I've recently seen a new facebook group -- one of those politically charged ones whose title is always "bet I can find 1,000,000 people who support such and such." It's up close to 2,000,000 members now, but of course who knows how many of the people who have signed on to it actually believe in the group's stated cause or are just signing on to it so they can write on the group's wall. That's just one of the reasons I rarely if ever join a politically charged group or cause on facebook.
Well, suffice to say that if you're one of those dissenters in this particular politically charged facebook group, you are blessed with the time-honored, rational-conversation-ending moniker: "homophobe."
The creator of the group publicly posted a message to one such dissenter, which began with the proclamation: "YOU deserve love."
Now this got me thinking. How successful do relationships tend to be when the focus on one (or both) of the parties is what he or she deserves from it? If I go into a relationship thinking solely of what I deserve, what is likely to happen in that relationship?
Is it better to go into a relationship thinking about what I deserve or what I can do to serve?
We have at least one religious leader in history who expressed a certain philosophy of relationships -- when he said that he came "not to be served but to serve."
That's the point of love. It is not that I deserve anything. Love has to be freely given, and freely received. If I were to walk up to my fiance and say, "Marry me -- I deserve it," how likely would she have been to say yes? Could any woman, or man as the case may be, say yes without disrespecting herself or himself?
Then what disrespect would be done to the beautiful gift of marriage if it was just given away to anyone who demanded it as a "right"?
Life, love, marriage, is not about what we deserve. It's about what we are called to do. I am called to serve others -- in a special way my family -- the one I presently have, and the one that I hope to build in the future.
The problem that I see with the movement to expand (and thereby essentially dissolve) the definition of marriage, is the thrust of the argument -- namely that it is a "right," something that you and I "deserve."
This is not to say that people deserve a wretched, loveless existence. But marriage and love are not the same thing. Many of the people who support same-sex marriage also very well understand this simple fact. Some same-sex marriage supporters view the traditional, heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong version of marriage with suspicion and even contempt. Those who are married to each other certainly deserve to be loved by one another in all the ways that the marriage vow requires. But that is not the same as saying that everyone "deserves" to be married -- much less saying that everyone deserves to enter into whatever manner of relationship they wish with whomever or whatever they wish, and call that "marriage."
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