Some remarks on gay marriage went past my wife’s Facebook feed and she made a rather ambiguous comment (“and so it spreads”). Someone who knows (or thinks they know) what her opinion actually is, pointed out that equal rights are a wonderful thing to spread. Disregarding the massive rational gap between the statements, I have to gather that we are probably now considered to be people opposed to equal rights, with all the hatred and bigotry baggage accompanying it. So I would like a chance to explain what I consider to be the actual issue, and the enormous gulf that exists between this and equal rights.

First, what this is NOT about. This is not about whether gay people can love each other as deeply as straight people. It is not about whether gay people are as able to be faithful as straight people. It isn’t about whether gay people desire or need this sort of attachment as much as straight people. I think the answers are kind of obvious, since we’re all people, right? But I have to admit that I can only speculate on other people’s comparative depths of feeling. The key point is that these things are irrelevant, and actually do not interest me. This is most DEFINITELY not about whether gay people are as good as straight people. I’m pretty well-acquainted with myself, and believe me, I think it would be easy to find anyone in any walk of life who would compare well to me. Nor is this about equal rights. Regardless of whether gay people can “do” marriage better than straight ones, they still can’t BE married. It’s not about rights; it’s about reality.

I also want to carp a little about the tendency to take a nuanced issue and dress it up with a biased sound bite. The best example is ‘choice’, used to refer to the A-word. I don’t know if anyone actually thinks the question is about who is and isn’t in favor of people making choices. Even a short moment’s reflection reveals that the question is about what is being chosen. If that thing is a random bit of flesh, well, who wouldn’t be in favor of choice in the question of cutting it off? On the other hand, if that thing is a little bitty human being, well, people who still want to advocate for choice have to get pretty creative about why and how and when it’s OK to choose murder. Best to just retreat to the “choice” sound bite and avoid the real issue. It’s a losing strategy to talk about what, exactly, is being chosen.

“Equality”, in this case, is a similar canard. Are you in favor of a black woman being equal to a white man?  OK. How about a rutabaga being equal to a Cadillac? A river being equal to a symphony? Obviously, the pre-requisite is that the two things being contrasted can be rationally equated. Right? With me so far? So just touting “equality” both seizes the high ground very effectively, and very effectively avoids the actual issue.

Even if you advocate equality in the eyes of the law as fiercely as I do, you still have some work to do in showing that this notion of gay marriage can even be equated to marriage.

Gay people who want to marry others of their own gender equate them, obviously. But let’s engage in a little exercise. Suppose I want to fly. So I redefine “flight” as standing on the ground and flapping my arms. I even get legal sanction for my new definition. I further manage to legally destroy anyone who takes issue with my claim to flight. Good. I can now “fly”. Have I accomplished something? No. I have simply equated things that cannot be equated.

So, I have two over-arching points to make.

The first point is that people who actually want gay marriage should explain how, exactly, two men or two women can be married. How is that marriage? How is it more than an arbitrary redefinition of a word, when the underlying reality is intractable? It’s not really my job to prove that it isn’t. It’s your job to prove that it is. Being in love, or wanting to be married, or wanting to commit to each other are all features of marriage, but not defining or essential features of marriage. Marriage is not a lifestyle accessory—it is a societal building block. The gay marriage folks are simply redefining it to encompass what they want, but that doesn’t cause actual marriage. It only causes cheapening of the language. I can’t argue with domestic partnerships, at least not very effectively. But I remain convinced that a gay man can only be married by finding a woman who agrees to marry him. That’s marriage. I could go into the unintended consequences, societal damage, and devastation to the innocent that will ensue from this, but I am weary. We’ve been trashing marriage and family since I was a little boy, when no-fault divorce and the sexual revolution kicked in. We are now almost hip-deep in rubble, destruction and bewildering sexual chaos, yet still have not learned the lesson. But I have learned this: there is no point trying to warn people about the damage this kind of engineering will cause. There’s not even a point trying to get them to acknowledge its existence after the fruit has ripened and is there for all to see. We all love to say no man is an island, until it impinges on doing what we want. Then, we decide we’re pretty island-y after all. Suffice it that my opposition is based not on bigotry but on compassion and mercy. If it doesn’t seem loving, and I’m sure it does not, well, look around you and decide how well our society actually grasps what love even really is.

The second overarching point is legal/historical. While gay marriage has, to my knowledge, never existed anywhere, ever, and would be met with undisguised horror by almost everyone from every age, I will still admit that there is fluidity in what constitutes marriage. Many societies have polygamy, and child marriage, and some have allowed siblings to marry. The point is that marriage does vary somewhat over time, geography, and culture: so why do I build this unbreakable wall excluding gay marriage? Fair-ish question. But it does miss the point. Consider American marriage law prior to the Supreme Court deciding to redefine marriage. You could be married to your brother, but the law would not recognize it. You could have seven wives, but the law would not recognize it. It may have been a design feature, or it may have been an unintended consequence, but the upshot was that legally recognized marriage was a lowest-common denominator, restricted to marriages that anyone would acknowledge. People who were repulsed, for any reason, by sibling marriage, were not forced to legally violate their consciences by recognizing or honoring it. People who thought that polygamy was the ultimate abuse of women could not stop it, but didn’t have to acknowledge or honor it. Contrast that with the current state of affairs. The iron fist of government has been brought down on any voice of dissent. You want equality? This is the new equality: making a gay couple feel bad is equal to your home, business, and assets. Ask the Kleins in Oregon. Ask Baronelle Stutzman in Washington State. Ask the former fire chief of Atlanta.

Previously, the government was simply acknowledging a reality that everyone assented to. And if everyone didn’t assent to it, the government did not acknowledge it. I’m sure you see the contrast. Today, the government brings tyrannical force to bear against anyone who will not submit to the mandated reality. Even if you get a warm fuzzy seeing people with whom you disagree getting squashed like bugs, you have to be a little uneasy. It will be your turn at some point. If the French Revolution taught us anything, it taught us this: no one is safe for long. Your turn will come. But for now, to summarize, if a woman wants think she’s married to a woman, I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to try. I don’t particularly care! But the government should not acknowledge it, and it should not threaten to crush me if I don’t acknowledge it. That is a sea-change in our treatment of marriage. It has no precedent, and it is wrong.

OK, that’s the rationalistic treatment. Let’s get artistic. Marriage is beautiful. It’s not just beautiful because of Love. It’s much deeper and more integral than that. I’m going to use the Christian conception of marriage to explain the beauty. You don’t have to subscribe to that conception, but I hope you will see that monogamous, heterosexual marriage is beautiful in ways that other kinds of marriage, real or imagined, cannot be. And beauty matters.

OK. God Himself took pity on humankind, who had royally screwed up and was helplessly beyond self-redemption. Christ, God Himself, cleaned the mess up at an infinite and totally extravagant price. Redeemed humankind has now been put into a covenantal, loving relationship with the God who redeemed us. We are instructed that marriage is actually a picture of this. God is good at details: marriage was always meant to be a picture of this. Christ loves the church as a good husband loves his wife: sacrificially, selflessly. A good wife honors and loves her husband as the church, at its best, loves and honors Christ. And this is why marriage is beautiful. It images out the most beautiful thing there ever was. Should a man have four wives? Well, does Christ have four churches, or one? Should a wife have two husbands? Why? Does the church have two saviors? What if there were two Christs and no church? Or two churches and no Christ? You see, all of these things tell a lie about Christ, and that is why they lack the beauty that a monogamous, heterosexual marriage has. Divorce says that Christ doesn’t want the church any more, or that the church doesn’t need Christ. In the same way, adultery also tells a lie about Christ. I’m not asking you to believe any of this. I’m just pointing out why that beauty is there, and I’m pointing out why the beauty is not the same in these other arrangements. Even if people don’t believe the reason, they can still see the reality. I get this vibe of unquenchable grievance from the gay community. I think the reason, at its heart, is that they want this beauty; but the government can’t grant it, and society can’t give it. No amount of accommodation, special treatment, or crushing of dissent can give it. The inherent problem is, well, inherent.

So: this really is not about who is more or less human, or loving, or equal in the eyes of the law. It’s not even a call to stop pretending that something can be something that it is not (although I would warmly recommend that course of action). It is a plea to stop using the government to force me to participate.