Most folks on this site might want to just skip my first two paragraphs, although I hope you'll come back and read them when you're done.

I just found out that Maine rejected gay marriage a few minutes ago from my girlfriend.  It seems a rather odd thing to do, but we do a great many odd things in America.  As  a Christian, I'm struck by the fallacy of this whole thing.  Gay people can't marry each other.  I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to, I'm saying that it's not possible for two men or two women to be married to one another and become one flesh and one body as is explained to us by the Word of God.

 However, what the  electorate in Maine seems to fail to realize is that this election was never about marriage, it was about civil unions that governments have, for too long, given the name of marriage.  A justice of the peace, that is not also a minister, cannot marry two people any more than a priest can write parking tickets.  All he can do is give a romantic relationship recognition by the state.   Atheists, not believing in God, let alone the miracles he offers, can no more be married than gay people, and yet the state recognizes their civil unions under the faulty label of marriage all the time.

So, now that we have that out of the way, you can all feel free to disagree with me as much as you like, but what I'd like to say next might intrigue you.

 This vote was a failure of so called Christian Americans.  Jesus was a firm believer in free will, and the power of change.  He ate dinner and socialized and healed and preached to and was a generally nice guy to everyone he met until he saw the hardness of their hearts and their willingness to follow rules of piety, rather than actually trying to be pious.

All gay folks want to do, or at least all they claim they want to do, is to love in the manner they're able.  Should we agree with it?  Should we think it's the best way to live one's life?  The Bible tells me no.  Should we try to punish them with ridiculously annoying and punitive administrative roadblocks that disallow them from offering the person they care the most about the basic communal rights that we've rightly come to expect in our society?  I'm pretty sure the bible would disagree with that as well.

So this brings me to the argument against gay "marriage" proposed by the zealoted right, as I know it.  I can't stand to study arguments made by fools for too long, so please forgive me if I mis-state some of their points.

Point one:

The state should recognize and create rewards, such as tax breaks, for married couples because this is a good way to promote the creation of the next generation.

Well, that's a  laudable goal, I think every person should have the opportunity to have children at some point in their life.  However, this sort of begs the argument that if a married couple chooses to remain childfree, their marriage license should be revoked after a certain period of time, I'd say five years if it were up to me.  Given my viewpoint toward state marriage, I don't actually have a problem with this, but I think a good many people probably would.

Point two:

The tax breaks and legal benefits we give to married couples not only promote people into getting married and having children, but assist them in staying married by making the fiscal responsibilities of parents less cumbersome.  This helps maintain stable, two parent households for children.

 First of all, everybody's brain is probably screaming "you mean like a gay couple could?" but let's give  the christian zealoted right some benefit of the doubt.  It's still pretty tough to be gay in America, from what I gather, and, though correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation, perhaps children of gay couples have a tougher time of it than children of straight couples.  Well that's fine then, if social services, or the police, or any other governmental representative, ever have to come to your house to investigate domestic disputes that have any merit, and find any fault with the stability of your home life, your marriage license should be revoked.  Consequently, since we're so concerned with the stability of a child's home, if you're not willing to accept random interviews, home inspections, and other intrusions into your privacy in order to determine your continuing fitness as a parent, your marriage license should be revoked.

Point Three:

 Marriage has worked and created a framework of families which have created clans which have created counties which have created states which have created countries for thousands of years.  People need this stable framework of relatives and social networks to fall back on in times of crisis, and to celebrate with in times of joy.  Governmental marriage of one man and one woman is a reflection of these familial structures and the customs from which they derive.  To redefine marriage into something else risks all this and potentially detaches us all from one another, creating powerless individuals where once there were powerful families and clans.

Well, given my mistrust of both government, and corporations, this is the only argument I've seen that made me go "huh".  However, we have facebook, we have myspace, we have twitter, we have blogs, we have "clans" built upon hobbies, unions built upon common employers, neighborhoods built upon nothing more than "I found a job in the area and this seemed a nice place to live for now".  The thing that killed marriage was not a burgeoning divorce rate, that was merely a symptom of a greater "problem".  Once travel became relatively easy and safe, once the industrial revolution prompted lower class families to gather in close proximity to one another rather than staying for generations on ancestral land, in short, once we all decided about 200 years ago that we'd like to get up and move around a hell of a lot more than we ever had before in our history, the ties that bind us together as families began to weaken as our life and lifestyle options expanded exponentially. To think that this trend can be reversed, or even stopped, is folly.  We are too separate and individual in America today, there is far too much selfishness and hermit like tendencies among us.  We must find a way to connect to one another on deep and meaningful levels again or we risk our very humanity; but, blood relations will probably have little to do with what comes next.  People today need more opportunity for deep and meaningful, lifelong relationships, not less.

 I am sorry that so many continue to suffer at the hands of a decreasing, but sadly still tyranical majority.