Rocking the Bison Hill Boat

So this week, I put an article in the student newspaper-- something I've been doing regularly now because Disch and I split a column called "Bursting the Bubble." Anyway, it's been making some pretty big waves over here, so I thought I'd post it in case anyone else wanted to read it and join the conversation. Furthermore, I'd like to say that before I submitted this article, I had no idea that the trustees were going to be on campus this week. So there's probably a large group of SBC deacons who have it out for me now. Oh well.

Why I am a Christian who Supports Same-Sex Marriage

I begin this brief treatise with a presupposition: marriage does not belong to the church. Allow me to explain. Marriage is a rite of the church in the literal sense—in Civ we all learned that marriage is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. However, historically people outside the church have gotten married all the time. Even today, if two Satanists currently living in sin decide to go down to the courthouse and get hitched, I would be hard pressed to find a good Evangelical looking to stop them.

Historically, marriage has been more about economics than anything else. Farmer needs a business partner, girl needs an income, their parents do some exchanging of money and boom! A love story made in heaven. In fact, it is the changes which heterosexuals made to marriage that have caused homosexual marriage to become an issue.

That brings me to my second presupposition: marriage is no longer about sex or bearing children. In fairness, for me, marriage is about sex because I have made the decision to abstain until then. But for society at large, sex has been removed from marriage by the prevalence of birth control and changing social standards. I don’t know anyone who would argue that because a child is born outside of wedlock he is any less entitled to both parents’ resources and love. But historically, that is a ridiculous argument. In fact, a major part of getting married, historically, was about determining which offspring should legitimately inherit the manor.

Instead, we have decided that marriage is about love and personal fulfillment. That means if someone does not ever want to get married then that is their choice. Or if a couple wants to get married and never have kids, that is also their choice. And (outside of the evangelical context) if a couple chooses to live together and have a family without ever getting married, that is an option. Single mothers or fathers are not looked down upon and divorce is no longer as stigmatized as it once was.

Socially speaking, we should not be surprised that homosexuals are demanding the right to marriage. After all, weren’t we the ones who decided it was about being happy? If the only real requirement to marriage is being in love, why do we get to choose which in love people get to get married?

Third presupposition: marriage is about inheritance, property rights, and plenty of other things I never think about. Did you know that it is more expensive to live as a homosexual than as a heterosexual? This is because rules about employment benefits, insurance, etc. apply only to immediate family. And if you are not allowed to get married, then you can never become immediate family. Imagine, if I got married today to someone with great life insurance, and he died in 3 weeks, I would get all of the benefits of that life insurance policy. If someone has been in a relationship with someone of the same gender for 67 years and dies, the other partner receives nothing because they are not technically immediate family. Being a homosexual makes wills and assigning next of kin for medical purposes more difficult, if you want to include your partner. Really, legally and financially if you are not a heterosexual, your life is just going to be more complicated.

There are many more things I could mention. But I will end with this: I do believe that homosexuality is a sin and the bible is very clear about that. But, I have come to decide that as an American, it is not my job to legislate the bible. I do not see my choice to vote in favor of gay marriage as voting for sin, but rather choosing not to vote against sin for the greater value in voting for equality. Above all things, I believe that it does not love homosexuals to take away their civil liberties. If we are going to legislate based on sexual sin, then anyone who has had sex outside of marriage should not be allowed to get married. Anyone who uses pornography should not be allowed to get married. Anyone who has ever been divorced or cheated or lusted (which Jesus said is the same as adultery) should not be allowed to get married.

What should we do instead? Instead of dictating to the world who can and can’t get married, I believe that the church should glorify God with their own marriages. The evangelical community has a divorce rate slightly higher than that of the rest of the world. Perhaps, if we allowed everyone to get married and then really sought to glorify God with our marriages, we would be salty and illuminating and the world would say, “Oh hey, Christian marriages work really well. Maybe there’s something to that.”

I believe that being a defender of marriage has little to do with how I vote, but instead how I live my life as an example to the world of the identity of my Savior.

Veronica Pistone

Contributing Columnist

Thoughts?