"We're going to probably hear more homophobic bullshit from this guy, anyway."
You know, because he'd been there before, and because we weren't going to actually see any sort of a new, kinder, gentler, more inclusive evangelism from people who have probably figured out that the best they'll get from us "tolerant" types is more tolerance,while hateful people will always back you up if you reinforce their biases.
And so it happened, we sometimes do hear some homophobic stuff from this guy, and it's typical and not unexpected, but this little bit here pulled me up and I had to take a look at it for a second:
“I’m more against the redefinition of the term marriage than anything else.”
And then came Warren’s real semantic argument.
“I don’t think other groups get the opportunity to redefine a term. For instance, if a Muslim says this is a term we use and all of the sudden I take that term and mean it for me. Well, that’s not right,” the pastor stated.
“Don’t take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.”
So, same-sex marriage to Pastor Rick Warren means “the exact opposite” of opposite-sex marriage.This fascinates me because I like to think about what words mean. What do we mean by "marriage", and what do we socially expect of married people? What do married people do, and how do they act towards and about each other?
When I think about it in very simple terms, I think of marriage as a committed relationship between two people which includes affectionate, romantic and sexual love between them, building a committment to one another to care for each other and the family they may choose to create. It would be a socially and legally accepted union that offers certain privileges and protections.
The opposite of that would be a lack of relationship between people, involving no affection, romance, or sex, no committment, no care for one another, no families, no social or legal recognition, and no privileges or protections. Maybe this "opposite" of marriage is the kind of gay marriage the pastor would like to believe exists--in other words: no kind at all. But the relationships of people who do struggle for marriage equality are the same in many of the above respects to straight marriages--so what the hell is the deal with calling them "opposite"? Who is using "doublespeak", now? Does he think that by simply not calling it "marriage", he can erase the reality of committed gay couples and their families? Is his pure concept of that word extending to only the particulars of binary physical genders of unions consisting of one of each more valuable to him than the lived experiences of thousands and thousands of people he has not bothered to even know or consider?
He seems a poor person to receive advice from when his worldview denies so much of the, um, world we live in.
1 comment:
Hi-Ho Vixen,
as the French would say, it gives one ferociously to think. Who would have thought that marriage would have become so politicized that people would start thinking of marriage as if it were the province of Democrats or Republicans.
I don't know beans about Rick Warren and could care less. I am not antagonistic to evangelical pastors, but mostly they disappoint me.
Both my wife and I were single for a long time before we got married. Years after most people tied the know we were still being being bachelor/bachelorette.
Naturally we both had the good fortune to have a lot of opportunity to have very deep friendships that could almost be considered family.
Finally we got married and have been happy for 28 years.
I wish I could remember who characterized marriage in terms of 'the great divide.'
The girls have all their friendships and the guys have all their buddies, and somehow we leave this and cross the line and start a kind of sacred bond that is entirely different.
Having had dear friendships, we both had sacred bonds with members of the same sex, but we crossed the 'great divide' to come together and form something different and new that often results in families.
I think the whole thing needs to be considered from the point of view of sacred bonding. My wife and I have a sacred bond with one another, and yet in our past we have had sacred bonds with members of the same sex who were our best friends.
After 28 years of successful marriage we know that these sacred bonds are different. They are not the same thing.
In some ways marriage is more difficult. You never understand your spouse as well as you did your best friends. You never have the concert of opinions that you did with your buddies. And yet it is still something more.
Maybe we should get rid of the word "marriage" altogether and talks about different species of sacred bonding. However, since the male-female sacred bond has been established as marriage, it probably will not change.
--Formerly Amherst
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