"Here's a glimpse of religion in America. All gays all the time. It seems that nothing else can capture the spiritual imagination of this nation. Jesus came to the world to stop the damned gays. He had precious little else to say.
Forget the fact that we Americans desperately need to be liberated from our materialism and narcissism. Or that our youth are clamoring for anything other than American Idolto inspire them. America's clerics will get around to it just as soon as we stop them gays.
The latest installment in the American obsession with gay marriage comes from Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who said in the Miss Universe competition that she opposes gay marriage and was immediately championed as a Christian heroine throughout America. But it seems that her Christianity could not prevent her from posing topless for men or from having the Miss Universe pageant pay for her breast implants.
Now I ask you, what is a bigger threat to heterosexual marriage today? Gay marriage or porn? When a wife waits alone in bed for her husband who is downloading pictures of naked women on his laptop, do you really believe she consoles herself by thinking, "Well at least those gays can't marry"?
For all my Christian brothers and sisters who scapegoat gays for undermining the institution of marriage, I would remind them that we straight people have done a mighty fine job of destroying it ourselves. The gay population in the US is estimated at somewhere around 5 percent, while the heterosexual divorce rate is more than 50% and was so well before gay rights ever became a national issue.
THE FOREMOST DANGER to marriage in our time is the wholesale degradation of women in the popular culture. In magazines, on TV and especially on Internet porn, women are portrayed as the libidinous man's plaything, not an equal to be respected but a subordinate to be used. On college campuses male womanizing is an expected right of passage. Women like Miss California who participate in porn become complicit in their own degradation and further the male view that a woman's principle purpose is to satiate male erotic needs.
Beauty pageants don't help much either, and it's surprising that my Christian clerical brothers haven't spoken out against them as they have against gay marriage. Can you believe that 60 years after feminism rightly pointed out that a woman's mind is even more important than her legs, we still have televised contests of women parading around in their underwear for Donald Trump to rate their bodies? And what would Jesus say about Miss California's implants?
HOW ANY of this is congruent with Christian values is beyond me. It seems that we've entered some weird Twilight Zone where opposition to gay marriage alone makes one a Christian in good standing.
Look. I'm not here to condemn Carrie Prejean, and I can of course be just as religiously inconsistent. But my point is that America has real problems and can really use an authentic spiritual voice to lead us out of the shallowness, greed, divorce and teen sex that are plaguing our country. So long as we make gay marriage the only issue of importance, we abdicate our moral responsibility to provide spiritual leadership to a starving generation. Most of all, we shift our focus away from combating the misogyny that has become such a staple of American culture.
Patti Stanger of Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker and I recently debated her belief that women ought to marry rich husbands. I argued that this just fuels the stereotype of women as greedy gold-diggers prepared to sell themselves as a commodity to a guy with cash. When men come to believe these stereotypes, it affects their respect for women. Soon they believe they can neglect their wives as long as they give them credit cards. But three quarters of all divorces today are initiated by wives who are making their own money and would rather be alone than remain with a distant husband in an empty marriage.
Approximately 30 percent of married women in America are on an anti-depressant, and Maureen Dowd of The New York Times scored big by publishing a book suggesting that perhaps women are better off without men.
As for the guys - well, it seems the only ones who still want to get married are gay. While the gay men are out petitioning the Supreme Court for the right to get hitched, the straight guys are inventing brilliant excuses not to wed girlfriends with whom they have lived for years and even have children.
We can save marriage in America and get men to become gentlemen who treat women like ladies. But that must be accompanied by women not only demanding male respect, but by respecting themselves as well."
The writer's new book is The Blessing of Enough: Becoming Materially Content and Spiritually Hungry. He is the founder of ThisWorld: The Values Network. www.shmuley.com
10 comments:
So, are you saying you support gay marriage?
Michelle,
No, I do not support gay marriage. My reason for publishing the article is that we easily focus on just one sin and ignore others that are just as destructive to marriage and family. Thanks for asking.
That's a very good article. I agree with him in that we do focus on one sin over another based on our own agenda. Good stuff.
yep... and then i read this today
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99442
I think there is a real danger in confusing the issue of homosexuality and marriage. This article is a prime example of blurring the lines. Whether we like it or not, marriage is a civil contract and as such is regulated by secular laws. So it was really only a matter of time before some interprising lawyers found some wealthy gays to bring suits that cite the 14th amendment.
My point is, the issue isn't marriage. The question is: Is homosexuality consistent with Biblical teaching? When we allow the discussion to get mixed up in marriage laws, it allows the proponents to focus the debate away from that key question. No logically thinking person would allow a debate over the act of murder to become a discussion of the laws governing J-walking. Yet that's what we do with gay marriage.
BTW, isn't it interesting that too many heterosexuals prefer not to be married and live together; but gays seemingly can't wait to be married? 'Wouldn't surprise me if 3 years after gay marriage is common, thye'll stop wanting to get married.
I find Christians are rather inconsistent in their application of "biblical precepts". I always here that the law doesnt apply anymore, now we are saved by grace. Thats why they can eat pork, shellfish, dont have to sacrifcie animals, etc...yet, they still like to keep tithing and homosexuality prohibition. Wildly inconsistent application.
The Old Testament laws were about purity. Jesus came and broke down the barrier between pure and impure, jew and gentile, male and female, etc...thats why he ate with the unclean of his day, healed the leppers, etc...to make a point that the purity laws flow from the heart, the inside of the cup, not the outside and its regulations.
Frank
You make a great point, Frank. We do like to pick and choose which OT laws we want to follow propositionally.
Our job now is to take the principle and to apply that. Surely you think that adultery and murder are still against God's desire for His creation: us?
We have New Testament clarification on many issues such as what we eat. Whether it makes things difficult and complicated or not, homosexuality still falls under "sexual immorality" because the principle remains the same.
Regarding marriage as a civil contract, I'm not sure I agree entirely. It is indeed a civil contract. But it is not only that. God designed marriage before we had civilization, before we had government.
Regarding divorce, Jesus tells us in Matt. 19, " 4"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' 5and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? 6So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
While marriage does indeed have a civil application, it is at it's core a relationship given to us by God. He made the rules, not us. And our culture is, as they always do and will, trying to buck God's system and make their own. We've been doing it since the garden.
All that, and what I really wanted to say was that I like your point, cbc101, that we are getting distracted and that the heart of the issue gets conveniently ignored. I should have just left it at that! We forget that most of these folks are lost and in need of their Savior to help them see things clearly. And we apply the rules to them without helping them trust the one person who can give them the power to change. I find that terribly sad.
Well Brandon, you are entitled to your opinion, as is everyone else. I have family members who are homosexual and yes they are saved just like you.
The sermon on the mount made it explicity clear that EVERYONE is sinful in some manner, we all fall short. Lets not pick out a group of people and use them for target practice OK everyone? Gay or straight, we all have sin natures that in Gods eyes make us exactly the same.
Not until poeple realize that we are all one and the same will love ever find its way in this world.
And we call oursevles Christians? Pitiful.
Frank
Frank - I certainly hope I didn't offend you. I did not intend to.
I was not picking on homosexuals. I attempted to clarify what the Bible teaches and remind everyone (myself included) that we need to love people and be gracious to them.
But I cannot ignore what God says because it is difficult. I too have sin in my life, but I call it what it is: sin. My frustration lies in the fact that somewhere along the path we changed the category of homosexual behavior from sin to OK with God.
How do we expect people to live in freedom when they ignore what God has taught us? I love homosexuals because they are people. They have worth and dignity because God made them and loves them. But our culture presses them into its mold by defining them by their sexual behavior.
God defines us because of who we are and who we are simply must line up with who God is or we have no anchor to steady us in the increasingly hostile seas. I cannot say that God approves of homosexual behavior because God has not given me the authority to do so. But that does not make me a pitiful Christian. I agree with the article that pornography is the silent cancer destroying the church I love from within and we'd be better off confessing that and getting that out into the light than bashing gays. But that doesn't give me the authority to deny what the Lord has defined. I just won't do it.
Brandon,
You missed the point. We are all sinners, no need to point out homosexuals as if they are any different than you. Their "sin" just takes a different form than yours. if poeple want to say homosexuality is a sin that is their right based on their beliefs. However, i dont see the benefit in our society continually singling them out as if they are some sort of outcast.
christians who do this are pitiful, because they fail to pull the plank out of their own eye. Once again, humans are all the same, sin just manifests in different forms.
So lets all grow up.
Frank
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