Maggie’s Anti-Biblical Marriage

Timothy Kincaid

October 2nd, 2009

gallagherMaggie Gallagher, as the head of the National Organization for Marriage, is quite fond of extolling the virtues of “traditional marriage.” And, for those uncertain as to what “traditional” means, her protege Carrie Prejean, lets us know that it is marriage which is “biblically correct.”

Well, when I was growing up in a “biblically correct” family, one of the scriptures often quoted to Christian kids of dating age was 2 Corinthians 6:14

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?

And lest any kids have any uncertainty about the application of that scripture or the meaning of “unequally yoked”, they were told in no uncertain terms that they were to only date other Christian kids. Marrying a non-Christian would be tragic.

It’s un-Biblical!
It’s un-traditional!
It’s Maggie’s marriage!

It turns out that for the last 17 years, Maggie has been married to Raman Srivastav, who just happens to be Hindu. Oh, my.

Well I guess we now know why Maggie un-traditionally uses her maiden name and why her husband is kept invisible.

Now I have no problem with Maggie being married to a person of any faith or no faith at all. But, then again, I don’t demand that marriage laws in this country be based on the Christian Bible.

(hat tip Bilerico)

Edwin

October 2nd, 2009

Ouch!! Caught in her own trap..For someone who supposed knows the bible she must have skipped that part. Doesn’t it also say she shall take the husbands name?
But I might be wrong on that part.
Now days you never know if it is ( Smith-Jones) or just Smith or Jones the married name!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dan

October 2nd, 2009

Actually in most religions marrying outside of the religion is encouraged as long as the outsider converts. Muslims in particular are big on this concept.

Bose

October 2nd, 2009

I found this the most interesting quote:

I’ve been exposed to a lot of different prayers, what with a New Age mom, nonreligious siblings, my own Catholic faith, a Buddhist sister-in-law, and a whole pack of Hindu relations (including my husband). I can’t imagine taking offense because they pray to God in their own way, not mine.

So, for Maggie, holiday celebrations can include agnostics and atheists, Buddhists and Catholics. She takes no offense that loved ones pray their own way. She’s also said that gay couples are not the problem.

In the midst of all these wonderfully diverse faiths, traditions, ethnic backgrounds, and life choices, civil marriage between two men or two women has magical superpowers to devalue and pollute what is good and life-giving.

I hadn’t understood until today that Maggie identifies as a former unwed mother, so her marriage created a blended family. In a NYTimes column during the hub-bub over Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown, she told unwed mothers to prepare for many nights when their children would cry themselves to sleep because of their unloving father.

It adds up to an intriguing personal profile — single mom for at least a decade, pining for marriage and a father for her child; person of deep Catholic faith raised by a now New Age mom; marriage to a Hindu man while pursuing a career among folks who don’t value religious diversity.

Last but not least, the person who cherishes, if not idolizes, marriage, and who celebrates diverse faith, stops abruptly to draw a line: All of the good stuff from marriage is for me and my family, she seems to say — sharing it equally with all families would only diminish it for me and mine.

I don’t get it.

BobN

October 2nd, 2009

This is small potatoes. Maggie’s really, really big sin is “depriving her son of a father” (that’s Maggie-speak for having a child out of wedlock and refusing, yes, REFUSING, to marry the child’s father).

me again

October 2nd, 2009

Traditional marriage…

http://www.youtube.com/v/OFkeKKszXTw

David C.

October 2nd, 2009

So, let me get this straight: all her vitriol and attacks against gay people result from Maggie having screwed up her own life? Is her heart so jealously black that she is unable to see the harm she does to the very thing she seems unable to get right according to her own internal sense of normalcy?

Maybe it would be better for all concerned if Maggie worked out her own issues instead of wasting millions lying and fear-mongering to prevent the creation of healthy LGBT marriages. She really needs to get into a more legitimate line of work to support her family instead of acting as a market maker for an industry of hate.

nikko

October 2nd, 2009

Hypocrite! This is outrageous! Why hasn’t this been known already?!

tavdy79

October 3rd, 2009

Until a minute ago I genuinely couldn’t imagine my opinion of Maggie Gallagher getting any lower.

It just did.

David C. – she doesn’t have a heart, black or otherwise. If she did she wouldn’t be willing to act with such a complete lack of compassion or ethics in her obsessive fight to deny loving couples the same rights that she is evidently so wilfully abusing.

John Ozed

October 3rd, 2009

Namaste Maggasaurus!

Ephilei

October 3rd, 2009

@Bose It makes sense that a person obsesses over something she does not have. Gallagher deals with her marital unhappiness by idolizing traditional marriage. “If only I had traditional marriage, my life would be perfect.” Those who are traditionally married know by experience that no marriage perfects your happiness.

@Dan Yes, but in Islam it’s a sexist view. Muslim men can marry non-Muslims because it is expected they have the power to convert their wives. Muslim women cannot.

David C.

October 3rd, 2009

@ tavdy79: Then that would make her a sociopath and her behavior is a danger to herself, her family, and society. She should seek care immediately. Perhaps an intervention by a concerned family member will get her the psychological counseling she so desperately needs.

Piper

October 3rd, 2009

Ok, I’m of two mind on this.
1. By discussing this we are getting into personal lives of our opponents, They’ve accused “homosexual activists” of doing this before. Her husband’s religion is really none of our business.

2. On the other hand as a public figure who is trying to push her religious views of Marriage onto the rest of America she is blatantly ignoring a part of the Bible. (AS someone who believes in the Bible, but not that it was literal, I really don’t care) but if she’s going to state that the Bible is against same-sex marriage then she needs to follow the other tenets herself.

Either way, while this may be a reason for us to take her arguments even less seriously in private, but let’s not try to make a huge deal of this, it’ll paint her as a victim, which is what we DON’T need

werdna

October 5th, 2009

This post is a cheap shot. How long have you been following Ms. Gallagher, Timothy? You should know that while they make a lot of noise about threats to people’s religious liberties, she and her organizations do their best to avoid basing their anti-marriage equality arguments on religious grounds.

If you want to find hypocrisy in her interfaith marriage, show us an example of her making an argument that marriages should be “biblically correct,” not an example of someone else making that claim. Especially when your example is someone that NOM has publicly tried to distance itself from!

It’s possible that you may be able to find an example of her making such an argument, but in the absence of such evidence, your snark just seems petty and unseemly.

Richard Rush

October 5th, 2009

werdna wrote:

This post is a cheap shot. How long have you been following Ms. Gallagher, Timothy? You should know that while they make a lot of noise about threats to people’s religious liberties, she and her organizations do their best to avoid basing their anti-marriage equality arguments on religious grounds.

The avoidance of “religious grounds” is only for political necessity. Maine is one of the least religious states in the US, as I understand. And even beyond Maine, but outside of the Bible-Belt, the “religious grounds” argument is not a political winner.

Why did the Christian Civic League of Maine change their name to the Maine Family Policy Council? I think it’s because the word “Christian” is a political negative.

Virtually all organized persecution of gays in the US is Christian-based. “Religious grounds” rhetoric seems prevalent in private communications intended to rally their people to maintain the anti-gay crusade, but they are careful to avoid it in communication directed toward others.

CPT_Doom

October 5th, 2009

Whatever we feel about Maggie’s “marriage,” the point is that there are many among her fellow travelers who consider her husband and in-laws to be pagans, outside the bounds of “traditional morality” and condemned to Hell for their refusal to follow the “one, true church.” In addition, many of her fellow travelers consider her marriage immoral and unBiblical because it is interfaith.

I therefore see no problem to judge her marriage in the same way she judges our marriages, as a sin. Maggie sure doesn’t care about the individual circumstances of our relationships; they must all be condemned for arbitrary, religious reasons. Turnabout is fair play.

More importantly, when she starts off on how governmental recognition of same-sex relationships would require “people of faith” to compromise their principles to recognize us as married, her marriage is more than fair game. After all, if Maggie were hospitalized in a Catholic institution, that hospital would be forced, under current civil law, to recognize her pagan sex partner as a “husband” even though their marriage is not fully recognized by the Catholic church – it may not even be blessed by the church (that decision is really up to the individual pastor when she got married).

werdna

October 5th, 2009

So you’re saying Ms. Gallagher is a hypocrite for marrying outside her religion because it conflicts with her secret belief that marriages should strictly adhere to biblical principles–a belief which she keeps secret for political expedience?

To me her interfaith marriage actually seems perfectly consistent with her professed views about marriage. It’s only inconsistent with beliefs that others here claim she has but doesn’t reveal publicly.

Let’s lay into her for the bald-faced lies, for her attempts to fund fake grass roots campaigns, for the money she took from the Bush administration to transmit propaganda in her syndicated work, and on and on. But let’s not waste time feeding her victim complex with distorted smears like this.

Priya Lynn

October 5th, 2009

Cpt_Doom is right, Maggie whines all the time about how equal marriage would be an unfair imposition on people of faith. She brought up the idea that religion trumps equal rights, her un-biblical marriage is fair game.

CPT_Doom

October 5th, 2009

Werdna, the point is not whether Maggie herself feels her marriage is unBiblical. The point is that she is living an “immoral lifestyle choice” according to a good number of her own colleagues. Why is she allowed to live a lifestyle at odds with her colleagues’ religious lifestyle choices, but GLBTs cannot?

Her marriage only serves to illustrate the point that every single one of us lives a lifestyle that is immoral according to some of our neighbors – that is why we don’t use arbitrary notions of “morality” to set social policy, at least when we aren’t talking about GLBT people, of course.

Timothy

October 5th, 2009

Every one interprets the bible differently. As it is not to be read as a book. The true believers that have the faith are guided through the Bible by their faith. Not the morals and laws that man has imposed on man in the name of God. Religion in general is mans God and their laws have been made to satisfy the fears of man and are constantly updated so that man does not fear his death.

Robert Goodman

October 5th, 2009

Dear Werdna-

Ms. Gallagher, as part of a panel on the Dr. Phil Show, participated very clearly in making the connection between “traditional marriage” and the Bible (and against Marriage Equality) several days after Prop 8 passed in California.

Robert Goodman

October 5th, 2009

Ms. Gallagher also violated strict Biblical teachings against pre-marital sex.

palerobber

October 5th, 2009

awesome.

unfortunely this new information will not give the marriage bigots pause since they’re entirely comfortable with the many hypocracies of their position.

can we expect anything different in a culture where christians, whether liberal or conservative, freely pick and choose which doctrines and scriptures they wish to follow and which to ignore?

to quote jesus / jack black:
the bible says a lot of things

Donna

October 7th, 2009

Thanks for covering this.

I think the main point is being missed. The fact Maggie’s husband is Hindu is irrelevant. However, the fact that she has aligned herself with traditonal values advocates who abhor her marital choice is relevant. Tony Perkins, for example, freaked when the first Hindu prayer was read in the Senate http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=LH07G02&f=WA07G24

No one can legitimately challenge the fact that the God America refers to in the pledge, our national motto, and other places is the monotheistic God of the Jewish and Christian faith. There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of the Hindu faith. I seriously doubt that Americans want to change the motto, “In God we Trust, which Congress adopted in 1955, to, “In gods we Trust.” That is essentially what the United States Senate did today.

Maggie refers to people of this mindset as

People who choose to be offended by others’ diverse attempts to gain the favor of the divine, simply because they pray differently or not at all, should be exposed for the illiberal, intolerant, small-minded bigots they are

Well, these “bigots” are Maggie’s supporters from whom she has been able to acheive fame and power. These “bigots” also donate gobs of money to her National Organization for Marriage.

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