{"id":9099,"date":"2013-06-27T08:18:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T12:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=9099"},"modified":"2013-06-27T08:18:01","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T12:18:01","slug":"what-if-the-right-is-right-about-god-and-gays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/06\/27\/what-if-the-right-is-right-about-god-and-gays\/","title":{"rendered":"What if the right is right about God and gays?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"What<\/a>

What if he really does side with the Tea Party?<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the toughest, most awkward aspects of modern American politics is that a significant amount of the public discourse revolves not around public policy, but theology.<\/p>\n

Following yesterday’s Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage, social conservatives said pretty much the things you might expect.<\/p>\n

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, one of the nation’s top Roman Catholic clerics, argued that the ruling went against “God’s wise design” and called this a “tragic day” for our nation.<\/p>\n

Russell Moore with the Southern Baptist Convention argued similarly that the decision wasn’t merely unjust.\u00a0 It violates Christian cosmology.<\/p>\n

“God designed the one-flesh union of marriage as an embedded icon of the union between Christ and his church,” Moore wrote.<\/p>\n

“Marriage and sexuality, among the most powerful pulls in human existence, are designed to train humanity to recognize, in the fullness of time, what it means for Jesus to be one with his church, as a head with a body.”<\/p>\n

Less thoughtful commentators were more blunt.\u00a0 “Supreme Court overrules God,” Fox News commentator Todd Starnes tweeted.<\/p>\n

Rep. Michele Bachman, an icon of social conservatives, chided men and women charged with dispensing human justice for violating what she views as sacred law.\u00a0 “The Supreme Court, though they may think so, have not risen to the level of God.”<\/p>\n

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee dispatched an email arguing that \u201c5 People In Robes Are Not Bigger Than God\u201dand concluding that in response to the decision, “Jesus wept.”<\/p>\n

This is difficult territory, not least because many Americans struggle when asked to mingle their thinking about faith and their thinking about social justice issues and politics.\u00a0 It’s awkward, right?<\/p>\n

As a result, quotes like these often get tossed out there without discussion or context.<\/p>\n

So let me ask some pointed questions.\u00a0 What if these conservative Christians are right?\u00a0 What if the thing that makes Jesus weep isn’t war or hungry children or the death penalty?<\/p>\n

What if love and sex between two men or two women is truly the human behavior that inspires a unique level of wrath and opprobrium from the all-powerful deity who created the universe?<\/p>\n

What if God’s wrath isn’t triggered by domestic violence, or the rape of female soldiers in our military, or crushing poverty in minority neighborhoods, but by consensual love and willing physical desire?<\/p>\n

What if the order of His created universe – a majestic thing that stretches in scope from mega-clusters of galaxies right down to lowly neutrinos — is truly insulted by two men joining in the union of marriage?<\/p>\n

What if the blessings of the Creator might actually be withdrawn from the United States of America, not because we murder one-another at an alarming rate or have astonishingly high rates of infant morality, but because two women might raise a child together or avoid paying extra income tax?<\/p>\n

I know it sounds like I’m being snarky or sarcastic, but I’m not.<\/p>\n

Social conservatives are making a particular claim not just about our politics but about the nature of reality itself – a reality, in their view, created by God with a specific moral architecture.<\/p>\n

If they’re right, then it raises a lot of troubling questions about what most of us view as basic goodness.\u00a0 The earth hardly trembles when nations go to war — in fact, these same Christians often beat the drums for conflict.<\/p>\n

But the pillars of reality shake when we condone same-sex marriage?\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that I don’t have any answers here, but I know many gay people, some of them in long-standing and beautiful marriages.<\/p>\n

If Jesus is indeed weeping on their behalf, or worrying about their love eroding the universe’s ‘natural law,’ then I’ll admit to sharing Job’s bafflement at God’s version of justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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