Don’t Get Me Started

29. September 2007 by Rob.

I had a little incident the other day with a woman who is devoutly religious, one of those “born again” Christian women who always say “amen” as a punctuation mark.  While in normal conversation I tend to ignore the overtly religious implications of her thoughts, tending to be of the “everyone has the right to their opinion” variety of person, this time she went too far.

She was agitated because two women tried to get a marriage license here in Denver and were denied.  They protested by sit-in and were arrested for trespassing.  Not entirely an uncommon event but something which was always occurring in other states, at least she thought it couldn’t happen here.

The comment which triggered my little diatribe was when she said that god had created marriage to be between one man and one woman.  Hold the phone.  God did not create marriage, man did.  In fact, if you look at marriage throughout the ages, you find that religion was either not involved until sometime around the middle ages or was only for the wealthy and powerful.  Now I have to apologize to anyone who has already recognized that this is a christian-centric thought because that, unfortunately, is the primary bias against which I have to fight.  I know a bit about other religions and apologize that my remarks tend to be a bit generic here, but they can and do apply to other religions, just not all of them.

Anyway, I asked her where she got the idea that marriage was created by god and she said that it had always been that way.  I then asked if Adam and Eve were married which seemed to startle her.  I said, there is no record in the bible of god ever marrying the two of them.  I then asked if there was marriage in the time of Jesus and she said “of course.”  You mean when the family of a girl (usually 12 to 15 and worthless to the family) was offered to the lucky family that had a son (usually much older)  along with a major bribe - in the form of a dowry - just so they could unify the two families?  You mean when the woman traded her father’s name for her husband’s since she was considered little more than property?  You mean when only the wealthiest or most powerful individuals had those unions “blessed” by the priests?  Did you know that the sacrament of matrimony is only about a thousand years old?

She went still, this wild look of shock on her face as I pounded truth after truth into the argument. You see, she had been converted by someone who told her that everything in the bible was true and she willingly believed it.  But when confronted with the truth, she was unable to process it.  I asked her how two women getting married could, in any way shape or form, harm her won marriage.  She roused long enough to answer with the expected phrase: it diminishes the institution of marriage.

She was nervous when I laughed and responded.  So the strength of your marriage depends entirely on whether or not people you dislike are allowed to have the same rights and privileges that you have?  I would think that divorce, infidelity, and the ability to get married quickly would diminish marriage, not simply allowing two men or two wome to be bonded in loven.  You make it sound like a country club where you don’t want any of “those” people invited.

She was a little flustered and I could see that her mind was spinning.  It’s not nice to toss a little chaos into the rigidly structured minds of  people who rely on religion to determine their lives.  But sometimes you need to open the window and allow a little fresh air in.  Don’t ever claim anything as absolute when there is conflicting and contradictory evidence for something else out there.  And please don’t ever attack me personally.  You get me started and I won’t stop until I have completely destroyed your position.  You see, this little thing called truth?  She’s a powerful bitch!

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