Religion and Gay Marriage and Getting What You Want
I'm one of those who tends to see Religion as D&D for grownups.
If you want to have your little group and play by these little rules and have all of these weird little taboos and totems and all that stuff, knock yourself out.
Hey, if you enjoy your gaming sessions so much that you want me to show up and play along, good for you. Come on in. We can talk about it. I'll put the kettle on.
Hey, if you even want to say "Our gaming group has a rule against elves", that's fine. I think that you're likely to alienate a lot of gamers out there who want to be elves... but it's your basement and it's not like there aren't games in other basements where elves are welcome.
But when you try to pass a law that says "nobody can play an elf in any basement", you're forgetting your place. It's just a game. Leave other people who want to play alone. If you're part of the SCA (Society for Creative Anacronism) and that's how you want to spend your free time, that's great. But you don't get to tell me that I should not be wearing denim or my glasses have inappropriate frames unless I sign up and say "I want to play by your rules".
I tend to feel the same for gay marriage. If your church doesn't want to provide the sacrament to gays, that's fine. It's your church.
If you try to make it so that the unitarians can't give the sacrament to gays? I ask: "What the hell?" Moreover, if the government wants to provide some measure of rights provided to married people to gay people in long-term life-partnerships, that's pretty much between the two people and the government and it's none of your business. If the two homosexuals come to your church and say "we want to have a wedding", you can say "we reserve the right to withhold sacraments from the following groups of people" and have whomever you want on that list... but you don't get to tell other churches and institutions about who they can or can't give similar sacraments to. Withhold your own. Talk about how people who aren't married by your particular Holy Man aren't *really* married. Talk about how, after they die, they will spend an eternity in hell. That's fine. But it's wrong for you to actively try to prevent people in other basements from playing elves.
I do not suggest, however, that pro-gay marriage proponents adopt this argument. I think that it would do their cause much more harm than good. As a matter of fact, if this stuff started being said in public, it would alienate pretty much everybody with even the slightest amount of sympathy for Religion (which, as we've seen in the last few elections, is enough to push the outcome one way or the other).
So if I were going to try to get gay marriage accepted by as many people as I possibly could, I wouldn't invoke religion at all. Point out that churches wouldn't even have to worry about homosexually sullying their altars. As a matter of fact, it shouldn't even be called "marriage". Hell, even "civil unions" is too loaded a term. I would come up with the most boring name ever. "The CP-45a Tax Relationship."
Point out that it's not marriage. Keep saying over and over and over that it's not marriage. Point out that all it does is allow for 100% tax-free inheritance between the two members of the CP-45a tax relationship. Point out that it allows for one to be covered by the other's insurance (if the policy itself allows such a thing). Say that one person in a CP-45a tax relationship can visit the other in the hospital over the objections of, say, the other's parents. Keep hammerring over and over and over that it's not marriage, it's just a tax relationship that is recognized by the government that allows a handful of benefits between the two partners who are, we'd like to point out, *NOT* married. (And, by the way, CP-45a tax relationships are only available to people who are not already in one and who are not married.)
I honestly feel that most people out there don't *CARE* about whether homosexuals are able to visit each other in the hospital, or if they require a will between the two of them if one dies, or if one is eligible for insurance coverage the other gets from work. It's not that they're for it, but they're just not against it. They don't care. A CP-45a tax relationship would play off of this apathy for the tax workings of others and most people will start yawning right around the hyphen in the name.
Just let the Christians keep their own gaming groups unsullied by elves and they will allow something like the CP-45a tax relationship to exist (and if the Unitarians want to hold a marriage ceremony for the two guys who signed the CP-45a Tax Relationship paperwork yesterday, well, that's offensive but the Unitarians aren't *REAL* Christians anyway, destined to hell forever and all that).
Far too often, I get the feeling that the gay marriage proponents are less interested in allowing gays to marry than they are interested in a thumb to the eye of Christians.
I sympathize with this. I really do. Just read the top part of this essay again, if you don't believe me. But, at the end of the day, if they want to keep to their basements playing their little games, they have every right to do that... just so long as I can allow elves into my games.
