Thinking Christian

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.)

…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?

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?

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 <i>for</i> 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?”

If I thought this was an isolated sentiment I wouldn’t pay it much attention. Unfortunately it’s not.

“We can sympathize with gay people because they are a minority and we are a minority,” said anti-Prop. 8 rally organizer Doug Kalagian, 17, a senior who founded the school’s Freethinking Atheist and Agnostic Kinship student club.

“Prop. 8 is not only a religious issue. It’s an issue of discrimination and prejudice. Who’s to say atheists and agnostics won’t be next?”

This is appallingly upside-down. What Kalagian is saying is this: the religious people have mounted an attack on gay marriage, and “who’s to say atheists and agnostics won’t be next?”

The real sequence of history is that gay-rights activists mounted an attack on marriage. And who’s to say Christianity won’t be next? Is that an overstatement? Not necessarily. Look at Canada. Look at San Francisco.

I could be wrong on that, time will tell. But the verdict is already in on Kalagian’s version: it’s already wrong.

This LA Times headline is unbelievable: Wielding religion as a weapon against gay marriage.

The first completely irresponsible assumption the writer, Steve Lopez, makes is that opposition to gay “marriage” came first, and religion is just being used as cannon to shoot at it. He discounts the fact that many Christians, myself included,

• Believe what God said in both the Old and New Testament about sexual practices outside of marriage.
• Take it seriously that God described marriage as a man being united to a woman
• Consider this to be a clearly understandable statement (one of many like it throughout the Bible)
• Believe that what God revealed through the Bible is authoritative, and we all need to yield to God’s word
• Seek to subsume our agendas under God’s word and the Christian religion
• Hold this religion to be sacred
• And therefore could never support “using” religion for any agenda
• Rather, we seek to discover principles and practices that are taught us through this sacred source, and align our agendas with that source–not the other way around.

Can we get that wrong? Certainly. I don’t think we have in the case of same-sex “marriage” (SSM), because the source is so clear. Still, that question leads us to Lopez’s second mistake, which is more subtle and therefore more interesting. He quotes a few religious spokespersons who oppose SSM, and others who support it. Here he speaks to two supporters:

I told the Rev. Vanessa Mackenzie of the Episcopal Church of the Advent that the other rally was much larger and that those who spoke claimed to know God’s will on gay marriage.

“How can you love God, who you do not see,” Mackenzie asked, “and then hate the brother and sister whom you do see?”

It’s not presented as hatred, I said, but as the word, as written in the Bible.

“Very clearly, that’s an abuse of Scripture,” insisted the Rev. Eric P. Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Opponents of SSM are lampooned for claiming to know God’s will through his word, the Bible. The Rev. Lee apparently knows they got it wrong. How is it that Lopez will accept that Lee knows God’s will, and that he has a direct line to a correct interpretation of the Bible, when just a sentence or two earlier he was laughing at people for saying they can read the Bible and understand what it says?

Well, Lopez agrees with Lee, and with Mackenzie. That’s why he thinks they got their interpretations right. And because he agrees, he doesn’t have to attack their religion. (I’m sure he would if he disagreed with them.) But he is most certainly using SSM to attack conservative religion. SSM is right, he believes, therefore let’s make religious opponents of gay SSM look like mindless idiots. I hope it’s clear enough now what he’s doing: he’s wielding SSM as a weapon against religion.

But maybe it isn’t quite clear stated that way. Let’s try it this way. (This will help those of you who are comfortable with symbolic approaches. Others may want to skip down a few paragraphs.)

Group (a) believes (A)
Group (b) believes (B)

Now we can propose a hypothetical situation (H). The situation in (H) is that (A) and (B) are contrary to each other; therefore each group believes that the other is wrong. (a) sets forth its beliefs as arguments against (B), and (b) sets forth its beliefs as arguments against (A). A newspaper writer is a member of group (a) and claims that (b) is using (B) as a “weapon” against (A).

Now let’s define two other groups:

Proponents of SSM: (s)
Conservative Christians: (c)

(There  are other opponents of SSM who do not share all of Christianity’s core values. Though they oppose SSM they are not members of (c) and should not be confused with (c)).

Now it’s time to substitute (s) and (c) into our hypothetical situation (H). Which group is to be identified with (a), and which with (b)? I encourage you to try it both ways. Let (s) = (a) and (c) = (b). Then let (s) = (b), and (c) = (a). It works equally well both ways! But our writer, Steve Lopez fails to recognize that. He says that it is (c), the conservative Christians, who are using their beliefs as a “weapon” against the other. He does not see that it works both ways.

It gets more interesting yet. There is a third group involved: liberal Christians–(l) for short. Our newspaper writer notes that (l) is not using its form of Christianity against SSM. He pronounces (l)’s theology acceptable, and (c)’s theology unacceptable. On what basis? There is no basis whatsoever, except that (l) agrees with him on SSM, and (c) disagrees. He bashes (c)’s entire belief set, right down to their ability to read and understand (c)’s core documents just on the grounds of (c)’s disagreement with SSM. His entire case for bashing (c)’s beliefs rests on the SSM issue.

As I already said, this is clearly a case of using the gay “marriage” issue as a weapon against Christian beliefs. Pot and kettle.

It’s hardly the first time gay rights activists have attacked biblical Christianity. Read the pamphlets linked from this page, especially “Reading the Bible with new eyes,” which suggests that Jesus lived an “alternative lifestyle” and goes into details of what that might have meant.

Let me clarify what I’m objecting to here. I have mentioned my objection to gay “marriage,” but I haven’t majored on that here. What I have been saying is that I object to Mr. Lopez’s using gay “marriage” to attack religion, and trying to sneak it through as though it were the other way around.

Warning: disturbing topic ahead. Some readers will find some of this material objectionable.

I was a pump jockey when I was in high school, a noble profession that has almost disappeared in most of America. Not familiar with the term? I worked at a full-serve gas station, filling up gas tanks, checking oil, cleaning windshields. There are a couple states (Oregon and New Jersey, that I know of) that still do not permit self-serve gasoline stations, and they are the only places where my former career is still much plied.*

I was working there during the (first?) great gasoline shortages. The federal government prohibited the sale of gasoline on Sundays. One of my fellow workers there was incensed, and he thought he had a case to make against it. “It’s unconstitutional! The constitution guarantees us the pursuit of happiness, and my pursuit of happiness means being able to work my job on Sundays!”

Well, there are couple of problems with that, I tried to explain to him. (I didn’t bring up working on the Sabbath, that didn’t matter to me at the time.) First, “the pursuit of happiness” is nowhere in the Constitution. There is no such legal guarantee. It’s in the Declaration of Independence. Yes, it’s one of the ideas that led toward the founding of our country, but it’s just one among many, and it’s not enshrined as law.

Second, even if it were law, it’s just not quite that simple. Do we really think the government can take everybody’s idea of happiness into account, and make laws that work for all of them?

All this came to mind today as I was reading WorldNetDaily on “Bestiality ‘OK If Animal Approves.‘” That’s the opinion of gay rights activist Frank Kameny. There’s a lot that’s ridiculous in what they’re reporting on there, and much that’s quite horrifying, not least of which is this from Kameny:

“Absolutely indisputably a central part of the very definition of Americanism is the guarantee, found in the Declaration of Independence, as not merely a Right, but as an Inalienable Right, of the ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’” he wrote. “If something which someone arbitrarily defines as a ’sexual perversion’ provides happiness for consenting adult participants, then its enjoyment is enshrined in basic Americanism.

“So: Let us have more and better enjoyment of more and better sexual perversions, by whatever definition, by more and more consenting adults. We will all be the better off thereby. And that will be Americanism in action,” he said.

The morality is perverted there. I will not go into any further details on it here. The logic is perverted as well. Can you quite imagine Thomas Jefferson or James Madison agreeing that the last quoted sentence there represents Americanism in action?

What is it that produces this kind of thinking? First, there is sin, and the desire to normalize it to reduce guilt. In the famous Romans 1:18-32 passage that describes a progression into deeper and deeper depths of sin, the culmination is not sexual sin, murder, or hate. The list does not end with “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (vs. 31, ESV). The culmination, the ultimate is

they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Need I point out how this is being practiced more and more in our culture, the California Supreme Court being a recent example?

Added to all that is the disdain Americans too often feel toward careful thinking. The logic of this ought not to seem so attractive, even to the man who stated it!

*Interestingly enough, that gas station stayed open as a full-service station, with self-serve competitors right across the street, until rising gas prices finally did it in just a few months ago. I don’t know how it survived that long; I was certainly sad to see it go.