I haven't caught up on the news since last week, but last I heard there were 165 lawsuits pending from out-of-state same-sex couples who got married in Massachusetts, then went back home and are suing to have their marriage recognized legally.
So yes, it IS my problem.
The sanctity of your marriage, of mine, and so on, is not diminished at all by the existence of a civil union between two gays, even if that civil union is called a marriage and entitles its members to the same rights and privileges as a heterosexual couple as far as taxes, insurance, pool memberships and whatever else goes. Extending those privileges to gays and homosexuals in no way prevents you from filing as a married couple, from enjoying the benefits Sarah gets at her job, adopting another child, or from making important life-and-death decisions in the event of the other's incapacitation. With your marriage left intact, how is it your problem?
The church is not required to perform same-sex marriages because of the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. Although some groups likely will scream "homophobia" when a church refuses to perform a gay wedding, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of James Dale v. Boy Scouts of America that government does not have the right to dictate inclusionary practices to a nonprofit organization -- and the BSA is not a religious group. With your church still able to view homosexual behavior according to the dictates of orthodoxy, how is it your problem?
Doubtless there will be gay marriages in some neighborhoods that didn't have them before. A couple with a piece of paper indicating that their union is sanctioned by the state (and maybe a church) is little different from a couple without such a marker. With the only outward difference between before and after being a piece of paper and official sanction, how is it your problem?
I'm not a student of history, but as I understand, marriage has become much more formalized in the last few hundred years, with couples going to church to be married in a lavish ceremony. It used to be that the service was a small civil thing, and that couples would go to the church to celebrate Mass together. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that's the direction we're headed now as a society -- civil unions for everyone, with the church blessing those it approves of and not recognizing those it disapproves of.
On a side note -- and this really isn't related directly to the topic at hand -- the Scriptures don't say much about what's involved in making a couple married. Paul pretty much states that when a man and a woman have sex, they're joined together in the eyes of God, which is why the Lord gives us the option of one partner or none. (Note: Insert standard digression here, about polygynous relationships in the Tanakh and whether they even were expressly forbidden in the New Testament.)
If that's the case, then wouldn't my friend Josh and his girlfriend Hagar be married in the biblical sense, since they are living together, with all that entails? If I understand the word in the classic sense, "fornication" isn't sex between two unmarried people as much as it is casual sex. (The word comes from the Latin "fornix," which is a brothel.)
The Netherlands have had civil unions for gays for a while now and it has destroyed the family -- last stat I saw said 65 percent of the kids born there in the last few years were born out of wedlock. Sad.
Using that kind of reasoning, I should point out that as the number of pastors and other clergymen in New York has increased over the last few hundred years, the city has seen a growth in murder, drunkenness, extortion, prostitution and corruption.
There are a great many many more social dynamics at work in the Netherlands than just civil unions for homosexuals. I would think the legalized prostitution and generally casual attitudes toward sex in general would do more to erode the concept of family, and probably drove the civil unions for gays as well.
We're probably going to keep going around the mullberry bush on this one as well. If one of our goals as Christians is to preserve the traditional family, we would do better to focus our attention on the root causes of what has caused family to unravel and start finding new ways to bind the strands together so it will hold in the times ahead.
The problem is that we keep viewing this as a political or civil rights issue. It's not. It's a spiritual one. Those driving the call for gay marriages have some legitimate grievances in there, and those who oppose them also have some legitimate objections. Deal with it in the political arena, and we're going to continue to divide ourselves against one another and further inflame heated passions.
Our goal should not be to get people to behave in a certain way, but to get them to the point that they put their faith in Christ, whatever their situation, whatever their sin, whatever their involvement. Lead them to Christ, and then let him begin the process of changing their hearts, which in turn will lead them to change their behavior. Transformation begins on the inside and works its way inexorably outward.
Since, as you acknowledge, the carnal nature is at enmity with the nature of God, trying to get sinful man to follow God's ways is much like trying to teach a pig to sing. You won't have any success, and you'll irritate the pig. And even if you do somehow teach the pig to sing, you haven't really changed its fate. It'll still get chopped up and turned into breakfast for one person or another. Don't focus on changing society's behavior, because you're not accomplishing anything except driving most people away from the gospel for the wrong reasons -- they see Christians as a bunch of controlling moralists -- and possibly making a few people more secure in their own righteousness so they have a comfortable, well padded trip to hell.
Look at it this way. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes to the Corinthian church that he has heard of a form of sexual immorality among the church that is unheard of even among their pagan neighbors. A fellow was having sex with his father's wife, and instead of being ashamed of it, was actually bragging about it.
Paul was outraged, much as I expect you would be too, and told the church to throw the guy the heck out and not have anything to do with him until he had repented. Paul's got all sorts of harsh words for this guy -- but he concludes by saying an odd thing: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? Expel the wicked man from among you." In other words, "If this were someone outside the church, I'd say it's none of our business. But he claims to be a Christian, so I'm telling you right now to have nothing to do with him until he's repented."
What business is it of ours if people outside the church want to have same-sex marriages? It's not our business. It has no bearing on us; it's irrelevant to what we're here for. Share the gospel, encourage one another to follow Christ, and keep yourself living righteously.
As to prayer, I see no point in praying that the Federal Marriage Amendment go through. I think the writing is on the wall already that it will fail, and even if it succeeds, what is it really going to accomplish? Will it stop same-sex relationships, or will it simply stop same-sex couples in committed relationships from being able to extend insurance benefits to their partners, from being able to make critical life-and-death decisions for one another, and so on?
If you're concerned for people in same-sex relationships -- and I believe you are -- I would suggest praying for ministries like Exodus Ministries and Genesis Counseling (or whatever their names are). Those ministries aren't for everyone, obviously, but there are people who believe they have benefited from them, and there are people who have left the gay lifestyle and adopted a heterosexual one.
And if you're concerned about the country's growing acceptance of same-sex relationships -- and I believe you are -- then start praying for our cultural leaders, the arists, philosophers and other social architects who provide moral leadership to our nation. Pray for them, and pray that they will awaken to God's call on their lives. (Those leaders, by the way, don't live within the Beltway, by and large. They're concentrated in Los Angeles and in New York.)
You aren't going to like hearing this, but the truth is the "culture wars" are over, and the church lost sometime back in the 1960s. We failed to understand what the hippy movement was about and we were slow to provide the leadership our culture needed. We now live in a post-Christian society where our worldview no longer dominates, and where Scripture's testimony about God is no longer accepted as an authority.
The postmodern society Gen X inherited and now is beginning to lead is a society where moral absolutes don't exist, and the superiority of one religion or one set of morals isn't a given. Try to justify your disapproval of gay sex without once referring to Scripture, and you might get a sense of why this is a lost cause. Society has moved on, and trying to get it to go back is like keeping away the tide with a broom.
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