Christian gay marriage
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That depends. You can live with your sister, your mother, your grandfather, your dog, or three buddies from work. The normalization of same-sex marriage is symptomatic of a society turning its back on God. In spurning God’s original design, we reject His goodness, wisdom, and judgment.
To endorse gay marriage is to approve of the homosexual lifestyle, which the Bible clearly and consistently labels as sinful.
Where over time it emerges that this bigotry has not in fact disappeared, more aggressive measures will be needed, which will include explicit legal and educational components, as well as simple ostracism.5
We must not be naive. Does the state have the right, let alone the competency, to construct and define a society’s most essential relationships?
We must consider why the state has bothered to recognize marriage in the first place.
Why go to the trouble of sanctioning a specific relationship and giving it a unique legal standing? At the same time, God offers forgiveness and grace to all who repent, recognizing that gay marriage is a sin and against God’s good design of sexuality and marriage (2 Corinthians 5:18).
implications for today
As followers of Christ, we are called to respond to all people—including those in the LGBTQ+ community—with both truth and love.
Marriage, in the traditional view, is a prepolitical institution. Every reference to marriage in the Bible indicates a union of male and female. Why go to the trouble of sanctioning a specific relationship and giving it a unique legal standing? Or to use a different example, the pacifist has a right to join the army, but he does not have the right to insist that the army create a nonviolent branch of the military for him to join.4
Redefining marriage to include same-sex partnerships publicly validates these relationships as bona fide marriage.Same-sex marriage assumes that marriage is re-definable and the moving parts replaceable.
It assumes the indistinguishability of gender in parenting, the relative unimportance of procreation in marriage, and the near infinite flexibility as to what sorts of structures and habits lead to human flourishing.3
But What about Equal Rights?
How can I say another human being doesn’t have the same right I have to get married?
The slogan may say “keep the government out of my bedroom,” as if personal choice and privacy were the salient issues, but same-sex marriage advocates are not asking for something private.
As Christians, we are called to stand on biblical truth with courage and compassion—loving others without affirming sin and always pointing them to the hope and redemption found in Christ.
what does the bible say?
God created marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman, reflecting His image and purpose, and the Bible consistently defines anything outside of that—including gay marriage—as sin.
They want public recognition. The reason is that the state has an interest in promoting the familial arrangement whereby a mother and a father raise the children that came from their union. Several passages in the Bible forbid homosexuality as sin (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26–27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Any legal system which distinguishes marriage from other kinds of relationships and associations will inevitably exclude many kinds of unions in its definition.
I don’t doubt that for most same-sex couples the longing for marriage is sincere, heartfelt, and without a desire to harm anyone else’s marriage. Under the new morality, marriage is oriented to the emotional bond of the couple. I want Christians to see why this issue matters and why—when same-sex marriage became the law of the land—the integrity of the family was weakened and the freedom of the church was threatened.
I know this is an increasingly unpopular line of reasoning, even for those who are inclined to accept the Bible’s teaching about marriage.
The church is sometimes the most vibrant, the most articulate, and the most holy when the world presses down on her the hardest.
But not always—sometimes when the world wants to press us into its mold, we jump right in and get comfy. The problem is that the push for the acceptance of same-sex marriage has been predicated upon the supposed bigotry of those who hold a traditional view.