David G. Myers, the John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology at Michigan's Hope College, is the author of fifteen books, and articles in dozens of periodicals, from Science and Scientific American to The Christian Century and Christianity Today. He serves on the National Marriage Project advisory board. Myers has been married for forty-two years and is the father of three adult children.
Letha Dawson Scanzoni has authored or co-authored eight previous books, including Men, Women, and Change: A Sociology of Marriage and Family, and her classic Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? She is editor and publisher of the Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus publication Christian Feminism Today. Her many articles have appeared in numerous magazines, from Christianity Today and The Christian Century to the SIECUS Report and Utne Reader. Scanzoni is the mother of two and grandmother of five. She lives in southeastern Virginia.
What God Has Joined Together
The Christian Case for Gay MarriageBy David Myers
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 David Myers
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060834544
Chapter One
The Great Divide
How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God's people
to live together in harmony!
-- Psalm 133:1, TEV
A long-ago sermon recalled a time when the village churchwas burning. At the front of the bucket brigade was the town'satheist. "Why come now?" "Because the only time anything excitinghappens here is when the church is on fire."
Today's church is on fire, and the spectacle is agonizingly exciting.From across the battle lines, advocates and opponents of gaymarriage and of gay ordination are throwing flames. Headlinesexpress the passions: "180 Arrested in Protest over Church's GayPolicies"; "Fury As Church Appoints Gay Canon as New Dean ofSt. Albans"; "Church Gay Rift Widens"; "Conservative MethodistsPropose Schism over Gay Rights"; "Presbyterian Battle overHomosexuality Still Unresolved."
The Reformed Church in America's general secretary, WesleyGranberg-Michaelsen, speaks for many denominational leaderswhen he says, "No issue today has as much potential to spawndivisiveness, mistrust, gossip, suspicion, and conflict in the churchas this one. No issue has more capacity to confuse our focus, drainour energy, injure our fellowship, and divert our mission than thisone. No current issue can so easily demoralize our meetings, paralyzeour process, fuel our anxiety, and cripple our confidence asthis one."
Battles over ordaining gay and lesbian elders, deacons, ministers,priests, and bishops are but one front of this culture war.Advocates for marriage renewal and advocates for same-sexunions clash with passions that rival those surrounding the taxpolicywar, the job-outsourcing war, and even the war war. In2004, eleven American states passed amendments banning gaymarriage. With more such amendments in the draft stage, andwith voices shouting both for and against a federal anti-gaymarriageamendment, the passions are not subsiding.
"Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for morethan five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilizationitself," observes an alarmed James Dobson, founder ofFocus on the Family. "For more than 40 years, the homosexualactivist movement has sought to implement a master plan that hashad as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family."3 Theapproval of same-sex marriage by the Massachusetts SupremeJudicial Court "is not just about homosexual rights," concursCharles Colson, Prison Fellowship founder. "It is even moreimportantly about the death of marriage and family as we haveknown it for thousands of years." Colson calls the battle over thedefinition of marriage "the Armageddon of the culture war."Same-sex unions "degrade" marriage, claimed Pope John Paul II."Legal recognition of homosexual unions [would] obscure basicvalues which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,"contends a pope-approved statement by the Vatican's Congregationfor the Doctrine of the Faith.
"No one is waging war on marriage," responds New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. "It's just the opposite. This is all aboutpeople who are longing to embrace it." Gay-marriage advocatesalso point to a justice issue. "We have been together for 43 years,"notes a gay letter writer to the New York Times. "Britney Spears was married for 55 hours and had more legal rights than we everhad."
The fire that now is ripping through Catholicism and mainlineProtestant denominations likely will spread as attitudes change. Inbut a thin slice of recent history, younger Americans' attitudes have done an about-face. In 1978, 53 percent of entering collegiansagreed that "it is important to have laws prohibiting homosexualrelationships"; but among their 2004 counterparts, only 30percent agreed with that statement.10Most Americans over agesixty-five oppose same-sex marriage, but most under thirty supportit (see appendix B, "Attitudes Are Changing"), and fromthem will come tomorrow's church leaders. Sooner than youmight expect, even conservative faith communities such as SouthernBaptists may find themselves aflame. Generational successionis destiny.
Could it be that today's Holland, Belgium, and Canada -- eachof which now allows same-sex marriages -- give us a glimpse oftomorrow's America? Are Vermont's civil unions and Massachusetts'slegal same-sex marriages just the first beachhead of a socialtransformation that will sweep the nation as did the civil rightsand women's rights movements in earlier decades?
James Dobson fears it. He writes that gay activist goals "thatseemed unthinkable just a few years ago have largely beenachieved or are now within reach ... We in North America andEurope are not simply 'slouching towards Gomorrah,' as JudgeRobert Bork warned in his best-selling book; we are hurtlingtoward it." On the other side of the divide, New Republic editorAndrew Sullivan finds himself "so surprised" by such conservativeresistance. Allowing homosexual persons such as himself to marry"is the most pro-family measure imaginable -- keeping familiestogether, building new ones ... [which] is why some elements ofthe old left once opposed such a measure."
Continues...
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