a Christian's rant against proposition 8

it’s just days before the election and i am feeling suffocated by the religious right’s efforts to eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry.  i created this blog to expose an alternative christian perspective— for a christian audience (but all faith backgrounds are welcome).

so here’s my take on prop 8.  to be honest, i haven’t put a lot of thought into this proposition until i started receiving emails last week urging me to vote for it because gay marriage is an “abomination to God” and a “peril to this Christian nation”.

the “open-minded” christians say that they are cool with gay people having domestic partnerships as long as they do not have the title of “married” because marriage is a Christian institution that is defined in scripture as a union between a man and a woman.  i have several problems with this:

• why are we legislating this piece of christian morality, especially upon people who may not necessarily be chrisitan?

• if we want to “protect marriage”, shouldn’t we also outlaw divorce, remarriage, and premarital sex- all of which are clearly prohibited in scripture? (except in the case of adultery- a minority of divorce cases)  mccain straight up cheated on his first wife for a 24 year old woman- 18 years younger than him.  can you imagine how the religious right would respond to a gay presidential nominee?

• the only way marriage is really “defined” in scripture is sex.  here’s an excerpt from a friend’s blog:

• • “GOD simply defines it in Genesis 2:24 ” a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” In other words, once a man and woman become one flesh (have sex), they’re married in the eyes of God. Ordained minister doesn’t need to declare them married. They don’t need a wedding. They don’t even need a certificate. All they have to do is have sex and they’ll be married in the eyes of God..  [Marriage and sex] are one and the same.”

• one can also argue that marriage is a holy sacrament, per church tradition.  but does that mean it has to be recognized by the state in order to be recognized before God?  my husband and i got married in a norwalk courthouse a month before our wedding date in order to secure subsidized ucla family housing.  but that civil ceremony is irrelevant to us because the real act of marriage took place before God, our pastor, and our spiritual community.  our government ceremony is only important because it confers to us legal privileges.  gay couples are not fighting to get married within the church.

• furthermore, marriage has existed across religions and cultures WAY before the church formalized it. so why are we imposing the christian understanding of marriage upon people?

domestic partnerships (DPs) do not have all of the same civil liberties as marriages.  here are some examples:

• many companies do not extend health insurance coverage to DPs nor do they allow employees to take family leave if their partners are ill
• DPs cannot file their federal taxes jointly to get the tax break married couples get
• DPs cannot sponsor a spouse for immigration purposes
• DPs must pay exorbitant property taxes on a home if their partner dies
• DPs do not have the same spousal privileges in court cases

if interracial marriage were illegal, i’d be pretty pissed because i’m in one.  but the supreme court struck down a law prohibiting it in freaking 1967.  sure, tons of people flew under the radar and coupled up anyway (just like gay people have been doing for generations) but people want and deserve public recognition for their decision to pursue committed and monogamous relationships.  sure, scripture doesn’t speak against interracial marriage, but i think this illuminates why the gay community is so impassioned to have the title of “married” and feel attacked by religious community.

but i think what bothers me the most is how the church’s crazy mobilization for this issue underscores its relative silence on other political issues that are central to the gospel.  standing up for the poor and marginalized oftentimes means taking a political stance, because frankly, people get served through things like affordable housing, social services, and access to health care.  and yet where is the church’s rallying cry for the very people jesus served?!!!!!

sometimes, i wonder how much of this prop 8 thing is really about representing jesus.  sigh.

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(note: below is a comment i left in response to an article posted in this facebook dicussion)

I disagree with Hick’s fundamental argument that gay marriage ultimately hurts “our” children. Research from single-mother families (environments oftentimes fraught with psychological and financial poverty) cannot and should not be generalized to same sex couples. The implication that gay or lesbian parents, who are typically emotionally and financially secure, would raise dysfunctional children is unsubstantiated, and frankly, engenders fear. In fact, the consensus in the “research world” is that sexuality does not affect the quality of parenting (I am getting my PhD in social work). As far as rearing children under both male and female influences, I think that even the gay community would agree with Hicks on this point, which is why gay and lesbian parents often make concerted efforts to bring friends of the opposite sex into the family life.

I would even argue that gay marriage actually helps the welfare of children. Three percent of babies born in the US are available for adoption, which is, very sadly, more than the number of parents willing to adopt. And nearly half of these children (65,000) are adopted by gay parents! And even still, we need more adoptive parents, lest we allow “our” children to continue languishing in the foster care system or underfunded institutions. These are the children who go on to have the dysfunctional lives Hicks describes, not the children of same sex couples. (And while we’re at it, why doesn’t anti-abortion rhetoric address adoption, foster care, or donating to children’s homes? The church must discuss this, especially if abortion should ever become illegal). Since so many gay couples are adopting children, I would actually prefer for them to be married in order to fortify their commitment to one another, because gay or not, two parents are better than one, both practically and emotionally for child and parent. However, I do know a number of social workers who are against gay marriage and yet would never prevent same sex couples from adopting.

I also disagree that marriage is solely for procreation. Should we prohibit reproductively-challenged men and women from marrying? Marriage is very much about “adult desires” and I think Song of Songs paints a very clear picture of that. In fact, God created us in a way to yearn and crave for the day we will be reconciled, or “married”, to Jesus, our bridegroom. And whether gays/lesbians recognize that or not, they too are wired to want the love and intimacy that marriage confers because it points to the good news of God’s kingdom come on earth: our wedding day. I pray that God would speak to the gay community through this marriage paradigm, that Jesus himself is also burning with desire to be married to his people, despite Satan’s attempts to blame and accuse.

As for marriage and God, I just see Church-sanctioned marriage and state-sanctioned marriage as two completely different things. As I mentioned in my blog, my husband and I had a civil ceremony a month before our wedding for some legal purposes, but we we did not consider ourselves to be married, especially in the eyes of God. We live as “aliens and strangers of this world” and are here to share the love of Jesus, not to institutionalize a God-ordained morality. The separation of church and state is what allows people to worship other gods, even though as Christians, we believe that true worship is reserved for Jesus and idol worship is the mother of all immorality. But it is that same separation that should also differentiate state marriage vs. church marriage and societal morality and Christian morality.

At today’s training, I learned that Billy Graham, in response to being asked how he could support Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, said, “It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict; it’s God’s job to judge; and it’s our job to love.” That speaks volumes to me about how the Church should respond to the gay marriage debate. Whether or not one thinks same sex attraction is wrong, the Church should be loving this community that has been burdened with rejection, depression, and suicide (highest suicide ate of any group or community). This is already how we respond to the battered and victimized woman who wants to leave her husband, even though we know that scripture says that divorce outside of adultery is wrong.

This is not an easy topic and I also struggle with my own desire to keep our culture pure and safe, especially for my future children. This whole “Girls Gone Wild” thing with straight women experimenting with their sexuality freaks me out. Every year, it seems like that stuff just keeps getting more and more normative and even….funny? I was at a wedding where my friend started to jokingly freak me on the dance floor, and I’m thinking that this is wrong, ironically wrong, on so many levels. We must viligantly guard ourselves. I do think it will be harder for Christians to stand by our convictions as abstinence will only become increasingly freakish to popular culture. But I don’t think making gay marriage illegal will mitigate the cultural shift that is already happening at breakneck speed. And furthermore, I don’t think pushing that agenda is the best way for us to love people or share the gospel. It is too easy for us Christians to fall into Pharisee-like ways of thinking and doing, while losing sight of the larger picture of God’s calling for us to love and forgive others as Christ did for us in our sin.