The ironies of the Texas gay-marriage proposition: Buggery bad, beastiality OK
By John David Powell John David Powell (11/07/05)
Funny how these things happen. The idea for this
column emerged just before Halloween (how fitting!)
when the Houston Chronicle (www.chron.com) carried a
story in its Oct. 27 edition headlined, “Proposition 2
supporters distance themselves from anti-gay KKK rally
/ Amendment’s backers say they want nothing to do with
Austin event.”
For those who don’t keep up with Texas politics, Prop.
2 is the proposed constitutional amendment that
outlaws same-sex marriages
(www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd?LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=JR&BILLSUFFIX=00006&VERSION=5&TYPE=B).
Texas law already bans homasekshul marriage, but
supporters believe the state needs a constitutional
amendment on the matter, fearing a liberal,
legislating judge could rule the statute
unconstitutional. In other words, proposition
supporters don’t want gay unions to slip in through
the back door, so to speak.
Politics, as the saying goes, creates strange
bedfellows. When word spread that the Texas sleeve of
the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
(http://awkkk.net) intended to rally in Austin to
support the amendment, other conservative Christian
groups distanced themselves in a stammering display of
irony.
The newspaper quoted the pastor of Houston’s Our
Savior Lutheran Church (www.osl.cc), and head of the
Texas Restoration Project, as calling the Klan rally
“most unfortunate.”
“I certainly think it doesn’t help any issue to have
the Klu Klux Klan associated with it,” said pastor
Laurence White.
Even the proposition’s author, state Rep. Warren
Chisum (R-Pampa) gave a quote equivalent to “Hey,
don’t look at me!”
It’s easy to understand their dismay. Most folks
consider the Klan a hate group. With good reason.
The federal government specifically mentions the KKK
in its hate-group definition (Federal Register, April
29, 1994, Vol. 59, No. 82; Federal Register, November
1, 1999, Vol. 64, No. 210).
Trouble is, the same list of hate groups and crimes
includes the category Religious Bias, defined as “a
preformed negative opinion or attitude toward a group
of persons based on their sexual attraction toward,
and responsiveness to, members of their own sex or
members of the opposite sex, e.g., lesbians,
heterosexuals.”
As one person pointed out recently, to protest KKK
support in this matter is like saying, “We don’t need
your brand of hate; we have enough of our own.” What
is this nation coming to when there is not enough hate
to go around? .
After some consideration, it became obvious that
pointing out the ironies of the goofy debate over who
has a lock on intolerance in Texas was too easy and
cheap. And, far be it from this space to stoop to the
easy and cheap.
This revelation led to the realization that no one has
pointed out that Texas law is silent on other marriage
issues.
For instance, pastors and klansmen don’t cotton to
spouse abusers or child molesters. They also don’t
condone the crimes of beastiality, frotteurism,
exhibitionism, or voyeurism, which are among the list
of recognized sexual perversions
(www.healthatoz.com/healthatoz/Atoz/ency/sexual_perversions.jsp).
Yet the Texas Constitution does not prohibit marriages
by practitioners of these activities. This means, in
Texas, men and women convicted for having sex with
animals and children can have their later marriages
blessed by the state, the Texas Restoration Project,
and guys who wear sheets and robes in public. Go
figure.
And then this morning dawned with the need to take a
kinder and gentler approach, one that might offer a
moment of pause and reflection to those who support
the Nov. 8 proposition come hell or high water.
Ancient Christian voices belonging to the early desert
fathers
(www.balamandmonastery.org.lb/fathers/indexdesert.htm)
seemed to speak directly to this issue, and are worth
at least a cursory review.
“A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was
called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused
to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to
him: ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he
got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it
with water and carried it with him. The others came
out to meet him and said to him: ‘What is this,
Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out
behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am
coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they
heard that, they said no more to the brother, but
forgave him.”
“A demoniac boy came one day to be healed, and some
brothers from an Egyptian monastery arrived. As one
old man was coming out to meet them, he saw a brother
sinning with the boy, but he did not accuse him. He
said, ‘If God who has made them sees them and does not
burn them, who am I to blame them?’
“A brother who had sinned was turned out of the church
by the priest. Abba Bessarion got up and went with
him, saying, ‘I, too, am a sinner.’”
Indeed.
John David Powell is an award-winning Internet
columnist and writer, and a contributor to the
Christian History Project.
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