Gay Marriage
A couple of months ago I posted a rather somber assessment of what is coming for the evangelical church as it confronts the push towards gay marriage under the guise of “marriage equality.” I see that Professor Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College, who is also a Roman Catholic, has come to a similar conclusion:
If things keep drifting in the direction in which they are rapidly drifting now, Catholics and other Christians and Jews who adhere to the traditional Judeo-Christian moral teaching are going to be marginalized, then persecuted. I foresee a day when the tax-exempt status of the Roman Catholic Church will be yanked because it resolutely refuses to ordain women, because it condemns abortion as murder, and because it refuses to condone sex outside a marriage open to procreation. I foresee a day when priests will be fined or imprisoned for articulating in sermons and counseling sessions the teaching of the Church. I foresee a day when similar punishment will be visited on Protestants and Jews who assert the traditional teaching of their faiths. This is, after all, the sort of thing that happens in Canada now. How can one tolerate those who deny others’ rights?
It is also hard not to notice the number of Republican politicians who have now changed their mind in favor of gay marriage (e.g., Senator Rod Portman of Ohio and Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois).
Denny Burk links to a clip of an interview with the British actor Jeremy Irons that is worth watching simply for the reaction of the interviewer. Irons is concerned about some of the implications of “marriage equality.” For example, Irons muses, would not this mean that a father could marry his son? What is amazing is the reaction of the interviewer to Irons’s seemingly irrefutable logic. The said interviewer rather astoundingly announces that gay marriage could never lead to a father marrying his son since everyone agrees such an arrangement would be immoral. But, of course, if morality is determined by what society considers moral, there is no reason to believe that any “moral” opposition against father-son marriage will be allowed to stand in face of the superior morality of “marriage equality.”
I have been wondering out loud about this issue this week. If the Lord does not return soon, I am afraid that gay marriage will become a lot like the issue of divorce is within the church today: a non-issue for most. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been amazed at the number of professed Christians, many who are divorced, who have used Scripture to inform everyone that they are against gay marriage, yet ignore the context of the Scriptures in that the talk about Jesus stance against divorce. Seems like the hypocritical views of some, or maybe many, have clouded the issue. Now, we are sliding down that slippery slope.
I can’t do better than to quote Carl Trueman on this issue:
“Frankly, in a couple of years it will not matter how much urban ink you sport, how much fair trade coffee you drink, how many craft brews you can name, how much urban gibberish you spout, how many art house movies you can find that redeemer figure in, and how much money you divert from gospel preaching to social justice: maintaining biblical sexual ethics will be the equivalent in our culture of being a white supremacist.”