The ongoing battle about gay marriage, which burst again into the cultural spotlight last week when the California Supreme Court ruled that homosexuals have a constitutional right to marry, reveals the deep divide in our culture about the Bible and morality. As Al Mohler wrote in his blog, when the court "struck down that state's definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman it announced a great social and moral revolution."
Mohler went on to say:
One unavoidable outcome of the legalization of same-sex marriage is that the great divide between conservative and liberal churches and denominations will become glaringly evident in a way that has not been the case thus far. The singular question of whether churches perform and recognize same-sex "marriages" will tell a much larger story.
At least until this new phenomenon, churches and denominations across the board shared an understanding of marriage and a vocabulary that included words like "husband" and "wife." In the world before same-sex unions, that made sense. In a world without a shared understanding of marriage, even the vocabulary falls apart.
The California ruling sparked another round of media reports and opinion pieces, which in turn spurred a flood of comments from online readers. One of the more interesting sites where questions like these are debated is "On Faith," co-sponsored by The Washington Post and by Newsweek magazine. There is a wide variety of opinion expressed in the posts—from Charles Colson who says that this issue affects the preservation of marriage and society to author Susan Jacoby who writes, "I don't have the slightest idea why happily or unhappily married heterosexuals feel so threatened by the very existence of same-sex marriages …"
One thing is clear to me from reading the different posts and comments: This issue isn't going away, and the evangelical community needs to find a compelling way to address it. As an Episcopal rector wrote in an "On Faith" post, "We're in for a long debate."
Stumble It!
