Archive for category: Marriage

For the purpose of this discussion, I will stick to the question of public policy. Given the fact that we live in a pluralistic democracy with a spectrum of experiences and deeply held convictions at play, how then shall we live together?

I agree with Tony Campolo, the prolific evangelical preacher and evangelist who, in 2003, stood in the shadow of the Federal Marriage Amendment and stated in a public debate with his wife, Peggy—a staunch advocate of gay rights: “At this particular point we have to agree on one thing: [gay and lesbian people] are entitled to an end to all forms of discrimination. There should be no legal system that gives rights to heterosexual couples that it does not make available to homosexual couples.”[i]

Brian Murphy, a filmmaker and web-designer who self-identifies as queer, shared a story with me in a recent interview.  A friend of Murphy’s attended an evangelical college and grew up with no gay friends or family. During a classroom discussion of homosexuality and gay rights on solely a conceptual and theoretical level, Murphy’s friend had an epiphany: these are people. We’re not just talking about a concept or a theory. These are people.[ii]

That is my starting point: are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gender people human? If they are human, then they, too, are made in the image of God.  If they are made in the image of God, then they, too, were given free will – the right to exercise liberty over their bodies and their lives – in Genesis 1. This right applies even when I disagree with the liberties they take. What’s more, the fact that gays and lesbians are made in the image of God endows them with intrinsic value and the same basic rights and protections afforded to any other human being. To legislate anything less, is to set up a society that formally declares a certain class of people as less than human.

And that was a central point made by attorneys David Boies (a liberal) and Theodore Olson (a conservative) who succeeded in overturning California’s Proposition 8 in 2010. The controversial 2008 Proposition aimed to ban gay marriage throughout the state. In 2010 they joined forces to fight Proposition 8 because they agreed that to ban a certain set of citizens from the fundamental civil right to love and be united with the person of their choice is to create a formal two-class system of citizenship in the United States. This violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of the law for all U.S. citizens.[iii]

Legally, marriage is a fundamental right of citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the 1987 case of Turner v. Safley the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Missouri Department of Corrections regulation that effectively blocked convicted rapists and murderers from being able to marry while in prison. The Court ruled unanimously that the right to marry is such a fundamental right of citizenship that even convicted rapists and murderers cannot have that that right impaired or revoked.[iv]

Yet, with the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, federal legislation formally defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, effectively banning same-sex marriage and creating a two class system for the purpose of federal law in the U.S. The Act does not prohibit states from defining marriage on their own terms, but more than 1,138 rights and protections are conferred to U.S. citizens by the federal government upon marriage.[v] LGBT citizens of the United States have no hope of ever receiving even one of these rights or protections in their lifetime—not under current federal law. They are literally and legally second-class citizens. Thus, on February 23, 2011, President Obama declared the Act unconstitutional and instructed the Department of Justice to stop defending the law in court.[vi]

The truth is institutions of marriage and family have been on an ever-changing journey since the founding of our nation. The institution of marriage is not static. It is dynamic—and as a woman, an African-American woman, I say thankfully so.

Miscegenation laws, introduced in 1691 in the state of Virginia and 1692 in Maryland, prohibited several ethnic minorities from marrying white Americans until 1967. In an interview with Bill Moyers, David Boies, the liberal side of the legal team who succeded in overturning California’s Proposition 8, remembered, “When the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to prevent interracial marriages, 64 percent or more of the population of the United States, about two thirds of the population of the United States, believed interracial marriages were wrong. That’s a much higher percentage than opposes gay and lesbian marriage in this country today.” Ted Olson, the conservative member of the team added, “When the Supreme Court had made the decision in Loving versus Virginia in 1967, striking down the laws of 17 states that prohibited interracial marriage, now it’s only what? 40 years later? 40 years later we think that’s inconceivable that Virginia or some other state could prohibit interracial marriage. It’s inconceivable.”

Likewise, the truth about the historic institution of marriage and family—even Christian marriage and family—is dynamic. Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation declared in 1522:

If a woman who is fit for marriage has a husband who is not, and she is unable openly to take unto herself another and unwilling, too, to do anything dishonourable since the pope in such a case demands without cause abundant testimony and evidence, she should say to her husband, “Look, my dear husband, you are unable to fulfill your conjugal duty toward me; you have cheated me out of my maidenhood and even imperiled my honour and my soul’s salvation; in the sight of God there is no real marriage between us. Grant me the privilege of contracting a secret marriage with your brother or closest relative, and you retain the title of husband so that your property will not fall to strangers. Consent to being betrayed voluntarily by me, as you have betrayed me without my consent.”

I stated further that the husband is obligated to consent to such an arrangement and thus to provide for her the conjugal duty and children, and that if he refuses to do so she should secretly flee from him to some other country and there contract a marriage.[vii]

 

This teaching would be unthinkable in most Protestant Christian churches today, yet Luther is the original architect of our protestant faith. Similarly, women were seen as property to be bought and sold with dowries until the late 19^th century. Not so today. Rape was legal within marriage in the U.S. until the first state, South Dakota, outlawed it in 1975 and the last state, North Carolina, outlawed it in 1993. In the antebellum south, the Christian vow of marriage did nothing to stop the cultural norm of white masters who serial-raped African-American women enslaved by them and many times even the children born of those rapes and using them both as “bed warmers.”[viii]  As a result, the marriage and family structure in the antebellum south was distorted from the start.

The veneer of the historic American marriage and family and the reality of it are two very different things. Marriage in the church and in the United States, its norms and its practices are dynamic—not static. In the harsh light of day, to suggest that Jesus-following Americans should want to “preserve” the “traditional” status and legal norms of marriage in the U.S. reveals either a deep, and sometimes, willful ignorance about the progressive course of marriage in our nation or, worse, a desire to reclaim the “traditional” place of white males in America.

Tony Campolo tells the story of a boy named Roger. Roger was gay. He and Campolo went to the same high school in West Philadelphia, in the 1950s. Roger would wait when the other boys took their shower after gym class because he was afraid. And when he came out the other boys, including Campolo, were ready with their wet towels. They would whip their towels at his naked body. They thought it was funny. One day, when Campolo wasn’t there, five guys cornered Roger in the shower and urinated on him. That night Roger got up around 2 o’clock in the morning and went down into his basement and hung himself.[ix]

 Campolo reflects: “And I knew I wasn’t a Christian. Oh, I believed all the right things; I was orthodox. I was evangelical to the core, but I wasn’t a Christian, because if I were a Christian, I would have been his friend. I would have stood up for him. I would have defended him. And when they came to pick on him I would have said, “Lay off! This is Roger, my friend.”

Personally, President Obama’s former position has reflected my own for the past few years. I have whole-heartedly supported civil unions, but had been hesitant to support same-sex marriage. But the process of writing this chapter has been a convicting experience. I know a lot of Rogers. I have called them “friend.” But truth-be-told I have been happy to close my eyes while society dehumanizes my friends. That is not love. That is not justice. That is not the way of Jesus.

Campolo says, “I hear from my evangelical friends often: ‘We love homosexuals, but…’ Well the truth is, there can be no ‘but’. We love homosexuals, therefore we must stand up for justice for gay and lesbian people, because justice is nothing more than love translated into social policy.

The church and society are still splitting over the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts. But we can know this. We’re talking about people—people made in the image of God. And as long as we maintain a dehumanizing legal system that gives fundamental rights and protections to some and not to a class of others, our society is in sin.

 

This article is an excerpt from my book, Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics, reprinted with permission from the publisher, Russell Media.

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[i] Tony Campolo, audio recording of Tony and Peggy Campolo Dialogue at the Gay Christian Network Gathering (2003): http://www.gaychristian.net/campolos.php.

[ii] Brian Murphy, Transcript of audio taped interview with author, January 4, 2011, pg 7.

[iii] David Boies, Transcript of Theodore Olson and David Boies interview on “Bill Moyer’s Journal,” February 26, 2010: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02262010/transcript1.html.

[iv] See The U.S. Supreme Court, Turner v. Tafley 482 U.S. 78 (1987): http://laws.findlaw.com/us/482/78.html.  

[v] Dayna K. Shah, “Defense of Marriage Act: Update to Prior Report” (2004), United States General Accounting Office, pg. 1. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf. 

[vi] Charlie Savage and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “In Shift, U.S. Says Marriage Act Blocks Gay Rights,” The New York Times, February 24, p. A1: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24marriage.html.

[vii] Martin Luther, “The Estate of Marriage” (1522) Translated by Walther I. Brandt:

 http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/protref/women/WR0913.htm

[viii] Jean Fagan Yellin, Ed, Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1987), pgs 13-14, 18, 27-30, 73-75.

[ix] Campolo, audio recording (2003).

It is hard to speak out as an advocate for traditional marriage today because so many observers immediately equate opposition to same-sex marriage with hatred or fear. As I hope to demonstrate below, I support marriage as a union between a man and a woman not out of dislike of gays and lesbians but out of conviction that traditional marriage is a universal social institution created by God for the good of all humanity. I hope that our discussion on this emotionally-charged issue will model a truly alternative political conversation with a spirit of mutual respect and desire for understanding.

Marriage as an Essential Institution

Let me begin my discussion by briefly outlining my understanding of marriage.

God created marriage for the good of humankind. Classic Christian teaching on the origin and purpose of human marriage looks to the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2. God created marriage as a permanent and covenantal relationship between one man and one woman, each equal image bearers of God created to complement one another and who together, in divine mystery, become one flesh. The late theologian John Stott identifies three central purposes for marriage as outlined in Genesis: (1) the procreation of children and providing for the nurture and well-being of families, (2) the provision of suitable helpers who supply support, healing, and encouragement so that each marriage partner can recognize his or her full created potential, and (3) “a reciprocal commitment of self-giving love which finds its natural expression in sexual unity or becoming ‘one flesh.’”

Jesus’s teachings confirm this understanding of marriage. When religious leaders of his day asked him about divorce, Jesus answered the question by pointing back to Genesis and emphasizing the divine creation and permanence of marriage.

Not everyone shares this view of marriage. For example, varying interpretations of Biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality have become a source of division and even schism within many congregations and denominations.

Marriage between a man and a woman has been recognized for millennia as a foundational institution that helps maintain the common good. As an institution, marriage is larger than and holds greater significance than the individual unions it represents. Marriage provides a way to create public and legal rights and responsibilities for the care and continuation of the next generation. As such, it presumes that committed, permanent male/female relationships are the best way (albeit not the only way) to protect and care for children.

In our increasingly individualistic society that encourages instant gratification and rampant consumerism, it is easy to forget that marriage is not ultimately about relationships between individuals. Sexual liberty is not and should not be the definitive goal. Marriage is not about personal fulfillment: it is fundamentally about self-sacrifice and seeking the good of others.

Rights of Individuals and Institutions

Many proponents of same-sex marriage argue that the denial of marriage benefits violates the civil rights of gays and lesbians. But this argument conflates the notion of civil rights for individuals with rights of institutions and organizations. I agree with the Center for Public Justice’s Guidelines for Government and Citizenship that states: “Sexual orientation should have no bearing on a person’s status as a citizen with civil rights in the political community. . . When the civil rights of citizens are threatened because of their sexual orientation, it may be appropriate for government to provide special protection against such discriminatory treatment.”

The public debate over gay marriage is not and should not be a debate about private sexual behavior. Consensual private sexual behavior should indeed be private, and government should not seek to regulate it. The lack of gay marriage does not prohibit homosexual activity or homosexual relationships; those are individual rights.

But marriage and family law are not rooted in concepts of individual rights; indeed, the goal of family law is to protect the institutions of marriage and the family over and against what individuals might seek for themselves. As the CPJ Guidelines explain: “In addition to recognizing the civil rights of individuals, public law should also recognize the rights of certain institutions and organizations – such as marriage, family, church, university, and corporation. Only by doing this can government do justice to the diverse institutions of a complex society.” Marriage is a social institution in which the state has a legitimate interest, so public law serves its purpose when it seeks to uphold and preserve it.

Government policies have often encouraged and supported the institution of marriage because it offers the best hope for the next generation. Study after study reveals that children raised in intact, married-parent households are better students, achieve higher levels of education, are less likely to live in poverty, and are less likely to commit suicide, have lower arrest and teen pregnancy rates, and earn more money as adults than their peers without married parents.

We are all aware that the institution of marriage is in significant decline, as decades of high divorce rates and increasing numbers of children born outside of marriage (currently 41% and rising quickly) demonstrate.

Many societal trends contribute to the problem, and our individualistic and libertine views of sexuality are among the biggest factors. We have lost sight of the essential societal role of marriage and have shifted our focus from responsibility, sacrifice and seeking the communal good to individual concerns like personal fulfillment and happiness. These are cultural problems, and they affect us all: Christians and non-Christians, gay or straight.

In my view, the best way Christians can respond to the same-sex marriage debate is to change our own behavior. Far too many Christians have bought into the lie of self-gratification; sex outside of marriage and divorce are commonplace. Christians aren’t living up to the standards that God ordained. If we want to rebuild the institution of marriage, we should start by repenting, changing our own behavior, and seeking new ways to encourage our brothers and sisters to live lives of chastity and fidelity.

“Bush is correct… when he states that allowing same-sex couples to marry will weaken the institution of marriage. It most certainly will do so, and that will make marriage a far better concept than it previously has been.”

Victoria Brownsworth, I Do/I Don’t: Queers on Marriage (2004)

The ongoing debate over homosexuality and marriage in America is difficult for many Christians, including me. I resonated with this depiction of the situation in a recent blog post by Kevin DeYoung at the Gospel Coalition:

• If we are speaking to cultural elites who despise us and our beliefs, we want to be bold and courageous.
• If we are speaking to strugglers who fight against same sex attraction, we want to be patient and sympathetic.
• If we are speaking to sufferers who have been mistreated by the church, we want to be apologetic and humble.
• If we are speaking to shaky Christians who seem ready to compromise the faith for society’s approval, we want to be persuasive and persistent.
• If we are speaking to liberal Christians who have deviated from the truth once delivered for the saints, we want to be serious and hortatory.
• If we are speaking to gays and lesbians who live as the Scriptures would not have them live, we want to be winsome and straightforward.
• If we are speaking to belligerent Christians who hate or fear homosexuals, we want to be upset and disappointed.

The complex web of responses boils down to Christians’ desire to simultaneously love and support our brothers and sisters without compromising our convictions regarding the sinfulness of homosexual acts. Tension exists in the pursuit of this end because of the organized movement to normalize homosexuality. Indeed, the gay rights lobby in America couches their ultimate goal in the language of rights, describing their “struggle” for “equality” as something akin to the African American civil rights agenda. Within such a construct, the belief that homosexual acts are sinful is on par with racism; the insistence on traditional marriage an antiquated remnant of Jim Crow. (It should be noted that this construct is offensive to many blacks.)

Such claims have pull with Christians for many reasons. First, our faith compels us to be on the alert for the presence of injustice, and to remedy it wherever it is found. Second, the majority of evangelicals and Catholics in America are white, aware of the terrible wrongs committed against African Americans, and therefore sensitive to comparisons. Third, proponents of marriage have largely failed to make their case using non-biblical arguments in the public square. In a pluralistic society such as the United States, the connection between God’s intended purposes for marriage and public policy must be made using arguments that carry weight with those for whom scripture is not a credible source. This is not to say that the biblical witness has no bearing on the public square. Indeed, the truths of scripture are manifest throughout the creation, which allows Christians to make biblical arguments without relying on scripture explicitly, relying instead on logic, sociology, history, science, and other means.

A masterful example of such an argument is Sherif Girgis, Robby George, and Ryan Anderson in their article “What is Marriage” in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. (Free download available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155) I won’t attempt to restate their arguments in full in this limited space, but the essence of the piece is an answer to the crucial question, “What is marriage?” The authors contend that nature of marriage, “what it fundamentally is,” settles the debate.

Their argument is formulated as an analysis of two competing views of marriage: conjugal and revisionist. The conjugal view is that “marriage is the union of one man and one woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together.”  The revisionist view is that marriage is a union of two people who are romantically inclined to one another and care for each other, “sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life.” The authors contend that the conjugal view is the only one to uphold three widely held principles for what makes a marriage.

The first principle is a “comprehensive union of spouses.” Unlike other forms of human relationship, the marital relationship is all-encompassing including, crucially, bodily union (sex).  Only heterosexual sex can fulfill the requirement of organic bodily union due to the unique capacity for sexual reproduction. Sexual coordination towards the biological act of creating a new human is unique to heterosexual couples.

The second principle is a “special link to children.” The authors state, “Marriage is a comprehensive union of two sexually complementary persons who seal their relationship by the generative act (coitus) – by the kind of activity that is by its nature fulfilled by the conception of a child. So marriage itself is oriented to and fulfilled by the bearing, rearing, and education of children.” Same-sex relationships cannot be marriages because they “lack any essential orientation to children.”

On this point it is relevant to point to the wealth of sociological research demonstrating the link between child welfare and parental situation. Studies show children reared in intact homes of biological parents have higher rates of literacy and educational attainment, suffer less from anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, and are less likely to experience out-of-wedlock pregnancy and incarceration.

The third principle is “norms of permanence, monogamy, and exclusivity.” The comprehensiveness of the first principles includes “temporal comprehensives,” meaning fidelity all the time, forever. Building on the principles of bodily union and childbearing, permanence and exclusivity “create conditions suitable for children: stable and harmonious conditions that sociology and common sense agree are undermined by divorce… and infidelity.”

Obviously, the state of marriage in America today seems to undermine the validity of the third principle. With divorce and infidelity so rampant, how can we defend the institution? The premise of this critique ought give Christians pause. The extensive failure to uphold God’s intent for marriage harms the credibility of marriage advocates and denies culture an example of a better way to live. However, these failures in no way serve as an argument for the further degradation of the culture of marriage; they do the opposite. The social ills resulting from divorce and infidelity will only grow if marriage continues to disintegrate.

Having argued that what marriage is cannot be modified, let me turn to a few common points in the marriage debate.

Proponents of same sex marriage and unsure citizens often ask, “What’s the harm?” They may grant that gay couples can’t meet the principles described above, but fail to see why the state should not offer some special status to those who want to enshrine their love in a formal way. The concept of “civil unions” derives from this line of thinking and is often considered a “middle ground” position.

First, it is necessary to recognize that no serious marriage advocate wants to limit rights of gays. There are many churches in America that joyfully “wed” homosexual couples in ceremonies symbolic of their commitments to one another. I oppose discrimination and violence in all its forms. So, though I am personally opposed to such action, I am pleased to live in a country where gays are free to choose.

Second, society can meet the desire of individuals to grant certain rights and privileges to loved ones without infringing on the freedom of others or redefining a historic social institution. Powers of attorney can be (and often are) granted that extend to non-familial persons inheritances, hospital visitation rights, and the other benefits often cited by gay rights activists. That gay advocates continually appeal to these scenarios despite the simplicity of solving the problem is evidence that the debate isn’t about these small points, but broad social recognition.

Third, granting legal protections to “gay marriage” would restrict the rights of others. Churches, religious schools, and other organizations would be required to violate their consciences by recognizing the relationships through provision of benefits. Additionally, parents and teachers would be subject to prosecution for teaching that homosexuality was a sin, as is already occurring in Europe and elsewhere.

Finally, we must understand that though politics is downstream from culture, the law is a source of moral instruction. Civil unions are an incremental step towards watering down the institution of marriage, pushing society closer to the social ills described earlier. Parents and religious leaders would be hindered in their desire to educate their children according to their own beliefs if the law of the land affirmed something contradictory to their teaching.

I am way over my word limit, so I must close concisely. I want to reiterate my desire for positive relationships with those who align LGBTQ. I am aware of the hardships that often accompany such an identification, including insults, violence, and strained familial relationships. I don’t envy that struggle. I have been inspired by friendship with a man who has embraced the fact that he is gay after years of struggle. He continues to face hardships, but over time he has also experienced the transforming power that comes from putting his identity in Christ, not in his sexual inclinations. May we all, gay and straight, be so faithful.