Given today's Supreme Court ruling on marriage, below is an excerpt from
Faith Steps, Chapter 14, "Freedom of Faith, Conscience and Speech":
While many followers of Christ draw from Scripture the
concept of marriage
as solely between a man and a woman, secular
governments for centuries also have advanced such conjugal marriage because of
its benefits
to children, the economy
and
social stability.
Unfortunately, the modern debate over marriage often has been marked by more passion than
reason, with relationships and reputations suffering as a result. Some who name
the Name of Christ unfortunately have violated the highest tenets of our faith
by showing only disgust and not love for those who practice homosexuality. This
fuels a public misperception that all opponents of same-sex marriage are hateful bigots.
Other believers do show love toward homosexuals yet remain
unpracticed in presenting rational arguments for a secular audience in the
public square. They feel at a loss to cogently defend what they know is a
cornerstone of biblical teaching–namely, that sex is reserved for the marriage of a man and a woman. So they just accept same-sex
marriage even though it counters what they know true marriage to be.
Believers, however, need not take either a position of
bigotry or of defeatism regarding marriage. We can communicate love and
simultaneously advocate for the truth about marriage.
A public message advocating for conjugal marriage might sound something like this:
We love and respect those who practice homosexuality and
support policies that protect their dignity and appropriate
equal protection under the law. But marriage remains a consensual, exclusive and lifelong
commitment between one man and one woman, expressed in a physical union
uniquely designed to produce and nurture children.
Removing these objective defining factors makes marriage meaningless. By uprooting and replacing the
definition of marriage with a subjective notion based on emotional
relationship, divorced from the natural and objective marital elements of
physical union and procreation, no rational parameters remain that would
exclude further redefinitions of "marriage" as between multiple
partners, related persons, or even persons and non-persons.
An affirmation of the exclusivity of marriage as between one man and one woman does not
preclude separate personal, societal or legal sanction of any other consensual
relationship. The core debate hinges not on a moral evaluation of various types
of relationships, but rather on the objective qualities that make marriage,
marriage.
Even those who lovingly and reasonably communicate in public
the rationale for valuing conjugal marriage, however, face an incredibly
harsh and judgmental reaction from activists, the media, politicians and other
segments of society. We technically may still live in a democracy, but the
intolerance of divergent views often seems more akin to a totalitarian state
that systematically erases ideological diversity.
The drive toward ideological conformity looks like this:
1.
First the culture makes a controversial practice socially acceptable.
2.
Then policy makers and the courts make the practice legal.
3.
Finally, the culture
and the government join to
enforce the practice–including punishing
objectors.
With that in mind, consider urging your legislators to
protect our First
Amendment freedoms of thought and belief, by quickly passing legislation to
protect conscientious dissenters from discrimination regarding marriage. We
urgently need to pass the federal First
Amendment Defense Act.
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