Newsweek’s “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage” Misses the Mark
- Dec 16, 2008 - 4
In the Dec. 15, 2008 edition of Newsweek, Lisa Miller attempts to make “the religious case for gay marriage.” Well, she may have made a “religious” case for same-sex marriage, but she certainly did not make a biblical one.
It is truly remarkable that a serious reporter for an influential weekly magazine would write about the subject of same-sex marriage and fail to address the two pivotal, foundational texts concerning God’s design for marriage. The first of the foundational texts is Gen. 2:18-25, where God creates Adam and Eve and declares, “Therefore man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
Jesus himself confirmed the primacy of the Genesis account. When confronted by the Pharisees who were challenging Jesus’ radically strict (by the Pharisees’ standards) teachings on divorce, Jesus reaches back to the beginning, before the Patriarchal period, quotes the Genesis account, and concludes, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt. 19:6).
The Pharisees immediately respond, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” (Matt. 19:7). Jesus responds with penetrating clarity. “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it wasn’t so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery” (Matt 19:8-9, emphasis added).
In saying, “but from the beginning it wasn’t so,” Jesus was emphasizing that God’s model and ideal was always lifelong monogamous marriage between one man and one woman. The Apostle Paul reinforces this teaching of Christ in the second foundational biblical passage concerning marriage, Ephesians 5: 22-32, where one husband is to love his one wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v. 25).
In attempting to construct a religious case for same-sex marriage, Lisa Miller ignores the two foundational biblical texts concerning God’s design for marriage for a simple reason—they totally refute and negate her argument. A religious case for same-sex marriage may possibly be made. However, a biblical one will forever be impossible.
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1 On Dec 17th, 2008, at 9:21am, Charles Enlow wrote:
A link on the AFA email let me read the Newsweek article, and it was one more hatchet job on Christianity. One of the authorities she cited said that belief that scripture is Jehovah’s Word and an infallible guide to belief and practice is “the worst kind of fundamentalism.” That’s where these people are coming from.
One time a son, who worked with a lesbian supervisor, opined that “she is just as normal as the rest of us.” In response, I did a search for scriptures weighing in on homosexuality, and sent it to him. I found 69, and my list is not exhaustive, but every one was condemnatory!
2 On Dec 17th, 2008, at 1:17pm, Ernie James wrote:
It has also been reported that the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successfull completion of the Human Genome Project, which, among other things identified each of the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The press release read, ” The human genome is complete and the Human Genome Project is over.” While this accomplishment was widely reported, almost no one reported the words of Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the project. Collins arguably the nation’s most influential geneticist, said, ” Homosexuality is not hard-wired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.
From an article—“Did God Create Ray Boltz As A Homosexual?”
3 On Dec 17th, 2008, at 5:21pm, Richard humphries wrote:
my Church is an Open And Affirming Church and Gay couples - men or women - have made significant contributions to our worship experience.
Dick
4 On Dec 17th, 2008, at 8:13pm, Manny wrote:
In the interest of honesty, someone at ERLC needs to inform their constituents that Dr. Collins has repeatedly said that his views were misrepresented in the article about Ray Boltz. He responded:
“The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.”
I will address the issues raised in the main article in another response.