On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the right of same-sex couples to marry was enshrined in the Constitution. No sooner had the ruling passed than a litany of presidential candidates vowed to fight it, civil servants and judges considered defiance and rallies were planned to express disapproval. Two of those candidates recently headlined one such rally in Columbia that showed the increasingly blurred line between politics and religion. One of the last civil servants holding out was imprisoned shortly after the Sept. 3 Weekender went to print and released the week of Sept. 14.
The people denying licenses, staging rallies and leading the fear-mongering tend to be doing so with Bibles in hand. I understand that not all denominations or churches hold these views, but the fact remains that almost all of the people denying licenses, staging rallies and prognosticating judgment are Christian. As such, I will be laying out a Christian case for LGBTQ acceptance.
I am aware of various verses that seem to automatically discredit my arguments. In fact, I’ll give them here: Leviticus 20:13; Mark 10:6-8; Romans 1:26-28; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Corinthians 7:2. One of those I would strike for being part of the old covenant, and thus irrelevant to Christians. Only one actually comes from the teachings of Jesus Himself. But I wouldn’t read too deeply into them. The Gospel is clear that even Satan can defend his points with scripture, making individual verses less important than broad themes.
Case in point, less than 60 years ago a judge in Virginia sentenced an interracial couple to prison for being married. His logic: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents .... The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”
Before that, individual Bible verses were used to justify the Inquisition, the Crusades, genocide of Native Americans, absolute monarchy, witch hunts, legal subjugation of women, slavery, the KKK and the slaughtering of Jews. I don’t mean to suggest that the Bible or Christianity defends these things — quite the opposite, actually. Almost all modern denominations of Christianity believe that the Biblical interpretations those horrid policies were defended with were unambiguously wrong, and rightfully so. Instead, I mean to say that the church has been wrong before on social issues, even with the seeming infallibility of the Bible behind it. As such, it is a tad arrogant to assume that the interpretations behind the above verses used by same-sex marriage opponents are necessarily correct.
To work through the government to institute a “Christian” code of morality also flies in the face of who Jesus was and what He came to do. Proposing that we need the laws of Christianity ingrained in secular law effectively argues that, sure, while an eternal kingdom of God is nice, we would really like a kingdom of God here on Earth right now, ruled by men enforcing God’s will. That, fundamentally, is not what Jesus came to do. At various points Jesus blocked the execution of a sinner, broke the Sabbath, superseded the legalistic laws of Moses and was executed by a secular government for religious reasons. That doesn’t sound a lot like a guy who believes that the laws of God must be enforced by the police of men.
So, at a minimum, the church needs to back away from trying to restrict the rights of private citizens through the government and from denouncing people outside of the church. There is simply no theological basis for doing so. But, Jesus often asked those He saved from social punishment to “Go, and sin no more.” As such, if homosexuality really is a sin, the church could still argue that its own membership should remain entirely heterosexual.
The problem is the natural and social sciences are making it increasingly difficult to claim homosexuality is a sin. Biologically, homosexuality has been found to correlate with fraternal birth order, finger length, genetics and many other factors that show that it has a lot of biological signs for a “lifestyle choice.” The abject failure of conversion therapy also shows that even people who desperately want to be straight can’t choose to be that way. It follows that if being straight isn’t a choice, not being straight probably isn’t either.
If, as the Psalms and most pro-life advocates suggest, God guides human development from conception, this presents a major dilemma: why would God create someone doomed to sin through the holy act of love? And, furthermore, why would He create someone otherwise capable of living in a steady, loving and Christian relationship — the epitome of marriage — and then declare that the love that would be praised in straight people is a sin for them. If God created everyone and expressed that love should only be shared within a marriage, what rational basis is there for declaring that some love is inherently sinful and cannot be within the institution of marriage?
It is telling that Jesus did not seem to particularly care. He makes one off-handed, but oft-quoted, mention of marriage being between a man and a woman while condemning divorce. Setting aside the irony of Christians using that passage to fight same-sex marriage while ignoring legal divorce, the wording makes a fair amount of sense. Jesus was speaking to people in the Roman Empire. He regularly explained spiritual concepts in language or metaphors they would understand. At the time, marriage was between a man and a woman and it would have seemed very odd if He had gone out of His way to include every possible contingency that could arise over the next few millennia.
In the end, the church will lose this fight. Then it could spend decades fighting against the notion that all men are created equal, as it has done before. But in the process, it might lose the real message of Christianity. People don’t look to religion to learn who they should and should not hate, or what political views they should hold, or what they should be afraid of. There’s enough hopelessness in the world as it is. Rather, they look to religion as a way of finding meaning. It is an illuminating and calming presence in the chaos. Christianity has the potential to be that presence for legions of people. But, if people look at the church and see fear and prejudice and reminders of the past, they will wonder how there can be meaning and hope in that darkness and keep on searching.
Modern Christian policy of trying to enforce God’s law through government policy is tragic not just for those denied their basic rights on Earth, but for those dissuaded from embracing life eternal.