Tag Archives: Gay Marriage

Kevin DeYoung’s article opposing gay marriage has broad appeal

Marriage and family
Marriage and family

In my own secular case against gay marriage from last year, I argued for 3 points:

  • same-sex marriage is bad for liberty, especially religious liberty
  • same-sex marriage is bad for children
  • same-sex marriage is bad for public health

My hope when I wrote that was that pastors and other Christian leaders would learn to argue for what the Bible says by using evidence from outside the Bible, so that they would be able to appeal to more people instead of only appealing to the minority of people who accept the Bible. I think that Christians who argue for their views by citing the Bible only will only be convincing to people who already accept the Bible. But there is not a majority of people who do accept the Bible as an authority, so I think that pastors have to make another plan. They need to argue using the Bible to those who accept the Bible, and without the Bible to those who don’t accept it.

Now with that said, take a look at this article by pastor Kevin DeYoung that Dina sent me. It’s from earlier this week. The article makes the same exact three points as I made in my article last year. Let’s take a look at how Kevin does that.

My first point was liberty, especially religious liberty. He writes:

[I]n the long run, the triumph of gay marriage (should it triumph as a cultural and legal reality) will mean the restriction of freedoms for millions of Americans.

This will happen in obvious ways at first–by ostracizing those who disagree, by bullying with political correctness, and by trampling on religious liberty. Surely, Christians must realize that no matter how many caveats we issue, not matter how much we nuance our stance, no matter how much we encourage or show compassion for homosexuals, it will not be enough to ward off the charges of hatred and homophobia.

[G]ay marriage will challenge our freedoms in others way too. It’s not just Evangelicals, traditional Catholics, and Mormons who will be threatened. Once the government gains new powers, it rarely relinquishes them. There will be a soft tyranny that grows as the power of the state increases, a growth that is intrinsic to the  notion of gay marriage itself.

My second point was bad for children. He writes:

[T]he state has an interest in promoting the familial arrangement which has a mother and a father raising the children that came from their union. The state has been in the marriage business for the common good and for the well-being of the society it is supposed to protect. Kids do better with a mom and a dad. Communities do better when husbands and wives stay together. Hundreds of studies confirm both of these statements (though we all can think of individual exceptions I’m sure). Gay marriage assumes that marriage is re-definable and the moving parts replaceable.

My third point was bad for public health. He writes:

The unspoken secret, however, is that homosexual behavior is not harmless. Homosexuals are at a far greater risk for diseases like syphilis, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, gonorrhea, HPV, and gay bowel syndrome. The high rate of these diseases is due both to widespread promiscuity in the gay community and the nature of anal and oral intercourse itself. Homosexual relationships are usually portrayed as a slight variation on the traditional “norm” of husband-wife monogamy. But monogamy is much less common among homosexual relationships, and even for those who value monogamy the definition of fidelity is much looser.

He also talks about the definition of marriage, and more.

I’ve criticized pastors before for dealing with social issues by only citing the Bible, like John Piper does. That approach won’t work on enough people to change society, because not enough people consider the Bible to be an authority in their decision-making. We have to use evidence from outside the Bible – like Wayne Grudem does in his “Politics According to the Bible”.

I think that pastor Kevin’s article is quality work, because it follows the pattern of taking an all-of-the-above approach to persuasion. He uses all means to persuade so that he might win some over to his side. I hope that many more pastors will do the same thing on this issue of marriage and other issues – even fiscal issues. Fiscal issues do have an impact on moral issues – think of how abortion subsidies and single mother welfare lower the penalties of recreational premarital sex. We can do this, we just have to do what works, instead of what makes us feel “holier-than-thou”.

Foster children removed from UK family because of political beliefs

Joyce Thacker, the face of fascism
Joyce Thacker, the face of fascism

Melanie Phillips writes about it in the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

The story sounds just too idiotic and outrageous to be true. A Rotherham couple, by all accounts exemplary foster parents for nearly seven years, took on two children and a baby in an emergency placement.

Eight weeks later, social workers came and took the children away — despite the fact that they were thriving — on the grounds that because the couple belonged to the UK Independence Party this was not ‘the right cultural match’.

Astonishingly, the official in charge is still unrepentant. Joyce Thacker, the council’s director of children and young people’s services, has said that the children, who were from ‘EU migrant backgrounds’, had been removed to protect their ‘cultural and ethnic needs’ from UKIP’s ‘strong views’ and apparent ‘opposition to multiculturalism’.

[…]The clear implication is that they were racists. But there is nothing racist about opposing multiculturalism. Indeed, many immigrants themselves oppose it. To damn this couple in this way is an appalling smear.

[…]Ms Thacker said: ‘I have to think about how sensitive I am being to those children.’ Is this woman for real? Clearly, she is actually doing them harm by putting ideological dogma above the children’s own needs.

[…]In the early Nineties, I unearthed what, it is no exaggeration to say, was a climate of totalitarianism in social-work training.

Anti-racist zealots had captured the social workers’ training body, and built into the social-work diploma the explicit assumption that society was fundamentally racist and oppressive.

[…]As a result, the needs of vulnerable children and other social-work clients have been junked in favour of the overriding requirement to impose an ideological view of the world in which minorities can do no wrong while the majority can do no right.

Over the years, this has given rise to one horror story after another. Twelve years ago, an eight-year-old Ivorian child, Victoria Climbié, was tortured and murdered by her guardians under the noses of social workers who believed such behaviour had to be respected as part of African culture.

In the early Nineties, Islington council was revealed to have ignored the systematic sexual abuse and prostitution of children in its care because it was terrified of being called racist or homophobic if it disciplined black or gay staff perpetrating such crimes.

[…]In Rotherham itself, the sickening sexual enslavement of under-age white girls by organised prostitution and pimping rings was largely ignored for more than two decades, in part because the abusers came overwhelmingly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds.

And for years, would-be adoptive parents have been turned down by social workers because they are deemed to be too white, too middle class or in some other way fall foul of the politically correct inquisition.

And don’t go calling me racist – I’m a visible minority, with darker skin than Obama. Half my family is Muslim, and the other half is Hindu and Catholic.

And here’s another interesting and related story:

An unusual custody battle involving a surrogate mother and two Houston men is playing out in a Harris County courtroom.Cindy Close,  48, gave birth to twins at Texas Children’s Medical Center in July, but on the night of their birth she was visited by a social worker. “She told me we had a surrogacy situation,” Close said. “I looked at her and said ‘I’m not a surrogate, what are you talking about?’” Close said that she had been duped by Marvin McMurrey, a man who she said had pretended to be her friend and allegedly promised to be a partner in raising the children. He had paid for her in vitro fertilization using his sperm and a donor egg. When the children were born, he claimed custody with his partner.

Close said they were not in a romantic relationship and that she never even knew he was gay. “We didn’t have everything nailed down because it was based on trust,” Close said. “There was never any contract and no money was exchanged.”The twins had been born  prematurely and spent weeks at the hospital. It was during that time a suit was filed challenging the mother-child relationship. Since Close is not linked to the children genetically, it alleged they were not hers. All she has now are visitation rights for two hours a day, six days a week.

Notice that in both cases we are dealing with social workers. I think that social workers tend to be more liberal and less inclined towards objective standards of morality. In practice, that means calling good evil, and evil good, and then subsidizing the evil with money taken from the good through taxes. They call this “compasssion” and “fairness”. They also like to use the power of the state to force those around them to agree with their view. I call that fascism.

When Obama legalizes gay marriage, I would expect to see things like this – children being taken away from families that oppose gay marriage and given to gay couples. It starts with stories like this.

More than 100 Conservative MPs express opposition to gay marriage law

Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail about the push by Prime Minister David Cameron to legalize same-sex marriage in the UK. Although Cameron calls himself a conservative, I can’t think of anything that he’s done that’s conservative. It’s nice to see that there is a sizable minority in his party that opposes his plans to legalize SSM.

Excerpt:

The full extent of the revolt among Tory MPs over plans to allow gay marriage was revealed last night. In all, more than 100 Conservatives out of 303 have written to constituents indicating their unease. If they all vote against, it would be the biggest Tory rebellion in modern times.

[…]The vote could happen as early as January after Mr Cameron decided this week to ‘get it done and get it done quickly’.

[…]The sheer scale of the opposition means Mr Cameron is facing what has become the biggest Tory rebellion in recent history.

Even though No 10 has signalled that it will be a free vote in the Commons, ministers will be under huge pressure to back the measure because the PM has staked so much personal authority on the change.

Even though the policy was not in the party’s election manifesto, his Old Etonian-dominated kitchen cabinet have told the PM that this legislation is a litmus test of his efforts to ‘decontaminate’ the Tories’ image on social issues.

[…][A] survey by the polling organisation ComRes found that 62 per cent of voters and 68 per cent of Tory supporters believe marriage should continue to be defined as a ‘life-long exclusive commitment between a man and a woman’.

A further 65 per cent said that plans to legalise gay marriage are ‘more to do with trying to make the Conservative Party look trendy and modern’ than a matter of conviction.

These findings are reinforced by a petition set up by the lobby group Coalition For Marriage (C4M) which has been signed by 612,000 people. It declares: ‘I support the legal definition of marriage which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.’

The Prime Minister has exacerbated tension on the Tory benches by issuing what has been described as a ‘guillotine’ – rushing the Bill into the Commons to fast-track the reform.

[…]One can only assume that the Tory whips have drawn Mr Cameron’s attention to this growing rebellion. In any case, it is now patently clear that the PM cannot write off opponents of his policy as the usual hardline right-wingers who have never been reconciled to his modernisation efforts.

The UK has a Parliamentary system that normally does not allow free votes. I would expect that even a view people in the Labour Party might vote against the legalization of same-sex marriage.

UPDATE: The actual number is up to 118 now.