(One Reason) Why Gay Marriage is Ok by Me...

I just saw that Bristol Palin spoke out against the President's decison to support gay marriage because as she understands it children tend to do better in a two-parent, mother/father household. I agree that kids tend to do much better with 2 parents to guide them, and though her lifestyle choices make it such that at this point in time she is unable to provide that for her son, I am phenomenally glad that the government has not taken away her right to parent him just because someone like me might think that he would be better cared for in a two-parent family. It is the influx of quotes such as hers that prompted me to write the following:

(One Reason) Why Gay Marriage is Ok by Me…

This week President Barack Obama publicly affirmed his support for gay marriage, the first sitting president ever to have done so. My brother quickly texted to inquire about my thoughts on the issue, but I am more interested in what everyone else is thinking. For example, as I sat in a coffee shop in my small Texas town this morning, I overheard a group of Christian women discussing the issue. The final word from one flustered lady when pressed about her unfavorable analysis of the President’s view was this “Well, I just don’t want someone as a president who doesn’t share my values.”  I then read an article written by Coach Ron Brown from University of Nebraska on a related issue who said, “I won't embrace a legal policy that supports a lifestyle that God calls sin."  I find this language fascinating mostly since there are so many diverse things we are called to value as Christians and so very many things that God calls sin—most of which we tolerate and even condone with public policies.

Divorce, for example, is something that Jesus was pretty clear about. I suspect some would indicate that divorce is something that happens once and can therefore not be legitimately classified as a lifestyle. I would disagree on the grounds that most traditional Christian wedding vows go to great pains in order to name all the conditions under which one must choose to remain married, better, worse, rich, poor, sickness, health --and all of these seasons cycle time and again until DEATH does part the two covenant makers. One must regularly revisit his or her commitment to that covenant; so, just as most Christians that I know would consider marriage to be a lifestyle, I would consider separation and/or divorce to be a lifestyle as well, in that one chooses over and over again to remain apart from an individual to whom they once pledged unflinching unity. (This is not even to mention the number of Christians who make repeat-divorces a lifestyle)

Divorce makes me sad. I think it often hurts men, women and children throughout our country and I believe there is a spiritual cost for breaking a vow made before God. Interestingly enough, I have exactly zero Christian friends who are trying to undo the policies that make divorce legal. Some of my Christian brothers and sisters would even say that they have benefitted from such a policy themselves. Do I think it should be illegal? No, I do not. I have no expectation that the laws of Texas or of the United States of America will be able to do the work of a pastor or priest and so at times individuals have to be allowed the civic freedom to make such decisions by their own spiritual consciences and at their own spiritual risk.

Similarly, I seem to remember the Bible talking about the sexual relationship as a pleasure reserved for marriage and yet I would venture to say that though I have many sweet friends who have practiced abstinence before and faithfulness after marriage, I have as many Christian friends who have engaged in a regular lifestyle of pre and/or extramarital sex for weeks, years, and decades . Pastors and families have frowned and shook heads over these personal indiscretions but, in my lifetime I haven’t seen any of them promoting legislative action that would make such consensual choices punishable by law.

You know what else God calls sin and is really gross? Greed. That one is hard to get away from in the Bible. God is always telling the Israelites to take care of the alien, stranger, orphan and widowed rather than hoarding for themselves. And, remember how Jesus lost it when those peddlers were using something as sacred as a Temple for money-making schemes?  He (Jesus) also told the rich young ruler to sell all his things to the poor. As a social worker, I think that was an awesome directive. I really believe most Christians should be more generous and quite frankly it makes me a little nauseated when I meet a follower of Christ whose entire life’s work seems to center around making money and storing up more and more barns for themselves here on this earth. I think it is perverse, inexcusable and plain confusing that some believers (myself included at times) can be so unapologetically self-serving once they have encountered the sacrificial love of Christ. Nevertheless, I don’t believe it should be illegal to purchase goods and services in excess. I keep thinking someone somewhere said something about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.  Who was that Guy?

I think that the problem that some Christians have had with gay-marriage is that it is foreign to many of us and creates a sort of squeamishness in our guts that we would like to be able to identify as good old fashioned righteous indignation. I guess, I just don’t buy that because there is no consistency in such a stance. If we really refused to vote for individuals who did not represent our own values like the lady in the coffee shop suggested or refused to support policies for lifestyles that God calls sin as Coach Brown claimed, then the entire Christian community would be practicing unequivocal voter abstinence (or at least wearing the True Love Doesn’t Vote regalia and pretending to abstain for posterity’s sake.)  Instead, I think that we have made a whole host of sins socially acceptable and encouraged (gluttony, pride and hatred to name a few) while reserving the right to be disgusted by those behaviors that are most alien or otherwise frightening to us.  This is a problem. And if we believe that any one party or political figure is accurately and comprehensively representing the values of Christ, I want to suggest that we might just have been hoodwinked somewhere along the way-- and that is a problem too.