So, about what happened in North Carolina yesterday...

Celebrating that one unaccountable man has redefined more than six thousand years of tradition from across the width and breadth of human society with one stroke of a single pen.

Seems more than a little ridiculous to me.  To say nothing of arrogant and presumptuous in the extreme.

I've seen a lot of hate and viciousness since yesterday afternoon.  Most of it seems to be coming from those who were most clamoring for "equality of love".  I can't understand that.  Or maybe I can and I don't care to articulate why... because what would be the point?

It's not same-gender marriage.  Same-gender marriage is a contradiction.  It's an oxymoron.  It is something so illogical that it cannot exist.  There will be consequences. Legal and otherwise.  Especially legal.  Ramifications for both "sides" of this debate.

Personally, I'm not worried at all about yesterday.  Marriage is something beyond human establishment.  It's untouchable.  Those people - and I'm referring to both parties involved in this - can scream that it's a mountain all they want.  Still doesn't change the fact that it's a pebble.

Bear in mind that at the time I was against Amendment One.  For various reasons I am still against it.  There are some things which are defined by something higher than man.  Whether that is God or immutable law, there are concepts which can neither be defined or redefined by legislation or activist judiciaries.  I couldn't support Amendment One because I knew something of the spirit of the men who were most pushing for it, and theirs was NOT borne out of respect for that higher concept of marriage.

And ironically, neither is what happened yesterday.  But where does this end?  Will polygamy be next?  Will corpses be given legal rights so that necrophilia is legitimized?

How far does this now go?

I'm looking at the LONG-term ramifications. And there will be consequences of this trend.

Some have asked by what right am I to dictate how two people are to love each other?  Well , I haven't conspired or ever attempted to tell anyone about what they express to another person.  I do have to sincerely wonder though about defining and re-defining something that is derived from law higher than man's.  Let's be honest: is what happened yesterday about marriage, or is it about coercing those who do not agree with it into endorsing something that they do not believe in?  There are some businesses which do not cater to same-sex marriages.  Some bakeries have refused to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.  They have been "penalized" with fines and made to sit through "sensitivity" classes.  Are they to be forced to do so against their beliefs?  It is already happening.

If two people want to express their love for each other, fine.  Let them do it.  Knock themselves out.  But that doesn't mean that I or anyone else should be made to give it an official stamp of endorsement.  I didn't think that Amendment One needed to do that for traditional marriage and I don't think that one judge's decision "needed" to do that for "gay" marriage either.

I cannot reiterate nearly enough that marriage is something man can't define.  Our attempts to do that will only meet with disaster.  Perhaps not today, but eventually.

For what it's worth: I think a case can be made that Amendment One, and it's biggest proponents, paved the way for what happened yesterday.  It really was one of the worst-worded, worst-inspired amendments that I've ever seen (and I mean from a strictly legal perspective, not on whether one agreed with it or not).  The ones who were demanding it cared more for strutting their own egos than they were about anything else.  One cannot set out to do something with an impure motive.  Doing so will in time destroy that work.  And that is what happened here.  It became less about defending marriage and more about looking like players at the big table of politics.

There are many who would be wise to learn from this.

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I'm Christian. I'm called "conservative". I'm not voting for Amendment One.

I will not vote for Amendment One.

Neither will I vote against Amendment One.

Because the more I have thought about it and the more that I have seen especially during the past couple of weeks across North Carolina, Amendment One is by far the worst thing that I have ever seen on a ballot in the Tarheel State. And that's sayin' something about this place...

For this blog's readership in various and sundry places not between Manteo and Murphy, Amendment One is the measure on next week's ballot that would make the Constitution of the state of North Carolina explicitly state that marriage will only be between one man and one woman. As you can probably imagine, this is widely perceived to be a measure attempting to circumvent the legality of "gay marriage".

I've been wrestling literally for the past several weeks on how to articulate what I believe about this, and not be misunderstood. Because my stance about Amendment One is not something that could be squared away as either "conservative" or "liberal". Which will likely honk off many who can't think beyond such ultimately meaningless ideologies. But I don't care. Because that's just how I roll. I'm out to follow as best where God leads me, and not the capricious wendings of man's temporal politics.

The initial reason why I will not be voting on Amendment One is that marriage is instituted by God and is not left to us at all to define. I've no doubt that there are many well-meaning people who will be voting for Amendment One because they sincerely believe that marriage is something that "must be protected".

It's not. It's really not. Not by a political gimmick anyway. And if it must be protected that way, then we as a society have vastly bigger problems than "gay marriage" could ever be.

There is no such thing as "homosexual marriage". It's a contradiction in terms of the most obscene kind. Marriage by definition is the uniting of two entities of distinctly different yet complementary natures into a new entity greater than the sum of its parts.

What does that mean? A man cannot naturally reproduce on his own. Neither can a woman. And neither can two men unite to create new human life between themselves.

I contend that this is the essence of the universal concept of marriage: that the potential for natural reproduction exists. This is not a "biblical" concept, as I have seen many across this state argue in the months leading up to the vote on Amendment One. "We support biblical marriage"? Bah! As if only marriages performed according to Judeo-Christian standards are valid in the eyes of God. The greater balance of cultures and faiths across human history have held that marriage is between one man and one woman. Are the proponents of Amendment One willing to assert that the vast majority of people today should be legally declared whores and bastards? But I digress...

Marriage of one man and one woman is as fundamentally an aspect of moral law as is the knowledge that murder is wrong. I have seen many statues on the books defining punishments for murder: I have yet to see a constitutional amendment saying that murder is illegal. It's something that merely is not needed, or should not be needed anyway.

And "gay marriage" is already illegal according to North Carolina law. Amendment One would not be changing anything.

"But Chris, some liberal activist judge could decree from the bench that gay marriage is legal in this state and that would be it! We need Amendment One to prevent that from happening!"

If that's true, then... wow, we really are screwed. Like I said before, we'll have inherently graver issues than gay marriage if that's the case. In the mind of this writer, it will means that we as a people have surrendered that wisdom and fortitude that the Founding Fathers meant for us to have as a free people. It will be a sad acknowledgement that we no longer possess the liberty of mind that too many men and women fought and even perished that we might enjoy. If we have arrived at a place where fear-mongering and worse, fear of nebulous ideologies drive our actions, then what does that say of us as We The People?

And this brings me to the most conscientious reason why I refuse to vote on Amendment One: because as a follower of Christ, as one who chooses the renewal of the mind in defiance of the patterns of this fallen world, I will not be motivated by fear and hatred and lust for political power. And unfortunately it has been those base drives which I have long observed have been behind the push for Amendment One.

Ever wonder where Amendment One came from to begin with? You should. It originated with Return America, an organization created and headed by Dr. Ron Baity, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem.

I will not dare judge the condition of Baity's soul before God. However, I am compelled to wonder aloud about any man who revels so much in the use of the word "queers" against his enemies as Dr. Baity has done, including in a number of Renew America newsletters and publications (which I have on hand). I also found it curious that Baity is fond of referring to President Obama as "Hussein Obama" in his group's official literature. But again, I digress.

Do people like Ron Baity truly believe that God needs their "help" to protect marriage? Because if so, presuming that He does indicates horrendous pride on our part.

I am not going to support Amendment One because I'm a Christian and "expected" to look down upon homosexuals with loathing and scorn and fear. Indeed: I have many friends, some of whom I have come to trust and be entrusted with counsel, who are homosexual. They know that I cannot approve of their lifestyle, that I do believe it to be sinful.

But how as one saved by the grace of God do I dare condemn them as being more sinful and less righteous than I?

I can't. Nor can anyone else. Whether or not they feel empowered by public referendum.

A little over a year ago I went public with my having bipolar disorder. It is what destroyed my first marriage. Among other things it made me extremely hyper-sexual, even though at NO time was I ever unfaithful to my wife. However, let's just say that my own mind drove me to do things that I would have otherwise never have thought myself capable of.

I don't believe God made me do that. It was just a symptom of something that for whatever reason, He allowed me to be born with. But as a result of it I do now see how some people could very well have a homosexual drive.

I do not however believe that is what in any way should define a person, any more than heterosexual drives should define others. As a follower of Christ I must accept that we live in a broken, imperfect world that can NEVER be made right in the hands of man. We are each, every one of us, beset with temptations and thorns in our flesh (as Paul put it). I did not want to be compelled toward pornography, but it happened and I wasn't strong enough to fight it. It is only by the grace of God that I have moved forward, and allowed God to bless me with things that I could have never found on my own.

That is why I can not condemn homosexual people. I don't know what their struggles must be like, but I DO know that they struggle with the flesh just as much as I have my own. Who am I to believe that they are any more lost than I have been?

At the same time I could never accept that a homosexual relationship could ever qualify as "marriage" in the traditional, historical and natural sense. If two people of the same gender wish to live together as "civil partners" or somesuch, then fine. That's their right. Calling it "marriage" however would put us on the slippery slope toward some attempting holy matrimony with barnyard livestock (I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader as to whether or not this has been attempted within this state). And there again, there is a terrible rot within our cultural soul if that is the case, for which a "pro-marriage" amendment would be akin to placing a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound to the head.

I cannot see any legitimate Christian love and concern, tempered with the quality of humility, in regard to Amendment One. If the same people who have most pushed this ballot measure had been living for Christ all of this time for His sake, out of a meek and humble spirit, this may not even have been an issue at all. As it is however, there is an impure motivation for Amendment One. And I absolutely believe that if the motive is impure, the work will be corrupted and in the end, do much more damage than we can perhaps understand.

The biggest reason Amendment One is on the ballot is because there are some who seek to exploit our hate, for their own gain.

But I refuse to give them that satisfaction.

Amendment One is just another political game... and I for one will not be playing it.

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