The mystery...apparently is some kind of mystery

Being one of those people who are able to understand multiple viewpoints on the same topic (which actually translates as "wishy-washy," "Devil's advocate," and my favorite - "rail-fence Christian"), naturally I have a range of Facebook friends whom I try never intend to introduce to each other. Recently, and spiking at the state-legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, I've had the opportunity to experience others' responses and ponder on ideas and solutions which would be more-condusive to everyone else shutting up and letting me have more screen-time to tell you what's really interesting. I mean, you'd think....

Imagine people in two distinct and opposing groups: the group which remembers marriage is really a promise/agreement motivated by intentionally giving one's love and committment to another as testament to the love and committment God has given freely, and those who think of it as open access to somebody's CD collection, foundation-garment contents, and dental plan.

COMPARE/CONTRAST: marriage is a lifelong testament to an eternal and unvarying God, or marriage is,

well, from the beautifully-frank perspective of a man who has Asperger's:

"[I want to get married so I won't have to cook for myself or masturbate anymore."

When components of these two populations run into each other on my Facebook page entirely by accident and with no prompting from me, invariably the facebookiness itself prevents meaningful exchange of ideas. I don't know if you've ever been subjected to a four-hour texting session (I have an extra one to give you if you've not had the experience), you know chopped sentences produce chopped conversations with chopped meaning.

But wait - I got me a blog!

Many advocates for redefinition of marriage have genuine feelings, desires/motives, and thought-out reasoning. Of those, a portion would describe themselves as deeply religious and committed Christians. When we choose to share facts and feelings, however, everyone is as likely as anyone to garble the two together.

I think this is an important observation. Feel free to do so as well. When told through argument that God wants children to be in a home with a mother and a father, a home godded by a God who considers divorce anathema and fornication and adultery not in the game-plan, what about single-parenthood happening anyway? Essentially, I can only speak for myself - extending the kind offer for you to agree with everything, but still I only speak for myself - I just think we need to be open to considering marriage as not so much a civic/legal idea. The government can not establish a marriage, can not justifiably define it, and can not by any stretch of warm and fuzzy imagination fix it. I've sat in on a televised...conversation...where it was actually said "I wan't to marry so I may then legally access my lover's insurance." But we do live in a world where that sort of thing has to be thought about. We also live in a world where some people consider marriage a Mystery and Sign of Something Really Huge and other's can only wonder "what the fuck was I thinking?" Unfortunately, Christians find themselves in both camps. Possibly, sex-deviants can show up on both sides of the issue as well, but until we use the same definition, we may as well just start hitting each other.

That's why you have me, Dear Reader: a good use for railfence-Christianity is that it's visible evidence that bridging the sacred and profane is possible and a duty - or rather, that the invisible/undeniable world of the One True God exists in tandem with chatshows, comment-boxes, op-ed pages, people who believe Tarot wasn't first just a plain-jane card game (a future post!), White-flight, unreasonable landlords, idiot drivers, American hitchhikers in Europe or Asia finding themselves (completely lost), "spiritual-but-not-religious", members of the "I Love Loosely" fanclub, Big Pharma, Big Farm, addicts, the feeble-minded, pure scum, and yeah, me and you. What is the Church for, if not all these? What is the Church for, if not for people who have no free-kicking idea what's going on? What is the Church for, if not to show the way to The Way itself?

But it's still not about the insurance. Go in peace and practice the real safe sex: get married in the Church and stay faithful until death do you part.