Now that I have your attention, let’s talk.

To start with, I’d like to give you a bit of background into where I’m coming from. A lot times, when I get into conversations with people about controversial topics, most folks have a tendency to say things like “Everyone I know believes x” and “I’ve never met anyone who really believed y.” I’m not one of those folks, though. I’ve met people from so many wildly diverse and contradicting viewpoints and backgrounds that I can’t honestly say that there’s not someout out there who believes [insert crazy idea here]. If you can think it, it’s someone’s obsession in life.

Perhaps that’s why I gave up caring about whether homosexuality is okay or not.

When most of the folks I knew were church folks, I found my morals came more easily. For some reason. I found it easier to believe that something was true when I didn’t know anyone it personally affected, or even someone who completely disagreed with me. Then I started to meet those people and questions came up that I couldn’t answer.

To be clear, and this will probably come as a shock to half of the people I know (and the 

For example, sure, I could point out the verses in the Bible where it says that homosexuality is a perversion of God’s design and unnatural. I could also point out the verses that says a woman should not be allowed to teach or even speak in church. Why is one a disruption of the natural order, but the other is simply a cultural difference? Truthfully, I don’t know.

Ironically, the best explanation I could ever come up with for why homosexual practices shouldn’t be encouraged came not from the Bible, but from simply science and logic. Same-sex couples cannot have children. From an evolutionary standpoint (if you subscribe to this idea), the more couples there are not having children, the fewer humans there are to carry on the race. Granted, we’re pretty overpopulated as is, so perhaps some cutbacks are necessary, however long-term, large-scale, it’s untenable. Think of it this way: if homosexualswere the majority and heterosexuals were the minority, in the same proportions we have now but reversed, we would face radical drop-offs in the population, possibly reaching a point where we were unable to continue creating enough humans to sustain our ways of living.

Now, I should point out, the above paragraph is complete bollocks (that kind of majority/minority flip is virtually impossible if we’re subscribing to the very same overly-simplistic evolutionary logic used in that same idea), but that’s besides the point. The point is, from a simple logic perspective, a fundamental (and flawed) understanding of science provides the best real-world explanation for why homosexuality should not be encouraged, while a theological response really only provides a theological answer.

And that’s kind of a problem.

This is where it gets tough. Given where I came from, my default position was to try to denounce homosexuality. I was never really vocal about it, but that’s where the internal monologue went. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t find a way to legitimately say “No, we can’t allow this!” in the same way that I could say we couldn’t allow murder, theft, or the stifling of freedom. If two people of the same gender decided they wanted to live together and love together, there’s not really any argument against it that doesn’t sound untenable at best and silly at worst.

Now, okay. By this point, I’ve said a lot of stupid things. Folks who land on the “God says not to” side will certainly think that I’ve disregarded God’s opinion on the matter entirely. Folks who land on the “people should be free to love whoever they choose” side of the aisle think I’m retarded for even trying to imply that homosexuality is “evolutionarily untenable”. What does that even mean?! It’s the confused musings of someone who up until this point really had no idea what to think and was pulled in multiple directions by close friends on both sides with wildly different viewpoints.

I think a lot of the mess has been cleared up for me now. And I think gay marriage should be legal.

There’s a lot of factors that contribute to this and I’d like to go through them. First off, I need to clarify, I am a Christian. That probably comes as a shock to roughly half of my friends and acuiantances, but it’s true (the other half who aren’t surprised I’d say that likely think I went heretic a long time ago, but that’s neither here nor there). As such, I do believe that God’s opinion matters. However, I do not believe in a theocracy. And, simply put, a government that is dictated by the laws of your God is a theocracy.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel, despite having been saved and redeemed by their God time and again, demanded a king be set up for themselves like all the other nations. This demonstrates not just a stupidity on the part of an ancient people, but more specifically, an unwillingness to be ruled by God. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about God, it’s that He’s not willing to impose Himself on the unwilling. No matter the circumstances, no matter the cost, no matter the penalty, it seems the one thing He absolutely will not do is force the unwilling to obey or to love. He will assert his authority and dominion where it is necessary, and He will never let it be forgotten that this world belongs to Him. However, love does not come from a coerced position. His people demanded government by another. And we’re no different. We champion the constitution as our saving grace for government, not the Bible. Even among churches, this is the case. It is simply impossible to argue that because God says it, it must be law.

“But Eric. God says not to murder, and we have laws against that!”

I’m pretty sure that families of murder victims also say not to murder. That’s a pretty easy one to pin down. Not to mention, most laws we have center around offenses that are at an obvious cost to others. Theft, deception, violence…these all have obvious consequences where one causes harm to another’s life.

Furthermore, ask most Christians, and they’ll tell you that divorce is not really high on God’s List of Cool Things. Yet divorce is perfectly legal. In fact, it occurs in the church quite a bit. This is because sometimes, in real life, bad things happen. If we’re concerned about the divine, uncorrupted plan of God, I have some bad news for you: it’s already broken. It’s in the process of being made whole, this is true, but in the mean time, bad stuff still happens. Sometimes people get stuck in awful situations and it sucks and there’s no good way out of it, and sometimes the process towards healing means bleeding first.

There’s really one thing that makes me more reluctant than anything to come down against gay marriage: I just don’t really know many gay people that closely. And, frankly, I have a really hard time telling people I don’t know that something they’re doing is wrong, when I can’t really pin down who it’s hurting, besides my sensibilities of what God, a god they may not worship, know, or care a lick about, thinks. I found it difficult to continue to pretend that I had my finger on God’s pulse all the time, that I knew what it was God wanted at all times. It’s difficult, frankly, to say that my answer to big moral questions is “I don’t know”. But, for me, it’s more honest.

I don’t want to meet someone and decide I know them before I talk to them. And I don’t really want to decide that someone is doing evil things before I’ve learned that person’s name. I want to get to know everyone. I want to treat people with respect and dignity. I suck at this a lot of times, but it’s what I’d like to be. And I don’t want to judge people harshly because somebody told me, years before I met them, that their lifestyle, a lifestyle that they say makes them happy, was evil.

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 is the best write up on this I can find. The short version is that the commands and the requirements of God have no real effect on those outside the church. That is to say, if you don’t really care about God, or if you don’t believe in God, then there’s really no room for anyone to tell you to obey God. Just like if I quit my job, I have no further requirement to obey my boss. He can still, if he chose, try to be involved in my life, but only so far as I allow him to be. Beyond that, there is no room to call for obedience. And those who are inside the church, those who believe in and are concerned with the thoughts of Almighty God, they have a way to discuss the matter. It’s difficult to have a relationship with anyone and not once consider how the way you live your life will affect your relationship with that person. That applies to human relationships and it applies to divine ones as well. And if that’s the case, if there is a gay person who believe in and wants to love that God they believe in, who am I to bring in any unwanted opinion? Sure, challenging your friends is a natural and requisite part of community and relationships, but that still implies a level of familiarity. Telling strangers on the street, or worse, legislating against people I’ve never met actually puts up walls between me and them, not unite us.

If this note sounds like an absolute mess, it’s because my thoughts on the subject are just as messy. And I’m not even really sure what I think. I’ve known some folks who are gay and delightful people. As I said before, I’ve never been terribly close, as in trust-you-with-my-secrets close, but frankly I’d like to. I’d like to get to know and learn about and be friends with all manner of people! I don’t want to exclude anyone. Can I promise that I’d never say “Hey, you need to not do that!” to a homosexual? No, I can’t. Then again, I’ve said the same thing to straight people. I’ve told straight people who want to be in relationships to chill out because, for whatever reason, it was damaging to them at the time. I can’t say the situation would never come up. People are complicated. Sometimes solutions to problems are weird.

But one thing I can say is that I don’t intend to ever tell anyone that they can or can’t do something that doesn’t tangibly harm another human being, unless I’ve gotten to know them, become friends with them, and discussed a situation with them intimately. I’ve been the listening friend to a lot of people. I’m known to a lot of these people as being very opinionated when I think they’re wrong. But I don’t tend to get to that point without asking a lot of questions first. And, frankly, I have a lot to learn when it comes to homosexuality. And I want to learn. I don’t want to shut anyone out. And it is far from my place to judge, condemn, or invalidate the choices and beliefs of people I’ve never met.

I’m not sure if that makes me a bigot, a homophobe, a heretic, or a lunatic. But it is what it is. Forgive my incoherence.

And New York: congratulations on winning one for freedom and equality. This is a good day.