Christian Nationalism? No

[peter_speckhard]

Peter you allow the marriage of divorced people whose first (or second or third) spouses survive to be called marriage, contra to scripture. So what’s in the word if the spouses are gay?

The issue of whether people are sinning by entering into a marriage is entirely (not mostly, but entirely) separate from the issue of whether it is a marriage they're entering into at all. A man and a woman may in many cases be sinning by entering into a marriage. Two men (or two women) cannot possibly enter into a marriage. It is not possible for them to become one flesh in any meaningful sense no matter how they try.

[Donald_Kirchner]

The issue never wa equal rights, it was the definition of marriage.

Uh oh! Here comes Brian!

[peter_speckhard]

The issue never wa equal rights, it was the definition of marriage.

Uh oh! Here comes Brian!

And as usual I've had to go back and fix a few typos in my previous posts.

[Brian Stoffregen]

The responses Charles made above show a lack of concern about the culture of our nation.  What we do and don't do affects others, it's not all about whether I am harmed or "freaked out" by what others do.  It's about the cumulative effect of innumerable actions on the whole of society.  The idea that, should someone's actions not have an immediate and direct effect on me, I cannot claim harm is just fundamentally wrong.  I just saw that a woman and her 4 year old child were murdered in the town I live in.  I did not know them.  It did not happen near me.  I suspect I know no one who did know her.  But to say I'm unaffected by the murders is just untrue for my entire community is damaged by that sin.  Community matters.

So, you want to make the culture of our nation more Christian. That sounds like Christian Nationalism.


Frankly, I prefer the culture of today (with same-sex marriages) over that of decades past when homosexuals were persecuted. Christians who oppose them need to remember Jesus' command to love our enemies.

Yes, you prefer current culture because it conforms with your Christianity.  You're winning.  How are you any different than "those people"?

(My obvious answer: you're not, and I have no particular interest in living in your theocracy either.)

I prefer current culture out of my Christian love for my neighbors - some of whom are gay and some are in same-sex marriages. Some of those couples are raising children.

[Brian Stoffregen]

Terrorists hide behind civilians. They imbed themselves in places one cannot bomb without killing the innocent. Imagine the frustration of taking aim at an  enemy advancing toward you behind a line of captured children. The enemy is evil. Its captives are not. Even its soldiers are not, except in so far as they are deceived. The real evil is always abstract-- an idea, an ideology.

The lgbtqia+ ideology (that erotic attraction defines a person but biological sex does not, that male and female are constructs, that orgasm is a matter of self-expression unrelated to procreation, that mingling one's body with another does not affect bodily autonomy, etc.) advances behind a growing line of captives-- innocent children and deceived activists. It is difficult to know how to fight it. A twelve year old boy desperately wanting to be castrated and become a girl is a tragedy. To support it is evil. But the boy is not evil, he is a captive. No sense attacking him. Two men who think they are husband and wife (or that husband and husband is the same thing) are deceived. The fruit of this ideology is barrenness and abortion.

None of the trans people I know sought to change their genders at 12-years-old - even if their brain was telling them that they were a different gender than their bodies. It is young adults in their 20s who I am seeing "coming out" as trans and changing their looks and their names. One recently posted about the change on Facebook - noting that his parents anticipated this for years - and they are conservative Lutherans.

[Brian Stoffregen]

So, you want to make the culture of our nation more Christian. That sounds like Christian Nationalism.

Good grief, yes! Don't you?

It's hard enough getting our congregations to be more Christian - that is, to act in a more Christ-like manner towards each other. I experienced more of that Christ-likeness among clients at an alcoholic rehab hospital that I do in most congregations. They all knew they were all sinners (and the particular sin they had struggled with). They were open and accepting and loving and forgiving and supporting one another to help them live their new lives of sobriety.

That sounds like Christian Nationalism.

Not according to this description.

http://alpb.org/Forum/index.php?topic=8208.msg522309#msg522309

It wouldn't be the first time I've been mistaken. It's not likely to be the last either.

[Brian Stoffregen]

In many places there domestic partnerships laws that allowed two people by mutual consent to enjoy all the legal privileges of married couples (tax forms, hospital visitation, etc.) without being recognized as married. It could be elderly siblings living together, could be a gay couple, whatever. Why was that not good enough? Who is injured by not having their relationship formally, publicly, and legally declared the same as marriage? Nobody. Except, of course, that gay people would say that isn't exactly true. Laws reflect the values and worldview of the culture.Iy was important to gay people not merely to have some legal benefit of marriage, it was important to have the cultural stamp of approval. And the same is true in reverse. It isn't that I suffer harm. It is that my marriage is declared the same as a gay marriage. The culture declares my values not the values of the culture.

Nope. I have a good friend who was in a registered domestic partner relationship. It only gave the legal privileges that the state offered married couples. At the time, it brought no federal benefits. They couldn't file taxes as a couple. She had a list of something like 1100 federal marriage benefits that they did not receive as "domestic partners."


Also, only a few states offered legal domestic partnerships. About the same time, a lesbian couple in another state that did not have domestic partners, adopted a child, but according to the laws of that state, only one of them could be listed as the parent, because they weren't married. Should the "parent" die, the other mother had no rights to the child.

[Dan Fienen]

Terrorists hide behind civilians. They imbed themselves in places one cannot bomb without killing the innocent. Imagine the frustration of taking aim at an  enemy advancing toward you behind a line of captured children. The enemy is evil. Its captives are not. Even its soldiers are not, except in so far as they are deceived. The real evil is always abstract-- an idea, an ideology.

The lgbtqia+ ideology (that erotic attraction defines a person but biological sex does not, that male and female are constructs, that orgasm is a matter of self-expression unrelated to procreation, that mingling one's body with another does not affect bodily autonomy, etc.) advances behind a growing line of captives-- innocent children and deceived activists. It is difficult to know how to fight it. A twelve year old boy desperately wanting to be castrated and become a girl is a tragedy. To support it is evil. But the boy is not evil, he is a captive. No sense attacking him. Two men who think they are husband and wife (or that husband and husband is the same thing) are deceived. The fruit of this ideology is barrenness and abortion.

None of the trans people I know sought to change their genders at 12-years-old - even if their brain was telling them that they were a different gender than their bodies. It is young adults in their 20s who I am seeing "coming out" as trans and changing their looks and their names. One recently posted about the change on Facebook - noting that his parents anticipated this for years - and they are conservative Lutherans.

Unfortunately, the experience of the trans people you know is no longer standard. We have advocates saying that toddlers can know they are trans. Various "gender affirming" therapies including gender identity affirmation (pronouns, name changes, cross dressing, etc.), hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgery on prepubescent children. There is also advocacy for parents being excluded from the decision making.

[Charles Austin]

If a man and a woman marry, both having agreed that they will not have children, isn’t that still a marriage?

[Matt Hummel]

If a man and a woman marry, both having agreed that they will not have children, isn’t that still a marriage?

Coram hominibus, I'll go with, "Yeah, prolly."

Coram Dei? No. If marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant of fidelity open to the gift of life, then choosing sterility from the start is a big ol No. Where is the total gift of self, where is the mutual vulnerability? When you deliberately separate the unitive from the procreative, bad things happen. Look at our society. I am up to my ass in the fallout from the grand experiment of sexual liberation. I teach in an inner city school.

Oh- and as for all the "good" Catholics you know who are in total agreement with your enlightened viewpoint, they are of a piece with all the good Lutherans I've encountered who know they are saved by their works. People can call themselves what they want. Don't make it so Pastor...

[Charles Austin]

Just because marriage “allows” us to procreate does not mean that every married person is required to do that. Or is doing wrong in deciding not to procreate.

[Brian Stoffregen]

If a man and a woman marry, both having agreed that they will not have children, isn’t that still a marriage?

Coram hominibus, I'll go with, "Yeah, prolly."

Coram Dei? No. If marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant of fidelity open to the gift of life, then choosing sterility from the start is a big ol No. Where is the total gift of self, where is the mutual vulnerability? When you deliberately separate the unitive from the procreative, bad things happen. Look at our society. I am up to my ass in the fallout from the grand experiment of sexual liberation. I teach in an inner city school.

Oh- and as for all the "good" Catholics you know who are in total agreement with your enlightened viewpoint, they are of a piece with all the good Lutherans I've encountered who know they are saved by their works. People can call themselves what they want. Don't make it so Pastor...

Where is it commanded that men and woman need to marry and have children?


"Be fruitful and multiply" is a command also given to fish and birds (Gen 1:22). They don't marry in order to reproduce.


When God gives the command in Gen 1:28, it's likely addressed to all the land animals as well as the humans which are all created on that same day. (Even if the command doesn't include the land animals, they reproduce anyway - and without marriages.)

[Charles Austin]

Furthermore, as to "Be fruitful and multiply" , we can honestly say, “OK, God, we’ve done that. We’ve done that so well that the Earth is in danger. Your glorious creation is now telling us to back off from a lot of our activities, like multiplying and squandering the earth’s land and its resources.”

[RDPreus]

God chooses to bless some marriages with children, and he withholds the blessing of children from some marriages.  God does as he wills.  He is the Author of life.  He opens and closes the womb.  He teaches us that children are his blessings.  He does not give children to punish, but to bless.  To argue, in a legalistic fashion, that God doesn't command married couples to have children and that it is not wrong to choose not to have children, challenging the traditionalist to prove the contrary seems to be an attempt to evade the fundamental issue before us: God is the Author of life.  God chooses life.  God gives life.  All we can do is engage, as God has ordained, in the activity through which God engenders new life.

I won't rise to the bait to "prove" that God commands married couples to have children and that it's wrong to choose not to have children because these legalistic challenges move the conversation away from where it really ought to be grounded: in God's fatherly love for us in blessing us with children.  Hey, you don't want it, that's your problem.  You don't want kids?  Fine.  But God loves children.  God blesses his children with children.  God established marriage for the benefit of the children he gives.  The fruitful womb is a reward, not a punishment.  God opens and closes the womb.  We're not in charge.

[peter_speckhard]

I’d say they are getting married, but they are misguided in their reasoning and possibly sinning against themselves, each other, and humanity by refusing to be open to procreation. In the Catholic Church I believe it would be grounds for an annulment, which means no, it is not properly the sacrament of marriage.

Again, a male and a female are capable of organically uniting their bodies, with every organ/member of the body fulfilling its design and purpose. The two become one. Marriage. Two people of the same sex cannot ever do that. It is by definition impossible. They can do things that in some ways are similar, but they cannot become one flesh.