No Christian principle, or liberal philosophy can justify the ban on gay marriage. One of the most important principles born from Illuminism and Liberalism requires that everyone should be free to do what he want until he don't harms others. This basically was already implicit in Christianity: love your neighbor as yourself. How can you love your neighbor and yet prohibit him from doing what he want? You cannot. This principle is implicit also in the idea of God, who according to all religions give man free will. But men for millennia have limited the freedom of fellow human beings. Especially those that are perceived as different. For example, homosexuals.
What is the Christian, liberal or philosophical justification for banning gay marriage? None. Let's assume that a person does not want to marry someone of the same sex. As he wish. But two men or two women marrying, people he don't even knows and he will never see, can damage him in any way? Obviously not. Yet the civil and liberal Christian West still prohibits gay marriage. In Italy it is forbidden to have even the slightest recognition of civil cohabitation, so that the proposal to introduce it sparked, of course, a sudden Catholic political commitment (or presumed such) that would be worthy of better causes.
And in the West things are also (relatively) good for homosexuals, because at least they are no longer persecuted by the law as it was until the 70. Until a few years ago. In three quarters of the world being gay is still considered a crime punishable by imprisonment or death. And the Catholic Church has recently opposed the UN directive that wished to condemn the world persecution of homosexuals.
Why this happens? Why would someone who isn't gay should give a damn if someone else is? Why prevent someone from being what it is if he do not harm anyone in any way? The answer to this question lies in the fact that our society has never fully become neither Christian nor entirely liberal. It has large and heavy wastes from the oldest and worse cultures, that believed women to be inferior beings, effeminates to be killed on the spot and the real men only those capable of slain someone with a knife. A type of culture of which there are large tracks in some books of the Old Testament. A type of culture that has produced such things as Nazism. The ban on gay marriage has no justification nor liberal nor Christian. But has reactionary and conformist justifications. The culture that prohibits gay marriage simply do not accept that gays exist. It would like them dead, quartered on the public square as it was sometimes used in medieval times, but does not have the courage to say so, and so try to hinder their lives in every way possible.
This culture is an integral part of the main religions in the world, although in theory their principles on the chart are love and respect for others. This culture is an integral part of nearly all the conservative parties from the West, although on paper they are great supporters of freedom. But this culture will be defeated. The gay marriage is already possible in Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Spain, Norway and Sweden. Civil unions are possible throughout the rest of Western Europe, except Ireland, Italy and Greece, suffocated by the political power of their churches. Although many U.S. states have banned gay marriage, it is permitted in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and since yesterday even in Iowa, the first of the central states to do so. Civil unions are allowed in Vermont, New Hampshire and New Jersey, soon to pass laws that will allow the real marriage, and similar laws exist in California, Oregon, Washington, District of Columbia, Hawaii and Maine. There are large parts of the West where public opinion has ceased to deny the fact that homosexuals exist. Because they exist, they must have the right to marry based on the founding principles of our democracies and our civilization. The "traditional family" man-woman has nothing to do with this. If you are a heterosexual man you may marry a woman. If you're a gay man you may marry a man. Point, there aren't other discourses to be done about this. You don't want to be homosexual? nobody has ever dreamed of forcing you to be. So why are there still so many people who do not accept the fact that homosexuals exist?
Why in 2009, after more than two thousand years of Christianity and some 200 years after the first liberal revolutions, we must still defend the principle that everyone should be free to live how he wants if he don't hurts others?
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