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Gay Marriage Editorial, Washington Post, quotes CS Lewis

The man. The myth.

Re: Gay Marriage Editorial, Washington Post, quotes CS Lewis

Postby Kolbitar » August 1st, 2005, 11:07 pm

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Re: Gay Marriage Editorial, Washington Post, quotes CS Lewis

Postby robsia » August 2nd, 2005, 12:27 pm

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Re: Gay Marriage Editorial, Washington Post, quotes CS Lewis

Postby a_hnau » August 2nd, 2005, 5:17 pm

Hi, all. Here's my ha'pennorth on this;

- one of the things which society has always done is decide what does and what does not constitute acceptable/desirable behaviour within that specific society. Some of these decisions are enforced by that society through whatever means are deemed appropriate (e.g. laws, but could also be simple force, coercion, fear - you don't have to look far in history to find examples)
- the decisions made by society on such matters are made on the basis of the values held by that society (or at least, those with power in that society)
- specifically in respect of issues like homosexual marriage, if a society chooses to change its laws, rules, on such issues what it's actually doing is making a statement about a change in its values i.e. it wouldn't have decided there was a need for a change unless the value system had changed
- at the very least, Christians can say about any change in laws/rules, that there is a change of values involved, and ask the question as to whether society realises that this is how values are affected, and if so, do people believe in this change of values? If people do firmly believe in this change of values then there's little that can be done except continue to bring out the implications and consequences of such a change and hope that this has some impact

Francis Schaeffer demonstrates some very pointed conclusions about the inability of society to live with the consequences of fully working out the implications of some of the changes to values that have seemingly taken place in Western society in the last fifty to a hundred years.
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Re: Gay Marriage Editorial, Washington Post, quotes CS Lewis

Postby robsia » August 2nd, 2005, 9:51 pm

Society does change, frequently for the better.

Of course, there are always people who do not think it is for the better.

But, if enough people DO believe this is the case, then the 'rules' do inevitably change.

Thank you a_hnau, for your very reasonable post.

There are many, gay AND straight, who DO believe that gay marriage should be allowed.

There is also a very vocal group who believe it should not be.

In the end, I do believe that eventually gay marriage will happen in much of the Western world, although it make take longer in the USA, as the religious conservatives are so vocal there.
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Postby robsia » August 21st, 2005, 9:39 pm

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What DID C.S. Lewis say on the subject?

Postby cajun » May 20th, 2008, 4:35 pm

It's futile to debate what CSL would have said on the subject of gay marriage. As far as I am aware he HAS said nothing on the matter. You have to remember that so very far from being anywhere near discussing gay marriage, in Great Britain, mere homosexual relations were against the law (as they were in most of the United States when Lewis wrote).

We know that C.S. Lewis had some personal antipathy for individual gay people he knew, and was inclined to use the word "pansies" in discussing them as a group.

On the other hand, Lewis was also critical of the laws of England on the subject and on one occassion (I think in "The Four Loves") refuted the argument that the "gay lifestyle" was immoral because it was illegal.

Lewis also was a proponent in several of his writings ("Mere Christianity" and "The Four Loves" come to mind) of what we now call "civil unions," in which the obligations of cohabitation were laid out and distinguished clearly from those of the Sacrament of Marriage as Christians know it.

C.S. Lewis foresaw the current day, in which half of all marriages end in divorce, and sought to allow those who did not view marriage as a sacred institution violable only at risk of one's immortal soul to cohabit without abusing the Sacrament of Marriage, while still having the legal protections afforded to married couples.

Do we get any closer to an answer to the question "What would C.S. Lewis have said about gay marriage?" by looking at these facts? Not really.

I suspect that in the back room of the Eagle and Child, some hilarious commentary might have ensued - after the first pitcher, to be sure - as to how "gay" such a marriage might be ("pretty dismal, actually, one might think... "). After which, possibly some searching discussion as to how Divinely ordained the legal ordinances of Great Britain (or governments in general) were in that respect. (There was a old drinking song called "Moses and Aaron" which dealt with the issue less reverently than the clergy might have wished.)

But we do get the general idea that Lewis might have been content to distinguish living arrangements from pairing of souls.

(And here the proponents of gay marriage get themselves into trouble by backtracking as to whether they "just" want to be able to same-sex partners to have spousal benefits on the same basis as married hetersexual couples or whether "marriage" per se was somehow important in a sprirtual way. I think this is a point on which they ought to pick a story and stick with it.)

Hope this helps with the hashing-out of this issue.
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Re: a related editorial

Postby cajun » May 20th, 2008, 5:02 pm

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Postby Mornche Geddick » June 12th, 2008, 5:16 pm

I've thought about this topic and read the Bible verses in question and it seems pretty plain to me (especially from Romans 1 : 27-28) that what is being forbidden is not homosexuality itself but anal sex.

For me (like Lewis) that law seems quite unnecessary. They might as well forbid sewer-diving, or enact a law against drinking neat vinegar.

But to decide whether gay marriage, civil or religious, can be lawful we need to ask these questions:

1) What is homosexuality?

2) Does it necessarily involve anal sex?

3) Does it necessarily involve other sins such as jealousy, possessiveness or promiscuity?
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Postby rusmeister » June 16th, 2008, 10:00 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby Jservic2 » July 27th, 2008, 7:03 pm

I support this role of law making. I find it the best way about going about it, make all contracts of the government uniting two people a 'civil union' and leave marriage to the church. Although I disagree with gay marriage i think the lack of benefits such as hospitalization visitation rights are deplorable. That being said the government has no right to define a religious act.

When making laws for a diverse group of people you can not assume every one comes from the same ideal set. Freedom of choice is a fundamental characteristic that God has provided for us, it should be represented in society.

The article may make some wrong conclusions, but I think C.S. Lewis would tend to agree with separation of marriage from the state. He was very Libertarian leaning IMO, he talks about forms a government extensively in an essay.... I forgot which one..... it could be Lillis that fester but again I am not sure. But, he comes to a conclusion that government is at best a necessary evil, with a Theocracy being the worst.
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Postby Jservic2 » July 27th, 2008, 7:27 pm

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Postby rusmeister » July 27th, 2008, 11:44 pm

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby Jservic2 » July 28th, 2008, 5:16 am

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Postby rusmeister » July 28th, 2008, 10:41 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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Postby Dr. U » July 29th, 2008, 3:34 am

I read through all the posts in this discussion, and have two additions to make.

(1)A couple times, a number of the verses in the Bible were cited that specifically name homosexual behavior as one of a number of sins God forbids. However, there is another passage that was (and often is) overlooked. When Jesus was asked about divorce, he said (Matt 19), "Haven't you read that in the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'".

This important teaching of Jesus cuts across dozens of cultural practices around the world and addresses them as not God's way: i.e., one man and one woman, not one man and four women or 10 women, or one man and the latest trophy wife, or one woman and two men, or one man and 100 prostitutes, or two men, or two women. Not only would this have been a direct assault on Greek homosexual practices - which dominated their culture - it also would have been a direct assault on Roman family practices, in which the father's authority extended into the marriages of all his grown children, even to the point of being able to mandate a divorce and strategic remarriage with someone else. (There's a distant echo of that paternalistic Roman world in the tragic Corleone family of the Godfather books/movies.) This short passage is RICH in insights and checks on the behavior of every person in every culture, and we ignore it at our ultimate loss.

Lewis devoted a whole chapter of Mere Christianity to the virtue of chastity, in the light of Jesus' words, and noted that it's always been the least popular Christian virtue - because it IS hard, it goes against all kinds of personal habits and preferences as well as whole cultures.

(2) One of the reasons this issue is not going away is because those who practice homosexual behavior are quite publicly frank that they intend to push legal acceptance of homosexual practice or legal penalties for those convicted of not sufficiently accepting these behaviors, into all areas of society. Churches and Christian organizations, including schools and charities are often named as targets. In the US there have now been quite a few lawsuits pitting a church or religious institution or organization's right to religious convictions about the nature of what constitutes sin against a secular non-discrimination conviction that views such convictions as evil that needs to be eliminated from society. Sometimes they have lost, and it hasn't always been Christian organizations alone. E.g., a Jewish seminary in NYC denied married student housing to a same-sex couple, and lost in court based on supposed discrimination, with the court requiring the seminar to give the same sex couple housing on campus.

It may even possibly mean that, over the long run, Christians in the "Western world" will have to develop more house-church and underground networks, perhaps including financial, rather than institutions that can easily be sued. I hope not, but it is something to start thinking about, how to make churches and Christian organizations leaner and less of a financial target to nuisance lawsuits that may arise from issues like legalization of homosexual marriages.

(3) Actually, one more comment. Someone a few pages back said something about "progress" in society, apparently defining it in their reply as when majority opinion has swayed to a new paradigm.

I'm modestly read in the history of "race" and racism. As the African slave trade grew in profitability for Europeans after the Renaissance, (the Muslim Arabs had already been capturing and selling sub-Saharan Africans for 800 years), there was a philosophical and theological chipping away at the biblical doctrine that humanity is one, until - hooray - "progress" won, and the idea of four "races", with the "white" race supposedly superior, became an unquestioned paradigm until after the mid-20th Century by almost everyone in the "Western world" except the most radical Catholics and Protestants. Generations of intellectuals laughed at the days when people had been so benighted as to have once believed that all peoples on Earth were created equally human by God from a common origin, when now "everyone" knew that, say "blacks" were scientifically proven inferior to "whites".

We need to be careful about majority opinion as an arbiter, even and maybe especially, majority opinion of whatever is in intellectual vogue in a given generation.
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