"...how do you connect gay marriage and your Christian convictions?"

(From a "note" I wrote in Facebook a while back....)

A FB friend just sent me this msg, and I decided to respond publicly because maybe others are thinking the same thing: “I saw your profile pic. I'm interested how you connect gay marriage and your Christian convictions.”

OK. First off, I believe “marriage” should be separate from “civil unions”—so two people can be joined legally and two people can be joined spiritually/Biblically/religiously as a separate thing. They may or may not coincide. Christians could still get married in a church, before God, and view it as a sacrament if they so choose, but they’d also have the “legal” aspect to their union for purpose of taxes, inheritance, medical visitation, children, etc. As a society, we’d make laws about the civil union side (no close relatives, no minors, only 2  people, etc) and the church and other religious groups would made decisions about their own unions that they bless. However, since we’re not there as a society, I don’t understand why we’d take one religion’s supposed definition of marriage and apply that to our laws. So, thru’ that pragmatic lens, I support same-sex marriage.

Now as far as my “Christian convictions” go, they all boil down to one thing: God is love. He defines love, embodies love, is the center of love and His son Jesus in love incarnate. Of course, there are a lot of other Christian beliefs and doctrine and so on that I subscribe to, but as Jesus Himself said, “The greatest of these is love.” And I believe God’s main message to us, His creation, is that of love, tied in with grace and redemption. And to me, that’s why I support gay marriage as a Christian too. I don’t see anything in the Bible that clearly condemns gay marriage. The handful of verses that refer to homosexual acts, when you view with the correct cultural and situational context and with correct views of the language of the time at most leave God’s view of homosexuality in general unknown. He seems to condemn some homosexual acts that are more about prostitution, violence, orgies, inhospitality and/or power, but you can’t extrapolate from that all the way to condemnation of a gay person or God’s outright forbidding of gay marriage.

So, back to love. Two of the most committed, loving, amazing parents I know are gay. They’ve adopted four children, 3 of whom were siblings and came into their home with some fairly significant “baggage.” They’ve opened their hearts and their lives to these children and are providing them with the love and support they so desperately need—and deserve. I don’t for ONE SECOND think that God is anything but pleased to see their love. And if those two parents want to get married (legally), who am I to stand in their way? Who am I to say that can’t? My Christian convictions absolutely inform my decision to stand with them and celebrate their love and their commitment.

There you have it.