Here's why Christians oppose gay marriage

Tensions are growing since the Supreme Court's controversial decision to make gay marriage the law of the land.  Proponents of gay marriage can still be heard celebrating, and for good reason.  Still, there are many Christians who feel the celebrations are a way of rubbing in their faces that of which they did not want to happen.  This has left many Christians questioning their faith, and why they were against gay marriage in the first place.

So, why is it we support marriage between a man and a woman, and why are we opposed to gay marriage? 

Dan Calabrese, a columnist for the North Star Writer's Group, explains why Christians don't support gay marriage in his column, "A detailed explanation of why Christians don't support gay marriage." I will use this as a reference for the following, although I will also add some of my own thoughts. 

1.  First it should be known that Christians believes that the entire Bible is the inspired Word of God. That’s why, when we cite the Bible, we treat it as authoritative.

2.  The Bible clearly defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  (Genesi 2: 23-2)(Matthew 19: 4-6)(Mark 10: 2-9)

3.  The Bible clearly sates that homosexual life is a moral sin with a penalty. Loving Christians want to see gay people spared of the pain of that penalty.  (Romans 1: 24-28)(Leviticus 20: 10-18)

4.  God is very stern with people who participate in sexual immorality. This is because when you unite with them physically you unite with them spiritually. He wants you to unite spiritually with one other person of the opposite sex of whom you are married.  (Leviticus 20: 10-18)

5. God explains that the reason for laws is for sinners, which includes sodomy (sex with an animal) and fornication (sex outside of marriage).  Timothy 1: 8-11

6.  We are all born into sin, and we are all tempted by our own desires, and we must resist these temptations to avoid the pain of punishment.  (James 1: 14-15)

7.  Liberals believe that people are born perfect and are corrupted by society.  So they believe the way to get the individual back to perfection is to do battle with society.  This explains why they battled so hard to change the definition of marriage.  

8.  Conservatives believe, as the Bible teaches, the people are born flawed, and the way to improve society is through the moral improvement of the individual.  They believe that to make society better you have to start with the individual.  

9.  Now, this is what the Bible says it is not me.  The following quote is from Calabrese.  "For the homosexual who says, “I was born this way,” I will not argue. We were all born with sinful urges of our flesh. Some struggle with anger. Some struggle with heterosexual lust. Some struggle with gluttony or addiction to alcohol. And some struggle with homosexual urges. These are our desires. They come from the flesh and they war against the spirit."

10.  "God’s desire for each person is that they will repent of those desires and surrender to Him so that He can deliver them from these urges by the power of Christ."

11.  "The Christian who loves as God loves certainly does not a hate another human being for having sinful desires of the flesh. We have them too"  So you can see that Christians love our gay brethren as all others. 

12.  Christians, however, recognize these thoughts as sinful, and so they resist the temptation.  They feel guilty when they have these thoughts.  This is God saying, "Stop!" 

13.  We must resist such sinful temptations so we can be right with God. Life is full of temptations, and every attempt at resisting them makes us a better person.  We are rewarded with blessings in our lives.  One such reward is a better society.  In other words, we make society better by resisting temptations.  

14.  The more people who resist temptations, the better society will be.  So society is made better one individual at a time. 

15.  This explains why there is a constant effort to improve the moral standard of the individual through the Church.  It is a constant battle.  We must never quit. 

Now, to tackle the modern issue of gay marriage, Calabrese said: 

I understand why some Christians struggle with this. They know a gay person, or maybe have a gay family member, and they want that person to be happy. It’s enticing to accept the “love is love” argument and to believe that surely God wants that gay person to be in a loving relationship.

But that argument wrongly conflates love with sex. There are a lot of different kinds of love. Hopefully you love a lot of people, but you only have sex with one person - the one to whom you’re married. If you want a gay person to know love in a romantic/sexual relationship, good, so do I. So I will pray that this person is delivered from those urges through the blood of Jesus so that he or she can find the mate of the opposite sex that God always intended for them to come together with.

Still, it must be added that all people have a right to choose the lifestyle the wish to live.  It must be understood, however, that Christians also have this right.  And to choose to be a Christian does not mean that we do not love and respect all our fellow men and women, all of whom we wish the best for.

Further reading:

• A detailed explanation of why Christians don't support gay marriage," by Dan Calabrese
• The Church will survive gay marriage if... National 
• Gay men blow kisses, taunting guy in ‘Ask Me About Jesus’ shirt; watch his reaction
• The Next Gay Marriage Battle: National Review

Theories are just theories, part 2

You may also replace big industry with progressive.

How many theories were postulated that told you that coffee is bad for you. Once it was thought that it would cause Parkinson's. Yet the same people -- who happen to be on a government panel -- who said that are now claiming that drinking four cups of coffee a day prevents parkinsons. They are also claiming it prevents heart disease and liver cancer.

I remember my mom, back in 1977, drank a beer a day while she was pregnant with my younger brother. Then she didnt' breastfeed, because one study came out that showed formula was better for a newborn. Yet that theory was proven to be false, and now the recommendation is that children should be breastfed until the age of three, which was how long most parents throughout history nursed their kids.

My point here is that we need to stop kowtowing to theories.

Another theory postulates that the NFL has lead to an increase in suicides among former players. So the NFL accepts the premise on the scanty evidence available, and defends itself against it. While a more sane solution would be to monitor the situation while waiting for more evidence to come out.

I have seen this (by my own study of medical history) over and over and over throughout history. It goes all the way back to the primitive and ancient worlds. You had people for thousands of years banned from touching a corpse, even for scientific purposes, because dead bodies were considered sacrosanct; that touching them would cause the gods or demons to cause famine and disease.

So what good did this result in. None. It resulted in slowing down of progress. It made it so people would have to wait until the 18th century to actually be able to look at and study a dead body without fearing death. It made it so people had to wait until the 20th century to get results. It made it so asthmatics had to needlessly suffer until the 1950s.

It's all because of senseless, cooky, mythological, feel good theories. It was all based on fear caused by theories that were later proven to be nothing more than theories; nothing more than myths.

Further reading:

• Theories are just theories: part 1
• Theories are just theories: part 3

2 reasons I support an armed public

There are many people who believe that there are too many guns in America, including great actor Liam Neeson.  These people believe that more laws need to be created to keep guns out of the hands of the public.

And every time there is an act of violence involving a gun, they use this as a reason for more gun control laws.  The most recent example is the violent action that occurred in France where police officers are unarmed and ride on bicycles.  They also frequently use school shootings, where guns are not allowed. 

There are two reasons why I am opposed to gun control laws.

1.  Bad guys will still get them.  If you could convince me that guns would be taken out of the hands of every thug in the world, I'd be all for gun control.

2.  The Police State would control us.  If you could convince me that the government would never take advantage of an unarmed populace, I'd be all for gun control.

Look!  Bad guys will get guns.  If the good guys don't have them, and the bad guys know this, then there's little hope for the good guys.

Look!  The U.S. military will always have guns, because their Raison d'être is to destroy things and kill people.  When the public no longer has guns, who is to prevent some future thug from getting elected president who will take advantage of this to control the people?

You see, people who support gun laws are the same progressives/liberals (fascists) who think they can perfect the world.  They actually think that if they get rid of guns there will be no criminals.  So the logic that bad guys would still commit crimes in a gun free world slips right by them.

Logic says that bad guys would find a way to get their hands on guns. If factories don't make them, then they would.  And if all the guns in the world miraculously disappeared, bad guys would use knives to kill instead.  So are they going to try to get rid of all the knives in the world too?

The truth is that most people who own guns are law abiding citizens who have a natural right to protect and defend themselves.  Attempts to take away their guns solves nothing, and creates chaos.