Is Opposition to Gay Marriage Hypocrisy?

Kirsten Powers in the USA Today thinks so:

…If this movement isn’t driven by anti-gay bigotry, then where is the outrage and “Day of Truth” over heterosexuals who are engaging in sex outside of marriage? Why aren’t Christians running around confronting their sexually active heterosexual co-workers and friends about their “lifestyle”? I guess because there is no “ick factor,” to borrow a phrase former presidential candidate and Southern Baptist minister Mike Huckabee used recently to describe gay men and lesbians.

This double standard might have something to do with the fact that many Christians also violate the Bible’s condemnation about sex outside of marriage with impunity. (I’m still waiting for the constitutional amendment banning extramarital sex.)

A few years ago, I attended a talk on the plague of pornography in our society at a New York City evangelical church. At one point, a speaker asked the group of about 300 young Christians, “How many of you are pursuing purity?” About 10 people raised their hands.

Has anyone noticed that there is this special little area carved out where the Bible’s teachings must be enshrined in U.S. law, but only when it applies to others, i.e. gay people?…

What the little lady fails to realize here is that she’s actually laying a firm intellectual foundation for a counter-attack upon the moral dissolution of the past 50 years. She is attacking opposition to gay marriage on the fact that Christians are sinners and are all too often completely captured by worldly desires. Indeed, she is quite correct about that. But she won’t like the logical conclusion of her argument.

Ms. Powers is essentially stating that since Christians are sinners, they should be ok with just one more sin. The opposite is the truth – because Christians are sinners, they must work against all sin. Perhaps starting with gay marriage, but certainly working our way back against pornography, adultery, illegitimacy and divorce. Christians, you see, are not called to be just ok in some areas – they are called to be perfect:

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48

That is the often overlooked end of the Sermon on the Mount. A rather strong injunction, given as it was by God as He lived on earth as a man. Rather hard to square that with divorce and adultery – but just as hard to square it with the idea of a man marrying a man. The counsels of perfection are difficult and, indeed, none of us will achieve such without divine intervention, but we are to strive for them – not surrender to imperfection because we can’t fix everything all at one.

Ms. Powers is very right to point out Christian hypocrisy and we Christians must thank her for the rebuke. It is needed – now and always. But I’m afraid she’s going to fall short if she thinks it a means of getting us to even so much as become neutral on the matter of gay marriage. It is time, and past time, that we started rebuilding public morality in the United States.

Yesterday, we had the case of a man who had broken in to a home and raped and murdered three women (a mother and her two daughters). The criminal has been sentenced to death, but that doesn’t clean the mess up. It is a certainty that this man was pressed heavily by the depravity of our society. Without making excuses about his personal culpability, the fact will always remain that he didn’t really act alone. It took half a century of moral corrosion for this event to happen. And this is just one example of thousands – how many rapes and murders and other cruel deeds are done these days which even 50 years ago would have provoked national outrage, but today cause barely a ripple?

This is because we’ve allowed immorality to run rampant. And how did it run rampant? Incrementally. It started with just allowing a bit of pornography to go unpunished. There were those first, mild obscenities allowed in movies. A flash of a boob in a movie in the 60’s has become all but completely pornographic depictions of sex on television today. You see how it has worked? Now, tell me, will allowing one more moral bulwark to fail improve things, or harm them? How will allowing men to marry men fix our moral problems?

If we Christians have been hypocrites (and we have), then the other side has been something worse – the tempter and the agent provocateur. They have pressed us to become immoral and we have followed (eagerly, at times). Now they want this new thing, gay marriage. And why do they want it? That is unclear. Other than bold assertions that it is a right (which it isn’t), there has yet to be much justification of why such a thing should be. Perhaps, though, we can smoke them out on their real intent?

By its fruit shall the tree be known. Let us challenge the advocates of gay marriage while also striking a blow for a return to morality. If the advocates of gay marriage will join us in a campaign to ban no-fault divorce, we will then consider their petition for gay marriage. After all, if you are backing gay marriage it must be because you feel marriage is so sacred that you want everyone to participate, right? If we do this, advocates of gay marriage can demonstrate their commitment to a moral society while we Christians can free ourselves from the charge of hypocrite. Its a win/win situation for both sides.

Or, at least, it would be if both sides in the gay marriage debate are striving for something honorable.

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