My Thoughts On: Gay Marriage

*As a note, while I believe every thing that I will say here, this is a highly opinionated and "up on my soapbox" kind of post.  Just warning you.*

I recently (aka, 5 minutes ago) stumbled across and read THIS article.  And it made me want to...cry.  It churned my stomach into knots and tears well up in my eyes.  It was titled:  A Complete History of the Duggar Family's Hateful Anti-LGBT and Anti-Abortion Comments.  Yikes!  I clicked on it mostly out of curiosity, and a bit of, "umph, suuure, haha."  But I didn't expect it to be as bad as it was.

  I'm not writing this to talk about the Duggars.  They are the main ones under attack in this article, but I'm talking about the deeper issue here: gays vs. those who believe it is wrong.  Or, as this article suggest, Those who just want to be able to love freely vs. haters. But, who is really doing the hating?

It would probably be best to actually read, or at least scan, the article I'm mentioning, but basically, the article starts out my talking about the channel, TLC, and how it recently canceled a show known as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. (Which I know nothing about, and have never seen)  A petition, it seems, had now been started to likewise cancel the 19 Kids and Counting because,

"The Duggars have been using their fame to promote discrimination, hate, and fear-mongering against gays and transgendered people. You need to take a stand on the side of justice and cancel their show."

 ~ Creator of the Petition, Jim Wissick

   I've been taking a logic class for high school, and this quote did almost make me laugh.  Propaganda is basically spreading your ideas and opinions.  Some propaganda is not bad, but it is easy to be caught up in agreeing with them, rather than thinking why you are agreeing.  Now, in this quote, he doesn't say how the Duggars have been hateful.  He doesn't even present us why the Duggars, whatever they did, is unjust, and he doesn't say how his side is "justice."  But, standing on the side of justice sounds so nice.  Standing with the Duggars in what they believe automatically makes me a discriminating, hateful person.  

But really, in what I believe, the exact opposite is true.  I follow and trust in a God of love.  A God of peace, and joy, and obedience and perfection.  I know that no one is perfect.  But that is why my Holy God sent His son, to be our Perfection!  So when we come to Him, He takes our sin, wipes it away, and calls us to Himself, to be with Him for eternity, in this life and the next.  All sin is sin in God's eyes.  Whether I steal a pencil, or a million dollars, it is stealing.  It is sin.  Whether I grow up my whole life as a church kid, never steal, never swear, never commit adultery, or murder, or rape, I am still no better than someone who did all of those things.  In God's eyes we are equally sinful, and if we come to Him, equally clean.  As a Christian, I am called to proclaim this truth.

I believe that abortion, and gay marriage is wrong.  It is sin. Like I just said, I don't think that a gay person and someone who has had an abortion is any more of a sinner than I am.  But, just because everyone does it, does not make it not sin.  

Further down in  the article, it talks about one of the Duggar's sons becoming the director of an organization (that I do not know) that, as the article puts it, "...Is vehemently anti-LGBT and anti-abortion, and has been classified as a hate group..."  It quotes a different organization that says, "Will TLC allow [itself]  to become a mainstream outlet for [the organization that Josh Duggar is now working]'s dangerous message?"

   Now, how can someone being in support of something so strongly be okay, but someone being against the same thing be a hate group?  Ready for another one of my examples? ;)  

   What if I made peanut butter cookies, and I walked around the house saying that peanut butter cookies are the best cookies ever, and that everyone should eat peanut butter cookies, and I made posters proclaiming how much I loved peanut butter cookies.  But then my sister told me that she didn't like peanut butter cookies, and that the peanut butter that I used in the cookies had gone bad, so no one should eat them.  If I turned around and called her a hater on peanut butter cookies, and saying that she has such dangerous ideas, and if I trashed her room, and called her all sorts of mean names, and purposefully stuck my peanut butter cookies in places that I knew she would be, just so when she put them aside I could call her a mean hater, who would really be the hater?  The one who dislikes the cookies, and is against them, or the one for them that is so angry about it that if anyone disagrees with them they instantly label them as hating discriminators?

The next point of the article talks about a event in which Michelle Duggar spoke out about a bill being passed that would allow people that "wished" to be of an opposite gender to be able to use the corresponding bathroom.  Michelle compared this to the actions of a child predator.  If men who "decide" to be girls that day are allowed into the women's bathrooms and changing stations; privacy is totally forfeited, and even worse.  I would never use a bathroom if I knew at any moment a man could walk in, and do whatever he pleased!  As a teenage girl, that thought just appalls me.  How can being against a man allowed to invade the privacy of a woman be called being hateful!  How can rape (which IS wrong) be wrong, and yet this be right??

About 3/4's down the page, there is a quote of a Instagram caption that one of the Duggar girls wrote.  Please read it, her words are amazing, and I totally agree 100%!  She says that the whole racial discrimination starts from the theory of evolution; some humans supposedly being more "advanced" or "evolved" than the other.  In reality, we were all created in our Creator's image!  None higher than another.  We were humans from the very beginning, and all of one race.  Adam's race.  She also compares the Holocaust to current day abortion.  In the end, it is simply a loss of the sanctity of life.  If a child in the womb is no longer worthy of the right to live, why is a child with down syndrome?  Or an elderly woman?  Or a teenager with cancer?  Or a man on life support?  You cannot take away the sanctity of life for one group, without destroying all of it for every group.

According to the article, it quotes a comment made on her photo:

“While your pro-life viewpoints are totally valid and respectable, the fact that you would even think to make this comparison is absolutely dehumanizing to those involved in the Holocaust, and beyond disrespectful to all women, not to mention the ones who have actually had to choose to go through the difficult process of abortion.”

How is her comparing death to death disrespectful?

Then the whole thing about the Duggars kissing.  Jessa, a newlywed, received criticism for posting a picture of her and her husband kissing, and so her parents backed her up by having a Facebook challenge of married couples posting pictures of themselves kissing.  Many did, but a good number of homosexuals did also.  And the pictures were deleted and the people who posted them were banned from the Duggar's page.  This brought on a whole new wave of criticism.  One man, whose picture was deleted, said, "How sad that they feel threatened by other loving marriages!"  For one, the Duggars deleting a picture from their own page does not equal them feeling "threatened."  That is an assumption, and one that is probably untrue, because there is no evidence to back it up, and just doesn't make sense.  If an atheist, or gay, had a facebook page, and if Christians started bombarding their page, the page owner would most likely be backed up and the Christians condemned!  But, when the roles are switched, the hate is still turned towards the Christians.

The article ends by having a quote from the same man whose picture was deleted:

Whether the petition causes TLC to question continuing to give the family a platform or simply fizzles out, the attention it gives to LGBT causes is worth the effort.  [T]his story is definitely having an impact, because it’s starting conversations about marriage equality in spaces that may still not be used to having those conversations yet, and it’s exposing the Duggars’ fans and social media followers — a good number of whom are social and religious conservatives — to images of loving, happily married same-sex couples, possibly for the first time.  The fact that so many of the responses were positive shows how quickly hearts and minds are changing on LGBT issues.”

The first thing I get from this is that after all this, they are really saying that they don't care about what happens to the Duggars, but they just wanted the attention drawn to themselves.  

I believe the homosexuals know that what they are doing is wrong.  If you are doing what you know/believe is right, then you can turn the other way from all the criticism.  But when you know that what you are doing is wrong, you want other people to agree with you so you can try and convince yourself that you aren't guilty.  Have you ever been on a website, or listening to music, or reading something that you know you shouldn't, but you just tell yourself, "Well, everyone does it" or, "All the other teenagers are reading this book, so it's okay."  Or, "Kids at church listen to this kind of music."  Really what we are doing is trying to convince ourselves that "everyone else agrees with me, so it can't be wrong."  But it is really easy to get offended and and angry when someone does point out that it is indeed wrong.

The attack always used is "freedom."  Gays need the "freedom" to get married.  Women need the "freedom" to kill their babies.  Men need the "freedom" to rape.  People need the "freedom" to steal.  Wait a minute!

    There are some things that are opinions.  Like whether airplanes should allow passengers to recline their seats.  And the minimum wage.  But no one questions that green means go and red means stop.  If you run a red light and a policeman pulls you over, you can't tell him, "Sorry officer, but I believe that I should have the freedom to decide what color I want to drive under."  That wouldn't work.  There has to be rights and wrongs.  And if it is simply up to humans to draw that line, then there will be problems.  People will always try and change, stretch, or sneak around the rules.  If the rules were made by humans to begin with, they won't last under the pressure.  BUT, if the rules were made by a Holy God that created everything, including us humans, then even when we try and mess with His rules, they will stand firm.  That is why I can say with such confidence that gay marriage, abortion, lying, murder, adultery, theft, and many more sins are all EQUALLY sinfully.  Because my LORD said that they are.

And His word stands.

*I'm officially climbing off of my soap box now.  Until next time.*  (tips hat and darts off)