Tag Archive - Prop 8

Gay Marriage in New York

June 25, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 151 Comments

New York’s state legislature has approved a gay marriage bill, and governor Andrew Cuomo has signed it into law.

Photo: Pat Arnow, Wiki Commons


As the states take up this issue one-by-one, I’ll keep working out my thoughts on the issue. I think that this is a complex issue for Christians. Here’s what it comes down to for me:

As long as the state is in the marriage business, Christians should support gay marriage as an embodiment of our calling to love our neighbor as ourselves.

First, I understand that there is a strong religious argument for the “definition” of marriage being the joining of one man and one woman. However, the state is not in the business of adhering to or adjudicating religious principles.

Second, to my mind, the best possible scenario is this: (1) the state does not marry anyone or recognize anyone’s marriage; (2) the state performs civil unions for any two persons who wish to join their lives for mutual support; (3) these civil unions are performed by civil servants, not ministers of the churches; and (4) churches can marry before God whomever they deem fit to marry in accordance with their religious convictions.

However, since this is not the case, and since the state has chosen to assign certain rights and privileges to married couples, people with religious convictions have to figure out not one problem, but two.

First, what do we think about homosexuality within the context of our religious community of faith?

But then the second, related but separable question is, What do we think about homosexual marriage within the state in which we find ourselves?

Here’s where, historically, Christians have done poorly: we have failed to realize that our answer to Question 1 does not determine that we attempt to enforce that answer as we take up Question 2.

I want to suggest that even those of us who do not support gay marriage within our faith communities have an obligation to support it in civil law as an expression of our calling to love our neighbor as ourselves.

It’s difficult for Christians to imagine a world where we are truly in the minority and subject to the power of people with alternative religious convictions. Perhaps a couple of examples will help.

What if there were a law that schools could only teach evolution and had to teach evolution in Biology class? I don’t mean that public schools had to do this, but all schools and educational programs had to adhere to this. What if we didn’t have the freedom to enact our wrongheaded desire to deny evolution and embrace creationism as an alternative?

If we want the freedom to make our own religious decisions about education and our view of the world and how to best educate our children, we are required to secure for those who disagree with us about every religious decision the freedom to enact their irreligious or non-religious or differing religious understanding of what a fruitful life here on earth looks like.

Similarly, what if our law-makers increasingly enacted provisions of sharia law? Do we want people determining what we can and can’t eat based on religious convictions with which we don’t agree? We’ve grown to anticipate that our representatives in various state legislature will enact laws for justice that do not infringe on our own free practice.

As Christians, we need to learn how to hold our own religious views while seeking liberty and justice for all–not just those who happen to believe as we do. In part, this will mean that we free people to do what we would believe is wrong.

Homosexuality, Abortion, and Race (pt. 2)

January 27, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture, History with 55 Comments

Yesterday I began this discussion of homosexual marriage and other moral issues by outlining why I don’t think that standing in favor of homosexual marriage entails selling the farm with regard to opposing abortion. Today I want to outline the closer parallel: opposition to interracial marriage.

When I read the arguments against homosexual marriage, I find myself mentally replacing the concept of homosexuality with the concept of race–because God is being invoked in our contemporary debates in almost identical ways to how God was invoked in the arguments against race (and interracial relations).

The arguments made against racial unions were, above all, Christian arguments. They went/go something like this:

    God made people different (choose one: different races or same gender) therefore God has indicated that people of (choose one: different races or same gender) should not be joined in marriage.

    To be so joined with someone of a (choose one: different race or same gender) is a violation not only of the specially revealed law in the Bible, but the law of nature by which everyone can see that people are not meant to come together.

    Since this is God’s law, then the nation and marriages and marriage in general will flourish to the extent that it is enacted and upheld, and societies and marriages will be weakened to the extent that we deviate from it.

The reason why Christians demand a certain sexual ethic comes down to something we believe about ourselves as Christains: our bodies are not our own because we have been bought with a price; our bodies are not ours to do with as we please because we are a temple of God’s Spirit; our bodies are not ours to join to whomever we please because they are joined to the body of Christ.

These are the grounds of full participation in and acceptance of the Christian story. They are not the grounds of jurisprudence in a pluralistic, secular society.

In asking us to carefully weigh whether a Christian theological and ethical position against homosexuality might also carry with it the imperative for the freedom of our homosexual neighbors, I am not only asking us to better imitate our Father who causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust alike.

I am also asking us to look history squarely in the face, acknowledge our failures–and stop repeating those mistakes of old.

Homosexuality, Abortion, and Racism (pt. 1)

January 26, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture, History with 33 Comments

As I have been working out some thoughts on why, given the choice between only these two options, I prefer to support homosexual marriage in American law rather than forbid it (here and here), a couple of related questions and criticisms have been raised.

In general, these tend to ask why a Christian sense of morality shouldn’t inform our political posture as much as anyone else’s secular sense of morality informs theirs. In particular, people have been suspicious that arguing for laws that run counter to the religious preferences of Christians might leave us no room to argue in favor of our other Christian positions such as opposition to abortion.

I do not find this line of argument persuasive.

First, there is a difference between arguing for a “Christian” position and arguing for a position on Christian grounds. If the only argument we have to make is a Christian argument, then a pluralistic society should reject those arguments. Moreover, to see that such a rejection is right in our political context is simply to affirm that religious liberty is good for all faiths, including Christianity.

And, in assessing whether my “Christian” position should be enforced more broadly I am not setting aside my Christian convictions. Instead, I’m asking what it looks like in a given situation to love my neighbor as myself and to do unto others as I would have done to me. In a pluralistic society, my ethic of Christian love dictates that I do not impose my religious law on another–just as I would not have their religious law imposed upon me.

In the case of abortion, asking these questions creates a network of issues that complicates what is otherwise a simplistic and insufficiently Christian pro-life position, but they do lead inevitably to a recognition of abortion as an injustice that should be rooted out of society.

Asking these questions complicates the issue of abortion because we do have to ask what it means to love the pregnant woman as ourselves. This question is too little asked by pro-life groups, and folks who are theologically and politically conservative here tend to take too little stock of the systemic issues that both lead to unwanted pregnancy and lead to termination of it. Loving the pregnant neighbor means more than forbidding her to end the pregnancy.

But in complicating the issue it does not pull us away from protecting the life of the unborn child–because we have to ask, also, what it means to love this unborn neighbor as ourselves and to do unto him or her as we would have done unto us.

In fact, I would argue that protecting the unborn child and standing up for civil equality are two instantiations of the same posture of protecting the powerless, defending the outcast.

However, the more compelling parallel to my mind is between homosexual marriage and interracial marriage as the latter was at first forbidden then gradually allowed, and now is generally accepted–at least in theory–all by Christians and for Christian reasons. We’ll look at this tomorrow.

Sex Inside Out

January 22, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 18 Comments

Or, “Do we not judge those inside the church? But those outside God judges.”

Or, “Master, is now the time when you’re going to restore the Kingdom to the United States?!”

This past week I think I may have caused more than a few of my readers whiplash. On the one hand, I have been writing about sexuality (More Sex pt. 1, More Sex pt. 2, plus and earlier post, God & Sex) and articulating in my own little way a quite traditional view of Christian sexuality.

Then on Thursday I come out with a post, distancing myself from the pastor who says the Supreme Court has created war between Christians (of which he’s one) and the gays whom he “loves”–a distancing that includes not only my disdain for the “war” language, but also disagreement about whether the discrimination between homosexual and heterosexual unions should be perpetuated in the legal system.

How does someone with what are fairly traditional Christian views on sexuality distance himself from political efforts to enforce these values on the rest of society?

Theologically, there are a couple of reasons for my bifurcation.

On the side of sexual ethics in particular, the apostle Paul draws a distinction between exercising our judgment on those outside the church and those inside: those who are outside, God judges, what do I have to do with that? he asks in 1 Corinthians 5.

We have a responsibility to police ourselves that we do not have with respect to those who have not joined themselves to the household of faith.

Second, throughout the Gospels and Acts we confidently distance ourselves from those silly disciples who thought that Jesus was going to inaugurate a war against the Romans and thereby bring about the reign of God. And yet, when we come to our own politics we too often anticipate that Jesus is going to exercise his authority in order to impose our political will on our opponents. Really? Is now the time that Jesus is going to restore the Kingdom to Israel… er… the United States?

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the driving dynamic of Christian love to which we are called in Jesus’ teaching is to do unto others as we would have done to us, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be like God who causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust alike.

I believe that this teaching transforms how we ask the question about our relationship to homosexuality and law.

The questions we ask are not, “How do we make people conform externally as much as possible to the law of God,” but instead, “What does it look like to do unto my homosexual neighbor as I would have done to myself? What does it look like to extend blessing and grace to my homosexual neighbor like the God who blesses them with the provision of this world day by day?”

This final set of theological concerns bleeds into the practical.

We are living in a pluralistic world. We have to figure out how to work toward a just society with other people who do not share our religious beliefs. These guiding principles of “how do I do as I would be done to?” and “How do I love as I would be loved,” and “How do I extend the capacious blessing of God?” must displace “enforcing the law of God as I understand it” as our public disposition.

Finally, there is the pragmatic reality that we do not enforce the law of God, and do not want it enforced, through civil means. We do not in general continue to agitate for the institution of laws against premarital sex and adultery. Why not?

In asking that question, I think we uncover that at least in part (a) we do not actually want the state enforcing sexual ethics between “consenting adults”–even when it is truly damaging to a victim as in the case of adultery! but more importantly (b) the reason for enforcing this homosexuality agenda has more to do with what we find personally distasteful or at least something we could never imagine ourselves falling into–in contrast to the heterosexual sins that we no longer appeal to our government to enforce.

Here, I’m tempted to start listing the myriad ways in which people who are legally married might have been married in the sight of God, though they don’t believe–is that false swearing by God’s name really such a good thing? Etc. etc.

I think that the best idea of all is for the government to get out of the marriage business altogether–civil unions for all, irrespective of sex (or no sex at all), and church weddings being none of the state’s business and not civilly recognized.

But in the mean time, so long as the government has laws about marriage, I feel compelled as a Christian to see that the blessing attached to them attend to even what conservative Christians might call “the just and the unjust alike”.

I Don’t Need Your Civil War

January 20, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture, History with 54 Comments

The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to hear a case challenging the Washington D.C. gay marriage law.

It seems that a group of residents wanted to put the revocation of the law on the ballot, as was done previously in California. Their petition was denied, and the law kept on the books without the imprimatur of the voters of the District.

In response, a Washington pastor, Anthony Evans, has declared the existence of a “civil war between the church and the gay community.” Of course, Evans hastens to add that this is an unwanted civil war, and “we love our gay brothers and sisters,” but apparently war is at hand because “we have a right as religious people to have a say-so in the framework of religious ethics for our culture and society.”

I was recently given an extended history lesson by my friend David Sehat. His book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom chronicles important episodes in the history of dissent from the traditional Protestant Christian mores in America (review here and here).

Here’s the punchline: when in the history of America Christians have sought to uphold, and impose, a “religious ethic” for society, we have time and again been the perpetrators and preservers of inequality, prejudice, and injustice.

When blacks were fighting for freedom from slavery, we white, empowered Christians developed biblical arguments for sustaining dominance over the black race.

When women were fighting for equal access to voting, to work, to the protections of the legal system, we Christians invoked biblical patriarchy to sustain their subjugation and prevent them from being recognized as persons protected by the law with equal access to its protections and freedoms.

When workers were fighting for just working conditions, we Christians invoked convoluted theological and biblical arguments about why they needed to simply obey their masters as the Master and get off the picket line.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was leading peaceful demonstrations of civil disobedience, our great hero Billy Graham warned that we have to obey the laws of a government even if the law is unjust.

Will we not learn from our history?

To my fellow Christians: when we try to make society after the image of the Bible as we read it, we become perpetrators of the injustice, impression, and baptizing of cultural status-quo that Jesus came to root out, free us from, and transform. The fight over legalized gay partnerships is but the latest in a long string of episodes where we have failed to bring to the “other” the freedom and justice we believe God wants for all people.

Or, if that language sounds too loosy goosy to you, try this. We have refused, in our fights for “religious ethics in society,” to love our neighbor as ourselves, we have not yet learned to “do unto the other what we would have done to us.”

Our attempts to perpetuate our ethics through the legal system has repeatedly moved us from the blessed co-confessors with Peter that “You are the Christ,” to those who stand in need of the rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan.”

For Peter, this came when he would not see that to be Christ is to be a suffering servant. Peter wanted a war. For us this rebuke comes when we will not see that our call to love is a call to be suffering servants, even to those whom we might see as our enemies. Will we really fight a war? Can we imagine that when we stand with Peter rebuking Jesus for setting aside the way of glory that this time we will be recipients of a commendatory “Well done, good and faithful servant”?

Repeatedly when I read the Gospels with my New Testament Introduction courses, we are made aware that the disciples and other first century Jews were looking for a war to free them from Rome. That’s what the Davidic Messiah was supposed to do. But Jesus goes to the cross instead.

If, in our purported following of Jesus we find ourselves promising civil war, we can rest assured that our expectations of what discipleship means stand in as much need of correction as those of Jesus’ first followers.

So, Rev. Evans, I don’t need your civil war. Because I love my gay brothers and sisters, even as you claim for yourself, and because Jesus shows me that Christian love is taking up the cross rather than taking up the sword, I part company with you here and stand by them.

You Heard It Here Last: Ken Starr as Baylor’s New President

February 15, 2010 in Academia with 16 Comments

The internets are swirling with the rumor: Kenneth Starr (yes, that Ken Starr) is going from Pepperdine Law to be Baylor’s next president.

Thoughts?

I find this an “interesting” choice from the perspective of a NT academic who recognizes that Baylor’s PhD program is on the rise. Sometimes guilt by association can be a tough thing to overcome. Starr is also involved with defending California’s enactment of Prop-8, the ban on gay marriage.

The sort of folks who would value the direction that the PhD program is moving (with bringing on Bruce Longenecker, etc.) and what it has to offer are also, likely, not to be all that thrilled about an institution with Clinton’s prosecutor, and a participant in the Prop-8 goings on, at the helm.

The value of the degree will depend, to some degree, on the religion department being able to separate its good work from the perception (whether true or not) of the university’s being headed by a conservative ideologue. None of this is to say that I think Starr should or should not have done x, y, or z, just that Baylor’s desire to be a certain kind of academic institution with a certain kind of reputation will be, in some ways, hindered by the perception of who Starr is and what he is committed to.