Mr. Exum:
I cede to you every right to your opinion on benefits for gay “couples,” which is the question now before the Chattanooga City Council.
What I would object to is the propriety of your comments which condemn those who object to this proposal. By your statement that“virtually every one of us understands hatred, prejudice and the difference between right and wrong” you infer that those who object to this proposal are acting out of malice. On both sides there have been excesses of speech, but the essence of the argument, as I understand it, is that the law, as it stands, provides benefits to those who are legally married. According to the law, those who are not married, be they heterosexual or homosexual, do not qualify. This has been the rule of law for ages, and it is only because gays have now included the overturn of established law regarding what constitutes marriage as part of the homosexual agenda that this issue has arisen.
You have rightly raised a question when you ask: “If you approve same-sex benefits where no marriage is involved, what do you do about the man and woman who are not married but who live together? What is the difference if they love each other like a same-sex couple? Who determines a “committed relationship” versus “just an arrangement” where a friend gets health insurance? And, since without a marriage there can be no divorce, how will the city of Chattanooga know a same-sex couple has split up?” Let me say that I do not take your comments to be unloving, hateful, or guided by prejudice, though some would say that you are making a false issue that is designed to weaken the intent of this proposal before the Council. To the gay community any objection to their agenda is said to be hateful, unloving, and prejudicial.
The gay community, by advocating these changes in law, does so on the grounds that the opposition is engaged in denying them their civil rights. Doesn’t it strike anyone as peculiar that they are willing to deny those same rights to a male and female who are living together without marriage as is declared in the proposed ordinance? So much for the civil rights argument.
You presume to influence the argument in favor of the proposal by asserting: “I believe a gay person is born that way…I think God created each of us and, therefore, if God created someone who is gay, that is God’s business.” In the first place, there is not a single incontrovertible bit of scientific evidence that a person is born homosexual. In fact there is much evidence to the contrary. And certainly the Christian community has almost universally rejected the homosexual definition of marriage. I'm not sure on whose side you really are on.
You claim to be a Christian, and I suppose that means you believe in the revelation of God as given in the Holy Scriptures. It is only reasonable to believe that, if God created homosexuals, as you claim, He would not afterward condemn his own creation as abominable, as the Scriptures declare. Homosexuality is a frontal attack on the institution of marriage which God created. It rejects one of the main purposes of marriage as taught in the Scriptures, of being able to “be fruitful and multiply.” Are you as ready to say that these statements of Scripture are “God’s business” as well? We can’t pick and choose Scriptures to fit with our own opinions.
The proposal before the City Council is just another measure down the slippery slope of moral decay that endangers our nation. You say that the proposal is just about benefits. Many of us say it is about much more than that. It is about the recognition of a gay partnership being recognized as acceptable as legal marriage. Hatred and prejudice have nothing to do with this issue, unless you are so foolish as to deny that the whole history of mankind has objected to this definition of marriage.
James West
Ringgold
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Mr. West ,
The ordinance in front of City Council is for domestic partnerships, not just same-sex couples. So your argument that the gay community does not advocate for equal rights to heterosexual couples living together is inaccurate.
Secondly, as a Christian woman who has been in a loving, wonderful marriage to a man for many years, I take great offense to your assertion that one of the main purposes of marriage is to “be fruitful and multiply." My husband and I are not able to have children. Does that mean our marriage, and the marriages of so many who do not or cannot have children, is less of a marriage in the eyes of God? I think not. And if it does mean that, than my God is much, much different than yours. Your argument is inaccurate, selfish, and flawed.
Samantha White
Hixson