Same-sex debate is a red-herring
What will it take for evangelicals to embrace larger issues?
Fred McTaggart
Special to ChristianWeek
It’s an interesting time to be the pastor of an evangelical church. Through the past few years, so much of what has been said about evangelicals has centered on the debates, arguments, and fights about same-sex marriage and abortion.
I’ve been a pastor since 1995, and in those few years, my snail- and e-mail inboxes have been absolutely bombarded with notices and warnings and calls to action. I have been asked to preach, lobby and, of course, I’ve been encouraged to “join the fight” and make sure that my nation’s abortion and marriage laws are restored to what I’ve been told is God’s perspective on the issues.
I’m literate, and I own a Bible. So it’s no secret to me that both Old and New Testaments have nothing positive to say about homosexuality.
Just as clear to me as I read the pages of the Bible is the strong theme of respect for life and the great value God places on it. I can understand why people would engage the issues with passion, because they are important.
During this time, I have visited Africa seven times, working in capacity building and small-scale community development projects, and known many people who are living in extreme poverty. Many are engaging the mission of God’s Kingdom with passion and commitment.
I’ve read Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty and I understand that the eradication of poverty is possible in my lifetime.
In relatively the same time period, I’ve watched as the United States significantly increased the pace of militarization. I’ve seen Canada change its role in international peacekeeping, embracing a much more aggressive and combat-related stance. The tidal wave of hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the military just by North American countries help keep much of our “hot” economies going.
At the same time, I’ve seen Rwanda, Chad, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia and Sudan ravaged by civil wars or ethnic cleansing in round after round of senseless killing.
AIDS has become a global epidemic, and the West pours up to $200 a day into agricultural subsidies per cow, while many people in the world live on less than one or two dollars a day. While Westerners enjoy competitively priced chemical cocktails, millions of sub-Saharans will never afford mosquito nets.
In such a context, I am asked if I will please increase the pressure already felt by my parishioners, to join the “fight” against same-sex marriage. I’m told, and I’m expected to tell my parishioners that it’s the most urgent issue we face, affecting all of the fabric of our society. This, of course, because the evangelical church is at war with culture.
I get few pleas about Africa from evangelical or other Christian leaders. I hear little concern about militarization.
Rarely do I see the First Nations on the agenda, many of whom live in squalor. I have not heard one of our major evangelical leaders rally people to eliminate extreme poverty, whether abroad or at home.
Maybe it’s because Western tax policy still favours evangelicals, who are predominantly right-of-centre and middle class in North America. Could it be because, in same-sex marriage and abortion we have identified a couple of “last stand” issues that help us know we are morally “better” than someone?
Maybe through the same-sex marriage debate we are able to throw the spotlight off of our greed, our failed marriages (evangelicals now experience a higher rate of divorce than that of society as a whole), and our consumerist, materialist lifestyles that are enabled by the billions of people in the world who live on less than one or two dollars a day?
It’s really amazing to me that same-sex marriage and abortion remain the two most identified issues around which evangelical pastors are expected to rally followers of Jesus Christ. Is it any wonder that the gap between the churched and un-churched continues to widen?
Something, somehow, has got to stop the train of our rhetoric, or at least begin to distribute it fairly. While evangelicalism is growing worldwide, I wonder if the most conservative version of it in North America will find the courage, grace, heart and strength to embrace larger issues with the fervour with which it has embraced same-sex marriage and abortion.
I wonder if we’ll have the integrity to at least temper resistance to same-sex marriage by prefacing our lectures with a preamble admitting to the shameful statistics of our own marriages. I wonder if we’ll have the integrity to admit the numbers of people in our pews who have experienced abortion or who are homosexual.
Millions of people around the world are waiting for evangelicals to notice them and their plight. People in North America are wondering if evangelicals can broaden their perspective before they will entertain the notion of embracing a faith community. What will it take?
Fred McTaggart is the pseudonym of a pastor serving in an evangelical church in Western Canada.
Marriage matters for children
Can our MPs recognize these facts this fall?
Al Hiebert
Special to ChristianWeek
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised a free democratic vote in Parliament on same-sex marriage this fall. On purely scientific, legal and moral grounds, McGill University’s Margaret Somerville notes an avalanche of researched facts that shows parenting is not “gender-neutral.”
A majority of Canadians agree. Can we encourage our MPs to use facts to review same-sex marriage more responsibly this time?
On July 6, 2006, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the state constitution guarantees no right to homosexual marriage. The court cited two grounds to limit marriage to one man and one woman, both of those grounds “derived from the undisputed assumption that marriage is important to the welfare of children.”
On the one hand, the court observed, marriage can be an “inducement” to heterosexual couples to remain in stable, long-term, child-bearing relationships. Secondly, “it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and the father.” Can our MPs recognize these facts this fall?
The same day, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled to uphold a referendum result banning same-sex “marriage.” Both the New York and Georgia courts heard the same arguments from militant gays and lesbians that prompted our previous minority Liberal government to pass Bill C-38 in haste in June 2005. This bill totally ignored children. Let’s encourage our current MPs to address this major flaw.
Recently, Maggie Gallagher observed to a U.S. Senate sub-committee, “the marriage crisis is intimately involved with...two key ideas: that children need mothers and fathers and that marriage is the main way that Marriage matters for children Can our MPs recognize these facts this fall?we create stable, loving mother-father families for children.
Both adults and children live longer, have higher rates of physical health and lower rates of mental illness, experience poverty, crime and domestic abuse less often, and have warmer relationships, on average, when mothers and fathers marry and stay married.”
On June 19, 2006, Ryerson University, Toronto, awarded an honorary doctorate to Margaret Somerville, founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University. A controversy erupted because she said in public, “I don’t think same-sex marriage is a good idea...But I haven’t got any problems at all with being gay or standing up for the rights of gay people.”
What protesting faculty and students seemed unwilling to hear was, “It’s about kids’ rights.” One can oppose discrimination against homosexuals but still not support same-sex marriage. Children get valuable genetic traits from each of their opposite-sex parents, something not possible with two mothers or two fathers, she said. Her viewpoint is supported by an avalanche of researched facts, though many of Canada’s elite have not yet learned to be tolerant enough to hear such views.
Our school children are now being taught that preferring mother-father-child families is part of our bigoted past. How are Canadians who still prefer natural families responding to this current trend? Some are too busy to take notice. Some seem more concerned to “go along to get along,” thinking the fall vote will likely reject Parliament’s revisiting this question—surely a defeatist attitude.
Can we inform Canadian voters and MPs about the impact of same-sex marriage on present and future generations?
The Witherspoon Institute’s summary of thousands of studies show that on purely scientific, legal and moral grounds, public good comes from natural husband-wife marriages. Done by more than 50 distinguished Canadian and U.S. scholars, “Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles” (http://www.princetonprinciples.org/) emphasizes that:
Marriage is a personal union, intended for the whole of life, of husband and wife.
Marriage is a profound human good, elevating and perfecting our social and sexual nature.
Ordinarily, both men and women who marry are better off as a result.
Marriage protects and promotes the well-being of children.
Marriage sustains civil society and promotes the common good.
Marriage is a wealth-creating institution, increasing human and social capital.
When marriage weakens, the equality gap widens, as children suffer from the disadvantages of growing up in homes without
committed mothers and fathers.
A functioning marriage culture serves to protect political liberty and foster limited government.
The laws that govern marriage matter significantly.
“Civil marriage” and “religious marriage” cannot be rigidly or completely divorced from one another.
Too easily cultural elites convince our MPs that same-sex marriage is “a done deal.” Can we at least urge them to research the facts carefully before they vote? Who would have thought 30 years ago that acceptance of smoking could end? Then everyone’s “right” to light up was a given. Non-smokers
should just “get used to it.” Recently Canadians have heard the same concerning same-sex marriage. “A right is a right is a right,” shout our culture’s elites. Slave-owners used the same approach in the 19th Century. Can our MPs do better this fall?
Al Hiebert taught philosophy and theology at Providence College and Seminary for 28 years and at Briercrest Seminary for nine years.
