The response from the Right in response to Obergefell v. Hodges has been pretty much predictable. Mike Huckabee (a.k.a. the Huckster), argued “…it’s only a matter of time and not long away before the court legalized polygamy." Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and determined to destroy every last vestige of his father’s name, warned us “the gay marriage ruling will lead to Christian persecution.” Rick Santorum warned that the next President must stop gay marriage for the survival of our country. Ted Cruz called it the darkest day in America’s history.
Their clarion call is simple. The Supreme Court is trying to redefine marriage—that blessed union defined by God and now bastardized by the Supreme Court and their gay supporters..
Christianity Today says very simply,
“We lost this one. We and many others made the case to our culture that traditional marriage is God’s good design, that this institution, embodied by a man and a woman joining together, leads to social flourishing. But our culture is not convinced. Much to our disappointment, it is now the law of the land to permit other forms of “marriage.””
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission says on their Web site:
The Bible clearly teaches the enduring truth that marriage consists of one man and one woman. From Genesis to Revelation, the authority of Scripture witnesses to the nature of biblical marriage as uniquely bound to the complementarity of man and woman. This truth is not negotiable. The Lord Jesus himself said that marriage is from the beginning (Matt. 19:4-6), so no human institution has the authority to redefine marriage any more than a human institution has the authority to redefine the gospel, which marriage mysteriously reflects (Eph. 5:32).
The National Association of Evangelicals reports:
God designed marriage for humanity. As first described in Genesis and later affirmed by Jesus, marriage is a God-ordained, covenant relationship between a man and a woman. This lifelong, sexually exclusive relationship brings children into the world and thus sustains the stewardship of the earth. Biblical marriage — marked by faithfulness, sacrificial love and joy — displays the relationship between God and his people.
But here’s the irony… if you believe that, then you clearly haven’t read the Bible. And the question becomes, at what point will you stop showing off your biblical impotence? How can you be so ignorant of the very book you purportedly use to guide your life? If the Bible is the written word of God, then do God a favor and read the book.
Remember the age-old argument, “God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve”?
Well, we know empirically that this didn’t happen. We can look back at the beginning of our universe, and then the beginning of our earth. If anything, God created “Lucy” who gave birth to us, and then we migrated from Africa to the Middle East, the Far East, and to the Americas. So their very premise of marriage is flawed. As an evolved species—as products of the earth, we adapted to our world. Marriage is essentially an adaptation—a remnant of how the human species chose to live in respond to each other and their offspring.
I think that the evolution debate is truly at the crux of the anti-gay movement. When we finally put the evolution debate to rest, when Christians finally accept science as a way of understanding our universe—especially in biology—they will no longer be able to cling to their faulty beliefs and will have to accept the diversity that comes with evolution.
But what about their Bible? Their holy book specifically tells us that God “ordained marriage”… or does it?
Christians point to the “Creation Story” as proof of God’s will for marriage. Except there isn’t a creation story. There are TWO creation stories.
In Genesis 1:3—2:4, the first story of creation, the author know as P (for Priest), notes that Elohim created the Earth, the animals, and finally man. Very little fanfare is made over this man. In fact, P doesn’t even bother to separate them into sexes.
“Then God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:26-27
This brings up some interesting questions.
- First of all, who is “us” in this story?
- Who was God talking to and what did he mean by “image” since God apparently doesn’t have an image?
This is an important question as it will say as much about God as it does about us.
- The second question is, “Who is man?”
The verse says that “God created man in his image,” and then goes on to say “male and female he created them.” The author doesn’t tell us if
- both Adam and Eve were created in the image of God,
- or if Adam was in the image of God, and Eve was in the image of Adam.
- Is the author saying that man and women were created at the same time and both in the image of God?
- Or is he making the case that Adam was both male and female from his inception.
- Is God a hermaphrodite, so that both men and women looked like him in one way or another?
With all these questions swirling about regarding the nature of the first human(s), there’s enough uncertainty that it doesn’t make the cut-and-dry argument that Evangelicals think it does.
In the second story of creation, Genesis 2:4—25 God (Yahweh), forms Adam first, before anything else.
“And no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
Yahweh then creates a garden
(Eden) for Adam to live in. In the middle of the garden, he places two trees: the
Tree of Life, and the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Almost immediately after Adam is in the garden, Yahweh starts to rethink his creation. In the first story of creation, Elohim ended every creative session (each day) with the phrase
“and God saw that it was good.” That is not how Yahweh did. In fact, the first thing out of his mouth was:
“The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
With Adam in the garden, God comes to the conclusion that Adam needs a help-mate. So he creates the animals. Once finished, he brings them to Adam one-by-one to be named. When Adam is done, God determines that none of them are really suitable as a helpmate. So he puts Adam to sleep, pulls out one of his ribs, and creates a counterpart, which Adam names, “Woman.”
So in this story, Eve (Woman) was an afterthought. It appears that God’s initial intention was that Christians SHOULD marry his pets. It wasn’t even in the mind of God that we should be “man and women” let alone man and wife. Man needed a "helpmate." In that context, homosexuality fits in fine, since it would still fulfill this purpose.
The great patriarch and founder of Israel, Abraham had two wives and two concubines that are “named.” Genesis 25:6 suggests that he had more.
Jacob had two wives and two concubines. King David never met a woman he didn’t marry. Between him and his son Solomon, they probably married half the known female population at that time.
In the New Testament, St. Paul of Misogyny seemed to have some very negative viewpoints toward marriage.
Now for the matters you wrote about. It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
1 Corinthians 1:1-2
Christians love to use this verse as a ban on Gay marriages, saying that true marriage is a union of one man, and one woman, but Paul is really just making marriage a concession to those who can’t handle their morality.
I say this as a concession, not as a command.
1 Corinthians 7:6
But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
1 Corinthians 7:9
The other scripture that the NAE
(National Association of Evangelicals) uses in their diatribe is Matthew 19:4-6
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Again, though, they are misquoting Jesus, using his words in order to say something that he didn’t say. They are taking his words completely out of context. This discussion happens in the context of a conversation about
DIVORCE—and they’re perfectly fine with divorce. Most Christian leaders on their second, if not third marriages.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Matthew 19:3
Once again the irony is so thick you could press a wrinkled shirt with it. Divorce doesn’t bother Christians (though it is the number one destroyer of marriage), only gay people participating in it. Jesus on the other hand, never mentioned gay marriage (or homosexuality in any way), but he had a great deal to say to hypocrites, including those who chose to divorce their wives. So when they quote Jesus here to accuse “us,” they’re really accusing themselves, which they "conveniently" miss. In fact, if you really want to adhere to this scripture, you should probably consider living as a eunuch.
“For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Matthew 19:12.
If I may paraphrase the great Inigo Montoya: “You keep quoting that book... I do not think it says what you think it says.”