Burden the Barren Bear

What of the childless fundy couples?

It must certainly be terrible to be a homosexual man or woman in a church in which the preacher or priest condemns you to hell. How awful it must be too to be a straight, married couple who cannot or chooses not to have children. You also are unnatural and lumped in with the hellbent homos.

Imagine sitting in the pew hearing that you are excluded from the love of your God, from the rituals of your church, and from the fellowship of your congregants. It may be a matter of biology, but you are not worthy because you have not procreated according to God's plan.

This past year was as bad or perhaps worst for such slurs. Following Massachusetts permitting same-sex marriages, the clerics who claim to speak directly for their God and the professional lobbyists in the same track have railed against married homosexual couples.

Only the idiotic and those who believe in miraculous asexual human reproduction could suppose that a pair of men or a pair of women could procreate unaided. Then again, what of the many childless heterosexual couples? What of those who try IVF and fail, or those who adopt, or those who just don't want kids?

Of course that is equally true with millions of straight couples. We humans are akin to cars in that way. We have hundreds upon hundreds of essential systems. The smallest malfuction or malformation can prevent us from realizing our full potential in one aspect or another.

Yet, to hear James Dobson, Gilbert Thompson and other hatemongers tell it, those incapable or unwilling to fulfill a specific verse of Genesis (1:28) are doomed and godless. How dreadful that must be to sit as a childless couple in a fundy church, particularly if you have tried your best, or should be say your damnedest.

We have to assume likewise that straight marrieds who adopt are failures before the Lord too, as the haters say of same-sex couples. One must wonder whether it is better for the tots to sit in foster care or orphanages with only each other instead of being reared by a pair of homosexuals or a barren straight couple.

Biblical note: Genesis 1:27-28 in the New International Version reads,

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

There you are, the evangelical heterosexual married, childless and therefore a failure to God. Well, at the very least you have clearance to have at each other sexually without fear. Sex is not supposed to be for pleasure, but if you are giving it your best Genesis 1:28 try, who can blame you for turning off the TV and turning on each other?

Ah, only the godless could ask how dare these pompous pulpit buffoons berate others. The fraternity of fundy ministers is filled with adulterers, with those who cruise gay men and boys, with those who rent prostitutes, with those who father illegitimate children. But they have met their own conditions, they have certainly procreated and they have at least one family with a mom and a dad.

So, is the next step for them to assert that straight marriages that produce no offspring are invalid, to put quote marks around their marriages? Are those who choose not to have children damned? Are the infertile cursed? Are the couples who adopt likewise unworthy of God's love and protection, be they straight or that other thing?

Shakespearean note: Antonio in the Merchant of Venice said:

Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!