Are homosexuality and homosexual marriage moral issues?

by Matt Slick

Some people who approve of homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle have said that homosexuality and homosexual marriage are not moral issues.  Often, this is stated in an attempt to distance themselves from ethics and focus on the social and political agenda to promote homosexuality.  Still, is homosexuality and homosexual marriage a moral issue?  Yes it is.

Morality deals with person to person relationships and what ought, and ought not, to be done within them. 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines morality:

  • "descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or, some other group, such as a religion, or accepted by an individual for her own behavior or normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons."1

Dictionary.com says of morality:

  • "of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes."2

Both of these definitions deal with right "conduct"; that is, with a person's behavior.  Marriage commitment and sexual conduct are both laced with moral issues such as 1) What ought marriage be defined as? 2) How should a marriage be dissolved? 3) What ought to be the age restrictions on marriage? 4) Should we be free to have sex with anyone we want to? 5) Should sex be restricted to marriage partners only? 6) Who decides what is right and wrong inside of marriage?  These issues are, by nature, moral, and the claim that homosexuality is not a moral issue is simply false.

What is the basis of morality?

But, the moral issue is not where homosexuals want to do battle - well, not normally.  They might claim the moral right to have sex with anyone they want, or have the "right" to marry a person of the same sex, but on what are their morals and rights based?  If they reply that society and personal preferences determine morality, there are problems that arise. 

  1. First, what would they do if society said that homosexuality is morally wrong and homosexuals should be isolated from everyone else?  Logically, it would mean that homosexuals would have to agree with such isolation.
  2. Second, if a society determines what is right morally, then why did the homosexuals work against society to get the moral standards changed to agree with their moral preferences?
  3. Third, if a society determines what is right and wrong, then can they legitimately complain against the Nazi Society that murdered Jews in World War II?
  4. If morality is based on personal preferences, then what do you do when the preferences of one person contradict the preferences of another in moral issues? 
  5. If morality is based on personal preferences and one person's opinion contradicts another, who's morality is right? 

Misdirection is the key

These questions, and others like them, are largely ignored by the homosexual crowd.  Instead, in order to further their agenda, they focus on other things.

  • "the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible"3
  • "Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme."4
  • "there are many ways to portray gays as victims of discrimination: images of brutality, tales of job loss and family separation, and so on."5

The homosexuals don't have much to stand on when it comes to promoting their practice based on moral issues.  Instead, they have used misdirection of the main issue, misrepresentation of the opposing viewpoints, and misapplication of civil rights to further their cause.  We need to be aware of this and deal not only with the so-called legal rights issues, but also the moral ones when dialoguing with homosexuals and pro-homosexuals.

  • 1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
  • 2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moral
  • 3. The Overhauling of Straight America, Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill, 1987.
  • 4. The Overhauling of Straight America, Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill, 1987.
  • 5. The Overhauling of Straight America, Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill, 1987.

 

 

 

 
 
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