Gay marriage isn’t about nostalgia
According to Bee columnist Andrew Fiala, dislike of same-sex marriage is mere nostalgia for out-of-date sexual mores that are evolving. That evolution, though, can continue.
The legal logic for the dignity of same-sex marriage as an aspect of human love can apply to, say, polygamy and such a movement does exist. Acceptance of same-sex marriage is itself nostalgia for the mores of ancient Greece and Rome. Both allowed same-sex marriage, formally in Greece and informally in Rome. The Roman emperor, Nero, may have married two men. The sexual mores of the time were coincident with a culture of slavery and zero rights for women and children.
Christianity’s mores opposed the contemporaneous mores of the Roman Empire. Christian moral values, though often disastrously and wrongly interpreted and applied, are based upon the ultimate dignity that all men, women, children are made in God’s image, are his children, and equal to each other in his sight.
That dignity expands in the marriages of heterosexual couples in a sacred oneness that helps bind society together. The Supreme Court has usurped that sacredness by replacing it with a dependence upon amorphous, changeable man-made notions of human dignity. Mr. Fiala fails to understand that it isn’t about nostalgia.
Mark J. Zoeller, Coarsegold
This story was originally published July 19, 2015 at 6:40 AM with the headline "Gay marriage isn’t about nostalgia."