Sunday, June 30, 2013

The "marriage revolution"

Here's an article on how conservative Christians are girding themselves to deal with "the marriage revolution." Essentially, they realize that gay marriage is bound to be legalized across the country, but they're not happy about it. The article makes reference to the florist who refused to provide flowers to a gay couple's wedding in March, who says, apparently straight-faced, "I was not discriminating at all. I never told him he couldn’t get married. I gave him recommendations for other flower shops."

I also found this statistic interesting: "When Christian researchers at the Barna Group asked Americans aged 16-29 what words best describe Christianity, the top response was 'anti-homosexual.'" But that apparently doesn't discourage religious conservatives. The president of the so-called National Organization for Marriage says optimistically, "I don’t believe most Christians are going to give up the fight. And they are more energized than ever."

Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said that the first step "is learning to defend traditional marriage without demonizing gays and lesbians." What these people don't seem to get, though, is that there's no way to say "marriage equals one man and one woman" without offending gays (and anyone who supports gay marriage) and, yes, demonizing gay marriage. You can't call heterosexual marriage "traditional" and "God-designed" and claim it's the only moral possibility, and then say in the next breath that you don't want to denigrate gays. It just doesn't work.

1 comment:

  1. You nailed it. The problem is that anti-LGBTQ fundamentalists don't think of themselves as bigots or their resistance to same-sex marriage as bigotry. When they realize that they ARE discriminating, they'll finally make progress.

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