It was only three years ago today that the Supreme Court which guaranteed the right to marry for same-sex couples.
It feels a lot longer ago than three years.
It’s amazing how fast it all happened.
Many years ago, the argument for recognizing the legal validity of same-sex marriages and unions was the “what if two people are in a loving relationship for many years and one is in the hospital. Their partner can’t visit them?”
We’re so far beyond that now.
A celebrity says something critical of same-sex marriage and there’s a backlash, efforts to boycott and essentially destroy the person.
Tolerance has been traded for tyranny.
The conversation has been crushed on this issue.
State after state after state voted against it. 32 of 33 states where this was voted on, voted no. In 13 of those states, the vote wasn’t even close, with more than 70 percent of people voting to ultimately preserve the traditional American definition of a marriage.
And now, it’s a fundamental right. And now, if a business owner doesn’t want to support it, he’s a hateful and bigoted. The public arena does not tolerate dissent, it doesn’t tolerate having any moral opinion on the matter other than enthusiastic support and affirmation.
America has changed the definition of love, promoting the idea that you cannot love a person and simultaneously disagree with an aspect of his or her life. But love is not purely about affirmation. Everyone knows that. We see people do things all the time where we disagree with them but still love them.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
-1 Corinthians 13:4-7
We flourish when we live in accordance with Godly wisdom. God’s ways are better than our ways. True joy and purpose is found in living for God, desiring to honor and follow God. Based on the Bible, it is my firm conviction that same-sex relationships are fundamentally inconsistent with this and are sinful.
Love is meant to be unconditional. Love doesn’t mean to always love everything someone does but it means to love a person where they are today. Love is loving a person even if they never do live in agreement with what we think is moral or right.
Love is also ultimately wanting the best for someone.
In Evangelical circles, there have sadly been many examples of unloving treatment towards the LGBT community. This is tragic. Culturally, we’ve been losing the public discussion on LGBT issues.
Part of the mistake that we make is we start at the wrong place. The Church shouldn’t be trying to save people to heterosexuality. We need to build relationships and spread the gospel. It is God who transforms souls and lives.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple who was getting married.
This decision only scratches the surface of the issue. It does not give every Christian who works in a creative field (baking, photography, etc) permission to refuse services for a same-sex wedding.
I’m not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar but it appears to be on an inevitable crash course for another Supreme court decision. Is it a matter of individual liberty? Whereby a person reserves the right to refuse service? Or is it discrimination and the violation of law?
People on both sides of this issue are very polarized. If private business owners do have the legal right to refuse service, some draw analogies to people refusing services to African Americans before passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s.
Persecution takes a variety of forms. There are absolutely people who seek to persecute Christians for their beliefs under the tyranny of law. With Jack Phillips, a couple attempted to force this man to comply. There have been numerous legal victories for the gay rights movement over the last few years. But some seek to crush any dissenters. There have been other businesses who have faced threats, backlash, and thousands of dollars in legal fees for standing by convictions.
Today’s decision does not further enshrine religious liberty. It has more to do with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and their hostility towards Phillips than if Christians have a general liberty to refuse services in situations which conflict with their faith.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
I’m pro-life. I believe life begins at conception. At the moment of conception, a fertilized ova is genetically distinct from both of the parents.
My home state, Ohio, has a proposed bill that would totally ban abortion.
The nation is roughly evenly split on being pro-life vs pro choice. There is also a lot of nuance within both of those positions. For instance, most people who are pro-choice are not proponents of late term abortions. And most people who are pro-life are not pro-life is an absolute where they think there’s never a circumstance in which an abortion is morally justified.
It’s interesting as I’ve seen my camp (the conservative evangelical camp) approach this issue.
With the question of constitutionality, if Ohio’s bill were passed and signed into law, I am seeing pro-life Christians arguing as to why it would be constitutional. Others are arguing that even if it were unconstitutional, who cares about the courts, and that the state should just ignore it for the sake of protecting life (not saying I disagree with that sentiment).
I think this is the wrong starting place.
It doesn’t matter if it would be constitutional or not. Because no state would pass a law where abortion were legally viewed as tantamount to murder. Even among pro-life people, that view is a minority.
The idea that states can simply ban it, when there is no ban, when most people favor it in certain circumstances, as moral as the suggestion might be, what’s morally right is not always realistically passable.
I think this “all or nothing approach” overlooks the real efforts that lawmakers are working on in states all over the country. 41 states have passed laws where there must be a licensed doctor providing the procedure. 42 states have passed laws that limit when an abortion can happen within a pregnancy.
More work needs to be done. I’m not saying this is ideal. I’m not saying the current laws are good. I’m just saying that as much as Christians (myself included) might want more laws to protect the lives of the unborn, that we also need to be pragmatic in pursuing something that is an uphill battle and that millions of people disagree with. That millions of people see as a right. All victories for the pro-life movement are hard fought.
Even if a total ban were proposed, it would likely be struck down (an Ohio law banning abortions on fetuses with downs syndrome was put on hold last week). And even if the state chose to ignore a court ruling, you would still need to find a jury of 12 people who would convict a doctor or a mother for having an abortion?
We need to keep beating the drum, educating people that life truly does begin at conception. We need to make sure that the necessary programs have the sufficient funding to support a baby that goes up for adoption. We need to keep chipping away at the laws.
To think an all out ban could pass is to be divorced from reality.
Once again, I’m pro-life, I feel that a baby has a right to be born and to live. It’s a child created in the image of God. And it’s tragic.
But it’s a sinful and fallen world, and we can’t always accomplish everything we want in one fell swoop.
I feel like these attempts are trying to sprint a marathon.
Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.
It was only three years ago today that the Supreme Court which guaranteed the right to marry for same-sex couples.
