Friday, December 07, 2007
No one has 'right' to sin
From the RoundTable blog
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John Stec
Stec is an engineer who lives and works in the Covington area.
The Roanoke Times editorial staff overlooks a few things when advocating the acceptance of homosexual activity. You do advocate this deviant behavior, demonstrated by an editorial, "Presidential politics come out of the closet" (Aug. 13). You praised the Democratic presidential candidates for "supporting" the gay position at an Aug. 8 gay rights forum in Los Angeles. You support oxymoronic gay marriage, as though there is such a thing.
In your editorial "America inches toward equality" (Nov. 11) you praised a bill that "moves the nation in the right direction," forbidding employment discrimination "based on their sexual orientation," including gays, lesbians, bisexuals and heterosexuals. (Heterosexual is an orientation?) You lament the House Democrats' tactic of removing "transgender and transsexual individuals" from the list to make the bill more acceptable to social conservatives. What about pedophiles? Shouldn't they have enumerated rights also?
We must be clear with what homosexual activity is before we can engage in a reasonable debate as to legalities concerning "rights." A man or boy can love another man or boy without the exchange of bodily fluids. I love my father deeply. Affection is physically given and proven by an appropriate and occasional embrace and a kiss. I love some of my friends deeply. They know it. They know it by my conversation, my commitment to their well-being and by the things we enjoy together. And they know it without having to disrobe to perform sex.
Father-son, coach-athlete, student-teacher, daughter-mother, friend-friend, doctor-patient, pastor-congregant, father-daughter, mother-son are all relationships of many sorts. But husband-wife even sounds different, especially when thinking of commitment and purpose, the intentions being marriage, home, children, family, permanence, in sickness and in health, good times and bad, till death do us part.
Mom and Dad and sons and daughters: sounds kind of natural and good, nuclear. The building block of society. Husband and wife complement each other physically, anatomically, emotionally and psychologically. Was this meant to be? Did marriage evolve this way? Should we make it different?
Let's forget the "rights" argument. A right doesn't exist and isn't established simply because somebody wants it, a law is passed or even because a majority desires it to be so. Using the argument that something is legal will not help your defense on Judgment Day. God is love, but God is also just.
God. Now there's a problem with the Lord's commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother." This law strongly urges children to respect the parents who gave and nurtured their lives from conception. It sort of defines the term parents: father and mother, sort of implying male and female. Ignore this commandment. Or should we change the wording so it is up-to-date? How about, "honor thy lesbian mothers and their sperm donor" or "honor both thy fathers" or "honor your three fathers"?
Christian churches that increase membership by calling sexual sin acceptable are doing an eternal disservice to those in need of paternal correction and loving help. Helping someone overcome sin, including fornication, homosexual acts and adultery, is the opposite of hate.
Basic rights all people should enjoy by nature of simply being human might be listed as food, shelter, employment, safety, freedom, opportunity to improve oneself and be happy. Maybe more broadly "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." But if pursuit of happiness includes snorting cocaine, euthanizing my "burdensome" grandmother, having sex with a consenting child, or doing unsavory things to my partner, should they be made into legal rights, even if a chunk of the general populace believes these things are acceptable? We have laws to regulate freedoms and responsibilities for the common good of society.
You craftily did not fully explain what "equality" means in your editorial defending this bill and its natural trajectory (employer-covered health benefits for their partners). If your "equality" means equating the ages-old institution of traditional marriage with two men doing disgusting, highly unsanitary things, then I couldn't disagree with you more. But if you meant giving homosexuals similar employment opportunities as heterosexuals, then that's OK, as long as they keep their physical affectations to themselves, just as heterosexuals must, in the workplace.
