Marriage

I guess what I was originally going to write about today is going to have to wait, so I can get this on paper - er, screen - while it's fresh in my mind. I came across the following bit of dialogue in the book I'm currently reading (Blue Like Jazz), and it speaks volumes:

"[Marriage is] much more than I ever thought it would be. One of the ways God shows me He loves me is through Danielle, and one of the ways God shows Danielle He loves her is through me. And because she loves me, and teaches me that I am lovable, I can better interact with God."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other."

And it's true - it is very difficult for me to accept God's love, even after the extraordinary lengths He's gone to in an effort to make it as clear as possible. I've experienced love through friends and family members, to be sure, but nothing that contains all the dimensions described in the above dialogue.

All of us were designed for the deep companionship that's ideally found in marriage, and yet the Church (and possibly God too) would tell me that I can never have that, so tough luck. It's about so much more than just the sex, though that's certainly part of the equation. It's even about more than having someone to face life's trials together with. It's about experiencing God in a way that I, as a single person, never can. For that I'd be quite willing to set the sexual aspect aside and consider the possibility of a celibate partnership, if I thought I would be taken seriously by more than a small handful of people.

So why would it be sin for me to seek to fulfill God's design for my life through a relationship with someone I'm naturally capable of bonding with? Because God destroyed Sodom following an attempted rape? (Honestly, I can't believe anyone tries to apply Sodom to this debate with a straight face.) Because of other, conflicting aspects of our design? I've already demonstrated how selective the Church is when it comes to the design argument. I've also heard it argued that same-sex relationships simply don't work, but that's so obviously mistaken that it's hardly worth dignifying with the space it takes up on this page.

Oh, and to those who would point out that nothing's stopping me from going out and marrying a woman: Yeah, because that would really be fair to her. I already know that my feelings are less than nothing to anyone who would make that argument, but you could at least think about the other person who would have to suffer the consequences of my self-deception.