Repost (I thought this was really intelligent)

[SeattleUte]

Very occasionally on NPR I hear something memorable, which is why I keep tuning in despite all the garbage it purveys.

Tonight I heard a portion of a talk given here in Seattle by the infamous Gene Robinson. He said a couple of memorable things. Robinson is one of those remarkable public speakers; he's very eloquent.

Robinson powerfully linked the gay rights movement and women's liberation. He quoted part of Leviticus 20:13, which condemns homosexuality, "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." Robinson highlighted "as he lieth with a woman," and reasoned that the stigma associated with homosexuality was that the homosexual partners were considered (consciously or subconsciously, I presume) to be abdicating their God-given status as males.

He said that gay rights movement successes represented the begining of the end of patriarchy, and called opposition to gay rights including gay marriage "misogyny." He didn't say this but I thought to myself how male homosexuality really is considered so much more repugnant to homophobes, especially males, than female lovers. I think he's right.

Robinson's second salient point arises from the fact, as he noted, that as practiced in America marriage is consumated by the state not any religion; it is not any religious ceremony that makes a marriage with all its vaunted status, but the fact of the individual who performed the ceremony, be he (or she) a cleric or civil servant, preparing and signing the marriage certificate and submitting it to the state. He advocated that there be two distinct ceremonies for every marriage just to drive home this point. As a practical matter, what the church does is just a rite, that of itself has no legal significance and does not generate rights. Marriage is rather part and parcel of Locke's social contract.