Unconvinced About the No Gay Marriage Movement

With the gay marriage movement gaining steam, I remain unconvinced by the opposing arguments. I've covered this ground in previous posts but wanted to revisit the topic, to see if I can't further clarify why I believe what I believe. I'm also open to hearing more or better reasons on both sides. So, in no particular order:

* It'll ruin our children. And divorce doesn't? Or loveless marriages? Or any number of bad parenting patterns? I fail to see how gay marriage is so destabilizing that it merits so much negative energy in the midst of so many other attacks on our kids.

* It'll ruin the institution of marriage. See above. We have a lot more institution-wreckers around that we could be channeling our efforts into minimizing.

* It's a sin. If so, last I checked, so was pre-marital sex, and you don't see campaigns against people who've had sex before marriage being able to marry. (And, by the way, I have no problem with Miss California or whoever is the beauty pageant contestant who has recently sparked some controversy by saying she's against gay marriage because she thinks homosexuality is a sin; as much as people want to hate on her, she's well within her rights to use her platform to say what she believes.)

* It portends an irreversible decline in morality and traditional values. More clearly perverted and scandalous gay behavior, maybe, to the extent that it is pornographic in nature and therefore offensive to the eyes and inappropriate for public consumption. But gay marriage, in which two people in love want to formalize their relationship, not so much.

* We'll have to equalize gay couples with straight couples in terms of things like financial benefits and adoption placement. I fail to see how this equalization is a bad thing, if in fact it leads to stabler households and more options for kids in need of parents.

* Marriage is about producing babies. So couples who choose not to have kids or who biologically can't have kids are also shunted to second-class status?

* It's a slippery slope to polygamy, bestiality, and other non-traditional forms of marriage. Not sure this has played itself out like that in other parts of the world where gay unions have been around for a lot longer.

As a Christian, here's what I think, and apologies if anyone finds this offensive: our faith has been the most homophobic of them all, when we alone have the moral sturdy ground from which to both adhere to our understanding that homosexuality is a sin and yet hold fast to our obligation to love and defend those who are different from us.

What if Christians were known, not for demonizing and hating on those who are gay or who support them, or for conveniently looking the other way on the whole "homosexuality is a sin" thing since it's politically incorrect? What if, instead, we stood fast on what we believed to be right and wrong, as we understand it in the Bible, regardless of how socially unacceptable it is, and yet with the same vigor condemned those who would vilify or even harm another person or group out of an un-Christlike homophobia?

And what if we focused our anxieties about the ruin of morality, the breakdown of marriage as an institution, and the safety of today's children not on a side issue like gay marriage but on the very real dangers in our generation, by fighting for our spouses and being there for our kids and taking a stand against pornography? But working on the foundation of our marriages, training our eyes and minds to avoid lustful situations, and instructing our kids in the ways that are right in the midst of all the wrong they are fed: that's just not nearly as neat and tidy and righteous as taking a stand against gay marriage.

And yet, those are the areas we really need to double down on. And as for gay marriages? Sadly, I can't say that where we Christians are on this debate is doing much to show the world what we're really about (truth and love), what wars are really going on (those for our very souls, our generation, and our children), and what weapons and assurances we truly have at our disposal to fight them (the authority of God's word and the empowering of the Holy Spirit to stand on those truths with fierce, unbending, tender love).

When history writes about our generation, I want to be able to say we fought the good fight, which to me means we fought well and also that we fought the right fight. I'm just not sure gay marriage is the right fight, or that how we're dealing with it is showing that we're fighting well.