designated conservative's blog

(cross posted from the designated conservative)

With friends and family in California, I watched the recent election battle over Proposition 8 with interest. We experienced a similar election fight here in Michigan a few years ago, with the result that Michigan is one of the majority of states to re-affirm and protect "traditional" marriage. For me, the civic lunacy of gender neutral "Party A" and "Party B" marriage licenses that resulted from the May California Supreme Court decision illustrates why courts are not the place to decide issues of public policy and morality.

However, we humans are complicated creatures, so I suspect that for many people (not just me) opinions and feelings about gay marriage are similarly complicated:

1. As a Christian, I believe that marriage is an eternal institution established by God to be between one man and one woman, and that no government can legitimately alter that. I supported Michigan's constitutional amendment and favored passage of Proposition 8 this year. Children deserve to be raised by a mother and a father in a stable and monogamous partnership. Strong families are the foundations of our neighborhoods, our churches, our schools, our communities, and our country. Legalization of gay marriage in the United States would further weaken the family and corrode the foundation upon which our country exists.

2. As an American, I believe in democracy and the supremacy of the people. In the U.S., laws are established by the people (through referendums like this one) and through the people's elected representatives in Congress and state legislatures. The liberal activism of the California Supreme Court offends me. It is not the place of the judiciary to make laws, and it is certainly not the place of a judge to stick his or her finger in the proverbial winds of culture to decide cases. The law is the law. It is the role of judges to enforce the law, administer justice impartially, and limit interpretation of the law to those instances where the intent of the legislature is unclear from the text and where a law may violate Constitutional limitations on government power.

3. As a person with a close family member living a homosexual lifestyle, I was happy to receive word that he and his long-term domestic partner had decided to marry in San Francisco. Long ago I welcomed his partner in as part of the family, and I love my family member no less because of his lifestyle choices. I'm glad that they have chosen to take this step to further their commitment to one another.

I don't find any contradictions in these seemingly conflicting ideas. As a complicated human being, I can hold these apparently opposing beliefs simultaneously, because they are all grounded in the Gospel of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ taught that we must abhor sin, but love the sinner. He taught that we all sin, and we all can be forgiven of our sins if we repent and come unto Him. It is through our behavior that we sin, not our feelings. We all are tempted to sin (including those that have feelings of same sex attraction) - to be tempted is not the same as sinning. We sin when we give into temptation, including homosexual sex.

I am a Christian, and I work to keep His commandments and follow His example. I believe that as the United States keeps close to the intent of our Founding Fathers, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we will prosper as a country. We are at heart a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. When we fall away from those principles as a nation, we will fail.

Being a Christian nation does not mean an autocratic theocracy, but it also does not mean that we should accept the redefinition of sin into virtue. Gay marriage is a poor counterfeit for the real thing, and those that seek to force society to approve their lifestyle choice seek nothing less than to compel me to give up my faith and my beliefs for theirs.

As evidenced by the near riots and violent protests at the LDS Church temple in Los Angeles, attacks and vandalism of church properties, and attempted intimidation of those that donated to the effort to pass Proposition 8, the pro-gay marriage minority seeks to impose a politically-correct thugocracy in America.

For more, visit the designated conservative.

(cross posted from the designated conservative at http://dcon2012.wordpress.com/)

So I'm sitting on a folding chair in an undisclosed location of a small Michigan downtown commiserating with 40 fellow republicans last week....  

After spending much of this year holding the keys for the McCainiacs and my Democrat friends who drank the Obama Kool-Aid, I was thrilled just to be in the same room with other designated drivers conservatives of the Party.  Here are a few snippets of the conversation:

• “The Democratic tsunami was larger in Michigan because the Michigan Republican Party wasn’t ‘there.’”
• “25% of the people in the room are Ron Paul ‘true believers’.  The Party leadership deliberately ignored Ron Paul - remember, he’s been right about everything he said.” 
• (of course, a non-Paulite in the crowd pointedly noted that Ron Paul himself supported a third-party candidate in the general election instead of the Republican standard-bearers!)
• “The Republican candidates that were successful in the last election did so despite, not because of, our party.”
• “You cannot be successful if you’re telling your (volunteers) to start fighting now and we’ll tell you what you’re fighting for later!”
• "The reason Republicans stayed home and only 20% percent of precinct delegates actually volunteered is because we didn’t have an actual Republican at the head of the national ticket!"
• “The Party needs to teach Econ 101 - socialism removes checks and balances from government and leads to corruption.”
• “Fight with everything you have not to become Canada (so said a Canadian expatriate and local businessman); the government makes money disappear!”

For the rest of the story, visit the designated conservative.