Proposition 8 discussion continued

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much made of mormon money:


The New Religious Right
Does the organizational and fund-raising prowess displayed by the LDS church during California’s Proposition 8 campaign augur future political might?
By James Kirchick

In june the governing body of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a letter to every Mormon congregation in California asking that a message be read to members at Sunday services stating that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God,” and “local church leaders will provide information about how you may become involved in this important cause.” The cause was Proposition 8, and church members were implored to “do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time.”

Mormons heeded the call. Not only did they donate what appears to be a majority of the funds raised by the Yes on 8 campaign -- an estimated $20 million, according to Prop. 8 opponents, much of it from out of state -- but church members also volunteered thousands of man-hours in support of the amendment. Though the Mormon Church avoided a visible public role in the campaign, it did formally join the coalition of religious groups supporting the amendment, and a prominent member, Mark Jansson, served on the Yes on 8 executive committee. (Jansson was one of four signatories to a public letter threatening a boycott of businesses whose owners contributed to No on 8.)

Mormons make up only 2% of California’s population, so the fact that they played such an outsize role in the Yes on 8 campaign testifies to their rigid and efficient organization as a religious community. Because the church requests that members tithe 10% of their annual income, LDS leaders are able to gain an accurate picture p of how much their congregants earn. With this information in hand, bishops in local communities went from house to house in California asking for specific amounts of money for the Yes on 8 campaign -- an incredibly effective fund-raising tactic. Mormons boast high rates of involvement in church-related activities, including commitments that can be quite demanding, such as missionary work, whereby members spend up to two years proselyting, often in far-flung overseas locations.

This individual discipline, obedience to hierarchical authority, and experience in exhorting people to join the faith comes in mighty handy for mass political organizing. Indeed, Mormons campaigned heavily for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid, especially in the key first primary state of New Hampshire. And it’s Romney’s potential future presidential aspirations, as well as Mormonism’s tortured history in America, that has led some to speculate that the church wasn’t just advocating for “traditional” marriage in the Prop. 8 fight. Perhaps it was also deliberately flaunting its power as a force to be reckoned with --showing both the broader religious right and the Washington political scene what it can do.

Ever since its inception in the early 19th century, Mormonism has been derided as a cult by other Christians, especially evangelicals. “They’re very insecure people,” says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. And the reaction to Romney’s campaign showed why this anxiety might be justified. From the start, Romney had difficulty attracting the much-needed support of evangelicals and was shocked at the level of anti-Mormon sentiment he experienced campaigning in heavily Protestant areas. “There’s a lot of resentment amongst members of the church,” says Clayton Christensen, a Mormon and professor at Harvard Business School, about the level of hostility that materialized during Romney’s candidacy. “Christ actually said you should love your enemies and do good to people who spitefully use you. And yet, with the evangelicals in the presidential campaign, those guys really showed that they are the ones that aren’t Christian.”

Mormons have expressed similar disbelief at the level of anger voiced by the gay community in the wake of Prop. 8’s success. In response to nationwide protests staged outside Mormon temples, the church released a statement bemoaning that it had been “singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election.” Church members feel “genuine alarm” at the hubbub created by their efforts, according to Damon Linker, a former editor of the conservative Christian public policy journal First Things and the author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. And that’s not surprising, considering that Mormons have long been involved in the movement to ban same-sex marriage -- and yet are only now facing massive scrutiny for it.

Ascribing cynical motivations to the LDS church’s behavior is intriguing, but the contention that it became involved in the fight over Prop. 8 as a way to impress is belied by Mormon history. First, Mormonism has never been particularly welcoming of gays and its doctrine proscribes homosexuality as a sin. Nor is it the case that the church ignored same-sex marriage until this past summer. The day before Prop. 8’s passage, a seven-page internal LDS memo was posted online showing just how prescient the church was on the issue. Addressed to M. Russell Ballard, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (men regarded as living prophets by LDS members), the memo presents a thorough argument for why and how the church should become involved in the movement to prevent same-sex couples from marrying.

The memo, dated March 1997, was written in response to continuing developments in Hawaii, where in 1993, the state’s supreme court ruled that the denial of marriage to same-sex couples was discriminatory. Anticipating a national legal and electoral fight over the issue, its author supported the involvement of the church in fighting back attempts to legalize marriage equality. The memo not only stressed the importance of working with other religious groups but also cautioned that more mainstream Christian denominations ought to be the public face of the campaign due to concerns that Mormonism was still viewed with suspicion by the general public. Describing a meeting that then–LDS president Gordon Hinckley attended, the memo states that Hinckley “said the church should be in a coalition and not out by itself,” and cites a poll conducted by Richard Wirthlin, a former senior adviser and pollster for Ronald Reagan and a leading LDS figure, which found that “the public image of the Catholic Church [is] higher than our church.” The conclusion of the memo’s author: “If we get into this, they are the ones with which to join.” The church had been nominally involved in the marriage debate prior to the writing of this memo; in 1994 it issued a formal statement against gay marriage, and in 1996 local congregations across Texas urged members to join an antigay organization called the Coalition for Traditional Marriage.

A great deal of the intellectual work of the traditional marriage movement was done at Brigham Young University, which is owned by the Mormon Church. James Ord, a gay Mormon living in California who describes his status with the church as “inactive,” graduated in 2004 from BYU’s law school, where he worked alongside professors Richard Wilkins and Lynn Wardle. The two have been prominent players in the anti–gay marriage movement and, according to Ord, began crafting the legal strategy to oppose same-sex marriage almost immediately after Canadian courts in Ontario issued a series of rulings in 2002 that laid the groundwork for marriage equality in the province and, eventually, the country. For the next two years Ord “attended meetings, forums, and academic discussions where the language for these amendments was floated and debated.”

A rapprochement between mormons and the religious right at large does not appear to be in the offing, despite the LDS Church’s hard work on Prop. 8. With marriage, there is “far more at stake for Mormons than there is for a Catholic or evangelical,” Linker says. Ironically, in light of Mormonism’s polygamist history, he points to its contemporary emphasis on the heterosexual family structure as the primary reason for its involvement. “Mormons are different than other factions on the religious right because their theology emphasizes a traditional male/female family with kids in a way that goes far beyond most other groups, whether they be evangelical or Catholic,” Linker says. According to Mormon dogma, marriage extends into the afterlife and couples continue to have “spirit children” who populate extraterrestrial worlds.

The church is also selective in the battles it fights. For instance, Christensen says, the church stayed out of the dispute over same-sex marriage in Massachusetts because it didn’t think it could defeat the measure in one of the country’s most liberal states, even though then-governor Romney was leading the effort to do just that. Contrast the church’s judicious decision in the Bay State with its 2000 campaign in support of California’s Proposition 22, a statute defining marriage as between a man and a woman. That measure passed with 61% of the vote, its success was never in doubt, and it occurred a full three years before Massachusetts ruled in favor of marriage equality. Given the uphill environment activists faced then, their outcry was understandably muted compared to the devastating sense of loss felt in November’s bruising. And since the church didn’t face any backlash in 2000, according to Ord, its leaders felt confident about rejoining the fight this time around.

But while Mormons may be bewildered at the outrage directed their way now, it would be wrong to conclude that the church has been so chastened by the reaction that it will stay out of future political battles. For one thing, Mormon doctrine remains steadfastly opposed to same-sex marriage. “To allow gay marriage is to fundamentally misconstrue what [they] are ordained by God to become,” Linker says. And Mormons have suffered far worse in their history than mere protests or the occasional anthrax scare. “I think we attempted to work in the process to do what we think is right in society and in the eyes of the Lord,” Christensen says. “I don’t feel any kind of sense that we made a mistake.”
 
Poor persecuted Mormons :sad:

What's next? Denying them equal access to rights? That would be ....unconstitutional. We can't have that. :tsk:

Amazing that a group that was historically a victim of persecution themselves decided to forego Jesus' message of forgiveness and acceptance and react by persecuting someone else.

First it was blacks, now gays.

Who's next on the list polygon ?
 
Dec 8 (AP) SAN FRANCISCO — Some same-sex marriage supporters are urging people to "call in gay" Wednesday to show how much the country relies on gays and lesbians, but others question whether it's wise to encourage skipping work given the nation's economic distress.

Organizers of "Day Without a Gay" _ scheduled to coincide with International Human Rights Day and modeled after similar work stoppages by Latino immigrants _ also are encouraging people to perform volunteer work and refrain from spending money.

Sean Hetherington, a West Hollywood comedian and personal trainer, dreamed up the idea with his boyfriend, Aaron Hartzler, after reading online that a few angry gay-rights activists were calling for a daylong strike to protest California voters' passage last month of Proposition 8, which reversed this year's state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage.

The couple thought it would be more effective and less divisive if people were asked to perform community service instead of staying home with their wallets shut. Dozens of nonprofit agencies, from the National Women's Law Center in Washington to a Methodist church in Fresno collecting food for the homeless, have posted opportunities for volunteers on the couple's Web site.

"We are all for a boycott if that is what brings about a sense of community for people," said Hetherington, 30, who plans to spend Wednesday volunteering at an inner-city school. "You can take away from the economy and give back in other ways."

Hetherington said he's been getting 100 e-mails an hour from people looking for volunteer opportunities, and that his "Day Without a Gay" Web site has gotten 100,000 hits since mid-November.

Despite Hartzler and Hetherington's attempt to fashion a positive approach, some organizers of the street demonstrations that drew massive crowds in many cities last month have been reluctant to embrace the concept, saying that it could be at best impractical and at worst counterproductive to "call in gay."

"It's extra-challenging for people to think about taking off work as a form of protest, given that we are talking about people who may not be out (as gay) at work, and given the current economic situation and job market," said Jules Graves, 38, coordinator of the Colorado Queer Straight Alliance. "There is really not any assurance employers would appreciate it for what it is."
Story continues below

Graves' group nonetheless is arranging for interested participants to volunteer at the local African Community Center in Denver. The agency said it could find projects to keep 20 people busy, but so far only 10 have pledged to show up, said Graves.

Scott Craig, a fifth-grade teacher at Independence Charter School in Philadelphia, had no problem requesting and being granted the day off. So many of the school's 60 teachers were eager to show support for gay rights they had to make sure enough stayed behind to staff classrooms.

About 25 teachers plan to take Wednesday off and to have their work covered by substitutes while they discuss ways to introduce gay issues to their students and volunteer at the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Craig said. A letter telling parents why so many teachers would be out went home Monday.

"We want to get the conversation going in the community that gay is not bad," Craig said. "For kids to hear that in a positive light can be life-changing."

Join The Impact, the online community that launched protests last month over the passage of gay marriage bans in California, Florida and Arizona, has urged people to withdraw $80 from their bank accounts Wednesday to demonstrate gays' spending power, and to devote the time they might otherwise spend watching TV or surfing the Internet to volunteer work.

Witeck-Combs Communications, a public relations firm in Washington that specializes in the gay and lesbian market, published a study this year that estimated that gay and lesbian consumers spend $700 billion annually.

Bob Witeck, the firm's chief executive officer, said it would be difficult to measure the success of Wednesday's strike since gay employees occupy so many fields. And rather than suspending all consumer spending for the day, gay rights supporters would have a bigger impact if they devoted their dollars to gay-friendly businesses year-round, Witeck said.

"Our community leaders who are running book stores, newspapers, flower shops, coffee houses, bars and many, many other things are hurting right now, so paying attention to their needs during this hard time is an effective form of activism," he said.

Hetherington said he has been careful to design A Day Without a Gay _ he came up with the name after the film "A Day Without a Mexican" and liked it because it rhymed _ so no one feels excluded or threatened.

He has specifically urged high school students not to walk out of their classes and assured college students they won't be disloyal to the cause if they go ahead and take their final exams. He also has listed opportunities _ ranging from writing letters to members of Congress about federal gay rights legislation to spreading the word about Wednesday on social networking sites _ for gay marriage backers who cannot miss work.
 
My cinnamon roll that's my dinner will probably burn, but I had to say this before I leave for class tonight.

I just got done writing a family history paper for my class, and I got to relive the deaths of my father-in-law and sister-in-law one more time. And I wad thinking that life is so short and can be so hard and there are people who are willing to deny other people happiness because they think their God wants them to. How can you do that? How can you decide who gets to be loved forever by that one spacial person? How can you deny a chance at happiness for people in such a world? A world where someone trying to get their fucking parking pass off the floor as she drives may send your car sliding into a tree and kill you just like that. You have no idea what will happen to you or anyone else tomorrow. How can you be so smug and righteous?

/rant
\dinner
 
The arguments I've read and heard against marriage equality in the last few months lead me to think that most of its opponents see marriage as being much less about love and happiness than you do.

Sorry about your roll.
 
Well, he's got his name on everything from eyeglasses to duffel bags to perfume, so why not an Internet dating service too, I guess.
 
Our Mutual Joy

Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.

Lisa Miller

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.

The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months—since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it—the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country's pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.

The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."

To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world. (The fact that homosexual couples cannot procreate has also been raised as a biblical objection, for didn't God say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? But the Bible authors could never have imagined the brave new world of international adoption and assisted reproductive technology—and besides, heterosexuals who are infertile or past the age of reproducing get married all the time.)

Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew. Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).

The apostle Paul echoed the Christian Lord's lack of interest in matters of the flesh. For him, celibacy was the Christian ideal, but family stability was the best alternative. Marry if you must, he told his audiences, but do not get divorced. "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): a wife must not separate from her husband." It probably goes without saying that the phrase "gay marriage" does not appear in the Bible at all.

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)." The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.

Marriage, specifically, has evolved so as to be unrecognizable to the wives of Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th. (In the NEWSWEEK POLL, 55 percent of respondents said that married heterosexuals who have sex with someone other than their spouses are more morally objectionable than a gay couple in a committed sexual relationship.) By the mid-19th century, U.S. courts were siding with wives who were the victims of domestic violence, and by the 1970s most states had gotten rid of their "head and master" laws, which gave husbands the right to decide where a family would live and whether a wife would be able to take a job. Today's vision of marriage as a union of equal partners, joined in a relationship both romantic and pragmatic, is, by very recent standards, radical, says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History."

Religious wedding ceremonies have already changed to reflect new conceptions of marriage. Remember when we used to say "man and wife" instead of "husband and wife"? Remember when we stopped using the word "obey"? Even Miss Manners, the voice of tradition and reason, approved in 1997 of that change. "It seems," she wrote, "that dropping 'obey' was a sensible editing of a service that made assumptions about marriage that the society no longer holds."

We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future. The Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage, family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs. Gay men like to point to the story of passionate King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he was "one spirit" and whom he "loved as he loved himself." Conservatives say this is a story about a platonic friendship, but it is also a story about two men who stand up for each other in turbulent times, through violent war and the disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his clothes at Jonathan's death and, in grieving, writes a song:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.

Here, the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations.

In addition to its praise of friendship and its condemnation of divorce, the Bible gives many examples of marriages that defy convention yet benefit the greater community. The Torah discouraged the ancient Hebrews from marrying outside the tribe, yet Moses himself is married to a foreigner, Zipporah. Queen Esther is married to a non-Jew and, according to legend, saves the Jewish people. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, believes that Judaism thrives through diversity and inclusion. "I don't think Judaism should or ought to want to leave any portion of the human population outside the religious process," he says. "We should not want to leave [homosexuals] outside the sacred tent." The marriage of Joseph and Mary is also unorthodox (to say the least), a case of an unconventional arrangement accepted by society for the common good. The boy needed two human parents, after all.

In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of Christ's all-encompassing love. The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage. If one is for racial equality and the common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and family necessarily follow. Terry Davis is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hartford, Conn., and has been presiding over "holy unions" since 1992. "I'm against promiscuity—love ought to be expressed in committed relationships, not through casual sex, and I think the church should recognize the validity of committed same-sex relationships," he says.

Still, very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal. The practice varies by region, by church or synagogue, even by cleric. More progressive denominations—the United Church of Christ, for example—have agreed to support gay marriage. Other denominations and dioceses will do "holy union" or "blessing" ceremonies, but shy away from the word "marriage" because it is politically explosive. So the frustrating, semantic question remains: should gay people be married in the same, sacramental sense that straight people are? I would argue that they should. If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that. People get married "for their mutual joy," explains the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center in New York, quoting the Episcopal marriage ceremony. That's what religious people do: care for each other in spite of difficulty, she adds. In marriage, couples grow closer to God: "Being with one another in community is how you love God. That's what marriage is about."

More basic than theology, though, is human need. We want, as Abraham did, to grow old surrounded by friends and family and to be buried at last peacefully among them. We want, as Jesus taught, to love one another for our own good—and, not to be too grandiose about it, for the good of the world. We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad." Let the priest's prayer be our own.

With Sarah Ball and Anne Underwood
 
A Gay Marriage Surge

Public support grows, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll.
Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek Web Exclusive

When voters in California, Florida and Arizona approved measures banning same-sex marriage last month, opponents lamented that the country appeared to be turning increasingly intolerant toward gay and lesbian rights. But the latest NEWSWEEK Poll finds growing public support for gay marriage and civil unions—and strong backing for the granting of certain rights associated with marriage, to same-sex couples.

Americans continue to find civil unions for gays and lesbians more palatable than full-fledged marriage. Fifty-five percent of respondents favored legally sanctioned unions or partnerships, while only 39 percent supported marriage rights. Both figures are notably higher than in 2004, when 40 percent backed the former and 33 percent approved of the latter. When it comes to according legal rights in specific areas to gays, the public is even more supportive. Seventy-four percent back inheritance rights for gay domestic partners (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 73 percent approve of extending health insurance and other employee benefits to them (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 67 percent favor granting them Social Security benefits (compared to 55 percent in 2004) and 86 percent support hospital visitation rights (a question that wasn't asked four years ago). In other areas, too, respondents appeared increasingly tolerant. Fifty-three percent favor gay adoption rights (8 points more than in 2004), and 66 percent believe gays should be able to serve openly in the military (6 points more than in 2004).

Despite the recently approved state measures, public opinion nationally has shifted against a federal ban on same-sex marriage. In 2004, people were evenly divided on the question, with 47 percent favoring a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage and 45 percent opposing one. In the latest poll, however, 52 percent oppose a ban and only 43 percent favor one. When respondents were asked about state measures, the numbers were closer: 45 percent said they'd vote in favor of an amendment outlawing gay marriage in their states, while 49 percent said they'd oppose such a measure.

A number of factors seem to play a role in swaying people one way or the other. For instance, 62 percent of Americans say religious beliefs play an important role in shaping their views on gay marriage. According to the survey, two-thirds of those who see marriage as primarily a legal matter support gay marriage. On the other hand, two-thirds of those who see it as mostly a religious matter (or equal parts religious and legal) oppose gay marriage. Moreover, the poll found significant differences across generational lines. Essentially, the younger you are, the more likely you are to support same-sex marriage. About half of those aged 18 to 34 back marriage rights, compared to roughly four in 10 among those aged 35 to 64 and only about two in 10 among those 65 and older. The survey also detected a gender gap, with women more likely to support gay marriage than men, 44 percent to 34 percent. Differences by race appear less noteworthy: 40 percent of whites approve of gay marriage, compared to 37 percent of non-whites.

One reason that tolerance for gay marriage and civil unions may be on the rise is that a growing number of Americans say they know someone who's gay. While in 1994, a NEWSWEEK Poll found that only 53 percent of those questioned knew a gay or lesbian person, that figure today is 78 percent. Drilling down a bit more, 38 percent of adults work with someone gay, 33 percent have a gay family member and 66 percent have a gay friend or acquaintance.
 
Turning the Bible on its Head -- Newsweek Goes for Gay Marriage
http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=2881

Newsweek magazine, one of the most influential news magazines in America, has decided to come out for same-sex marriage in a big way, and to do so by means of a biblical and theological argument. In its cover story for this week, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers a revisionist argument for the acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is fair to say that Newsweek has gone for broke on this question.

Miller begins with a lengthy dismissal of the Bible's relevance to the question of marriage in the first place. "Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does," Miller suggests. If so, she argues that readers will find a confusion of polygamy, strange marital practices, and worse.

She concludes: "Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?" She answers, "Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so."

Now, wait just a minute. Miller's broadside attack on the biblical teachings on marriage goes to the heart of what will appear as her argument for same-sex marriage. She argues that, in the Old Testament, "examples of what social conservatives call 'the traditional family' are scarcely to be found." This is true, of course, if what you mean by 'traditional family' is the picture of America in the 1950s. The Old Testament notion of the family starts with the idea that the family is the carrier of covenant promises, and this family is defined, from the onset, as a transgenerational extended family of kin and kindred.

But, at the center of this extended family stands the institution of marriage as the most basic human model of covenantal love and commitment. And this notion of marriage, deeply rooted in its procreative purpose, is unambiguously heterosexual.

As for the New Testament, "Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere" to be found. Miller argues that both Jesus and Paul were unmarried (emphatically true) and that Jesus "preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties." Jesus clearly did call for a commitment to the Gospel and to discipleship that transcended family commitments. Given the Jewish emphasis on family loyalty and commitment, this did represent a decisive break.

But Miller also claims that "while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman." This is just patently untrue. Genesis 2:24-25 certainly reveals marriage to be, by the Creator's intention, a union of one man and one woman. To offer just one example from the teaching of Jesus, Matthew 19:1-8 makes absolutely no sense unless marriage "between one man and one woman" is understood as normative.

As for Paul, he did indeed instruct the Corinthians that the unmarried state was advantageous for the spread of the Gospel. His concern in 1 Corinthians 7 is not to elevate singleness as a lifestyle, but to encourage as many as are able to give themselves totally to an unencumbered Gospel ministry. But, in Corinth and throughout the New Testament church, the vast majority of Christians were married. Paul will himself assume this when he writes the "household codes" included in other New Testament letters.

The real issue is not marriage, Miller suggests, but opposition to homosexuality. Surprisingly, Miller argues that this prejudice against same-sex relations is really about opposition to sex between men. She cites the Anchor Bible Dictionary as stating that "nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women." She would have done better to look to the Bible itself, where in Romans 1:26-27 Paul writes: "For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error."

Again, this passage makes absolutely no sense unless it refers very straightforwardly to same-sex relations among both men and women -- with the women mentioned first.

Miller dismisses the Levitical condemnations of homosexuality as useless because "our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions." But she saves her most creative dismissal for the Apostle Paul. Paul, she concedes, "was tough on homosexuality." Nevertheless, she takes encouragement from the fact that "progressive scholars" have found a way to re-interpret the Pauline passages to refer only to homosexual violence and promiscuity.

In this light she cites author Neil Elliott and his book, The Arrogance of Nations. Elliott, like other "progressive scholars," suggests that the modern notion of sexual orientation is simply missing from the biblical worldview, and thus the biblical authors are not really talking about what we know as homosexuality at all. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," as Miller quotes Elliott.

Of course, no honest reader of the biblical text will share this simplistic and backward conclusion. Furthermore, to accept this argument is to assume that the Christian church has misunderstood the Bible from its very birth -- and that we are now dependent upon contemporary "progressive scholars" to tell us what Christians throughout the centuries have missed.

Tellingly, Miller herself seems to lose confidence in this line of argument, explaining that "Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching." In other words, when the argument is failing, change the subject and just declare victory. "Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition," Miller simply asserts -- apparently asking her readers to forget everything they have just read.

Miller picks her sources carefully. She cites Neil Elliott but never balances his argument with credible arguments from another scholar, such as Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary [See his response to Elliott here]. Her scholarly sources are chosen so that they all offer an uncorrected affirmation of her argument. The deck is decisively stacked.

She then moves to the claim that sexual orientation is "exactly the same thing" as skin color when it comes to discrimination. As recent events have suggested, this claim is not seen as credible by many who have suffered discrimination on the basis of skin color.

As always, the bottom line is biblical authority. Lisa Miller does not mince words. "Biblical literalists will disagree," she allows, "but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history." This argument means, of course, that we get to decide which truths are and are not binding on us as "we change through history."

"A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism," she asserts. "The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

All this comes together when Miller writes, "We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future." At this point the authority of the Bible is reduced to whatever "universal truths" we can distill from its (supposed) horrifyingly backward and oppressive texts.

Even as she attempts to make her "religious case" for gay marriage, Miller has to acknowledge that "very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal." Her argument now grinds to a conclusion with her hope that this will change. But -- and this is a crucial point -- if her argument had adequate traction, she wouldn't have to make it. It is not a thin extreme of fundamentalist Christians who stand opposed to same-sex marriage -- it is the vast majority of Christian churches and denominations worldwide.

Disappointingly, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham offers an editorial note that broadens Newsweek's responsibility for this atrocity of an article and reveals even more of the agenda: "No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism," Meacham writes. "Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition."

Well, that statement sets the issue clearly before us. He insists that "to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt." No serious student of the Bible can deny the challenge of responsible biblical interpretation, but the purpose of legitimate biblical interpretation is to determine, as faithfully as possible, what the Bible actually teaches -- and then to accept, teach, apply, and obey.

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.

Newsweek could have offered its readers a careful and balanced review of the crucial issues related to this question. It chose another path -- and published this cover story. The magazine's readers and this controversial issue deserved better.

Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com
 
Albert Mohler, like many many others I've seen did a horrible job trying to go one for one with the Newsweek article.

He attacks theologians that counter his view by simply calling them "backwards", he says since there are some black people who voted against it's obviously not the same thing, and he waffles back and forth between what he himself really thinks is the role of the Bible.

Just incredibly weak, like the majority of arguments I find from conservative Christians on this subject.
 
Can you tell me what democratic rights should be withheld from American citizens?

Be specific.



oh, aren't you cute.

you're the one arguing against the legalization of gay marriage.

being flip and dodging the question isn't doing anything for whatever arguments you mean to defend.

answer the question.

to answer yours: the right to vote away existing civil rights from a specific, targeted class of American citizens seems to me to be not a part of democracy.

could you imagine what they would have done in the past to blacks? or the irish? or catholics?
 
winner ! - first hatemongering bigot to weigh in on newsweek

I certainly hope you're not calling me a hatemongering bigot. An article was written by someone claiming to post the Scriptural response to gay marriage. It was rebutted in article by someone else. Is it hatemongering to hold a dissenting view? And do you have comments on the actual article itself?
 
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