Thinking Christian

Clay Farris Naff asked in the Huffington Post this week, Do We Really Want America to Be a Christian Iran? It only takes a moment’s reflection on that question to realize Naff’s sense of proportion (like Tavis Smiley’s) is askew. Many of his “facts” and his arguments are too. It’s about the Manhattan Declaration, from which he quotes,

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality — a covenantal union of husband and wife — that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized…

He responds,

What a pantload! This has all the moral suasion of a claim that to salve the conscience of Seventh Day Adventists we should outlaw donating blood.

Wow. I won’t respond with the same scatology, because it’s not civil—not that this claim of his doesn’t reek of stinky thinking. The rest of the article is likewise distorted, but I’ll let this snippet be representative of the whole.

First, he’s really quite misinformed: “Adventists embrace all ethical medical treatments including blood transfusions.” A family friend of ours received a kidney transplant at Loma Linda Medical Center, an Adventist hospital. Maybe Naff was thinking of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a cult whose views both Adventists and I roundly reject.

Second, and more substantively, this is not about “salving consciences.” Salving is for those who feel guilty. We who have signed the Manhattan Declaration are not dealing with feelings of guilt, we’re dealing with social and legal attacks on a God-ordained institution. Naff’s thinking on this is sloppier than his research on Adventists.

Naff’s most egregious distortion (at least in this snippet) is the parallel he tries to draw between outlawing gay “marriage” and outlawing blood transfusions. To put an end to blood donations would take quite an aggressive legal and public relations campaign to change existing laws and practices. Where’s the parallel? Are Christians doing anything remotely like that?

Here we see the magnificently mixed-up success of the gay rights PR machine. They’ve maneuvered the public into believing Christians are making some kind of assault on gay marriage. We’re doing no such thing. We couldn’t; it would be strictly impossible for us to do that. You see, “marriage” in same-sex context really belongs in quotes. Marriage is “a covenantal union of husband and wife.” There is no such thing as gay marriage. There never was. There’s nothing there for us to campaign against.

Really, Tom? Then why all the fuss? Why write it into this Declaration? Here’s why: a legal and social assault has indeed been launched. But we didn’t launch it: they did. They’re the ones attacking historic laws, customs, and morality. They speak as if we’re the aggressors, when in reality they are. We’ve had to take up a defensive position, to protect an institution as old as recorded history. We didn’t pick this fight, the other side did. Let me re-emphasize: there are those in Western culture who have mounted an offensive. It’s not the Christians who have taken the aggressive stance, though; it is the gay rights activists.

It pays to stay aware of what’s really going on. Regardless of what some PR machine may be trying to tell you.

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Recently posted on the Center For a Just Society website, my thoughts on “Hate Is Not a Family Value,” beginning with,

The other day I saw a car displaying the bumper sticker, “Hate is not a family value.” As slogans go, I thought, this one is just about perfect. Packed with emotional impact, in just six short words it exposes the hypocrisy of “family values” proponents. That’s the intent, at any rate, and it works well so long as one doesn’t break the First Rule of slogans: Don’t think too hard about them, just swallow them whole.

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Introductory

The national news media are collectively embarrassed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Gay rights activists are publicly calling on the mainstream media to offer support for gay marriage, arguing that the media let them down in November. It appears that Newsweek intends to do its part to press for same-sex marriage. Many observers believe that the main obstacle to this agenda is a resolute opposition grounded in Christian conviction. Newsweek clearly intends to reduce that opposition.

[Link: Turning the Bible on its Head -- Newsweek Goes for Gay Marriage]

following comments

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Probably the best piece I’ve seen written so far on the gay rights movement and Proposition 8: Civil Rights and Gay Marriage.

It’s from Black and White, “Birmingham’s City Paper.” The author, Jeff Jacoby, is identified as a columnist for the Boston Globe. His question: where is the real bigotry and hate being displayed?

(I’ve viewed the Mormon-attacking commercial he describes at the end of the piece. I don’t agree much with the Mormons on some issues, but they way they’re treated in this piece is truly despicable. Gay rights leaders ought to be the first to denounce it.)

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…tell him I forgive him.

[Link: The Point: Bible thumpers takes on a whole new meaning]

(More details here–some of it unfortunately rather graphic.)

Related: What Does Hate Really Look Like?

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The line out there in much of the media is, Christians hate gays. The fact is, Christians (evangelicals, generally, that is), disagree with much of the gay rights agenda; gay rights activists disagree with Christians. A recent attack on a church in Lansing, Michigan, could fairly be described as an expression of hate.

Worshippers at a Bible-teaching church in Lansing, Mich., were stunned Sunday when members of a pro-homosexual, pro-anarchy organization named Bash Back interrupted their service to fling propaganda and condoms around the sanctuary, drape a profane banner from the balcony and feature two lesbians making out at the pulpit.,,,, the protesters also screamed at parishioners and pulled the church facility’s fire alarm.

Compare the church’s response:

After things settled down, the blasphemy ended, the lewd props removed and the families safe from fear of additional men and women running into and past them the pastor took the stage and led the congregation in one more prayer … not for retribution, or divine justice or a celestial comeuppance (that’s what I’d have prayed for) but instead that the troubled individuals who’d just defiled the Lord’s house, so full of anger and hate, would know Jesus’ love in their lives and God’s peace that exceeds human understanding

What does hate really look like?

Related: What Does Love Really Look Like?

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We’re continually asking and answering the wrong questions about same-sex “marriage.” Defenders ask, “what’s wrong with it?” Opponents answer by pointing out its various moral and social ill effects. Defenders deny that those effects happen or that they make any difference.Then they ask, “Since you can’t show it’s doing any harm, why not allow it?”

Why not instead ask, “what good does it do?” More than that, “What good does it do for anyone other than the participants?” (I do not thereby concede that it is good for the participants, but for the sake of argument I would propose setting that aside for at least a moment.)

“What good does it do for anyone other than the participants?” I ask again. And I would be willing to bet that at least some readers’ reflex answer is, “Why do you ask? Does that make any difference? Marriage is for the participants, after all.”

And here I have found myself tempted to follow the usual path of defending traditional marriage over against same-sex “marriage.” I actually wrote an entire paragraph before I realized I was answering the wrong question, even while I was warning us all against it.

The problem, friends, is not gay “marriage.” The problem is the attitude, “I’m going to do what I want unless you can prove to me it’s hurting someone else”—with the standard for such proof set impossibly high, by the way.

An approach like this is rights-oriented instead of responsibility-oriented; it is about wanting what one wants when one wants it, and getting upset if anyone else gets in the way; ultimately it is self-centered and self-excusing. One grants oneself full permission to take offense if anyone else takes offense. Everyone else’s offense is regarded as wrong and bigoted, while one’s own is fully condoned and sanctioned as the right kind of offense to take.

But it’s not just about gay rights. It’s about an attitude toward rights in general, one that regards individual liberty as the highest good. It could be (and has been, obviously) equally expressed in the form of corporate greed, racial bigotry, peddling drugs and smut, or any of the common forms of individual crime.

It can even be expressed within a traditional man-woman marriage relationship. In my own marriage I’ve often been guilty of focusing on my own needs and my own “rights.” The difference is that marriage was not originally designed nor intended just for the sake of expressing individual liberties. Its purpose is broader, richer, and more demanding than that by far.

Therein lies the real danger of gay-rights activism. It is its incessant focus on individual rights, and its utter lack of attention on what builds stronger societies and better people in this generation and the ones to come. “Better people? What’s that? Isn’t it awfully bigoted to consider one person better than another?” Maybe so, in many cases. How about this, though: what would build me to be better than I otherwise would be?

The question is not what’s wrong with gay “marriage.” The better question is one that I fear is bound to provoke some upset and anger. It must be asked nevertheless. The better question is, “why do you continually focus on such a self-oriented question?”

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