Thoughts in a Haystack

Al Mohler is happy ... sort of. A Tennessee state court judge has disagreed with the consensus of judicial rulings since United States v. Windsor that banning same-sex marriage is a violation of the equal protection and/or due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The issue in the Tennessee case was whether Tennessee had to consider and grant a divorce to two gay men legally married in Iowa. Al was particularly happy with this from the judge's decision:

Marriage can simply not be divorced from its traditional procreative purpose.

According to Al:

Christians looking at this judge's reasoning would recognize the very logical case that the judges [sic] made. A case based upon a rational objective understanding of what marriage is. Tying marriage not only to its historical structure but also to its recognized functions: procreation and the raising of children. And also the fact that as that stable, unifying institution of society, marriage rationally deserves the kind of protection that the state of Tennessee offered through this ban on same-sex marriage.

Al, of course, does not tell us how, rationally, banning same-sex marriage "protects" marriage or why the state still allows post-menopausal women, women who have had hysterectomies or men who have had vasectomies to marry if procreation is the rationale of the law.

In fact, Al goes on to demonstrate that his, and Christians in general, real objection is that they don't like some peoples' sexual and gender identities, by railing against a transgendered teacher and her elementary school, which is seeking to have its students understand and accept Rebecca (nee Robert) Reuter.

Al quotes Mary Hasson in some rag called The Federalist to the effect that:

It is unlikely that children are going to immediately buy into this. It's going to take some very sophisticated brain tampering to get them to accept what they're going to be told. Some kid, perhaps even the majority of children, when told that the individual for them who used to be Mr. Reuter is now Ms. Reuter is simply going to think, and perhaps even to say, "no he is not."

I seriously doubt that. Children are pretty accepting of change and different people. In fact, the process runs in the other direction. Rodgers and Hammerstein were right: