“Husbands and Wives: What gay marriage won’t change” by Tod Lindberg, The Weekly Standard, August 2, 2004.
“Justly Protecting Marriage” by Bob De Moor, The Banner, May 2004.
“The Prohibition of Gay Marriage” by Collin Hansen, christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2004/jul15.html
by Dr. Ralph Blair
As contributing editor for The Weekly Standard, research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and editor of Policy Review, Lindberg is aligned with the neoconservative cause. So when he states that marriage for same-sex couples will not “be especially dangerous to marriage as such, as opponents fear,” he is contradicting his conservative cohorts’ concern. He adds, though, that the extension of the right of marriage to same-sex couples will also not “usher in equal recognition for gay and lesbian couples, as proponents hope.” The lessons of history back him up. Civil rights legislation for African-Americans has not done away with racism. Similar laws for the protection of Jewish Americans has not done away with anti-Semitism. The winning of equal rights for women has not done away with prejudice against women preachers, for example. Noting that many factors contribute to the fact that “marriage, in general, isn’t what it used to be,” he says “we await a discussion that disentangles gay marriage from other factors contributing to the downward social spiral of the family.”
Observing that critics of marriage for same-sex couples view “marriage between a man and a woman as something higher than could ever be represented by a union of two men or two women,” Lindberg makes a powerful counterpoint: “But if man-woman marriage is truly higher, how is it threatened by something lower? If what’s lower can cut marriage down to the size of the low, then what is the basis of the claim that marriage of the man-woman sort is higher in the first place? After all, the fact that some marriages are not good marriages across the full panoply of modern dysfunctionality does not mean that no marriages are good marriages (and therefore, presumably, of a higher sort). The higher sort are not undone by the existence of a lower sort.”
The Banner is the periodical of the Christian Reformed Church, a small, conservative denomination of 19th century Dutch immigrants. The CRC has wrestled officially with homosexual issues since the 1970s. Under the guidance of a former editor, The Banner took some courageous steps to be fair on these issues. De Moor is maintaining that tradition in his May editorial. He reminds readers: “we still ‘see through a glass, darkly’ … so let’s be careful to discuss [same-sex marriage] in the Spirit of Christ, who calls us to both truth and unity, boldness and meekness, integrity and tolerance, faith and love.” And he grants that “if you’re looking for definitive answers in this editorial, flip the page.” Instead, readers flipped out. Their response was overwhelmingly negative.
Admitting “I get more confused by the minute as I tap into brighter and more learned Christian minds than mine,” he observes that “in most societies marriage has been, and still is, defined as a committed relationship between a husband and a wife (or wives). The Bible also speaks of marriage that way.” He then argues for “something like ‘domestic partnerships’” for same-sex couples. He says this would treat “homosexual people justly, respectfully, lovingly, and pastorally.” He says “this approach would protect the sanctity of marriage while allowing us to deal justly with a societal reality,” explaining that “churches, other value communities, and individuals could still actively promote their own views and policies with respect to recognition of such partnerships” and “governments would be able to deal justly with people in homosexual relationships by affording such covenants appropriate recognition and regulation.”
Hanson writes on the Web site of Christianity Today. His ignorant disdain for same-sex couples is evident in his reducing their need for stabilizing commitments to nothing nobler than a desire for “feel-good sexuality.” He likens their love to “a weed” and “alcohol abuse.” Indeed, Prohibition is his analogy to the defeated Federal Marriage Amendment as a perilous attempt to legislate morality with unintended consequences. He warns: “You can try to kill a weed by cutting off the visible part. But until you’ve treated the root, the same problem will emerge later.” And until Hansen and his cohorts are willing to admit what they already ought to know – that the root of the right to marriage for same-sex couples is something deeper than “feel-good sexuality,” they won’t begin to grasp what a terrible mistake they’re making. Indeed, the long, embarrassing history of “traditionalist biblical” opposition to the extending of basic human rights to women, children, blacks, interracial couples, the sterile, the poor and other oppressed people is a reminder that, in Hansen’s own words, “the FMA debate has lacked historical perspective.” If he goes back as far as Matthew 23, he’ll find that the religious leaders have always opposed the prophets of social justice. “Traditionalist” religious leaders would still load burdens onto others that they won’t do a thing to lighten and they still shut the doors of the Kingdom to “whosoever” would come.
Ironically, Hansen cites Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union without an apparent awareness of her “Boston marriage,” Anna Gordon and Lady Henry Somerset (as discussed by historians Carolyn Gifford, Lillian Faderman, Nancy Hardesty, et al). And just as the FMA crowd calls marriage for same-sex couples destructive of marriage for heterosexual couples, Willard’s “Home Protection Ballot” for women’s suffrage was called a “Home Destruction Ballot” by the reactionary preachers of that day.
Must conservative Christians always and finally bring up the rear when it comes to issues of justice? After losing a General Conference battle with Methodists resistant to the rights of women in 1888, Willard wrote: “I confidently predict that we five women, whose election was thus disavowed, will have more enviable places in history than any who opposed us.” And she’s been vindicated. Just as our ancient ancestors built memorials to the prophets their more distant ancestors persecuted, we remember with gratitude those our ancestors persecuted. And we’ve all forgotten – or wish to forget – the oppressors.