Normally I avoid public discussions of politics. This country is so divided on so many issues right now that even seemingly innocuous topics tend to result in screaming matches rather than and sort of reasoned discourse. Yet there are times when I need to speak up.
The citizens of North Carolina have voted to create a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as one man and one woman, precluding any future efforts to create any sort of marriage equality legislation or even civil unions for LGBT people in that state. This is something that I find disturbing, for a number of reasons.
On the secular level, I think any legislation that specifically prevents groups of people from having rights to be on shaky ground, and the product of dangerous motives. On a purely legal level, marriage is nothing more than the right of two people to make a contract. It defines how property is shared, it defines power of attorney and guardianship, it defines tax rates, it does many, many things that have nothing to do with religion or personal relationships. This sort of contract, in North Carolina and many other places, can only be entered into by one man and one woman. This, in and of itself, is discriminatory. The same sorts of legal contracts can be created between two people of any gender, but not as quickly, easily, and inexpensively as getting a single marriage license. Civil unions have been a workaround in many places. In North Carolina, two men or two women will need to spend more time, and more money, to make legal contracts of a similar nature, and that is unfair.
In terms of “defending marriage”, I can only repeat what I have said many times: if the people trying to preclude same-sex couples from getting married were also demanding legislation that heterosexual couples must get pre-marriage counseling, so they they are not entering a legal contract or a sacred covenant frivolously, I might take the “definding marriage” claim seriously. If they were demanding legislation requiring heterosexual couples seeking divorce to go through counseling first, or to tighten the requirement to break this type of legal contract and/or sacred covenant, I might take their claims that they are defending marriage with fewer grains of salt. If they were spending as much time and money on aiding single-parent families, victims of domestic violence, and orphaned children as they do on campaigning against LGBT people gaining the right to marriage, I might see their point. That’s not what’s happening, though. They have a tight, laser-precise focus on homosexuals and in the absence of other aspects of “defending marriage” can only be seen by me as blatant homophobia.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, I find their theological grounds for barring same-sex couples from marriage to be extremely dubious. My atheist friends are quick to point out that there is no Biblical definition of “traditional marriage” that matches anything like what these “marriage defenders” claim. There’s a lot of polygamy, for a start. There are also a lot of less savory ways men claimed women as wives described. Because I am not a believer in Biblical inerrancy, that the Bible is absolutely literal at all times and in all places, I can reconcile that. Leviticus and Romans and every other book that contains a pull quote used to condemn homosexuals were written by men who were struggling to know God’s will and trying to do what they thought God wanted. Sometimes, they got it wrong. That doesn’t mean the Bible is invalid as a teaching tool; the ability to learn from other peoples’ mistakes is a great way to learn how to avoid the same mistakes.
Everything in the Bible, to me, needs to be run through two filters. The first is the Ten Commandments, and there’s not a single mention of homosexuality in there. Yes, there’s mention of adultery, yet again I must point out that if the “marriage defenders” were going after heterosexual adulterers as strongly as they are going after homosexuals, I might take them seriously. There’s no clear definition of marriage in the Ten Commandments and, as I pointed out above, a lot of different marriage situations in the Old Testament. I won’t push the idea that by allowing LGBT people to marry and sustain committed relationships, you’re giving them the option to avoid committing adultery. I won’t point out that unmarried couples of any gender combination who are in loving, long-term committed relationships are probably in stronger “marriages” than many heterosexual couples in “traditional” covenants marred by infidelity, domestic violence, and other issues.
The second filter I use for all things Biblical are the words of Christ himself. He never said a word about homosexuality, but he did give us two new commandments. First, to love God with all our heart and second, to love one another as Christ loved us. Here we run into people who define “one another” only as fellow Christians or fellow members of their particular denomination, but John 3:16 begins with “For God so loved the world“, so I have to believe that Christ’s command was to be inclusive, not exclusive. He was giving us reasons to love, not excuses to hate. As a disciple of Christ, I have to ask how North Carolina’s Proposition 1 is an expression of love for one another. I have to ask how this brings people closer to Christ, or makes new disciples, or even how this paints a positive picture of Christ’s unconditional love for the world.
Excellent article Berin.
As a small government guy, I grow concerned whenever one group uses its majority to prevent another from doing something the first doesn’t like – even when it really isn’t harming them.
As a Christian, I sometimes think Christ must shed a tear every time we rip ourselves apart by emphasizing our differences instead of searching out and celebrating our similarities.
The other day my son and I were talking about marriage and he asked we (his mom and I) needed a marriage certificate from the Government. Honestly, I had a hard time explaining why the Government even needed to sanction the marriage if it was between us and God.
Hopefully this isn’t a double response. The WP login looks to have eaten my first attempt.
Bear – this is spot on in my opinion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
The Bible defines homosexual relationships as an abomination to God, therefore marriage in the Bible excludes such relationships by default. Leviticus 18:22 “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination”. and Genesis 13:13 ” But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” In case you didn’t know, Sodom is where we get the term sodomy. When the angels came to visit Lot disguised as human men to deliver him from the devastation that the Lord was about to visit upon Sodom and Gomorrah, they were confronted by men of the town who desired to have them for sex. Lot offered his teenage, virgin daughters in their place but the men of the town refused. What heterosexual male would refuse teen, virgin girls and demand men instead? Therefore we KNOW that homosexuality was at least one of the sins that was mentioned in Genesis 13:13.
Also, defining marriage as one man and one woman is not an act of hatred. Nobody hates homosexuals as people, it is homosexual sex that is objected to for the reason stated above. We are told to love one another, that is true, but we are also told to hate sin as God hates sin and homosexual sex IS a sin.
You say there is nothing in the 10 Commandments about it, but that argument doesn’t work. There are more laws in the Bible than just the 10 Commandments and you can’t use the Commandments to either justify or invalidate anything God said anywhere else. You need to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy in their entirety to find the many laws that God expected his people to obey prior to the coming of the messiah, and take them in their entirety. You don’t have the option of keeping the ones you like and crossing out the ones you don’t. You say you are a follower of Christ, but in picking and choosing which Bible verses you agree with and which you don’t, you are proving that you are anything but. A true follower of Christ doesn’t nitpick the Bible to pieces like you are attempting to do. Either you accept the whole Bible as the divinely inspired word of God, or you do not. There is no middle ground.
Jesus did not say anything specific against homosexuality, but he did say that he came not to replace the law, therefore the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy still applied not only in Jesus’ day, but in ours as well including the prohibition on homosexual sex.
And here’s something else for you to think about. Why is it that when the political left wants something they think they can get more than 50% of the voters to agree on they declare that majority should rule but when the majority goes against them, they suddenly become champions of minority rights. Why is that?
“You don’t have the option of keeping the ones you like and crossing out the ones you don’t.”
And yet, Joe, people who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible do that all the time. I don’t see people spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours of their time pitching legislation trying to ban shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-10). Even that cotradicts Genesis 3:9. I’m not going to go through each and every law in the Old Testament, but there are many, many laws that we don’t follow in modern society. There are things that get expounded upon with a lot more text and/or are mentioned many more times than homosexuality. Yet… not big campaign to legislate those. Just a deep, deep focus on homosexuality above all other sins.
Again, I believe Christ’s message of love trumps everything else. Your mileage may vary. Thanks for commenting.
“What heterosexual male would refuse teen, virgin girls and demand men instead?”
Males who aren’t pedophile rapists, for starters.
Funny how people pick and choose what parts of the bible they want to enforce.
I personally don’t have as much of a problem with gay marriage as I do with organized religion as a whole.
I completely respect other views on the subject, and admit that it’s difficult. Yet I still wonder why the Body of Christ is spending so much time and effort on this when our own houses are in order. This isn’t the same thing as murder; this is consenting adults. You can’t force conversion at swordpoint, gunpoint, or through legislation. You can’t change peoples’ natures. You can bring people to Christ by screaming at them how bad of a sinner they are, even if they’re terrible sinful. What we can do is show Christ’s love, which is unconditional.
I also look at the reported $3mil each side spent debating this issue, and wonder how many of the poor, hungry, and sick that could have helped. A much better expression of Christ’s love than the gay marriage debate, in my opinion.
I agree with the Baptist minister Will D. Campbell that civil marriage and holy matrimony are different things. One is a legal contract, th over the religious covenant. They need to be separated. If a church doesn’t want to perform same-sex union, they shouldn’t be forced to; that’s freedom of religion. However, no church should get into legislation to prevent people from the ability to make this contract.
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So we have heterosexual men acting agai.st their nature and wanting to rape other men. That to me sounds very zpecifi, and markedly different than two people who are legitimately attracted to each other engaging in a consensual relationship.
As for the “majority” issue, I’m not going to get into left-right mudslinging because I’m not enamoured with either side. but sometimes the majority is wrong. See ALSO: slavery,women’s sufferage, prohibition,Jim Crow,
There are those who like to say that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. Various verses are cited (out of context), and the verses that people use to show that homosexuality is wrong are explained away. The world wants to change God’s words and meanings into something more suitable to its sinful desires. Nevertheless, the truth stands: the Bible condemns homosexuality as a sin. Let’s look at what it says.
Lev. 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”1
Lev. 20:13, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them”
1 Cor. 6:9-10, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
Rom. 1:26-28, “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. 28And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.”
Homosexuality is clearly condemned by the Bible. It goes against the created order of God who created Adam, a man, and then made Eve, a woman. This is what God has ordained as the normal means by which we carry out his command to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). What God has set up is what is right — not what sinful man sets up.
That said, Christ tells us to love the sinner and hate the sin. I do not hate the homosexual but rather the sin (s)he is committing. Marriage has traditionally been defined as the holy union between a man and woman for the purpose of joining together to perpetuate the species.
If society wants legalize unions between same-sex couples, that is society’s perogative. I do not however think that those unions should be defined as marriage.
Before someone calls me a hater, I am firmly of the opinion that divorce does just as much damage to the “sanctity” of marriage as same-sex unions.
We live in a fallen world. I try to follow Christ’s commands. I do not condemn the homosexual just the sine. I am not perfect. I am a sinner saved by grace. Assuch I aI am just as guilty of sin as anyone else. I am not perfect.
This articulates my belief with great eloquence ans
This articulates my beliefs with great eloquence and scholarship
http://www.soulforce.org/resources/what-the-bible-says-and-doesnt-say-about-homosexuality/