Gay Marriage
Pastor Paul Viggiano
Published 3/19/08
Heated
discussion in the State Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of
Proposition 22 (the one man, one woman marriage bill passed in 2000), reinvigorates
the question: Why is the Christian right so concerned about what others do in
private? And it’s not merely
homosexuality.
At the risk
of sounding self-deprecating, I confess that Christendom is extremely narrow in
painting the boundaries of amorous: no premarital, no extramarital, no incestuous,
no pedophilia, no gay, no lesbian, no bisexual, no polyamorous, no
trans-sexual, no bigamy or polygamy, no necrophilia, no bestiality, no
prostitution. According to Christians, it’s
mom, dad, junior and sis. Departing from
that is simply wrong and should not be sanctioned.
The Christian
right opposes the type of liberty necessary for these multi-variegated sexual
preferences to flourish and are, therefore, viewed as a bigoted lot. Our culture comforts itself by assigning them
with a psychological disorder and then hoping they’ll go away. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Are Christians truly bigots or are there good
reasons for their narrow view of what should constitute a household?
Reasons to
oppose divergent unions should not be founded upon ignorance, anger, hatred,
self-righteousness, psychosis or simply because people think it’s yucky. After twenty-five years of ministry, I’ve
seen all these ugly dispositions in the church.
It’s carnal indignation and it’s wrong.
But there are good reasons for the exclusive ‘mom and dad’
criterion.
As a Christian, I believe the
declaration of Scripture (which clearly addresses the subject in question) is
sufficient to arrive at an ethical conclusion.
But it is a mistake to think the ethics of Scripture are arbitrary—as if
man would be happy if God would just leave him alone. No one knows man like God knows man. And no human counsel can elevate the soul and
culture of man, like the wisdom found in God’s word.
A biblical apologetic for the traditional
household:
At creation God
declared that one thing, and only one thing wasn’t good—it wasn’t good for man
to be alone. Biblical anthropology suggests
something incomplete in a single gender.
The simple nature of the case is that there are two genders. These two genders are interdependent, that is,
they can’t survive without each other.
Men and women were engineered by God in such a way as to produce
life. But these physical life-giving
distinctions are not the end of it.
Men are women are emotionally and
psychologically distinct as well. Interests
and temperament between the sexes is universally divergent. And regardless of what examples one uses to
demonstrate gender distinctions, it is virtually impossible for any rational
person to ignore that they exist.
One reason Christians push for the
traditional family is due (or at least should be due) to the recognition of gender
distinctions and how they work together augmenting the spiritual and
psychological well-being of children and culture. A household which contains the necessary components
to produce healthy, happy and well-balanced offspring is a household comprised
of a mom and dad. To publicly promote a
model which purposefully ignores or excludes this does harm to households and
the societies which households produce—it therefore becomes a public affair. Prisons are not comprised of inmates raised
by loving moms and dads.
And even if a
couple is past the child bearing age, or doesn’t intend to have (or adopt)
children they still provide a model. An
eighty-year-old couple who can no longer have children (even those who never
had children) still convey to their culture the substance of what generates a
healthy psyche. They are still the
archetypical standard of an ideal home.
It is
occasionally argued that this ideal may become impossible if a parent dies or
leaves. But the mere assertion acknowledges
that when this happens the ideal has been compromised. It is one thing to fall short of an ideal out
of necessity or neglect, it is quite another matter to alter or abandon ideals
altogether.
A final
explanation, one that is less likely to be embraced by our increasingly
apostate culture, is the picture given in Scripture of fathers, mothers, husbands
and brides. God calls us to view Him as
a Father with the father’s attending roles of love, provision and protection. Jesus is compared to a groom who lays down
His life for His bride, the church. It
can easily be argued that human roles have, as their primary design, these pedagogical
ends.
We can say
these are private matters but they inevitably become public and work their way
into the fabric of our corporate psyches.
After all, if it were truly a private matter it wouldn’t at the State
Supreme Court.
