Editorial: Gay Marriage: The Debate - Trying to be the Calm Voice

Guest editorial by By Sheryle Smith - March - April 1,  2004
Toronto Digital Queeries

© All Rights Reserved: sheryle_smith@bellsouth.net,  Snellville, Georgia.

 Gay Marriage: The Debate -  Trying to be the Calm Voice

 

With all the news focused on gay marriage today, one can’t help but be bombarded by opposing opinions. Most of those opinions are religiously based and therefore packed with emotion and not reason. 

Since coming to terms with my gayness, also meant for me, coming to terms with being a Christian; I searched for truth. After all isn’t that what Jesus tells us to do? Seek the truth. Truth for me, meant a truth that wasn’t adulterated by someone’s opinion or standing on the issue. Therefore I chose to look for writings by individuals who didn’t actually have a stake in the issue. Individuals who could research the issue and tell me what it was that religion really had to say. 

For those of us who have had the chance to study religion in depth, from both a theological point as well as a historical point, we see what the impassioned and the dispassionate are missing in their arguments. The facts are, that although there is a God and His words were inspired into writing in the Bible, through the years they have been mistranslated due to changing languages and slang. I have read many informative books on the matter by committed theologians; committed to the truth and the pursuit thereof, regardless of what your point of view may be. The fact remains that there is no direct admonition to gays in the Bible. As hard as that, may seem to fathom. 

In their zeal to “control” the world’s moral pulse, many mainstream Christians do so, without the benefit of any other knowledge than what they have been spoon fed by religious leaders. I’m not saying that I could possibly know the mind of God, but it seems that from what has been continuously mentioned throughout scripture, neither do the mainstream Christians. After all, isn’t it Jesus admonishment, not to judge lest ye be judged and how about casting that first stone? 

Beyond the religious aspects there are also those misconceptions regarding the gay community. We are not motivated to be gay because of sexual desire. It’s a desire of the heart that motivates sex, not the opposite. Contrary to popular heterosexual belief, we are not constantly on the prowl for our next sexual conquest either. 

We are simply doing what comes naturally to every human being in the world. Looking for someone to spend the rest of our lives with for all the same reasons heterosexuals are. Being told that gays will destroy the sanctity of marriage and family, is a literal slap in the face to us as a whole. If any group can identify with that sanctity, it is the gay community. We have been ostracized by families, friends, jobs and societies as a whole. Yet we are able to maintain relationships just as long and sometimes longer, than heterosexuals, in the face of such adversity. We are Christians, wives, husbands, parents and families facing the same struggles, albeit with much more societal opposition, as heterosexuals. 

Am I bashing mainstream Christianity? Being a Born Again Christian and loving God with all my heart, I also believe that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected on the third day. Recently the verbal, physical and written attacks upon one’s character and body have given me quite a scare. 

We are literally being persecuted by the very faction that is supposed to be loving and forgiving. Will that stop me from believing in God? No, however it will make me rethink mainstream Christianity. How different are some of the Christian factions than Alqueda? What lengths are some of them willing to go? Do I want to stir up a pot of hate? NO. I want to stir mainstream Christianity up to think for themselves and stop allowing the hate that’s being spoon-fed to them. 

No one is here to judge, but we all have to share this great country and our Great God. No one has the corner market on either.