I read this blog post and I was floored. How do we know what is a right? Is marriage a right?

I should preface this by saying I’m striving to be the best Christian I can be. I don’t want to be vague about what I believe. I also want to be evidence that not all Christians are closed minded and hateful. I am by no means perfect but I want to do what Jesus says in Mark 12: 30-31 

 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

³¹ And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Love God and Love people. Seems pretty straight forward. Except, Christians throughout the history have proven that we cannot be trusted to follow the second GREATEST commandment. That being said; how can you love God if you can’t love his creation? 

We are so good at othering people and making them seem as if the are less than us because they don’t believe like we do, or because they don’t love like we do. I’m sure you’re thinking “what does that have to do with marriage being a right?”

 We value tradition, customs and lifestyle over what is actually right. We had “christian” slave holders. slave holders who decided that Black people were not human enough to have the security of marriage. They weren’t human enough to be treated with dignity. Slave holders who used the bible to justify having slaves and treating them like cattle. Breeding them like horses and dogs. Slavery was a gross institution and it was eradicated by a series of constitutional amendments that were intended to guarantee that black people would be afforded that rights of citizenship in the united states. Unfortunately, It took more than just an amendment to change custom and traditions. Slavery existed in practice ( sharecropping) for a very long time after ( don’t really wanna say that the practice is over… I don’t know that for a fact).

Women were not allowed to vote or to hold property. They were not considered citizens. Women weren’t trusted to raise their own children. Marital Rape wasn’t something people recognized. Divorce used to mean RUIN for a woman. People used the bible to justify treating women like property. They made it seem as though God created this human hierarchy that we should strictly adhere to.

These things being the norm are farfetched to us today and that is because of social change. 

There are places in this country where laws against interracial marriage are still on the books. There are supreme court decisions in place telling us what the constitution says about marriage and slavery and the guarantee of equal resources and equal rights for Americans.

This guy said in his post that marriage is not a “right”. Except… it is. There are a number of arguments that can be used using supreme court precedent. For example: Justice Earl Warren says that Marriage is a “basic civil right of man”. Another example: The Supreme court ruled that Freedom of contract was implicit in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. ( I’m a supreme court geek. don’t judge me.)

But more than just what some rich smarty pants has said, can you imagine someone telling you that you can not build a life with the person that you love? Can you imagine them telling you that you can not have a family together and that you cannot show the world that you are committed? Can you imagine not being able to visit you spouse or child in the hospital because someone said your relationship did not count? I ask this because it brings us full circle. Love you neighbor as you would love yourself. one of two commandments as told be Jesus Christ, the person we follow as CHRISTians.