Same Sex Marriage and Christmas Music

Today I was listening to Talk of the Nation and the discussion was about the Bible and Gay Marriage. One of the guests, Lisa Miller (religion editor at Newsweek), made the interesting argument that contemporary Christianity has already turned its back on and rejected the Bible’s depiction of marriage and marital practices — polygamist, sexist and procreation-centric. She also uses the fact that throughout the Bible slavery is nowhere condemned to argue that modern religion has already evolved with the changing morals of society. As a result, she argues that we can similarly reconcile the Bible with gay marriage, just as we can uphold the Bible and denounce slavery and polygamy.

On the other hand, guest Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, made that absurd slippery slope argument that if same sex marriages were permitted the flood gates would open and we’d end up with polygamy (ironically sanctioned by his Bible) incest, and people marrying their pets and furniture. Nevertheless, he did say that he wanted to see gays and lesbians, as well as criminals and drug addicts in his church on Sundays because God loved all sinners. So I suppose that the sins of gays and lesbians naturally fit into a sentence ending with criminals and substance abusers.

Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. We already know from the uglier part of our history that separate is not equal, so if the law is going to confer certain rights on one class of people, it has to do the same for others. Call it all marriage. You can still render unto God that which is God’s, and give Caesar his gay weddings at city hall. No one is telling Mr. Mohler or any other clergy-person that they have to marry gay people in their churches. It’s not like same sex civil marriage is going to suddenly force American churches to desegregate.

Furthermore, for those who think that somehow same sex marriage is bad for marriage, well, I don’t see how gay people could do much worse than us heterosexuals who have a 50% failure rate. What about gay people adopting and raising children? Would civilization come to its dramatic end? It’s time to face the facts, some of which Dan Savage pointed out last month in the New York Times,

Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

In other words, children are put up for adoption because their biological parents, by definition heterosexual, weren’t up to the task (or, as my bro explains, were taken away from them by the state).

But the real issue that I want to bring up here is Christmas. If the Bible is against gay marriage, then why is Christmas music trying to out everyone during the Holiday season? I was just listening to some of my Christmas favorites, and I could have sworn I heard Nat King Cole in “O Tannenbaum” sing something about a gay fräulein. And in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” we’re promised that our troubles will be left behind upon making our Yuletide gay. I don’t really know what a Yuletide is, but I am almost certain that “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” is homoerotic code. Then again, I’m not one to judge — judging is not supposed to be very Christian, at least not at Christmas.