The Power of the Imaginative Story: Matthew (part 6)

Jesus shakes up his listeners by declaring that certain conventional and legal actions (or inactions) are not at the heart of goodness, not at the core of righteousness. He reminds them of what everyone already knows (“You have heard . . .”) and then pulls the rug out from underneath their feet by pushing them away from their perceived moral and ethical safety zones (“But I say to you . . .”). So:

Not committing murder doesn’t eradicate the internal anger that resides in one’s heart.

Not committing adultery doesn’t magically erase the objectifying of someone as a mere object of sexual desire.

Following the legal rules that allow a man to divorce his wife—thereby forcing her into a new marriage relationship in order to avoid becoming destitute—doesn’t wipe the slate of oppression clean.

These first three admonitions, while clearly not ignoring the fact that actions and thoughts do not necessarily have the same consequences (actually killing someone brings a more severe result than just thinking about murder), bring to the forefront two important emphases:

First, there resides in the human heart the potential for the worst of human actions. Therefore, all people stand together in a sea of dark possibilities. It’s one thing to make a right judgment about something, as in bearing witness to some observable event (such as, “Officer, that car made a left turn and crashed into the light pole;” or, “I saw that man strike that woman and run away with her purse”). It’s another thing to claim that the possibilities for wrongdoing and error do not exist in those of us who haven’t committed any crimes. Such a claim is at the heart of judgmentalism.

So, just because a person didn’t pull the trigger on the gun doesn’t mean that her inner anger, an anger that makes murder a possibility, has no unrighteous power.

Just because a man hasn’t cheated on his wife doesn’t mean that his constant lusting over his neighbor’s wife doesn’t have the potential to destroy lives and relationships.

Second, legal permissions and boundaries do not necessarily mirror what is truly right. In Jesus’ day, a man could divorce his wife, sometimes on flimsy grounds, as long as he gave her a certificate of divorce (most likely a legally-recognized document that freed her to marry another). To be a divorced and disempowered woman in that time would be a sure ticket to destitution. Jesus wouldn’t allow for such a legally protected action, as though the boundaries of the law eliminated the destruction that would surely follow.

I wonder how things would change for us if, when we heard that someone did something awful, rather than saying, “How could he do that?” we lamented, “I am capable of the same thing.”

I wonder how generous our hearts might become if, while respecting the reality of our national laws, we didn’t allow legal regulations to be the ultimate definers of righteousness? For example:

Do the existence of immigration laws and national borders mean that “neighbor” is defined only by the legalities of residency and citizenship?

When the courts make a declaration requiring obedience—whether related to abortion, marriage, immigration, discrimination, and any number of other important issues—is the conversation over for followers of Jesus? Or do we look to him and wait for him to say, “But I say to you . . .”?

The words of this sermon in the gospel of Matthew—typically called “The Sermon on the Mount”—have been studied, reflected upon, and cherished by people for centuries. But they are not necessarily words of comfort. They force us as readers to confront ourselves and challenge our own perceived securities.

There is a road leading down from a mountain in Mexico where I have ridden my bicycle several times. There is a big sign on the side as the road begins its winding, eight-mile descent. The sign reads, “Curvos Peligrosos.” Dangerous Curves.

There should be a heading at the beginning of this message from Jesus that reads: “Palabras Peligrosas.” Dangerous Words.

The NOH8 Campaign

On this day after the overturning of The Defense of Marriage Act, I’ve been doing a bit of reading about the “No Hate” (cleverly abbreviated as NOH8) Campaign. Here’s what the website declares as its mission statement:

“The NOH8 Campaign is a charitable organization whose mission is to promote marriage, gender and human equality through education, advocacy, social media, and visual protest.”

The campaign illustrates its mission through over 30,000 photographs of people—many of celebrities or politicians—with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing the silencing of their voices when Proposition 8 was passed in California.

I’ve been thinking about NOH8’s mission statement. I understand the arguments for marriage equality (meaning that marriage should not be limited to one man and one woman. We still seem to deny such equality to underage people, so the opportunity is not entirely equal to all). I appreciate the call for human equality, if what that means is that all human beings are of equal value (of course, such equality shifts a bit based on one’s social status and net worth).

But the call for gender equality puzzles me. I’m just not sure how that works. There is a co-humanity that underlies gender, and a kind of gender equality exists between members of the same sex (as long as size doesn’t matter). I just don’t get how the male gender is equal to the female gender.

I’m all for equality of opportunity, voting rights, etc., when it comes to gender. But, when it comes to comparing women to men, I’m pretty sure that the parts are different (if memory serves). There is a difference of hormonal makeup between men and women. Woman can bear and give birth to children, while men are made to watch TV in their underwear while eating potato chips and drinking beer.

Equality is an important word. You can give me two cookies to eat, and I eat them. Then, even while the crumbs are still dangling from my lips, you can give me two more and I eat them also. Or, you can just give all four cookies at once and watch me eat like a starving pig. Either way, I have eaten four cookies. Two plus two clearly equals four.

But equality and value are not necessarily the same. A dollar bill is different than a stack of a hundred pennies, but the value is the same. A dollar bill has similarity to a hundred dollar bill, but they differ in value (yet neither is value-less).

I have to say that I’m a bit concerned about the movement to flatten all things out to something called equality. From what I’ve seen, if someone has a different view (not necessarily hateful, but just different) about marriage, for example, the word hate is applied to that person. Hate is not equal to love. There is no equality to be had. So is equality only to be found in unanimity of opinion? Does that unanimity equal non-hate? Does it equal love?

There was a notion about equality in Jesus’ day. Long ago, Moses had pushed against the dominant, tribal practices of retribution (as in, you steal my chicken, I kill your entire family) by directing people toward an equality of response: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Punishment and recompense needed to fit the violation.

But Jesus challenged that sense of reactive equality by insisting on an entirely different response to an offense, one that flew in the face of any sane person’s view of equality:

“But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:39-41)

Jesus’ words violated the dominant view of the culture. So was he a hater? I don’t think we would say that. Maybe those who espoused equality regarding retribution were the haters. But who makes that call? If the culture at large demands a particular point of view, isn’t anyone who speaks differently a hater? Who now defines hatred? Jesus was condemned to death on the basis of the claim that he was a hater—he hated God’s temple, he hated Caesar, he hated the status quo. They duct taped him to a cross to silence him.

In our time, it seems like disagreement and difference of opinion are tantamount to hatred. This worries me. I am all for standing against hatred. Hatred spawns violence, oppression, and murder. I am just concerned about categorizing any contrary views on a topic as hatred.

In fact, I may now be a hater just because I’m not sure that gender equality makes precise sense. I’d better go find some duct tape.

DOMA Dies

Okay, time for a break from reflective and devotional stuff, because there’s news that must be considered.

The High Court has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The Supreme Court has ruled (5-4) that DOMA (signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996), which defines marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife,” is unconstitutional.

Here’s my concern, and it’s not what you think it is.

My concern is about the word “one.” What if the limitation of having one spouse is also eliminated in the drive toward proper constitutionality? Is it possible that some form of polygamy will become normative?

I’m not thinking here about the impact on society as a whole. I’m thinking of the impact on me.

Given the opportunity, I don’t think I would go shopping for an additional wife. Some guys might find that to be a great idea, but they really need to stop and think about who is really in charge of their lives. It isn’t them. It’s their wives. Face facts. So, I don’t think it would be helpful for me to have more than one boss. I have enough trouble following orders as it is.

What I’m worried about is my wife bringing in an additional husband. You see, as I get older, I’m less interested in household chores. There are other things that I’d prefer to do, and I’m sure that this annoys my wife. So what if she marries an additional husband who will pick up my slack? What if things get competitive? And where will he sleep?

I suppose it could work out. He and I could become friends, I guess, realizing our solidarity in servitude. We could play two-person video games, go bowling, and even take up hunting. But what if a bromance began to blossom? How awkward would that be? Of course, a new definition of marriage would allow for that, since the three of us would be hitched already.

There’s probably not a lot of danger of this happening, really. My wife has put up with me for a very long time, and I’m betting that she’s not interested in housebreaking another roommate. It’s likely that my sole position in the family is fairly secure.

But maybe I’d better get out there and pull some weeds. It doesn’t hurt to play it safe.

The Ordinariness of Sex

A recent post by Tony Jones (quoting Jamie Wright, who I was delighted to discover through Tony’s blog) has caused me to take a break from my Ordinary Time reflections in order to talk about sex, which in a way is a very ordinary topic (as my dad says, we’re all products of unskilled labor).

Tony wonders if maybe we Christians make too big a deal out of premarital sex. It happens a lot, he says, whether or not we think it should, and we shouldn’t relegate people who have had other sexual partners prior to marriage to the heap of damaged goods. Indeed, I would agree, we do need to think more deeply than we have in the past about redemption and new life and all that comes with following Jesus as new creatures. People shouldn’t have to wear Premarital Sex stickers on their foreheads for the rest of their lives.

Jamie, as she thinks about her sons, advocates for helping young people wait to have sex before marriage. As much as I agree with her, I get the difficulty in this conviction. Cultural pressures aside, we are asking kids to wait a decade or more beyond hitting puberty before they act on one of the most powerful hormonal forces that living creatures can experience.

I’ve also talked to folks who just think the whole conversation is silly. After all, it’s just sex. Big deal. Get over it. It doesn’t matter and people end up doing just fine, assuming they don’t get pregnant or get STDs or whatever. Outside of those common and inconvenient problems (which we now take care of, for the most part, with quick visits to a clinic), it’s just body parts having a good time. Right?

Well, if we say it doesn’t matter, that sex is only a physical release and doesn’t impact us in any other way, that sexuality is incidental to our humanity, then we’d better be right. Especially if we’re in a position to help people figure out how to live well, and if we are considered to be leaders of the Christian type. We’d really better be right.

If not, then we might be committing spiritual malpractice.

There are certain things that are incidental to our humanity, like eye color, physical characteristics, ethnicity, and even race. It’s not that those things are unimportant; it’s that they are not at the heart of who we are as human beings (some would argue against race or ethnicity being incidental, but I would say that both the biblical creation account and evolutionary biology would argue for the emergence of the human race from somewhere in north Africa, making our current racial diversity nothing more than multiple expressions coming from the same family tree).

Gender and sexuality, however, are not incidental to our humanity. They are essential to it. Our maleness and femaleness are not mere social constructs (although our roles often are). To be human as either male or female includes our differing body parts and hormonal chemistries. We can’t extricate our genders from our humanity and still be human. You can lose an appendage or start identifying with a different ethnic group and still retain your humanity, but gender remains essential to being human. And, by association, so does our sexuality.

In the movie Vanilla Sky, a desperate woman (played by Cameron Diaz) tells her cavalier sexual partner (played by Tom Cruise) that, while their ongoing and non-committal sexual relationship means very little to him, it means everything to her. She says,

“When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise.”

I think that’s a profound theological statement. We need to think in new ways about the whole human person, the integration of body, soul, and mind. What we do with our bodies matters, and promises run deeper than mere words. And if a person makes a lot of bodily promises along the way, those promises will be carried into marriage someday (assuming the person actually gets married). That could be a lot of passengers in the marriage bed.

I have a friend who used to tell her young adolescent daughters that faithfulness to their future husbands begins right now. I think she was right about that. Faithfulness doesn’t just magically emerge on someone’s wedding day.

So, there you have it. I’m for people waiting to have sex until they join their lives with a partner in the expectation of lifelong faithfulness (we used to call that “marriage.” Can we still do that?).

On the other hand, we do need to help people who have danced with other partners, so to speak, to find healing and restoration in their lives, and not label another non-preferred violation as the “unforgiveable sin.”

And we’d better stop saying that things like sex don’t matter. Because our bodies do indeed make promises.

On Marriage Equality*

Okay, here’s my last and final post on the marriage issue, until I think of another one.

There is no equality in marriage. None at all. Allow me to explain through personal, anecdotal descriptions that clearly apply to the entire human race.

When Emily and I got married, I was 20 and she was 19. At that time, at least in the nation of California, a woman could marry at age 18 without parental consent, but a man had to be 21. I was able to join the Navy at 19—keeping America safe for democracy—without parental consent, but I had to get a note from my Dad and Mom in order to get married. Not equal.

After our honeymoon, we were driving around the town were I was to be stationed, looking for a place to live. We were broke, having spent half of our $200 fortune on our honeymoon (yes, we had a $100 honeymoon). I suggested to my new bride that we stop and get a Coke to share (so romantic), which in the ancient era of 1972 cost 15 cents at McDonalds. She chastised me for being so reckless with our money, and vetoed my request. No Coke. Not equal.

Years later, I decided to quit my teaching job because I was tired of being broke all the time. I intended to try my hand at business in order to get rich, but did it without talking it through with my wife or (perish the thought!) praying. It all went to smash because I went for it alone. Not equal.

Years after that (after recovering from the smash and actually doing pretty well in business), I suggested that we put in a swimming pool. Emily didn’t think that was a good use of our money. A year later, we were standing in our back yard and she said, “Maybe we should get a swimming pool.” We did. Not equal.

In 2005, during my time as a pastor, two of my no-account pastor buddies claimed that we should gather some folks, drive to Louisiana, and help out with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort. I said it was a bad idea, because we would die there. I called my wife to tell her of my friends’ stupid idea, and she started to cry. She said she believed that the Lord wanted me to go. I went, and didn’t die. Not equal.

She gave birth to our two daughters. It looked like pretty hard work to me. I just watched because I am not equipped to have babies. Not equal.

And, on top of all that, at least according to the statistics, I will die first.

That is not only unequal. It’s just plain unfair.

*Humor alert

Love, Marriage, and Rights

I recently shared a video on Facebook from the New Zealand parliament. The MP who spoke was very humorous in his delivery, which was why I posted it. He insisted that any time two people love each other, they should enjoy the right to be married. It’s not an uncommon declaration and we hear it with some frequency here in the US as well.

The argument about legally recognized marriage—regardless of gender—seems to now be grounded in love. Of course, the government doesn’t really care about the love part, and they have no assessment tools to measure love in the first place. The government cares more about operating consistently with the laws of the land and providing a framework for families that offers protection under the law. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a different thing than love as a qualifier.

So, as the argument seems to go, a declaration of love results in a demand for rights, and the granting of those rights gives people what they want and deserve.

For we who follow Jesus, however, we believe that the claim to love doesn’t begin with us—it begins with God. And the love that comes to us at the initiation of God, a love that moves outward from us to others, does not result in us getting what we deserve. In fact, we aren’t called to a life of de-serving at all. We are called to serve, and to do so as followers of and participants with the Spirit of Jesus.

I am aware that Christians are often looked at as narrow-minded people who are against everything, especially gay marriage. I’m sorry for that negative view. In some ways we’ve asked for it, since most publicized debates on the issue tend to lack civility and are reductionistic. Of course, I have to cast a bit of the responsibility on the other side, where any suggestion of a different point of view results in the accusation of being a hater.

I’m hoping that, when the dust starts to settle, that Christians will step back and assess our identity. Perhaps we’ll need to revisit with fresh eyes the One we claim to follow, who said, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Do we give our lives for people or for issues?

Dethroning the Big Stories

In all the commotion created by the debates surrounding same-sex marriage, I have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on, something that reaches beyond this topic to a larger cultural upheaval.

There is an interesting characteristic of the shift in western culture that philosophers and theologians refer to as “postmodern.” It’s a kind of vague term that points to a movement in culture after the modern period, a period in history marked by the certainties and perceptual frameworks that emerged out of the Enlightenment.

There were a lot of assumptions about life that came about over the last few hundred years—assumptions about dominant power (mostly white, male, and European), marital relationships (exclusively heterosexual and linked to both the state and the church), economics (increasingly dominated by what people are now calling “the haves”), science (marked by the belief that people can be purely objective in their observations), and religion (mostly dominated by western Christendom).

Each of these assumptions carried the conviction of a larger story that drove actions and practices. And as long as the people who constituted a majority kept the story alive, the domination remained in tact. That’s sort of how the thinking goes.

I wonder if the dismantling (okay, redefining. Whatever) of traditional marriage is part of the larger culture’s willingness to deny the power of any story that claims dominance over competing narratives. After all, the gay community is a very small percentage of the overall population (probably somewhere around 3%). Yet, almost half of the US population is in favor of gay marriage. Half of the citizens of the US are willing to let the old story of heterosexual marriage as the exclusive and dominant story of committed relationships be removed from its prominent position.

In a similar way, we’re seeing that in other areas of western culture. The Occupy Wall Street movement, as scrappy as it was, was an attempt to dethrone the powers of western economics. The attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular may be an attempt to dethrone faith from its position of power and favor.

Indeed, there may be something bigger going on.

So, again, I have to ask: In this new world of uncharted waters, what will be the church’s posture? We can hunker down and reinforce our walls of protection, keeping all new ideas out. We can take the walls down altogether and embrace everything that comes our way, allowing the shifting preferences of culture serve as our interpretive guide for faith. We can embed our convictions in our preferred political party and hope for shelter and a renewal of our power. In my view, each of those options are perilous in their possible consequences.

Maybe, for we who follow Jesus, it will become a time to rediscover who we really are when we no longer enjoy a place of favor and prestige in the culture. As Christians—particularly in the western world—are increasingly marginalized, we might have to recapture our identity without the advantage of cultural dominance.

As the accouterments of power and dominance are slowly stripped away from the western church, when our resources dry up, we will look around and wonder what has happened to us. What will we see? Will we see nothing? Will we see a purely secular world where faith has no impact or place? Or will we see “. . . Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone”? (Hebrews 4:9)

Remember: When it comes to Jesus, where there is death, there is always resurrection. Resurrection is not resuscitation; that’s just the reanimating of something that’s dead. Resurrection is new life altogether.

Really—Is This Marriage?

In the debates I’ve heard within the context of the church regarding same-sex marriage, the call to preserve marriage as a union between a man and woman is referred to as “traditional.” It’s a fairly accurate term, since marriage has been looked at that way for a very long time. It is too bad, in my view, that anyone who finds a shift in that tradition difficult is often labeled as a hater or a denier of human rights.

On the other hand, those of us who are heterosexual followers of Jesus and interested in the debate about marriage might be missing something in the conversation. There’s a mirror being held up to us and we are avoiding taking a look at the reflection.

First of all, while the statistics are a challenge to accurately nail down, the evidence suggests that divorce rates in the US are ridiculously high (including for folks who are Christians), marriage rates are falling and premarital co-habitation is rising.

We have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Is this the tradition we are seeking to preserve? It is, after all, our reality. Or is it a lost ideal that we treasure? Is traditional marriage something that we heteros have mangled and crushed so thoroughly that it is hardly recognizable as marriage any longer?

There’s a story of an artist who would take several cellos, smash them with a sledgehammer, cover them with resin, and then sell them as art. It was as though he was asking the art community, “What do you think: Is this art?”

It seems like the gay community is lining up for marriage licenses and asking the rest of us, “Given that you’ve slaughtered the traditional concept of marriage, what do you think: Is this marriage?”

Second, when we look closely at all the people whose images are reflected in the mirror, do we only see them and us? If we look carefully we will see a common humanity that stands in tragic solidarity before God, all made in God’s image and yet fractured and broken. At the same time, it is a humanity that constitutes the world that God loves, a world that God, through Jesus Christ, is reconciling to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (see 2 Corinthians 5).

Since the battle for same-sex marriage rights may be over, we heterosexual Christians have the opportunity to do some self-reflection and start the conversation anew. Rather than point outwardly at the other while attempting to preserve a sense a righteousness, it is time for us to confess our own brokenness before God—including the sexual misadventures, fantasies, and deviances that roll through our heterosexual minds—and recognize our complicity in the sins of the world (see Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 about the connection between the mind and sin).

If we expect to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus in the world, then we will have to do so confessionally and with repentance. Our rapidly changing culture—one in which our story of faith is losing its dominance—is still our context for ministry. We don’t minister in the abstract; we minister in what is real.

And to do so with integrity, we need to look deeply into that mirror.

More on Marriage and Rights

Attentive reader and friend Brian (see his comment on my post of September 8) rightly points out that the Supreme Court of the US has indeed declared marriage to be a basic civil right. That is true, and probably will provide the basis for the eventual approval of same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

But my question is this: For we people of faith—Christian faith in particular—does the Supreme Court (or any judicial or legislative body of the state) have the ability to declare how we view reality within the contrast society we call the church? In other words, if the Supreme Court says that marriage is a civil right, does that provide us the only basis for talking about marriage?

I found the following at a University of Missouri website:

“Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 hotly debated the issue of slavery. George Mason of Virginia argued eloquently against slavery, warning his fellow delegates:

‘Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins by national calamities.’

Southern delegates, on the other hand, argued strenuously that the new government should not be allowed to interfere with the institution of slavery. Delegate John Rutledge of South Carolina, for example, told delegates that ‘religion and humanity have nothing to do with the questions’ of whether the Constitution should protect slavery—it was simply a question of property rights.

“The Supreme Court, in its infamous decision in Dred Scott v Sandford (1857), ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. In so doing, Scott v Sandford invited slave owners to pour into the territories and pass pro-slavery constitutions.”

At one time in US history, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of slavery, making the forced labor of human beings an act that was considered legal and the right of slaveholders. Others declared that what the Court had ruled, while a social and economic reality, was a fundamental violation of human dignity.

Just because the Court says its so doesn’t make it so. It might be the law of the land, but it doesn’t necessarily create the only boundaries within which followers of Jesus form their thinking and practice.

I’m not advocating lawlessness, nor am I, in this posting, advocating one way or the other regarding same-sex marriage. What I am saying is that we people of faith have to process these kinds of issues from a standpoint that assumes something bigger than the Court can rule upon.

Disagreeing with Rachel Held Evans, but loving her anyway

One of the blogs I enjoy reading belongs to Rachel Held Evans. She’s a terrific writer and I like her take on things in the world of faith in general and Christianity in particular.

She made a brief remark recently, however, about which I disagree. She said, “I believe that marriage is a civil right in this country.” I am not, in this limited space, attempting to address the larger issue of same-sex marriage, except to the extent that I think its proponents base their arguments on a faulty assumption.

Marriage is not a civil right.

Let me explain: When I got married a zillion years ago, there were certain requirements I had to meet in order to marry my fiancé. First, we had to affirm that we were not already married to someone else. Even back in 19blah blah blah, polygamy was frowned upon in US society. Second, we had to get blood tests to prove that we didn’t carry communicable diseases and end up spawning mutants and then infecting all our neighbors. Third—and this is the one that still outrages me—I had to get written permission from my parents in order to get married. Back in the olden days, you see, a woman could get married without parental consent at age 18. Men had to be 21. My fiancé was 19 and I was 20, so I had to get a note from Mom and Dad. Nevermind that I was in the US Navy at the time and could, theoretically, defend the nation for the sake of democracy; I still had to get a note. If my folks said no, then I’d have to wait a year.

Once we satisfied those requirements, we could get married. But it was not because it was a civil right; it was the recognition by the state of California (and also our church) that something existed between my fiancé and me that could be recognized and declared as a union called “marriage.”

We didn’t have a right to get married. We did, however, have a right to request that our life together be affirmed as such. And we could, potentially, be refused.

Two ten-year-olds can walk into the County Recorder’s office, pick up the form that requests a marriage license, fill it out, and submit it. It will, of course, be turned down. In our society, even children can ask to get married, but we won’t let them do it. It’s their right to ask, but not their right to actually tie the knot.

While the requirements are not quite as rigid today, the point, I believe, still stands. I’m wondering what would happen if the debate about marriage moved away from the assumption of a “right” to the exploration of marriage that is recognized and declared by the communities in which we live. This is not just an issued related to same-sex couples; it has to do with the whole idea of marriage in a culture that can deconstruct and reconstruct lives via medical technology in ways that were unthinkable a hundred years ago. Marriage and sex assumed, at one time, procreation. No longer is that assumed, even with heterosexuals (read this interesting blog on the topic). On top of that, we heterosexuals have pretty much redefined marriage as something that only works half the time anyway, so maybe some fresh and new reflection is in order.