Here it is:
Today I received an email from a forum I subscribe to in which folks submit a question and people are invited to drop in and debate the issue. Many are just silly, imo, and I ignore em. Like ‘What’s your dog’s favorite food?’ or some such. But many ask questions that I consider important and I feel compelled to drop by and offer my 2c—4c if I’m feeling long-winded—which I often am.
Anyhow, today someone asked, “Who should make the decision regarding gay marriage?” I was
gratified to see the number of people who responded with the idea that the couple involved should make that decision.Since that coincided with my view, I considered it wise and cogent.
After dropping off my comment, I rebutted a number of people who quoted the Bible to prove that LGBT’s should not be allowed to marry or said ‘they’ are just in it for the tax benefits or compared them to criminals of various stripes, etc. etc.
After I finished up over there I deleted the email that had brought the matter to my attention and went back to reading the newspaper but the question kept nagging at me and I went through this dialog with myself:
‘I know my view is right. Gays should be allowed to marry and it’s no one’s business but their own.’
‘A lot of people [not the majority in that forum, I don’t think, but a lot nonetheless] disagree with that viewpoint.’
‘Well, I’m right. Gays are people who deserve the same rights as straights. It’s that simple.'
'A lot of people disagree.'
'They’re wrong.'
'Still. . . .'
'I’m right. I know I’m right.'
xxx
And then it hit me. I’m right for me.
There were people in the forum who were speaking for God. They are absolutely certain they're right. While I believe it’s the height of hubris to tell other people who God loves or, even more ominously, who God hates, that is what I believe.
In fact, when I call the creator the All that Is the entire point becomes moot.
If the All that Is is All that Is, it is straight people and gay people and conservatives and liberals and agnostics and atheists and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Wicca and Christians [even radicals of all those philosophies] and antelopes and mammoths and butterflies, and stars and planets and hydrogen and uranium and nitrogen and mercury and whales and grass and trees and sharks and trout and dung beetles and leopards and lap dogs and and and——— how could it be otherwise?
But still—either every dot on the circle truly IS where it needs to be or it isn’t. And my views are no better nor worse than the people who believe the literal interpretation of Leviticus.
When I look at the world as it is, it’s a hard concept to acknowledge sometimes—most times, when it comes to that.Hitler’s stance was as acceptable as mine?
Musselini’s position was?
The people who plied the slave ships during the 19th century held view points about slavery that were as legitimate as mine are?
People who believe a loving Father would condemn its children to everlasting fire and putrefaction hold a justifiable belief?People who interpret the Bible literally are right?
The people who ordered the torture of the ‘detainees’ and those who carried it out held defensible opinions?
People who disbelieve evolution hold a compelling view?
People who believe that gay marriage will threaten them have valid points to make?
It seems so simple when I’m reading Seth or Michael and they say, “It’s all good. It’s all about learning.” From my easy chair, it’s not too hard to accept that prospect. But, when I go to put it into practice it twists and turns in my hand.
I know I don’t have the luxury of seeing all this from the Causal Plane [I wish I did] but———when all is said and done———it’s either true or it’s not. Right?
Your thoughts on this would be welcome. My head is swimming a bit right now.
22 comments:
I like where you went with this.
To me, I'm totally for allowing gay marriage, but I also see that it's about recognition from others. In a legal sense. We've progressed very far - not so long ago, the problem was actually having gay, open relationships, not just legal recognition of that.
Re: The Seth/Michael teachings, much of that speaks to me about the inner choices and powers we have. Most of us don't accept or allow the full range of desires - and so how this manifests is rage at someone else's desires, or doubting, or fighting and defensiveness, to name a few. There's always growth from it.
hi, Matthew--and thanx.
yeah-- to allow people who love each other to marry seems to me to be a no-brainer.
and, I know we began allowing bi-racial marriage only 50 years ago or so.
but, the new part for me is accepting that everyone's views are valid -- for the point on the circle where THEY ARE.
my views are correct for me -- theirs are correct for them.
as I said in the post, the general idea isn't hard to handle. but when I see Nazi Germany, Darfur, N. Korea, torture, radical religionists of any stripe--that's when I start having a hard time with it.
letting go of I'm-right-the-other-is-wrong is my next task, I think.
hey again, Matthew--
I went back and reread your comment and I think I see what you're saying:
that when people don't allow themselves to truly want what they want but squelch it, they get angry at those who ARE allowing their own wants and try to squelch THEIR wants, as well.
_is_ that what you're saying?
Yes, that was what I was trying to say. Feeling rather spacy now... an illness that afflicts me.
Tolerance is a good thing, even tolerance of intolerance. Including tolerance of one's own intolerance, knowing that there are things that just don't work for you and that it's fine to say it's unacceptable.
I actually hate the new age crap implying all-acceptance is a good thing. It is only if it accepts and allows complete non-acceptance. :-)
"I actually hate the new age crap implying all-acceptance is a good thing."
xxx
oh, yeah, I think I know what you mean. you put me in mind of my hippy days [yeah, like I ever left em :) ] when I made my pilgrimage to the Haight and I met one of the Jesus Firsters. she wanted me to come to meeting with her.
she was all 'sweetness and light' and my skin crawled. I didn't go to meeting.
Marriage is 1. uniting man and woman before God and the church
2. obtaining legal benefits
The way I see it, gays are not being denied the right to love or live with eachother, so they must have a motive for demanding marriage that is either 1. they want the church to sanctify their union
2. they want legal benefits
It is not a government issue to decide whether the church should or should not allow gay marriage, so the only relevant motive is 2. gay couples are being denied benefits from the government.
With the exception of hospital visitation rights, I see no justification in giving legal benefits to a gay couple, based on my understanding of the origin of such benefits: to financially assist the growth of a family, (having and providing for children)
Since a gay couple is fundamentally incapable of producing children, in my opinion it is unnecessary for them to recieve a financial break from the government. (I realize that not all married couples have children, but this doesn't justify giving more aid to couples who don't have children, nor does it justify taking all aid away in order to be "fair")
The way I see the big picture, the gay community is asking a nation (of which the majority of citizens are straight) for financial assistance. All ideals aside, the voting straight citizen has no obligation to support gay marriage.
{forgive me if I have overlooked any extra rights that come with marriage, as I have never been married and I haven't researched the subject}
As for the conflict between the All that Is- and the personal vision,
The way I come to peace with it is to understand that all "destructive" actions (genocide, hate crimes, etc.. ) are probably not carried out through highly-enlightened souls unless the actions hold behind them the purpose to teach and further the enlightenment of the effected..
And if the actions aren't carried out with the purpose to teach (which is more likely), valuable lessons are learned anyway and so these negative experiences have their place in the world, too. The younger souls who carry them out are not aware of Michael Teachings or the true nature of their existence, so they probably recognize no internal conflict between their hate and the loving-nature of the soul.
Older souls who are observing the hatred in the world might find it difficult to accept.. the Mature souls will be the group who will act in order to balance the negative energy, while the Old souls (on the brink of enlightenment) , with their almost complete internalization of the infinite, will not champion the more noble cause but will provide the world with peace through understanding. (besides- it may not be their time to entangle their soul in extra karma)
Thats just the way I see it : )
hello, jones and welcome to AtI--
the exception you made is a HUGE one.
imagine being gravely ill and your spouse is not allowed to visit you in the hospital. you are denied the support from the person you love. or, alternatively, your spouse is ill and you are not allowed to be at his/her side during that time of need.
beyond that there are other civil rights you did overlook:
1] one partner dies without a will. no matter what their wishes may have been, their property does not pass to their life partner.
2] the life partner does not have the right to decide whether to bury their deceased partner or cremate him or her.
3] if they have children [and they often do] unless those children have been legally adopted by the partner [which is illegal in some states] they will be taken from the parent who has been bringing them up and placed in foster care.
furthermore, you say they cannot have children. I have known numerous L&G couples who have had children [from previous marriages or through artificial insemination or (in the states where it _is_ legal) adoption]. so, you are saying we should deny those children financial help because their parents are L or G?
and, btw-- such children are not more likely to become gay than any other children are. virtually all LGBT people were born of straight parents, fwiw.
furthermore-- while the majority of the population may be straight, that does not give us the right to deny civil rights to the minority. our nation is founded on that basic precept. it is why there are 2 houses in Congress.
was it ok to deny civil rights to Blacks during the slave and Jim Crow years? they are, after all, the minority. do they not deserve the same rights as the majority?
jones--
I wanted to answer your second comment separately, too.
I agree that almost all violence/hate are practiced by infant and baby souls.
and, yes, from what I can tell I'm an old soul [and lazy/tired] so, you're right -- I'm not all that likely to do anything about it except donate money to causes I agree with.
the issue, for me, is the statement I placed at the top of my blog-- about the circle composed of dots.
it's so easy to dismiss people who I disagree with as 'wrong' in their views-- and the aha! moment I had yesterday was that they are NOT wrong for their maturation level.
aamof-- I've read that Baby souls don't perceive my moral values [circumstantial -- not black/white-either/or] as moral values at all. just as _I_ don't perceive the moral absolutes they espouse as correct.
but those moral absolutes ARE the right place for Baby souls to be -- even as circumstantial values are the right place for me to be.
so, I perceive MY current life-task as the acceptance of the fact that 'right vs. wrong' IS their proper perception at this moment -- even while I do not agree with it.
I'm a very visual person so, yesterday after I posted this piece, I printed up pics of G W Bush, Kim Yung Il, Hitler and a man who has obviously been tortured and is probably about to be executed and mounted them on the wall above my computer -- in order to remind myself that not everyone is on the same place in the circle as I am. and they _are_ in the right places for them to be at this moment in time.
and I don't have to like it. just accept it.
We may accept the reality of hatred and ignorance and intolerance without accepting the acts and thinking of those who exhibit these characteristics.
If we have the depth of compassion and wisdom, we can love the sinner but hate the sin. We must all make our stand on what's right and wrong in principle, while we need to understand the boundaries are often unclear. Killing other humans is wrong, but I think I would do it in self-defense, or to protect innocent life.
Fortunately most ethical decisions are much easier to make than that situation offers. For the most part, a basic sense of fairness is not too difficult to form, unless you are a hateful, willfully ignorant, and bigoted person.
hi, Dave--
what you said makes perfect sense from the human perspective.
I'm trying to look at it all from the perspective of the circle of dots. and that's where my head starts to spin.
maybe, being caught in the human condition, I just can't get there -- I'm gonna keep trying, though.
i think you got it right......
also... for Jones..... perhaps there is a more fundamental flaw in our thinking.
perhaps the problem is insufficient practice of separating Church and State.
perhaps marriage, as a union of two in the eyes of God has nothing to do with the State at all, and the State should attribute no level of legal contract or benefit to that union.... has no requirement to legitimize such a spiritual union.
perhaps the civil unions administered by the State should be handled just as the State handles corporate agreements of any kind. certainly the State doesn't deny incorporation to a company if it includes Gays.
as far as license to raise children, certainly if the State and private enterprise can raise children in an institutional environment where it cannot guarantee freedom from exposure to any number of social "anomalies", a gay couple in corporate civil union could be certified to adopt.
as far as Church recognition of Gay marriage.... there are Churches that will marry Gays.... so that is not the issue, is it?
Separation of Church and State is probably the wise maxim.
hi ghost dansing--wb, haven't seen you in a while.
cool vid.
agreed on the gay marriage thing. imnsho, the state should've stayed out of the whole thing. but, that ship has sailed.
I wish the state would get completely out of the shadchen business and issue civil certificates to everyone -- then the couples could make whatever religious arrangements they wanted to -- or not.
I've been to numerous gay weddings. but the state doesn't recognize the marriages-- and that's the rub.
xxx
acourse, gay marriage wasn't the point of this post. that was just the jumping-off point for me. it brought the bigger issue into focus.
that issue is the fact[?] that every person's point of view is correct for where s/he is on the circle. that's what I'm wrestling with right now.
it SEEMS, to me, to be what Seth and Michael are saying when they talk about all decisions being about learning. it's hard though, when I see decisions like Darfur or Hitler's Germany being made, to wrap my mind around that bigger picture.
one more for Jones--
aamof, I THINK, though I'm not positive, that those financial benefits you mentioned are given according to how many children are in the household.
I don't know how things are now-- I know the tax codes have changed since I was a child --but back then, the parents received a deduction of $2000.00 per child. not enough, even back in the 1950's, to make much of a difference-- but every little bit helped, I imagine.
anyway-- if that still holds true, then only gay couples with children would benefit from any tax breaks that have to do with having children, right?
I think there might be some small advantage to being married and filing a joint return. but that's not based on having children in the household.
fact is, no matter how much some people claim gays are asking for 'special rights' it simply isn't true. they're asking for the same rights the rest of us enjoy.
the fact that they are the minority shouldn't allow us to deny them those rights.
OK, here's one for you.
"I" would not be here if it were not for Hitler starting WWII. My father was in Paris where his talents for playing jazz were more appreciated and financially rewarding than in the US. Just as he was deciding to live in France, Germany invaded Poland.
That changed his plans and he moved back to the states and met my mother.
So I can call Hitler the worst of humans until I'm blue in the face, all while knowing I may well not even be here if it were not for his evil actions.
Although this circumstance is not that unique, it presents a strange perspective on the big picture from my little point of view.
It is interesting that millions of us living today may well owe our existance to the most horrible of all human events.
wow, Dave, what a paradox for you.
I imagine the fact is that lots of us wouldn't be who 'we' are if it weren't for that series of events. the baby boom might not have happened-- so 'I' might not be this particular person [or in this body, anyway] if the most evil event in human history hadn't taken place.
acourse, believing in reincarnation as I do, it's a moot point. if I was determined to get to the planet in 1947, I figure I would've found a way.
in fact, in another post, I wrote about how WWII didn't really cause the Baby Boom-- although it looks that way from this perspective.
and, who knows? how many of us might have had our lives cut short by the Holocaust or the war and have done an immediate u-turn to get back on-planet immediately and finish up that interrupted life?
still, your particular perspective must be interesting as all get-out. =)
nothing can change the shape of things to come...... much
hi ghost dansing--
another good one.
Michael speaks to that, fwiw.
it says we do change probabilities. and, of course, the closer we get to a specific event [WWII or the ending of apartheid to name two biggies] the less chance there is to change the outcome.
great conversation! The Marriage Equality website has a neat little side-by-side comparison of marriage rights vs. domestic partner rights. This is on the federal level, which is really where the tax and legal rights come to play big time.
and remember: opposite sex marriage is supported whether or not the couple ever has children. Many do not. "Marriage" has changed so drastically throughout the ages, I think in the 21st century it is well time to take another look at it - again.
Found you via Morning Martini. What a lovely space you have here!
hi TaraDharma-- welcome to AtI. and thank you for the kind words.
what is the url or the site you mentioned? I'd like to take a look at it.
for me, the gay marriage issue was what brought me to the realization that every soul's understanding of TRUTH is right for it and its own level of development.
xxx
still, I do wish the state would stay out of marriage completely. issue licenses, fine -- but issue them to everyone. and call it 'marriage' or 'civil union' or whatever you want to -- but let the name be the same, no matter who is marrying.
hi again TaraDharma--
I found the site.
it truly blows me away when people who want to deny gays marriage rights claim, 'They only want the monetary advantages.'
First-- there are plenty of other advantages married couples gain. are the nay-sayers saying gays don't want those?
and
Second-- my challenge to them is: if you're married, don't take the financial advantages. put your money where YOUR mouth is -- _then_ pass judgments on others for wanting to marry.
**pant, pant**
putting my soapbox away now.
Post a Comment