Marriage Equality

Famed Christian author and Englishman, C.S. Lewis, wrote the following in chapter six of book three in "Mere Christianity" nearly seventy years ago: 

"I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question — how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."


What stikes me is the relevance that this statement carries today. While written in the 1940s about divorce it perfectly applies to the current struggle for equality among the GLBT community in the USA today. The discussion over gay marriage continues to simmer in the social saucepan of our country. After the most recent state voted to ban unions between same sex couples I've been thinking a lot about how vocal I have (or haven't) been concerning the issue. Usually I leave these conversations to happen in person. It seems like it can be a bit disconcerting to simply read somebody's thoughts on a blog which is all too often insufficiently written and misunderstood. But I recently read an article in Relevant Magazine where two Christians gave their opinion on the gay marriage debate; it's also where I first read this quote from C.S. Lewis. Usually these conversations are unbalanced rants, but thankfully the publication from the Christian magazine held to its high standard for thoughtful, provoking, and biblically sound articles.

I digress, it's not my intention for this post to be a heady or merely informative. I believe there is so much truth in the above quote. The morality of same sex marriage has been a question that I've been wrestling with since I had to vote on Prop 8 in California. My conclusion about gay marriage rights has been the same as C.S. Lewis' had on divorce. Why are we holding non believers to the same standard that Christ holds to his followers? There shouldn't be a debate, we are all human, we all should have the same rights. Many people, like the man who penned the first viewpoint, believe that we have an obligation to defend marriage as a Christian institution. But if we are holding up marriage as a biblical union between a man and a woman then why do we let people who aren't Christians get married? The truth is that we can't keep regulating the general public with some views that Christians themselves can't even agree upon. 


It's the Church's job, the responsibility for each person who claims to follow Jesus Christ, to first love God, and secondly to love others. Jesus says that if we love him we'll obey his commands. I'm not so concerned with all of humanity following the rules as much as I am worried that they won't know what the love of Jesus looks like. I used to think that because of my own moral convictions that I had after studying the bible that I should do my best to make sure everyone else adhered to the code of conduct I saw in Scripture. It only seemed logical. God says he wants humanity to do something, so why would I back others who wanted to live contrarily to that? In the end I admitted that it is the job of the Holy Spirit to convict people of their sin, not mine. In the same way that I didn't constantly admonish my little sister for drinking underage, I don't see the benefit in discriminating against same sex couples. We must stop allowing "separate but equal" treatment of the GLBT community. They have their own convictions, and if they are seeking God I trust that the Lord will reveal himself to them. When the person needs someone to talk to I pray that they turn to their Christian neighbor, to their believing coworker, or to their kind waiter who talked about missions for Jesus. We will not win any to Jesus by political rhetoric but by loving them.