By now, any number of people are familiar with Misty’s paper defending same-sex marriage. I think most people understand that she wasn’t seeking status for such marriages in the church. She was proposing a civil remedy. Then again, maybe I’m overly optimistic about what people do and don’t understand. In any event, the paper provoked an uproar in Reformed circles and gave rise to many responses, a lot of them quite vicious.
Why?
Many would say the answer is obvious. They don’t even understand why I’m asking why. They would say the Scriptures make it clear that gay marriage is wrong wrong wrongity wrong wrong wrong (and if I’ve misrepresented the position by not throwing enough “wrong”s in there, I apologize). Therefore, civil government cannot rightly allow it.
There’s a massive assumption in that “therefore”.
If the Bible defines something as sin, does that automatically mean the State cannot permit or regulate the activity? I trust everyone immediately sees the absurdity of such a position. But in case my optimism is once again clouding my view of reality, let’s take a look at the problem.
Specifically, let’s look at an example that may prove instructive in the same-sex marriage discussion–building permits. May the civil government issue a building permit for a mosque? A synagogue? A Roman Catholic church that will include a statue of Mary for people to bow down to? Scripture defines idolatry and false religion as serious sins. These sins get a lot more Biblical attention than same-sex couples. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say the civil government may rightly issue permits for such buildings. Christians ought to support and protect the civil rights of Muslims to build mosques, Jews synagogues, and Roman Catholics churches.
I’ll go further out on a limb and predict I’m not going to get a lot of hate mail for taking that stance. I probably won’t even get my husband kicked out of the church. (Um. If you don’t know the context to that joke, just move along.) Yet I just openly solicited Christian support for false religion and idolatry. Do Christians not worry about those sins as much as they do about homosexuality?
Seriously. Why am I allowed to support building permits for idolaters, but Misty isn’t allowed to support marriage licenses for gays?
Now some people will respond that the issues of same-sex marriage and idolatry are different. I’ll even grant that up to a point. But this still doesn’t explain the furor that erupted against Misty’s view.
I’ve heard some suggest that the State doesn’t regulate our duty to God, only our duty to our neighbor. Let’s concede that distinction at least for the sake of argument. And let’s further pretend that this theological distinction fully accounts for conservative Christian calmness at the thought of worshiping Jews versus their hysteria at the thought of married gays.
If we make this distinction, then marriage is within the State’s purview and worship isn’t. Civil government need not prohibit sins of worship and may cheerfully regulate false religion by granting building permits, providing roads that service idolatrous facilities, etc. etc. But the government under this theory may and must prohibit marital sins and issue permits for right marriages only. It’s simple.
Or is it?
Let’s think a little further. At the very least, this means the state needs to outlaw adultery and prohibit divorce except in the case of sexual immorality. (Also, divorce where an unbeliever leaves a believer would not be contested. We won’t go down this rabbit trail, but it helps point out the absurdity of attempting to govern by “Biblical” law.) Now a lot of conservative Christians who read this will be unperturbed. “That’s fine,” they’ll say. “Outlaw adultery. Prohibit divorce except in the case of sexual immorality. We’re cool with that. Bring it on.”
Ok, let’s explore that.
First, why aren’t Reformed and evangelicals up in arms over these issues? Why aren’t they enraged to the point of hysteria that some of their elected representatives are divorced or have committed adultery or both? How can they practically canonize Ronald Reagan while refusing to vote for a gay candidate on “moral” grounds?
Why aren’t conservative Christians clamoring for anti-divorce laws and harsh sanctions against adultery? They may claim they’d like to see such laws, but look at their actions. The only thing that’s got them screaming is same-sex marriage. The only thing they really oppose is something that doesn’t even tempt them. How are gays supposed to take us seriously when we demonize them and give our own kind a free pass?
Second, consider this issue of divorce. Jesus said it’s not permissible to divorce except in the case of sexual immorality (Matthew 5:31,32). Should the state hold its citizens to that standard? Must it? What if I said no? What if I said people are inclined to divorce and laws against divorce won’t stop them? So the State may as well regulate the process. Would that suggestion unleash an avalanche of vicious emails? Would I get called a heretic? Maybe, though I doubt it. Most conservative Christians wouldn’t be incredibly upset by my attack on the institution of marriage (if I may borrow terms ironically from the other debate). Some wouldn’t be upset at all. They might even agree.
Not to drop names, but if I took such a position, I would only be advocating what God did under Moses. When God set up a government under Moses, He lowered his standards for marriage. That’s right. If you don’t believe me, listen to Jesus:
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
The Pharisees are asking about the command of God in Deuteronomy allowing a man to to leave his wife by writing a certificate of divorce. Jesus replies by saying that this permission was given because of their hardness of heart. God knew they were a stiff-necked people and would be inclined to divorce. Rather than prohibit divorce outright, he regulated the process.
But as Jesus points out, this is not the creational norm for marriage. As God created marriage, he intended it to be a permanent bond between a man and a woman. How dare a civil magistrate lower that standard? Well, when the civil magistrate is God, I guess we have to let things slide. Not only did the sin of divorce go unpunished under his theocratic rule, the sin was permitted and regulated without comment.
Wow.
Even in the theocracy, God watered down the institution of marriage in the interests of civil order. We’re talking Israel, a holy people set apart to God. Even there God permitted and regulated divorce.
Do you see where this is going?
Is it perhaps possible that, given the current political and social situation in the US, it would be better to permit and regulate gay marriage than to ignore it?
Remember, you can’t make the argument that civil government can’t permit and regulate anything sinful. We’ve shown that to be false. And you can’t make the argument that with the institution of marriage, at least, civil government can’t permit any deviation from the creational norm. The institution of marriage is the one thing where we know definitively that God himself once lowered the standard when setting up a government. If that makes you uncomfortable, take it up with him. But I’d suggest you not try the old “holier than thou” stance when you do so.
So if you’re going to speak against State regulation of gay marriage, you’ll have to come up with a different argument. More important, can you see that it’s possible to support governmental regulation of gay marriage without being a heretic or compromising with sin? You don’t have to agree with Misty’s view to agree she’s not sinning or committing heresy by suggesting it.
Where do I stand? I don’t know. The older I get, the more I realize I’m a terrible political theorist. But I’m a good exegete and theologian. So I stick with those strengths. And speaking from those strengths, I’m saying that Scripture does not offer us much in the way of political theory. What it does offer does not prohibit a civil government from permitting and regulating gay marriage.
If the US legalized gay marriage tomorrow, it wouldn’t bother me at all. I might even breathe a sigh of relief. It would put the believers in “Christian America” one step farther from their terrifying goal. That’s got to be worth something.
6 December 2006 at 9:45 am
Very nicely done, Bill. The frothing at the mouth so many “conservative” Christians do betrays a few things, in my opinion. While I come down on very conservative views about abortion, why it’s such a “big deal” to them I do not grasp. While I tend to do the same about gay marriage, I simply do not understand the veracity of Evangelicals. The only thing I come up with is that they have linked the Gospel up to their cultural values. The froth they have for these things ought to be directed toward the Gospel. one thing I have asked is why the Evangelical wing of wider Protestantism allows so very well for personal choices like birth control (something other Christians who are called Roman Catholics [BTW, your post betrays some Evangelical assumptions that seem to suggest “RC’s are not Christians” somehow, to which I furl my brow] have stridently different views and do not allow for conscience), yet are absolutely rigid when it comes to their own particular agendas.
For my part, I am very sympathetic to most of what Misty says in her general outlook.
However, here is where I am at in general: first, I consider myself a Reformed confessionalist; I take great, great issue with those who see this tradition as somehow mostly consistent with Evangelicalism. I used to be an Evangelical and was given the nuts and bolts to move out of it via the works of Horton et. al. and into the Reformed faith. Evangelicalism is NOT Reformed and it certainly is not confessional. In the last several years or so I have progressed via the works of DG Hart into what I consider a much more developed Reformed confessionalism (see his book Lost Soul of American Protestantism). I see things the way Hart does, which I know is a relative minority. When I read him it is much like when I read Horton years ago: someone who thinks just like me! Anyway, that’s the first thing. The second is built around more Hartian work. I have come to embrace the two-kingdom view and find his latest work called “A Secular faith” to be yet another articulation of how I also see things broadly speaking. I reject all forms of theonomy and tranformationalism. I have read most of what lee Irons has put down as well. Van Drunen’s little monograph on natural law is great, too. One of Hart’s most crucial points is that there ought to “a radical intolerance for things cultic and a radical tolerance for things cultural…there are various ways to go about solving cultural problems.”
Anyway, with that thumbnail sketch I would have to say this. While I like a lot of what folks like Misty (and you) have to say I have to draw a line. When Misty says things like (and I roughly paraphrase here) “the Church ought to be fighting for the rights of gays to marry,” I cringe. And it is not because I have something against gays or out of something akin to an Evangelical form of homophobia or because I think gays should be relegated to some sort of fixed second-class status; having been reared in secularism I have no natural template for disdain and disgust for homosexuals. Rather I have great trouble out of my radical two-kingdom devotions. The Church is about cultic endeavor and the state is about cultural endeavor. It ought to be left up to Christian liberty and conscience just what an individual decides. For my part, I think Christians should be allowed to have whatever political conclusions they want on any issue, whether it’s abortion, gay marriage, death penalty, euthanasia, birth control, or issues that are mundane and way less attention grabbing. I say, “Leave our consciences alone!” If Misty wants the Church to take up a political endeavor she ought to allow her opponents the same leeway (which she probably does). But I say that both are misguided in their notions that the Church is about solving ANY cultural endeavor. I say the same thing to Misty as I do to the Evangelical ilk of FOF, Chuck Colson, D. James Kennedy: keep it to yourself and do not presume to speak either for me or the Church proper. The Church is not about making sure gays can’t marry, nor is she about making sure they can. She is not about freeing the salves 150 years ago or freeing them; she is not about giving women the right to vote 100 years ago or making sure they can’t; she is not about making sure blacks have civil rights 40 years ago or making sure they don’t; she is not about now protecting the unborn or the reproductive rights of women. But most disagree with this, I think. Most, in their linking up of moral cause with that of the Gospel, thoroughly confuse the endeavor of the Church with that of the state. It is deeply seated in the American memory that whatever is deemed good in the cultural ought to be pursued by the cultic. I can never decide which is the greatest threat to the Gospel in America, moralism or spiritualism. This morning I lean toward the former!
Misty can have the persuasions of her conscience with regard to cultural endeavor. I do not begrudge her view one iota. In fact, I think she has a leg to stand on. But I also do not begrudge those that think otherwise. What I do begrudge, and that right strongly, is the idea that anyone’s particular conclusions is that of God and that it should be incumbent upon individual’s or the Church proper to pursue one over the other. While I probably disagree ultimately with the idea that gay marriage is conducive to the natural order, I derive those conclusions form natural law, not the Bible, and for the very reasons you explore above. Take that perennial issue called abortion. While I think it’s also complicated and largely misunderstood by most people, for the sake of discussion I will concede to say that I fall into the anti-abortion camp (not pro-life since I am also for capital punishment). But I also concede that he other side of the table has valid arguments, that intelligent people can indeed disagree in cultural endeavor. Am I fully persuaded of my views? Yes, I am. They have won the day. I don’t lose sleep over it, I don’t go around acting like the sky is falling, I don’t think “that’s one more step Jesus is taking toward His return because we are so nasty,” I don’t berate the other side, I don’t mount a moral high horse about it and I don’t link up the Gospel to my cultural views.
From a confessionalist point of view, we ought to be more concerned with cultic truth than cultural endeavor. No, this is not to promote a Gnostic or Evangelical unconcern for things material. The very best of the Reformed and Calvinistic tradition is very “worldly” and concerned for things material. And very radically opposite these views, we pursue worldly endeavor and have a world-embracing piety (a key ingredient to this Christian’s rejection of wider Evangelicalism for Reformed beliefs); we are not afraid of the world and culture, we do not see the material world as a “necessary evil” only good for getting a paycheck; we are not given to building more illegitimate and just plain bad Christian sub-culture, we are are “in the world but not of it,” not “of the world but not in it.” however, that said, good confessionalism is not about changing the world. We are not transformationists. We know how to keep the kingdoms distinct for each’s own good.
zrim
6 December 2006 at 3:08 pm
zrim,
You said “When Misty says things like (and I roughly paraphrase here) “the Church ought to be fighting for the rights of gays to marry,” I cringe.”
I think that your “rough paraphrase” has distorted Misty’s view. Perhaps I am wrong, but I do not recall her saying that “the Church” (as a cultic institution) ought to be fighting for the rights of gays to marry. That of course would be as you say, entirely contrary to the Spiritual nature of the church. What I hear Misty saying is that Conservative Christians functioning in the present time with dual citizenship in the two kingdoms, should in the civil realm protect the rights of the homosexual community.
So while I don’t think that Misty wants “the Church” to “pick up a political endeavor” she does want individual believers as proper citizens of both kingdoms to not be so muddleheaded and offensive when it comes to this issue.
By the way, who are you? I see you on all the same blogs I read but am not sure if we know one another.
JDF
6 December 2006 at 3:36 pm
hi, joel.
first, who am i? if i had a nickle for every time i asked myself that very same question…:) i am not sure how to answer. my name is steve zrimec, i am in grand rapids, drive a buick…i dunno, that help?
to your main idea…
when christians begin to call other christians to certain cultural conclusions i conisder it, right or wrong (and i am honestly open to correction here since i am consider myself working a lot out still), to be an unoffical call to the church proper to follow suit. she is automatiucally employing a “theological or cultic” category when she implores “christians.” granted, she has not “made official overtures to her denomination,” so to speak.
i guess my point is simply that, yes, she should be free to have her views (something bill’s post proper correctly gets at when her detractors do all they can to “shut her up”). her position has a lot of merit to it, and so does bill’s. in fact, they are really challenging me on my own conclusions thus far. these arguments deserve to be on the table. but allowing for clear headed argumentation is a far cry from telling other christians how they ought to conclude. i suppose i would rather see arguments from natural law. once one goes to the bible it seems to implicitly suggest that the conclusion is of divine will.
i am very sympathetic to wanting to see the overwhelming degree of muddle-headedness and offensiveness be cleared away (although i do not hold out hopes for such to ever really be squelched). i simply find conservative evangelicals completely unable to engage the wider world with anything else. the way they engage this discussion is never a surprise to me; they always fumble things in the beginning, are always culturally neandrathalish and it takes generations for them to catch up.
zrim
6 December 2006 at 3:53 pm
also,
i guess i just find lurking underneath Misty’s argumentation still a resident evnagelicalism that leans so hard on the stuff of moralism and politics. i just do not connect at all with this evangelical need to have my worldview approved by the almighty state; i don’t understand it. do i have opinions about this or that? of course i do, who doesn’t? but the apparent love affair with “the right thing,” whether defined by righties or lefties seems so misguided to me. while i am no fan of chuck colson AT ALL, i recently read a quote by him in the TIME mag piece on david kuo fallout recently in which he said during his tenure in office it was very clear that american evangelicals are simply enamored with the pillars of power; they love being around it. and it freaked him out (quite an about face for chuckie, methinks).
to be honest, if gays are allowed to marry or have civil union (i prefer the latter term since the former suggests a cultic approval), i just wouldn’t be that put out. i hate to sound somehow apathetic to cultural endeavor and sound as if i don’t think it matters, but…sheesh…there are plenty of things in the world that don’t square with my own opinion of how it oughta shake out, you know? get over yourselves, i say. i don’t know…i don’t connect with the voracious need to make the world a better place per “my own set of values.”
zrim
6 December 2006 at 5:37 pm
Okay,
I guess I don’t know you, but we seem to share opinions on many issues. My name is Joel Fick and I am a PCA Minister in SoCal and drive a minivan.
As for Misty, I can assure you that she is making a more careful distinction than you think. She is not calling the Church institutionally to act. As you said it is not as though she is imploring her denomination to sign some petition and present it before congress or something.
It seems to me she is not really arguing from the bible so much as she is from the realm of common grace. So she says right up front “the question of whether to allow civil same-sex marriage is a civil liberties question, and maintaining a respect for people’s civil liberties in this country is always to the church’s advantage. In fact, it is absolutely essential for the survival of our religious freedom in a pluralistic society.”
Maybe this is no big deal at all. I just thought that your initial “rough paraphrasing” misrepresented what she actually wrote.
JDF
6 December 2006 at 10:34 pm
Hey, I know a “Joel Fick” who is a SoCal PCA pastor, but I’m not sure the one I know would ever drive a minivan….
JJS
7 December 2006 at 8:40 am
I also do drive a minivan: green and very, very boring.
I will reiterate my main point, which is to say that I think these things ought to be argued from natural law, not revelation. I subscribe to what Hart refers to as being a Christian secularist. I am not saying I am by any stretch an expert on interpreting just exactly what he might mean by such a phrase, but this is my own feeble interpretation of what that means. And a Christian secularist believes that revelation is wholly occupied for other-worldly concerns (e.g. the grand themes of sin and grace). Revelation is not concerned for this-worldly worries. I believe that using revelation to argue for one cultural conclusion over another does two basic things. First, and this of primary concern to a confessional Christian secularist, it muddles the purpose of cultic or religious endeavor and concern. It injects this-worldly concern into revelation, either knowingly or unknowingly, thereby significantly weakening the main message of revelation, namely the unfettered Gospel of Jesus Christ. Second, it muddles the discussions in the cultural. When the backdrop of any argument is religion it is simply one set of conclusions that recognizes the authority of heaven and seeks to pull it down in order to give it ultimate credence: who can argue with the implicit meta-message that “God agrees with me, this is also how God sees it, resist me and you resist heaven.” I need only point to the usual reckless antics of a Pat Robertson when he castigated and divinely threatened the city of Dover, PA for not adopting ID as the official science curriculum of the public school system (I think the city of Orlando is still waiting for the natural disaster he predicted for allowing gay pride parades). Let me give a concrete image to help out. What I picture is a communion rail that can be shared by those with vastly different political, cultural and social devotions. As Christians, we should be able to drop our this-worldly concerns, as entirely important as they are, at the rail. That said, I am not so naïve as to not appreciate the fact that beliefs systems are easily confused. And when you are talking about human beings with religious, cultural, social, moral and political interests these things are simply bound get confused. My point is that we ought to work much, much harder at drawing the appropriate lines. I am also not so naïve as to not understand that this sort of perspective will not be easily bought in an American context that has deeply woven into its memory and identity cultural endeavor linked up with cultic belief. After all, we are the “city on a hill,” are we not? Our foundation has resident within it deeply held beliefs that our cultural mission was mandated and directed by the hand of God.
Now, I would have to commend the likes of Misty and Bill for staying quite away from the intense religiosity of the other side of the table. However, I would venture with some measure of humility that it may very well be possible that what Misty and/or Bill are so angry with—and I cannot at all blame them—is the intense religiosity from the other side, and not merely that gays are not allowed to marry. My hunch is that they are quite bothered by the backdrop (i.e. the Christian religion) folks like Pat and James use to further their own sets of conclusions. What I remained unconvinced about is that the very same backdrop ought to be used to counter them, because this is to make the very same faulty assumptions they do—namely, that the Christian religion is of very little use unless we can use it to further our opinions. Most of Misty’s argumentation is aimed at the religious right. Again, I am no friend or defender of this brood. But because so much of it is aimed at them it makes me wonder about just what makes her so contentious. After all, she does not appear to aiming her words at the keepers of civic law and neither does Bill. Most of what is said seems directed toward the assumptions of conservative evangy’s. But if what is desired is that laws ought to be passed to protect the rights of gays to marry then it seems to me that the words ought to be ones that solicit the civil authorities to do so and worry less about how conservative evangy’s see things. They might experience less hostility (and personal head banging) from brethren if they did less to convince and persuade some very deeply seated beliefs and simply solicited the lawmakers. I don’t know, maybe they do this already. Certainly, there was a time when conservative Christians in America did not think it was so bright an idea to desegregate and pursue civil rights (I have a hard time translating “Falwell” back a few decades and believing that he was a personal champion to such things), but those who were savvy enough probably understood that the point was not to convince detractors so much as it was to execute in “real time” real results as they saw fit. It is somewhat naïve, I think, to act surprised that those in very conservative circles aren’t going to come hard against what is being said. I think they question before the likes of Misty is, “Do you think gays should be allowed to marry?” if yes, then do more to make that a reality and spend less time expecting to convince those who still see themselves tied in to what James Dobson. But, of course, I argue this from more of a natural law POV, not a biblical one.
I would like to also reiterate that I think what Misty and Bill ought to be commended for is calm and reasoned thinking. This indeed distinguish them for the religious right types who have for far too long dominated the discussions and presumed to speak for all of us who do hold to Christian orthodoxy and who may or may not have “conservative” conclusions culturally speaking. To be blunt, they are rodeo clowns who may have legitimate cultural points with regard to their positions but allow themselves to be clouded and distracted by their religiosity. To be honest, I also think much of what lies underneath their rhetoric and ways is the realization that they have simply lost the so-called culture wars, feel backed into a corner. And much of what we see is the sour grapes swiping of those who have long since lost the cultural devotions of the wider world. They talk as if the culture wars are yet raging, but I believe they have been fought and won by a particular side and the other side is just frankly pissed off about it. Much of what we hear and see is just them licking their wounds.
Zrim
7 December 2006 at 10:26 am
“It seems to me she is not really arguing from the bible so much as she is from the realm of common grace.”
i should give her more credit on this score as well. yes, you are quite right, she does do that on the surface. and, again, she has very strong arguments and i for one have to admit she has some substance to her position.
“Maybe this is no big deal at all. I just thought that your initial “rough paraphrasing” misrepresented what she actually wrote.”
my rough paraphrasing comes out of a concern for not simply “what she actually wrote,” or the surface level message. my concern is the meta-message, since the religious right can and does argue from common grace (or natural law) as well, if we are being honest. my concern is the back drop folks use. and i have a concern for christian conscience. i don’t like being told what i ought to do/think or what someone’s opinion of what “good Christians ought to do if they want their christianity to be valid” (“Wasn’t sure you heard me the first time? Then let me be absolutely clear: Conservative Christians should support civil same-sex marriage.”). i just don’t like it, whether it’s Dobson/Kennedy or the red-letter christians like jim wallis.
zrim
13 December 2006 at 3:20 pm
Bill,
Thanks. That was helpful. When I first read Misty’s paper (back when it appeared on Upper-Register), I was immediately sympathetic to the argument from the State’s lack of constraint to enforce God’s law. But my conscience wasn’t clear about approving the State’s affirmation of sin (and I think that I was hung up on our specifically republican and democratic forms of government–wondering if I was personally responsible for sanctioning sin). But your illustrations from other relationships between the State and sin were very helpful.
God bless you,
Chris
1 January 2007 at 5:23 am
You lost me as soon as you started exegeting the Scriptures!
7 January 2007 at 9:41 pm
Concerning post 10: I share the author’s conviction that Dr. Bahnsen’s greatest strength was not exegesis. However, it is not very helpful and is just plain bad form to poke fun in such a manner about Dr. Bahnsen. Grow up in Christ, friend.
22 January 2007 at 12:34 pm
Can’t you make a common grace argument that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed? Government is supposed to protect its citizens and create a stable environment for people to live.
Also, you can’t have a birthrate that provides for a stable population if you have a lot of married men. Just look at the mess Europe is in now with their population in decline. Read “While Europe Slept” by Bruce Bawer to hear his defense of a judeo-christian ethic.
Allowing same sex marriage is incentivizing homosexual activity. Just doesn’t seem to provide for a good environment for the majority, if you ask me. Homosexual areas are public health disasters, also. This article seems to be turning a blind eye to the natural tendencies of homosexuals to proselytize and molest children, either. In every conversation I ever had with Lee about this, he just put homosexuals on this pedestal and never acknowledged certain aspects of their behavior that are harmful to those who don’t agree with them.
24 January 2007 at 1:49 pm
PRCalDude, I agree with you from message 12. I was about to post the same sort of thing, but you took the words right out of my mouth. I couldn’t understand why no one was willing to argue this matter outside of a theological standpoint. It is fundamentally in the interest of the state to protect the interest of children. Though I agree the state should allow for divorce, for the record, I believe that when no-fault divorce was passed in so many states in the 70s, the state betrayed its duty to protect the interests of the next generation. When society forgets that our offspring need a stable home and family with two parents of the opposite sex who are married to each other, children get thrown into moral confusion about good family values. As a child whose mother divorced her father in the 70s for apparently questionable reasons, I can attest that the fact that the state of Ca made that possible definitely encouraged her to do so, rather than doing the hard work to keep her family together. My sister and I have suffered a lot of trauma because of it. Laws have the power to encourage or discourage certain behavior in the populace. This is not about theology. This is about what’s in the best interest of children.
Recently the LA Times ran a series on a couple of gay men who were seeking to become parents through artifical insemination of a surrogate. The article infuriated me. It focused on the fulfillment of these men’s feelings about becoming dads and their supposed “rights” to experience parenthood without ever asking the most important questions. How will it impact the surrogate when she has to be torn from the child she has birthed when her body is DESIGNED to form a vital emotional bond with the newborn? How will the child’s vital needs for a mother’s constant physical care and emotional bond be met? They presume and take it for granted, of course, that men and women are fundamentally the same and a man can “mother” a newborn just as well as a woman can. I could write a whole essay myself on why this is a faulty, dangerous and selfish assumption. The whole thing was about the “needs” of the two men to “experience” parenthood. No one for a moment questioned whether their future child would be missing out on something crucial by being deprived of a mother!! Christians, don’t you see that allowing gay marriage will *promote* gay marriage? Just like allowing no-fault divorce resulted in an increase in divorces nationwide, which resulted in many children being torn from one of their parents, sometimes for good? Just like the allowing of legal abortion resulted in the drastic increase of the murdering of precious little ones created in His image? Don’t you realize that the increase in gay marriage that *would* result if gay marriage were permitted would result in an increase of IVF pregnacies once these gay spouses begin pursuing their “right” to parenthood? Don’t you see that this “right” isn’t really a right since it fundamentally denies the resulting child its true right to have BOTH a mother and a father? Do you realize that IVF pregnancies create multiple embryos just to increase the chances of having one fertilized egg “take” once these multiple eggs are implanted (because the process is too expensive and time-consuming to do again and again on the off-chance that creating just one fertilized egg at a time to implant will not result in a viable pregnancy)? Do you realize this is creating REAL human beings that will become “leftovers” you know will be disposed of once your one desired pregnancy “takes”? Don’t you realize what all this life-creating, life-disposal and creation of fatherless or motherless children (as the case may be) is so selfish? All this playing God is just so two sodomites or lesbians can have some additional personal gratification via parenting? Why should society encourage people to bring vulnerable, needy children into the world for people who will be denying *them* of their fundamental rights just to be able to say they’ve accomplished reached the final fronteir of homosexual rights: parenthood?! Have you heard of the turmoil that is *currently* experienced by IVF children who have grown up without a parent (usually a father), and are now desparately seeking him out? They do this by instinct. We have a God-given need to know and be loved by BOTH our mother and our father. Don’t be deceived. Homosexual marriages won’t let their future offspring fulfill this need. Don’t stand idly by while our society goes down this slippery slope.
PLUS, it’s simple human nature that once Biblical values of heterosexual marriage are seen in society as being a moral equivalent to homosexual marriage, people will be less inclined to procreate and parent children. With a declining population, it won’t take long for our country to be in a horrible mess. One generation is a very short time. Because our heterosexual marriages will be seen as fundamentally the equal with homosexual marriages that are inherently infertile! Having babies will be seen as something people do purely for personal gratification. But wait. That’s the view of the church already. Birth control. Oh. Nevermind.
The church has lost its credibility to speak to the world on this issue the day it permitted its marriages to be separated from the act of procreation. Yes, that’s right. I’m saying that Christian marriages that use birth control have lost the moral authority on this because God is glorified when His plan for procreation is not changed. Sex and procreation and heterosexual marriage. They’re ALL meant to go together. As soon as we separate any of these 3 aspects from one another, we are not glorifying God.
24 January 2007 at 2:38 pm
Jenny,
I will say that, judging by what’s happening to Europe, this society won’t survive more than another generation if gay marriage is legalized. In Europe, the demographic nightmare has gotten so bad, thanks to abortion and homosexual marriage that European countries are importing people from the Islamic world. Muslims are virulently homophobic, amongst other things. Hate crimes against gays are skyrocketing in places like France and England, where most of the immigrants are either from Central Asia or North Africa.
To say that Misty’s argument is a common grace argument is ridiculous. It is a civil liberties argument, not a common grace argument. And it’s a slippery slope. Common grace suggests doing what is good for the population and society as a whole, not for the minority. It means seeking after public health and child safety. It means seeking after a birthrate that creates a stable society. It means disincentiving harmful behaviors to the society at large. It means acknowledging pathological behaviors of certain population groups, regardless of whether or not they were “born that way.”
Rest assured, if the government doesn’t want to protect these things, the society won’t be around long enough to make these “same sex marriage” arguments anything but academic. I hope everybody here has enough patriotism to want to see their country succeed.
12 February 2007 at 11:20 am
while i have a tremendous amount of sympathy for misty and most of the things she says i do think she has a couple of weaknesses (btw, as unhomophobtic as i like to think i am, i cannot say that i am as sold on the idea of gay marriage being legal, but that’s another dimension).
the one weakness i think she perptually has is in her nomenclature. she chooses the rubric and self-identifier “conservative evangelical” and then proceeds to try and comport her views under them. to be blunt, she can’t do that. it’s against the rules.
a roman catholic cannot claim that rubric and then say he rejects papal authority; that would be roman catholcism. a republican cannot contend for big government and higher taxes; a baptist cannot baptize infants and a presbyterian cannot withhold it; an anarchist cannot contend for rules; a klansman cannot contend for civil rights.
and a CE cannot contend the things misty does. there are rules to being a good CE and arguing the things she does does not make one a good CE.
this is a part of the reason, for example, that i dumped the nomenclature of CE for “reformed confessionalist.” i think a good confessionalist can argue the things misty does, but not a good CE. the popes of CE’ism have made the rules of what it means to be a CE. further, they represent the devotees of CE’ism. to be a good CE you must believe that homosexuality is a choice and that it exists ‘all in your head.’ you must be committed to making gays decidedly second-class. you must refuse to accept people cannot change and champion the causes of the “make ‘em straight factories.” you must have low view of both sin and grace and you must feign a thoughtful treatment of the Faith, seeking to make it as lowest common denominator as possible. you must support superficiality and moralism and spiritualism. you must be anti-intsitutional and confessional, decidedly gnostic and world-denying. you have to be able to recklessly ignore the separation of church and state rules while all the while giving it lip service. you must imply, imply an dimply some more than your moral, social, cultural and political causes are right from heaven. and you simply cannot do anything that would make the lives of homosexuals any better.
as de jure as all these rules are, they are nevertheless the rules of CE’ism. in fact, it’s the de jurism that gives it its punch. real popes may issues encyclicals de facto, but we all know the more influential messages are the ones not spoken directly.
how misty comports these sorts of rules with her views and expects them to be taken seriously is what makes me wonder. she might as well walk down to the local roman catholic parish and suggest that papal authority be reconsidered.
as dead on as most of views are, i would highly suggest she consider changing her lingo.
zrim
12 February 2007 at 11:21 am
“a roman catholic cannot claim that rubric and then say he rejects papal authority; that would be roman catholcism.”
i meant to say ‘that wouldn’t be good roman catholicism.”
zrim
21 July 2007 at 8:23 am
Obviously, you cannot legislate morality. A nation that has a morality founded on the populace’s individual belief in God, and the literal interpretation of the Bible would not be having to legislate morality.
The fact that our society has even come to the point where the question of “legalizing civil unions” is now a governmental issue just signifies how far we have fallen away from an understanding of our personal responsibility to God.
A governement “by the people, for the people” only works if you start with good people. Start with selfish, proud, arrogant, intolerant, vain, and petty people, and you are in for a hard time.
“Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Meekness, Faith…against such there is no law”.
23 July 2007 at 1:47 pm
“Obviously, you cannot legislate morality.”
really? i think we can, we may, we should and we do. and we w2k-natural law devotees get slammed for promoting “neutrality” and “relativity”!
“A nation that has a morality founded on the populace’s individual belief in God, and the literal interpretation of the Bible would not be having to legislate morality.”
really, really? this sounds to mean that if we just make people (certain kinds of) christians we will need no laws. mormons believe in God; so do many other sects and religions. is plain vanilla “belief in God” really what we are after?
“The fact that our society has even come to the point where the question of “legalizing civil unions” is now a governmental issue just signifies how far we have fallen away from an understanding of our personal responsibility to God.”
really, really, really? certain dictatorships and ruthless regimes that persecute christians wouldn’t tolerate civil unions or gay marriages.
“A governement “by the people, for the people” only works if you start with good people. Start with selfish, proud, arrogant, intolerant, vain, and petty people, and you are in for a hard time.”
sort of like how God starts with His Gospel? so, you are saying that there is such a thing as good people? i wonder if it could be called selfish, pround, arrogant, intolerant, vain and petty to even suggest that there is such a thing as good people? i wonder if you mean to say that something like america only works if you start with your kind of christian folk and not those nasty ones that are not as good. there is a reason precious moments figurines sell so well…they are the physical projection of how certain christians actually think God views them.
zrim