Claiming that most Americans oppose gay “marriage,” Focus on the Family promotes moral relativism with a definition of marriage based on the whims of public opinion.
A recent Gallup Poll found
55 percent of Americans oppose same-sex “marriage”, while
only 39 percent said gay relationships should be given the
same rights and privileges as traditional marriage.
Actually, the poll did not ask whether respondents supported equal benefits. Focus on the Family confuses two separate issues.
Jan LaRue, legal policy director at Concerned Women for America, said this issue is a matter of common sense.
“This is morally repugnant to most thinking people,” LaRue
said. “Thankfully, the majority will prevail as to
preserving marriage to a man and a woman.”
Calling anyone who disagrees with the religious right unthinking and “morally repugnant,” and consigning morality to majority rule, seem like two bad ideas to me.
Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family resorts to strawman argumentation, claiming gay groups believe marriage is nothing more than “two people loving each other and living together.” In fact, it is the Federal Marriage Amendment that trivializes marriage, reducing it to little more than the union, however brief, of one penis and one vagina pursued for the wrong reasons: church-sanctioned sex, and government tax breaks.
LaRue says, “We need
Christians better equipped to make the arguments.”
Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family equip Christians with inaccurate assumptions about their pro-marriage adversaries. And the organizations seem to guide their supporters away from commitment to traditional values of fidelity, long-term commitment, spirituality, and the needs of children currently trapped in government-run foster care.
I personally oppose gay marriage, but it’s not our government’s job to sanction morality, so I believe that it should be legalized, despite the fact that it’s wrong.