Is it really so hard to imagine Jesus supporting same sex marriage?

In an Op-Ed in the New York Times last week, Louisiana Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal writes that he is "holding firm against gay marriage."

If I were a cartoonist, I would draw an exaggerated, boy-like image of Jindal, wearing tiny wooden shoes and standing against a crumbling, leaky dike with his fingers plugging up one or two of the many holes. I would label the water behind the dike as "The unstoppable force of basic human decency and justice" and label the dike as "bigotry based upon a cherry-picked section of a religious text that also forbids working on Sunday, trimming your beard, and mixing clothing fabrics."

If you're a cartoonist and are inclined to sketch this proposed image, I would appreciate it and be more than happy to post it here. 

If I were a historian, I would add Jindal's Op-Ed to my next textbook so future generations could learn about what a bigoted jackass this man and politicians like him were. 

If I were Jindal's friend, I would tell him to stop acting like a douchebag. Then I would probably stop calling. 

But I am none of these things. I am not even a religious person, though I have read The Bible from cover to cover three times. I am a reluctant atheist. I want to believe in a benevolent God and a glorious afterlife but have yet to find the faith to do so.

Still, I was raised in the Christian faith and have read and studied The Bible and enough to ask this simple question:

Is it really that hard to imagine Jesus supporting gay marriage? 

Because if you've actually read the first four books of the New Testament, it's really not.

Imagine: Two women appear in Galilee, declaring their unwavering love for each other and asking Jesus to marry them.

Do people like Jindal really think Jesus would say no? Do they really believe that Jesus would condemn these two women? Refuse them access to the same institution of marriage that heterosexual people enjoy? Kill them as The Bible demands?

If this is what Jindal and other same sex marriage opponents believe, they don't know Jesus like I do. I may not possess the faith to believe that Jesus was the son of God, but I believe the man existed and that he was a good man. I am confident that if Jesus appeared on the Earth today, he would support gay marriage.

I suspect that he would also be more than willing to trim his beard, wear a cotton blend, and enjoy a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark, even if it meant supporting work on the Sabbath. 

I have no doubt in my mind at all.