When it comes to situations like this, I quite prefer St. Paul's take in his first epistle to the Corinthians (5:12), "For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?"
Some people have told me that this is really lazy/not 'dedicated' enough or whatever, but I've never had anyone tell me that it somehow isn't
clear, unlike all this "let's argue over what to call it" business (civil partnership, marriage, whatever). I'm not really so wedded to a
word or concept that I likely disagree with other Christians on the particulars of anyway that I think it somehow profanes the marriages of those who don't come to the Church seeking that their unions be blessed by it in the first place. They're
already profane, in the sense of secular/not sacramental, which is the only division my own Church seems to recognize anyway (e.g., we are not allowed to marry outside of the communion in the Coptic Orthodox Church, since marriage is a sacrament to us, so marrying non-Orthodox is functionally equivalent to placing oneself outside of the communion by seeking to have this sacrament outside of it).
This works well enough for us even though it looks barbaric or whatever when set against the terms and norms of modern secular societies in the west. That's a good thing from where I'm sitting, as had the Church followed the society in an analogous manner in its original homelands it wouldn't exist anymore, and what would replace it (Islam) is not better with regard to its outlook on marriage, and
certainly not with regard to its treatment of gays. We simply say we won't marry them or recognize their marriages, the same as we do with anyone else who seeks a marriage we won't recognize (e.g., with non-Orthodox); Islamic shari'a
does worse than that, and that
is a salient distinction in the MENA region (not in the US, I realize).
I know it is a hard pill for some people responding to this thread to swallow, but Christianity is not actually the worst religion out there with regard to its treatment of homosexuality. Far from it, I'd say, though I would also admit that I am pretty biased against people not recognizing how good they have it to be living in a western country with a large Christian population in the first place (yes, even with the presence of religious conservatives and others who won't
just get with the program on these sociopolitical wedge issues already). We Christians are at least amenable to some level of secularization via a certain reading of "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" (though I think the way that this is shaking out in the USA, where I live, is profoundly stupid and short-sighted, possibly even malignant, but that's another matter) and the strong tradition of Christian monasticism, built as it is on recognizing the inherent difference between life in the city vs. life in the monastery, which is paralleled by a similar distinction which can be made between life in the Church vs. whatever is going on outside of it (or else we wouldn't have in our scriptures verses like the one I opened this post with).
Anyway, just my two cents, and probably worth even less than that. Carry on, wayward thread.
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