Posted by
Pete Chase on Monday, December 15, 2008 12:00:00 PM
Those with eyes can see that the mainstream media has pretty much abandoned all pretense of objectivity. Having been massively disappointed in the previous two presidential elections, and with new media loosening their stranglehold on public opinion, they must have felt that the November 4 election was simply too important to leave to chance.
And now, after abetting the election of Barack Obama, they’re feeling their oats. They apparently believe that now is their best opportunity to push for a raft of social changes that have been long denied because of those troublesome conservatives.
The first item on the agenda, evidently, is same-sex marriage. Last week Newsweek came out – figuratively speaking, of course – with a nifty little cover article by Lisa Miller purporting to make the religious case for same-sex marriage. The snarkiness of the opening sentence – “Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word” – sets the tone for everything that follows. After a quick side trip to compare the battle over same-sex marriage to that over the abolition of slavery, Miller deftly deploys her straw man. Claiming that the only basis for opposition to gay marriage is religious, she proceeds to make the case that the bible itself is a lot more inclusive towards, shall we say, “alternate living arrangements” than those Krazy Kristians would like to admit, even if they could read above a high school level. I’m sure that a closer reading – by a Columbia University diversity studies prof, say – might also unearth the bible’s unequivocal support for late-term abortion.
Of course Miller’s premise is demonstrably false. Most who oppose same-sex marriage do so from completely secular considerations. But such arguments are difficult to counter, so best ignore them completely. Miller does damage to her own case, however, by admitting that marriage is not a wholly religious concept:
"Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one.
But Miller, having made that admission, attacks only the religious understanding of marriage, failing to recognize – or ignoring completely – the fact that court-imposed gay marriage would affect only the civil institution. Surely Miller is not suggesting that churches should be forced to recognize same-sex marriage as a sacrament, is she? Why, yes, she is:
(S)hould gay people be married in the same, sacramental sense that straight people are? I would argue that they should. If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color.
Further undermining her argument – albeit unwittingly – she writes:
As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance.
Yet each of the states where same-sex marriage was imposed by the court – Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut – already recognized domestic partnerships, granting homosexual unions those same benefits. What, then, is the impetus for granting marital status? Miller does not answer that.
The debate over gay marriage is still raging (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Proposition 8 didn’t end it – not in California, not anywhere. But flagrantly misrepresenting both the arguments against same-sex marriage as well as biblical teaching is contemptuous, and Newsweek should be called on it.