Canadian authorities don’t
approve this “wedding”, what reason can they give? What
right do they have to deny marriage to Bill and Bryan, just because
they are “straight” instead of being “gay”?
Does a same sex couple have to “love” each other in
order to be married? Who is to say that Bill and Bryan don’t
love each other, anyway? After all, don’t best friends of
the “normal” persuasion love each other? How do you
define love, anyway? All of this serves to show how utterly foolish
it is to allow any two men or any two women to enter into a relationship
and have the laws of the land sanction that relationship by calling
it “marriage” equal to that of a man and a woman as
endorsed by social institution since the beginning of time.
In writing this opinion, I am
getting so close to such a hot topic that I will never get away
without getting burned, so I might as well go for the roast. The
person who believes that homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle
with no moral repercussions is sadly mistaken. It does not matter
how you cut it, slice it, or dice it, the Bible clearly calls
homosexuality a sin. It is a sin in the same way that murder,
adultery, lying, and drunkenness are sins. We should also make
it clear that the Bible says that we are all sinners. Since hatred
and hypocrisy are also sins, it is a double sin for anyone to
hate the homosexual. Hatred is a sin and it would be hypocrisy
for us, as sinners, to hate the homosexual, who is a sinner. However,
none of this justifies homosexuality any more than it justifies
adultery. It is simply not true that there is any natural or genetic
inheritance or tendency to become homosexual. All such claims
have been proven false. Homosexuality is a spiritual sickness,
or addiction, similar to the addictions of alcohol, drugs, pornography,
and gambling. Some of these addictions are based on substances,
such as drugs and alcohol, and some are psychologically based,
such as pornography, gambling, and homosexuality. Nevertheless,
they are all serious addictions and perversions of what is right,
good, and normal for the human being. Such addictions can only
be cured by radical spiritual treatment which starts with being
born again as a believer in Jesus Christ.
To cave in to the homosexual lifestyle
by allowing for legally sanctioned unions of the same sex and
calling it “marriage” opens a terrible and ugly can
of worms that may never be closed again. If we redefine marriage
to include a same sex couple’s union, then why not redefine
marriage to allow for polygamy? If marriage is not necessarily
one man with one woman, then why can’t marriage be one man
with two women? Or one woman with two men? Or two women with two
men? Does this sound disgusting to you? Mark my words, if the
United States bows down to concept of a homosexual marriage, such
degrading standards will soon follow. It can even get worse. The
day might come when some fine citizen would go to court for the
rights to marry their pet dog. Such is the horrible picture when
men of the earth take it into their own hands to redefine a sacred
institution such as marriage, which was created by Almighty God.
The institution of marriage faces
greater challenges today than perhaps any other time in all of
history. Scientific achievement and technological advancement
have given today’s societies the notion that they can redefine
the essence of mankind itself. Such ideas are far more dangerous
than we can even imagine. Marriage is more than an idea, it is
more than a convenience, it is more than physical attraction,
even that of one man with one woman. Marriage is a beautiful ordinance
formed by the hand of God. “For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will
become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore
what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matt
19:5-6, NIV). We are well advised as a nation to respect the very
confines of our own creation. No tax benefits are worth the risk
of the evil that might befall us if we play games with an institution
that is made by the hand of God.
James Sanders
Pastor,
August 16, 2005
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