I’ve never understood why someone who believes homosexuality is a sin must oppose same-sex marriage. I’ve also never really bought the conservative Christian line that same-sex marriage is a threat to our country. I have gay friends and they really don’t threaten me or my family or anyone else for that matter. I’m kind of shallow so I always assumed that conservative Christians oppose same-sex marriage because they either don’t want to question their own sexuality or they are simply “creeped out” by homosexuality.
Nick Street offers another reason in “It’s the Spiritual Economy, Stupid: Why the Gay Marriage Fracas isn’t About Either” and I think he’s on to something. Street argues that the battle is really about the importance of Scripture, particularly the more literal interpretation of Scripture. Of course, conservative Christians can’t really openly argue that so they have to keep that idea in the closet. Here’s a bit of Street’s argument…
Well, the impulse behind the movement’s anti-gay activism doesn’t really have much to do with marriage and sexuality. No one on the religious right has argued—or is likely to argue—that the success or failure of Jenna Bush’s marriage really hinges on whether lesbians and gay men are allowed to tie the knot on the courthouse steps in San Francisco.
The real issues are the authority of the Bible and the nature of revelation.
Recent polls show that while roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that Noah’s flood, the creation story and other biblical events are literally true, only about 40 percent of those surveyed accept the Bible as completely inerrant—a figure declining at about the rate that public acceptance of gays and lesbians is increasing.
So a lot is at stake in a political initiative with deep roots in the foundations of canonical Christianity. If religious conservatives can’t persuade a majority of Californians to heed one element in an otherwise obscure list of purity codes in Deuteronomy—and that Jesus’ preaching in the gospels isn’t really complete without Paul’s finger-wagging in Romans—the stitching that holds together the disparate parts of the Good Book will have subtly but irrevocably loosened, along with the Bible’s centuries-old grip on American public life.
Pretty interesting argument. If it’s true, it shows that conservative Christians aren’t being totally honest.
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