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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)
What's something that you were wrong about?
I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.
Scott, as always, says it best:
In any case, what were you wrong about?
I was wrong about God. Grew up atheist, now I am a firm believer in the trinity as well as the power of prayer. That changed my view on other political/cultural topics too, like abortion (formerly was for it in certain circumstances, now against it), race (formerly pretty racist, now I see that all people have inherent moral value), gay marriage (formerly for it, now against it), taxation (formerly against it, now for it especially on the rich—render to Caesar and all). The best policy for society is twofold: love God and love your neighbor.
I'm curious, as a fellow Christian, how you're able to reconcile loving God and loving your neighbor with being against gay marriage. I don't mean this in a confrontational or hostile way, at all. I'm genuinely intrigued.
Sodomy is a horrible sin and allowing it’s official sanction will convince more people to experiment, leading to their own damnation.
That doesn’t mean we should break out the construction cranes to rid ourselves of them. But from a Christian paternalist perspective a duty of the government is to discourage gay sex.
When you say that sodomy is a sin, why do you say that? Because the Bible says so? Or because you have some logical arguments? I think that "the Bible says so" is worthless as a moral argument.
I hope you understand why Christian paternalism would have a different attitude towards the Bible?
But in any case, gay couplings are incapable of performing the action that we can tell their organs are meant to do- the telos of the sexual act is PIV. It is quite trivially obvious from the design of the relevant anatomy that any natural law morals have to condemn sodomical acts; the consequences of routine sodomy make this doubly obvious. To say nothing that the sexes are different and meant to cooperate; the usual complaints about lesbian dating or the observed behavior of the gay male community make it clear that what they are missing is the opposite sex. The sexes complement each other not just in the design of their bodies but in their essential temperaments and inclinations, and a well ordered person is designed to seek out this complementarity through bonding with the opposite sex. Attempts to engage in the sexual act without this complementary bonding are trainwrecks, heterosexual sex without a unitive bonding experience is the basis for the legions of issues with modern heterosexual dating as criticized by almost literally everyone. Finally, we can tell that sex is meant to make babies, both from desire(contraceptors often report a drop in libido, women are both most attractive and most interested in sex during the most fertile time) and from results- the action these organs are clearly designed for makes babies without specific intervention to make it not do that. Homosexual sex can’t make babies inherently.
The normative sexual experience and telos for human sexual desires is clearly heterosexual, committed, fecund, and PIV. Everything about the act and everything involved in it tells us this. Moving too far from the norm and ideal for something important and public is probably a sin, even when the health consequences of sodomy or general bad behavior in the gay community are left out. Those are simply the nails in the coffin.
And sex is important and it is public. If you have sex with your coworkers all of your other coworkers will gossip about it and not feel bad about it. The same is not true for grabbing lunch- unless, that is, your having lunch is perceived as starting up the kind of relationship which usually leads to sex! Thinking of sex as a toy or mere private act is a childish mistake that one could only make having no familiarity with its social consequences.
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