Paradise Under Your Feet — Page 190
190 compared to heterosexual populations. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), although the MSM ( ‘ men who have sex with men ’ ) group account for only 1% of the population, over 60% of syphilis cases in the USA occur in the homosexual community. Of course, perfectly good people may feel homosexuals should be allowed to marry, acting out of compassion for them and some legal scholars have carried the ball further, looking for support in their interpretation of constitutional laws. Even many Muslims may have no qualms about homosexuals forming secular, legal marriages since Islam has a separate Nikah system anyway, and in their view, these waters will never meet. From the Islamic perspective, the term “ gay marriage ” is actually an oxymoron anyway, since our faith is based on human nature and biology, where male and female gender are complementary; the reproductive systems are incomplete on their own, and when they join in the generative act, a united whole is achieved. In other words, the Islamic stance is a conjugal view of marriage grounded in reality based on how humans are constructed. Marriage therefore cannot be re-defined - and would be akin to trying to re-define food, say for instance, calling cardboard “ food ” and eating it and simply being able to eat cardboard does not make it food. Accepting homosexual unions as legal marriages should give some pause since the laws of any society represent who we are as a nation and what we cherish and value. As such we should be prepared to respond with common sense secular arguments supporting traditional marriage in addition to religious positions. As to why marriage should be preserved as male-female bonding is because marriage is a public institution, not a private one. However, one needs to reflect why the State got into the marriage business in the first place, declaring an interest in certain relationships, and regulating it vigorously. The fact is that since the beginning of