Andrew Cuomo, Same-Sex Marriage, and Stigmatization

Stigmatization with words is merely a prelude for victimization with actions. Name calling may not hurt right now, but is does lead to “sticks and stones.” The continual assault of the State and Media against Christianity has paved the way for victimization. When New York State governor Andrew Cuomo was asked if he found any arguments against same-sex marriage (SSM) compelling, he answered,

• “None,” he said. “There is no answer from the opposition. There really isn’t. Ultimately, it’s, ‘I want to discriminate.’ And that’s anti-New York. It’s anti-American.”

Ed Mechmann of the Archdiocese of New York’s Family Life Office was incredulous and called Cuomo’s remarks,

• “chilling” that the state’s top official would declare such a large segment of the population as “political pariahs.” He warned Catholics of an “impending persecution,” saying that Cuomo has effectively “declared us to be enemies of the state and nation.”

• “In reality, Mr. Cuomo doesn’t just disagree with our arguments, he denies their existence,” said Mechmann on the archdiocese’s blog. “He clearly believes that they are pernicious, beyond the pale of proper discourse, and motivated only by hatred.”

• “That is why he has now declared that we are ‘anti-American’ — that is to say, enemies of our nation,” he continued. “This is legitimately frightening. We all know what the power of the state can do to its enemies,” he added.

Indeed, it is one thing to disagree with the opposition. It’s another to defame them as discriminatory and “anti-American.” I guess that would mean that America had been anti-American up to just a few decades ago, and we then magically found our true American identity. What insanity!

Perhaps even worse is the hypocrisy. Gay marriage is defended by the rationale that it’s unconstitutional to discriminate and stigmatize. However, many of the supporters of SSM show little hesitation about stigmatizing their opposition as “homophobes” and “bigots.” And sadly, it seems that our centers of Power and Influence are content to not raise their voices against this hypocrisy. Where will this hypocrisy lead?

• In July, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan warned that, if experience in other jurisdictions was any indication, believers in the traditional family “will soon be harassed, threatened, and hauled into court for their conviction.” Christians in the UK, Canada, and elsewhere have lost their jobs, been dragged through lengthy “human rights” proceedings, and faced steep fines for questioning the dangerous homosexual lifestyle, declining to facilitate gay “marriages,” or even failing to acknowledge “gay pride” events.

Meanwhile, the dangers of homosexuality and its forceful social promotion are unmistakably obvious:

1. The stats reveal the frightening costs – medically, psychologically, and in terms of substance abuse and suicide.

2. History has ruled decisively against this practice. Although tried in many cultures, it has never persisted in any salutary sense.

3. The world religions have all tried it and have forbidden it.

There seems to be many good reasons to remain reflective about SSM’s social promotion. John J. Davis (Evangelical Ethics) writes of the work of British Anthropologist, J.D. Unwin:

• After a comprehensive study of both Western and non-Western cultures throughout human history, Unwin concluded that the record of mankind “does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it had been absolutely [heterosexually] monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.” Unwin observed that a society’s adoption and maintenance of heterosexual monogamy as a social standard “has preceded all manifestations of social energy, whether that energy be reflected in conquest, in art and sciences, in extension of the social vision, or in the substitution of monotheism for polytheism.” (p. 116)

The Apostle Paul had fittingly warned:

• Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. (1 Cor. 6:18-19)

We are not our own, and sexual promiscuity not only affects us, but also our families, communities and society. Sadly, it might take decades and many lives before Cuomo can begin to see that it’s not a matter of, “I want to discriminate.”