Right. I suspect we would probably agree on all things that an Orthodox should consider immoral, including gay marriage. But our disagreement lies it what immoral actions the State must be relied upon to proscribe.
Your logic seems confused. You say:
1. It is un Orthodox to seek to legalise things that are immoral. "I AM saying that is IS immoral to support legalization of immorality".However;
2. When challenged, you suggest you don't want to make immoral things illegal. "But you seem to think I am trying to PASS laws against immorality". And yet, now you say;
3. "If we can influence law and national morality, we should".
So, if it is always sinful to support legalised gay marriage, what other immoral activity's legality is it also always sinful to support? Is it always sinful to support legalised fornication or adultery? If not, what makes gay marriage different?
It seems rather easy for us to simply oppose legalisation of actions, but I think we need to establish a justification for when the State should intervene to buttress Christian morality. Why is the State needed to prohibit gay marriage but not gay sex or fornication or greed?
The State is a two edged sword: a State that is sufficiently intrusive to prevent legalised gay marriage may also be sufficiently intrusive to prevent legalised Christian teaching and practice.
I think it would be more helpful if you asked questions rather than assume that I am confused, to ask me to explain what seems like a contradiction or inconsistency to you, rather than say that my logic is confused.
First of all, I think that the initial state should be an absolute minimum of laws. I believe that, as long as a people has common sense, they don't need laws. Thus, I do not think we should run around trying to make every imaginable immoral action specifically illegal. I think we should rely on the common sense that knows things are wrong without law.
Law becomes necessary where this common sense breaks down. When people begin, on a significant scale, to treat immoral behavior as normal and socially acceptable, law is the force of the state forbidding what the common conscience is in danger of ceasing to forbid. Yet even this reaches a point of futility, if everyone comes to accept the immoral behavior as socially acceptable, as meriting public approval, or at least public tolerance.
I think fornication ought to be illegal. But I think that before that, and more important than that, it should be subject to social stigma, a force more powerful and effective than law.
So the problem is that, under the influence of mass media and centrally-controlled government education, people have become inured to what they once thought horrific. I don't think ANY law can save a people that turn their backs on the Christian God. At the very most, law can only delay the collapse of Sodom. But I think the delay, what Tolkien called fighting "the long defeat", to be a good thing.
The specific issue of both social tolerance of sodomy and the idea of "same-sex marriage", along with sexual morality in general, differ from most other moral issues in that people are now beginning to believe that "anything goes" in the family and sexuality.a powerful social voice is needed to affirm that "anything " must NOT "go". Law is a last-ditch, short-term tool that can slow down the cancerous spread. But it can't stop it, not without national repentance. So I think we are witnessing the decline and fall of western civilization, something that will make both the fall of Rome and the resulting "Dark Ages" and the fall of the Soviet Union look like minor things by comparison; but before that, we will see a new persecution of Christians that will similarly eclipse anything Nero or Diocletian ever orchestrated. Fearful times are ahead. If you don't understand how that can be, particularly the collapse of civilization, then I would recommend Chesterton's book to more clearly understand the nature of the family, affirmed by the Orthodox Church (and Hopko's stuff on the OCA site is pretty good for the spiritual aspect) in secular terms, that is, in terms of what the family does and is in this world.
I hope that clarifies my own view. It seems fairly clear and straightforward to me, but I can see how it might not be to others. At any rate, it's not confusion. If there is anything you are not clear on, feel free to ask!
