A CHRISTIAN IN DEFENSE OF GAY MARRIAGE

January 2, 2000

This morning I heard the sound bite of a man being interviewed on public radio who was working for the Knight initiative.  [This was a statewide California initiative by a conservative state lawmaker  against his son, who is gay.] It provoked an internal dialogue in the form of a hypothetical radio interview in which someone asks me why, as a Christian, I am so strongly in favor of legalizing gay marriages.

[So why are you in favor of gay marriage?  Do you find that it conflicts with your religious views to accept homosexuality not only as acceptable and normal but even positive in the eyes of God?]

First of all, marriage is a social institution, not primarily a religious one, and many of my reasons for wanting to legalize marriage between any consenting adults is not tied to religious beliefs. I believe we, as a whole society, should promote marriage because it promotes social stability. Married couples of any variety tend to settle down, buy a house if they can afford it, and live quiet, happy lives. Far from being deviant revolutionaries trying to undermine the social order, committed gay couples tend to get home mortgages, and steady jobs, so they can pay those mortgages off. Here in San Francisco I hear many gay people joke about how mundane and almost boring this seems, but that's the point. It is normal. Long-term, committed relationships between adults follow pretty much the same rules no matter what the gender combination. And happy couples tend to support the idea of a stable, prosperous society.

Now, that is just common sense. But a much more compelling reason why we should promote marriage is to alleviate suffering. In my lifetime I have witnessed a silent, national tragedy of pain and emotional scarring from the breakdown of numerous marriages. Prohibiting divorce is not the solution--coercive laws on social behavior are almost always harmful--but I don't think we as a society have done enough to support people through the inevitable difficulties in relationships. Just before we got married my wife and I heard a lot of descriptions and advice about marriage; and the one consistent piece of advice was that successful, happy marriages require a lot of hard emotional work. I have also seen that successful marriages need a lot of community support, whether it be in the form of a church or temple or a strong circle of friends.

If all that sounds like a conservative perspective, I wish it were so. Some my beliefs overlap the conservative-liberal division, but my strongest disagreement with either social view is with their own internal inconsistencies. A consistent conservative stance would be to promote marriage of all types. Part of the gay community is libertine, and rejects the idea of long-term relationships. Conservatives will always be at odds with this culture of sexual promiscuity, but I think their objections to promiscuity should apply equally regardless of the orientation. A consistent moral stand would also send a more humane message to the rest of the gay community: not just objecting to the libertine lifestyle but promoting committed relationships of all types.

To me this line of thought still sounds like self-evident pragmatism. However it all hinges on two beliefs that are not widely held in America. First, that a large number of gay women and men do want to settle down in long-term relationships and desire the same social support and privileges as all married couples. That is the Gay Agenda today: striving for equal protection under the law. True, equal protection is a revolutionary idea on a global scale, but every American renews their commitment to that revolution each time we pledge alliegance to the laws of the United States. We have been pushing that revolution forward for more than two hundred years, slowly expanding the envelope of equal protection to include all adult humans. I renewed my commitment to that revolution most recently while serving on jury duty. I do not know how to convince people who have no direct contact with openly gay people. If you shelter yourself and remove yourself from contact with people who are different, you cannot truly see different people as human; and that failing strips away part of your own humanity.  To Christians I would say that you are betraying Jesus and his message when you refuse to take any steps towards compassion with the stranger, the outcast, the one who is different.

The second, most controversial belief that from the Christian perspective, homosexuality is not evil. More than that: I believe Christians must commit to embracing people who are unusual, different from the norm, and challenging to the status quo. In the first century, the others were Samaritans and Greeks. Now, in America, it is homosexuals.

To challenge the general belief among Christians that homosexuality in itself is not sinful I must argue from within Christian faith. This should not be an argument addressed to the general public, but unfortunately Christians in recent years have been willing to abuse our numerical majority to impose our morals as law, discriminating unconstitutionally against believers in other faiths. Realistically, members of other religions must pay attention to the debates within Christianity. The irony is that Christians betray not only the U.S. Constitution but the core tenets of our own faith when we pass laws aimed against homosexuals.

As a Christian it is significant to me that Jesus said very little--almost nothing directly--about marriage itself. He said plenty about love, and taught profound lessons about love, but nowhere in the Gospels did he make definitive statements about what is and is not marriage.

2 January 2000