Last Friday's Supreme Court
decision that forced all fifty states to recognize same sex unions as legal
marriage continues to ripple through our culture. So many people on all sides of
the issue are confused about just how far the decision impacts them, their
faith, and their lives.
My friend Mike Licona reposted a question
concerning how the Supreme Court's ruling affects Christians and why we are so
upset. He recounts:
Chris Armer commented on my earlier post. He asked
whether I believe a Christian might be able to look at the issue of same sex
marriage in a manner similar to religious liberty; that a Christian could be
against the act but for the freedom to do that act. For example, one might
disagree with Islam but support a Muslim's right to worship freely in the U.S.1
I also saw a meme circulating on the Internet that asks, "You're upset because
you want your religious laws to be the law of the land. Do you know who else
wants that? ISIS." Are these charges fair? I don't think so. While it is true
that my religious belief informs my opposition to
Obergefell, it is not the only
factor involved. In fact, I think there are at least three separate but
interrelated offenses that the
Obergefell decision violated and it's important
to understand the distinctions between them.
1.The Obergefell Decision Contradicts
Christian Theology
The
Obergefell decision offends Christians because of their theological
understanding of marriage. Marriage is described in the Bible as the joining of
a man and a woman where "they two shall become one flesh" (Matt 19:5, Gen.
2:24). Such a phrase denotes a physical joining of two people together—in other
words sexual relations. Biblical marriage is conjugal; and of everything is
working as intended, the two will literally become one flesh in producing a
child.
Because homosexual sexual relationships are forbidden in the
Bible, Christians see the
Obergefell decision as antithetical to biblical
values. They are right in this. The objection above, though, holds in this
instance. There are many other human acts that are not illegal but are
anti-biblical. Take the ever more common occurrence of two people living
together out of wedlock. Should the government outlaw these relationships, too?
Of course not. We are, as Licona rightly noted, not a theocracy and Christianity
has never been about coerced morality.
Still, Christians are part of
the governmental authority and from this position alone they have a right to
keep immoral actions from becoming sanctioned. Christians have every right to
protest and try to vote down laws making recreational use of marijuana legal,
for example. The United States is a government of the people, by the people, and
for the people, thus Christian views should count as part of that process. This
is not a push of theocracy; it is giving a voice to a significant portion of the
U.S. constituency. It is the outworking of a representative democracy. The ISIS
comparison fails in this respect.
However, my complaint against
Obergefell is not simply theological. There are at least two other spheres the
decision affected, and those are important to recognize as well.
2.The Obergefell Decision Denies the
Democratic Process
While Christians are not trying to impose a theocracy upon the nation, they
are also upset because the decision really violates the established process of
representative government we agreed to in both the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution. The dissenting Justices clearly saw this decision as a
Constitutional tragedy. Chief Justice Roberts wrote:
Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their
celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men,
the majority's approach is deeply disheartening. ... Five lawyers have
closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of
constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a
cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more
difficult to accept.
If you are among the many Americans — of
whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage,
by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate the achievement of a
desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment
to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not
celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.2
Justice Thomas characterized the decision even more starkly:
The Court's decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but
with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787,
liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not
entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to
preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our
Constitution in the name of a 'liberty' that the Framers would not have
recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect.3
Alito and Scalia spoke in similarly harsh terms. It is a fact that when the
question of defining marriage was put to a vote, natural marriage was winning
handily. Thirty of the fifty states passed Constitutional amendments reserving
marriage to one man and one woman by an average margin of 68%.
4
Only the state of Minnesota's vote in 2012 failed to gain a majority of the
votes required to pass the amendment. In most of these states, the vote was
struck down by judges, usurping the will of the electorate.
Of course it is
not always true that the majority has a correct view of the rights of others.
The history of slavery in our country shows this. However, it is also not true
that Supreme Court decisions are always a corrective as the
Dred Scott,
Buck v. Bell, and
Roe v. Wade decisions also show. Righteous indignation at
a court that decides a case because of personal ideology instead of the limited
power the Constitution affords the Federal government should be applauded.
As Scalia commented, "Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320
million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the
Supreme Court."
5 The United States was never to be an
Oligarchy. Christians, who were winning democratically in the majority of
states, had their voice and the opportunity of democracy stripped from them
through judiciary fiat.
3.The Obergefell Decision Ignores
Natural Law
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the
Obergefell decision is wrong
because it violates the basis of marriage that may be found in natural law
itself. Natural Law has been recognized as the foundation of our entire system
of government since Jefferson penned his famous words in the Declaration of
Independence. Just as one can look to the nature of human beings to know all
are of equal worth, so one may look to nature to understand that marriage
transcends government sanction. Marriage has a biological component of producing
children and this makes the institution different than either societal creations
or societal conventions.
6
Our government may not be a
theocracy, but it must recognize natural law to be considered just. Marriage is
the only institution in human history that has been recognized as the proper
institution for producing and rearing children. We do not allow children to be
produced in government hatcheries. We do not encourage parents to abandon their
children to government agencies. We encourage children to be brought up in
stable homes and we expect biological parents to shoulder the responsibility of
rearing their children. That's what deadbeat dad laws are all about.
Nature
dictates that every child has a biological mother and a biological father.
Every. Single. One. Because of this, there is a responsibility the parents bear
when creating a new life. Codifying homosexual unions either denies the child's
right to a legally recognized mother and father or it separates the child from
the parents completely, assuming biology has no bearing at all on what
constitutes a parent.
The
Obergefell decision degrades marriage by
diminishing it from its recognized role across societies as the primary
institution for creating and rearing children. It purposely cleaves the
procreative aspect of marriage since there is no way any homosexual union could
ever produce a child. This is a clear and compelling difference between natural
marriage and homosexual unions. The nature of the two unions is different. As
Francis J. Beckwith explains:
The argument against same-sex marriage is based on the nature of human
persons as gendered beings who have a purpose that is derived from that
nature. That is to say, male-gendered human persons are meant for coupling
with female-gendered human persons, even if their coupling does not result
in procreation. This argument is not based on a human person's current
function, ability, or desire, each of which could be inconsistent with how
human persons ought to be by nature. For example, a person who is blind is
lacking something physically, though he or she is still a human person who
by nature ought to be seeing. In the same way, a sterile, aged, or willingly
childless person is still a gendered human person whose purpose for marital
union (if he or she does not have the gift of celibacy) can be consummated
only by one-flesh communion with someone of the opposite gender. This
remains true even if he or she has desires that are contrary to what he or
she ought to desire by nature.7
Martin Luther King, in his famous "
Letter
from the Birmingham Jail" explained the difference between a just and an
unjust law:
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a
man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust
law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the
terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted
in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is
just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
8
If the
Obergefell decision shows that it is neither rooted in eternal law nor
natural law, then it should be opposed on grounds that the law has no basis for
being just. Christians can dismiss the charge we are trying to establish a
theocracy as unfounded. The grievance against this decision is grounded in a
more fundamental premise than that.
References
