Same-Sex Marriage, Part 1: Faith and Values column 10/20/12 (with references!)

There is a familiarity in the debate about same-sex marriage, a predictable cycle involving traditions and institutions that tends to play out pretty regularly in America. Public opinion, especially among younger generations, starts to favor a break with long held tradition, older generations react to this by passing laws to defend those traditions. Passions are inflamed, things are said. Public opinion swells, time passes, the old guard fades and traditions fall. We’ve seen this all before: in the 1910s, women sought equal access to the voting booth, in the 60s, blacks sought equal access to public education, this time it’s about equal access to marriage. Marriage is one of our most cherished institutions, but America is a land of reinvention, a land where traditions seldom survive the urge for forward momentum. It’s inevitable, then, that we will become a country that protects the rights of same-sex couples to marry, to share property, parental rights, a stable home and all the other benefits marriage confers. It’s what America does. We’re a country that prides itself on extending the blessings of liberty and equality to all people, widening that circle of blessings with each generation. Eventually, the issue of same-sex marriage will be seen as an issue of rights, laws will be passed protecting those rights, and we’ll move on. The debate about same-sex marriage, then, is not all that suspenseful. If you want a really interesting discussion, talk about the Christian response to the reality of same-sex marriage.  

What makes this particular discussion interesting is that it’s not necessarily about the Christian attitude towards gays or same-sex couples, it’s more about our attitude towards the Bible. Christians follow Jesus, who said he came to fulfill the law, the words of Hebrew scripture, down to the smallest stroke of each letter (Matthew 5:17-18). So of course we hold our Bible in the highest respect, a Bible that holds definitely negative views on homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:9-10). On the other hand, Jesus had a funny way of fulfilling the law. You’d figure he would be a strict literalist – separating himself from impure folks, no work on the Sabbath, the whole nine yards. But he wasn’t. Case in point: the Pharisees brought a woman accused of adultery to Jesus. The law required this woman be stoned to death – would Jesus abide by the law? He could have played it safe, said something like “God said it, I believe it and that settles it!” – and stepped back as the stones started to fly. This is the kind of Jesus in which some would like to believe - it’s not the one found in the Bible, though. Jesus wasn’t interested in the easy, bumper sticker approach to scripture. He did the hard thing, the risky thing, sacrificing his safety as well as the literal words of scripture to save this woman. He also came up with a better catch phrase: “Whoever is without sin, go ahead and throw the first stone” (John 8:1-11). Jesus wasn’t a literalist:  he had read the laws against adultery, but refused to let the crowd stone the woman. He knew the purity laws, but still spoke to and touched the unclean. This was sacrificial stuff – all in the name of love, because love, Jesus said, is how you fulfill the law: the entire Bible, the smallest stroke of every last letter, it all boils down to this: love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as well (Matthew 22: 37-40). Both of these, all the time, at the same time. This is why the church has been able to condemn slavery despite biblical passages supporting it (Ephesians 6:5-7, 1 Timothy 6:1); it is why many Protestant denominations now welcome women into the ministry, despite biblical prohibitions against women even speaking in church (1 Corinthians 14: 34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12). Following Jesus, we have learned how to fulfill the words of the bible, sacrificing our comfortable positions inside its literal meaning in order to love our neighbor. The alternative to all these issues – condoning slavery, prohibiting women from the ministry – violates the rule of love and the underlying principles of the Bible. It is also why Christians find plenty of room for debate about same-sex marriage despite biblical condemnation of homosexuality. More on that next week.