I think, perhaps, that I am beginning to understand the fundamentalist fear that gay marriages will somehow destroy their own.
A few days ago I pondered Jenny Sanford’s odd declaration that marriage is an enduring love is primarily an act of will. Apparently, this attitude is ingrained in the fundamentalist creed, at least the fundamentalist flavor the Sanfords prefer. Consider this statement from Sanford spiritual adviser, Warren “Cubby” Culbertson:
Culbertson also thinks that the only thing holding his friends’ marriage together right now is “their vow to God.”
“Because it’s not feelings _ it’s not emotions,” Culbertson said, the smile fading from his tanned face. “For most Christians, at some point in your marriage, if you’re married long enough, you do it because that’s what we’re called to do _ out of obedience instead of out of passion. And I think that’s where Mark and Jenny are right now.”
Now, I understand that passion only lasts so long. After a while, as Hamlet said, “the hey-day in the blood is tame”. But the dichotomy here seems a bit strange. Christians gets married out of passion, but stay married only in obedience to God. Apparently “most Christians” (or at least their spiritual advisers) are unaware that a relationship between two people can be sustained by more than sex and, to the point, more than mere obedience.
At bottom this is yet another illustration of the profound contempt in which “Christians” hold women, for the unspoken premise is that men are bound to stray once their women no longer arouse unbridled passion. They can’t conceive that a woman can be anything but an object of sexual desire; once that “passion” is gone, she’s just a ball and chain.
It must make “most Christian” marriages awful fragile, more like a chore than a rewarding experience. All those Christian men, holding on to their marriages by the tips of their fingers, the strength of their will, and their fear of the Lord. It still doesn’t provide a logical explanation for why they consider gay marriage a threat to the institution of marriage, but maybe it explains their emotional reaction. Anything that calls their god-centric view of marriage into question undermines their ability to keep God’s commandments, and stay with the wives with whom they have no other bond than mutual fear of God’s wrath.
Post a Comment