One of the core arguments raised by the Christian right against marriage equality is that it is said to be a threat to traditional families. The claim is bizarre: even within the European/ Western tradition, there is not such thing as a single model of the “traditional family”, but several models, evolving over the centuries, until it reached the form known as the nuclear family, peaking in the mid - twentieth century. In a global context, there is even more variation.
Nor is it clear how allowing gay marriage could harm even the nuclear family, which (it is common cause) is under threat from very different stresses. Increasing numbers of couples are choosing cohabitation rather than marriage, divorce rates are hight, and a large proportion of children are being raised by single parents, or by a succession of step-parents. In popular culture, casual sex, promiscuity and adultery are treated as commonplace, if not actively glorified. These trends have not been caused by gay marriage, nor will they be aggravated by it. Quite the reverse is true.
Gay male culture in particular is popularly believed to be guilty of precisely these characteristics, a widespread and deliberate celebration of free sexuality for its own sake. If a significant portion of this community begins to publicly embrace instead the values of commitment, monogamy and fidelity, this will surely cement and strengthen the institution of marriage, contributing to the social cohesion that healthy marriages can bring.
But Christian leaders continue, irrationally, to argue that introducing equality will harm the institutions of marriage and family. In a co-ordinated campaign earlier this month, a range of Australian church leaders addressed their congregations on the alleged threat.
MCC Pastor Reverand Karl Hand attended the service in St Andrew’s cathedral, to hear for himself what was being said. In his report for Greenleft, he pertinently identified the real threats to families presented by gay marriage - and they come from the churches’ opposition to it.
First, he points out how the churches’ campaign is dividing families. Whether they know it or not, most families have a member or near relative who is gay, lesbian, trans or intersex. When families are encouraged by their pastors to take a stand against marriage equality, the message they are sending to those LGBT family members and relatives is one of rejection. Families are divided against themselves. The “Gay / Christian” divide, he notes, is a false dichotomy. Presenting it can too easily lead to a demonising by some Christians of all LGBT people, and conversely, for some in the queer community to reject everything the churches represent.
In conclusion, he graphically describes the most serious of the ways in which the campaign against gay marriage is damaging real families, one which can damage families like no other:
Gay kids from Christian backgrounds are killing themselves
It is now recognised by most professional psychiatric bodies that gay kids exhibit shockingly high rates of suicidal feelings. Those who grow up in churches are the worst affected.
Now, this is the issue that Christian communities need to be addressing internally, instead of worrying about secular law reforms of marriage, which do not affect their own religious practice.
The message such emotionally vulnerable young people are hearing from their leaders now is they will never be able to have a fulfilling intimate relationship or any form of sexual expression “in this life”. At St Andrew’s, there was no mention of counselling, support networks or suicide-prevention hotlines accompanying the message.
What does that do an emotionally distraught gay teenager? I know the song well because it is the experience I and my friends all had growing up as gay kids in conservative churches. We lived in fear and shame, and nobody helped us.
It’s time for churches to get active about these evils. It is not the role of LGBTI activists or archbishops to tell Christians how to deal with their own internal struggles, but it is time for the grassroots in each denomination to rise up and take back some power to protect vulnerable people in their midst.
via Green Left Weekly.
Related articles
- Mormons For Marriage Equality
- Casey Michel on Archbishop Nienstedt’s “Crusade Against Gay Marriage” (thewildreed.blogspot.com)
- The Amazing Grace of Marriage Equality (mlp.org)
- Breaking from Their Church, Mormons March in Seattle’s Gay Pride Parade (slog.thestranger.com)
- David Blankenhorn Drops Opposition to Gay Marriage (nytimes.com)
- Speaking of Gay Marriage (and The Abiding Validity of Abstention) (confessionalouthouse.wordpress.com)
- The Top Six Arguments Against Marriage Equality (and why they all fail) (mlp.org)
- David Blankenhorn Defects On Marriage Equality (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
honestly though, the “suicide epidemic” is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, while the teaching against same-sex relationship is at least a thousand or so years old. What has changed? the invention of sexual identity. Linking someone’s sexual desires to their personhood is the reason why anti-same sex relationship teaching only NOW over a thousand years later, is producing the desire for “gay people” to want to kill themselves. prior to the invention of the homosexual identity and gay label it was impossible to discriminate against “gays” as a group (they could only be “punished” for having anal sex, which was hard to prove and few people assumed it occurred, and people had anal sex with less frequency than they do today). Try “banning gays” from the priesthood without using the words gay, homosexual, or any specific word or phrase that lumps “men who are attracted to men” into an identifiable group.
They are wrong, same-sex marriage is not a really major threat to the nuclear family. Feminism is the biggest threat to the family. LGBT rights and feminism used to be very separate things, but they have joined forces because the LGBT lobby is greatly aided by adopting the rights and equality of feminist rhetoric and feminists see gays as just another way to deconstruct gender differences. funny thing is, sexual identity is more of an artificial construct than gender roles are, yet they defend gender identity with every tooth and nail while denying trying to promote the deconstruction of very real human gender differences… Feminism is the biggest deception in the west since Carl Marx. Feminism and the type of society it produces is the single biggest threat to marriage that is possible, gay-marraige is a red herring. These groups need to start targeting the real problem (but unfortunately feminism is not visually distinctive like same-sex marriage is, and there is little “scripture” to fight the feminist arguments). Personally, I hope that an increasing number of Gays start re distancing themselves from radical feminism if they are serious about the sanctity of marriage (some have started to do so, but many more are needed). (note, ”feminism” is something different than women’s rights - which is something that I support obviously).
This is a really helpful post, especially in terms of challenging the futility of constructing separate ‘gay’ and ‘Christian’ camps. I think that it’s much more challenging for churches to face up to change when this reality appears under their own roof, as opposed to being understood as something external, and a product of secularization. The idea that same-sex marriage would undermine ‘traditional’ (i.e. heterosexual) marrriage and families is just bizarre - as if heterosexual men and women are suddenly going to feel that their relationship has been devalued, or decide to ditch it and dash off to have a gay marriage instead?! Families today are facing so many challenges, with financial struggles and family violence being two major ones. I’d like to see churches engaging more with these ‘threats’ to the family, and threats such as violence and abuse, rather than demonizing same-sex couples and families.