Kevin R. Armstrong, Pastor, North United Methodist Church…
King David had several wives, while King Solomon was commended for his 700 wives and 300 concubines.
Despite this, he goes on to write…
Marriage is not for everyone, but Christian marriage is fundamentally about how the shared gifts of two faithful people witness God's love for the world.
Why does he limit it to two?
Rabbi Benjamin Sendrow, Congregation Shaarey Tefilla…
Monogamous homosexual relationships should be recognized by the government as civil unions.
Monogamous or not, same-sex relationships should be recognized as marriage if that is what the participants want.
There are other kinds of relationships between loving adults, but only a man and a woman make a marriage.
Why not any two loving adults? Why not any number of loving adults? An adult brother and sister, or parent and adult child, or three loving adults -- why cannot these be marriages?
Virtually everyone is opposed to incestuous and plural marriage. But why? There are no secular reasons to oppose them -- certainly not the risk of birth defects from incest, which generally do not appear in the first generation of an incestuous union. Even if they did, we allow marriages between carriers of fatal diseases such as Tay-Sachs. The only reasons to prohibit incestuous or plural unions are Judeo-Christian values that have influenced society even if the source goes unacknowledged.
We have separation of church and state in the US. So there's no reason, then, to deny full marriage equality.
Donald Stikeleather, Dharma Ocean Indianapolis…
The Vajrayana Buddhist view goes beyond removing the dualistic "good and bad" labeling of the world and vows to see all parts of life as sacred, not attempting to control parts that frighten us, that appear aberrant, or are simply different.
We desire to balance and merge our feminine and masculine energies, creating a partner relationship by employing an equal, balancing force to match one beautiful energy with another. Gender is simply a construct to manage how we see the world. This commitment to another is one of awareness, learning and appreciation.
I’ll count on Stikeleather as an ally for full marriage equality.
I’ve always wanted to know where, in Judaism, the monogamy idea comes from.
ReplyDeleteAbraham married his sister, Sarah, and their servant Hagar. As mentioned by the other clergyman, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Lot had a wine-induced threesome with his daughters. Where does the whole “one male and one female” idea really come from?