Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was interviewed in ChristianityToday about a new book he’s written. In this book, he argues that the Bible tells the Church not to try to establish a Christian nation.
Haggard distinguishes between what his church teaches and what the law should allow. This is good news for those of us who believe in intellectual and religious freedom.
Although Haggard cannot let go of his far right biases and language, some of his positions should be welcomed and encouraged.
For example, Haggard supports the decision in Lawrence v. Texas. He wishes the process was legislative, rather than “activist judges”, but he thinks it was “probably a good decision”.
Haggard states his position that for the church to insist on a moral code in law there must be a compelling secular reason:
So, if you can make a case for something outside of a strictly biblical argument, then you would support a law on that case?
Yes. We are in a pluralistic society. It is a secular society, but it is not an atheistic society. An atheistic society means that you can’t use any biblical arguments at all. A secular society means that you can use biblical arguments, but you also have to have a compelling reason for the state to impose those values on people that don’t believe the Bible. You can’t just randomly say, since it’s in the Bible, then it applies to everybody. Christ doesn’t even do that. He lets people choose whether or not they respond to the wooing of his grace (I’m an Arminian).
The following is his take on gay marriage:
Do you think there’s a need for the Federal Marriage Amendment?
Yes. And the reason we need the Federal Marriage Amendment is for the sake of children. All the research shows that children have the greatest opportunity to be successful in life if they’re raised by their biological parents. And so my argument for the Federal Marriage Amendment is not a biblical argument.
The biblical argument could be made, but not in this particular case. In Washington, D.C., our argument has to be the fact that the greatest benefit to society and to our culture and to the children of our nation would be to instill in our Constitution that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. It would be devastating for the children of our nation and for the future of Western civilization for us to say that homosexual unions or lesbian unions or any alteration of that has the moral equivalence of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage.
So that needs to be inculcated into the Constitution, otherwise we run the risk of a Supreme Court decision that will say that a gay couple living together and a heterosexual couple living together have the same standing under the law.
This further evidences our need to combat the lies spread about our community. Haggard is mistaken. There is no research that suggests that children raised by opposite-sex couples have any advantages over those raised by same-sex couples. But Haggard is not being deliberately dishonest when he repeats that often claimed falsehood.
Now Haggard’s true objection is found in his horror that a gay couple would be treated equal to a straight couple under the law. And I do believe that if the “for the children” claim was debunked to his satisfaction he would just find another “secular” reason to support his pre-determined conclusion.
But, overall, the position he’s taken in his newest book gives me hope that some evangelicals are, or soon may be, approachable with the truth. The farther an anti-gay activist has to reach to find a secular excuse for religious opression, the more likely it is that folks like Haggard may come around to supporting (or at least not actively opposing) equality.
I feel hopeful in that at least one Evangelical leader out there actually seems to believe in free will…including to do things he doesn’t support.
It’s funny that his argument against gay marriage is more of an argument to constitutionally ban divorce or adoption, considering this would affect way more kids than the tiny portion of the population that would take advantage of gay marriage. I wonder if he has thought about that at all, and if so, how he would try to explain it away.
“For the sake of the children.”
This isn’t the strongest argument, this is the weakest. This still sets gays and lesbians apart with unequal (or impossible) standards not imposed on heterosexuals for these main reasons.
1. Marriage, or licensing of marriage is not contingent on raising or having children. This is not even a question asked when applying to marry.
2. Whether a gay couple marries, does not have any bearing on the children of heterosexuals and the quality brought to the marriage of hetero couples.
3. The quality of what kind of parents heteros would make is not a requisite of qualifying to marry.
4. Suspending the option to marry from gay persons who ARE parents, also suspends the quality of life they might provide for their children. This makes the children of gay parents suspect and left with unequal status as well.
5. It would be considered cruel and heartless to suspend the freedom to marry from sterile couples or those past child bearing ability. This isn’t imposed on those of disparate physical qualities, health or mental facility or criminal background (incarceration)-who might only marginally be able to care for a child and are not compelled NOT to marry. Why does anyone feel this cruelty is fair to gay people?
6. “For the sake of the children” was also the mantra of segregationists. They believed that a ‘mongrel’ child would have to bear the brunt of a cruel society, so why subject children to that? Therefore, preventing interracial parents from marrying would prevent this mongrelizing and it’s all good for everyone.
7. We’ve heard all this bull**it before. It wasn’t right then, it isn’t now. The integrity of marriage and child care isn’t bestowed on GROUPS. No ethnciity, religion, or family structure has the lock on perfect childcare. And pretending it’s guaranteed just because a couple is opposite sex more than flies in the face of reality and practicality.
8. This isn’t just about the gay couple who wishes to marry, but also their extended family and the quality and security that can come from it. Aging parents, the necessity to adopt the children of a sibling, family crisis, or structure can benefit from gay marriage. The couple would be in a better position to help someone else.
9. Gay people are spoken of and treated as if they are children behaving badly. Not consentual adults, who are not accorded the consent that affect their lives profoundly, but never and not at the expense of heterosexuals. However, heterosexuals cannot demand support for laws that are at the expense of homosexuals. This is unfair, impractical and anathema to the specifics in the contracts that are the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
10. To live within the laws of the Bible or any other holy tome, is ultimately a personal choice that can be taken up or abandoned at will without the interference of the law. To force ONLY gay people to live in this manner is taking a permanent and public law and applying it without consent.
When it comes to those things which affect the quality of life of gay people-they are burdened with proving their rights, this is opposite to the legal terms that it is the opposition’s burden to prove that gay people cannot function commiserate to equal treatment.
So far, they haven’t been forced to do that, even though they are supposed to.
There are no more excuses…and a ‘tradition’ has even LESS protection in the Constitution than a flesh and blood person with needs and obligations does.
The courts MUST recognize that gay people cannot escape those obligations, not as citizens, not as people. Their rights and freedoms have to be balanced with such. It’s as simple as that.
Well, I was going to comment on the “for the sake of the children” remark, but Regan did such a good job earlier today there’s no need!
Maybe just one thought though on this. Quite honestly, the thing that screwed ME over in my formative years WASN’T GAY people or their “lifestyle” (how I HATE the word “lifestyle” used this way, as though somehow all gay folks were magically living some cookie-cutter “lifestyle”…), it was RELIGION! Yep, that old time, fear-filled, homophobic, xenophobic RELIGION.
The excessive guilt. The shame. The poor self-image. And NONE of THAT having to do with homosexuality per se—just for being a KID!
If Evangelical leaders REALLY want to do something “for the sake of the children” then they should resign—and close their so-called “ministries.” (But only AFTER apologizing to the masses and unburdening MILLIONS of “the children” of the shame and guilt these charlatans have caused already.)
Brett, very well said. I too find that evangelical leaders in a broad sense, set unrealistic expectation s of their followers and when they fail, they suffer problems with self-image and esteem. The ironic part is, is that most evangelical leaders are no different than the rest of us and go forth and “sin”. Most have just become masters of not getting caught. Bakker and Swaggert weren’t so fortunate. Most of today’s mainstream evangelical “preachers” are no different than those two pathetic souls. All are human and are not perfect although they would like the world to believe that. Regan covered the “for the children” fallacy quite well. Most of today’s children and adolescents are much more world wise and would not fall for the naivety of the evangelicals, although, if one is nurtured in a fundmentalist household, they would be more likely to resent their parents because of the vast differences with the outside world.
Regan is, of course, 100% correct. That is the most succinct repudiation of the “for the sake of the children” argument that I have read.
I will only make one comment on her last point:
10. To live within the laws of the Bible or any other holy tome, is ultimately a personal choice that can be taken up or abandoned at will without the interference of the law. To force ONLY gay people to live in this manner is taking a permanent and public law and applying it without consent.
I suppose it might depend on the “laws of the Bible or any other holy tome” are. More than a few Unitarian-Universalist congregations approve of same-sex marriage. I would suspect that the Metropolitan Community Church would also approve of same-sex marriage. Should their views on the subject be ignored? Why should “mainstream religions” be able to control the discussion when the state is involved? If the Roman Catholics or the Presbyterians or the Methodists or the Southern Baptists do not want to conduct marriage ceremonies between same-sex couples that is their business. But it is not the states’ business. And it is the states’ business that matters.
Raj, great point, thank you for that.
This poly theistic, poly ethnic culture we live in can and makes room for diversity.
There are many universal cultural norms or experiences and I’d say that gay people are smack in the middle of.
Every religion and culture has gay people embedded in them. Some have tried to deny it. But as Iran denies it, they also publicly executed a couple of teenagers suspected of being homosexual.
If there are no such people there, what were the public hangings for?
This conflates denial of having gay people with the threat imposed on them to never announce their existence.
This would make an impression on gay youth. Very much like the public lynchings and mutilations of black men (always suspected of some sexual assault) was meant to do the same.
I would argue, that if there really were no such thing as gay people and homosexuals had never existed anywhere, WOMEN would be desperately seeking to own their self determination, equality and bans on violence exclusive and unique to women.
It was and is, after all, the exclusive domain that men wrote all those holy books, wrote most of the original public laws and enforced them and they would no doubt use or exploit that and the male centric tradition to justify the harsh inequality that exists elsewhere, or has yet to be completely behind us here.
The strictest religious societies are as I have mentioned before, are INHERENTLY sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic and resistant to scientific progress and distinctions from belief and opinion.
Hence the imprisonment of Galileo. Hence the objection to homosexuality being stricken from the DSM. Hence the objections to sharing or donating body parts. Hence the squeamishness with stem cell research…
You get the picture.
There are those whose religious life embraces new ideas and interaction.
And others with malevolent opposition to it.
I’m all for a spiritual life and purpose, but not if it’s inordinate amounts of time looking down at one’s own navel…or up one’s own ass.
I know that it’s really no sacrifice whatsoever to accept gay people as equal to myself and all other human beings. It hasn’t taken any extraordinary emotional investment, no special intelligence or courage to understand our place together in this world.
I know also there is rich opportunity to know better who gay folks are.
What I can’t understand, or forgive-is the parent or siblings of a gay child that will sacrifice that gay child to the conceit of the majority.
And sometimes patting themselves on the back into the bargain, that destroying their bond and that child in the process was more desirable, than sacrificing the long held belief that would make them do such a thing.
Having a gay child is never a tragedy, and certainly doesn’t have to be, except for the capituation to prejudice and limits of parental love.
This is not an amputation. This is not cancer. This is not an experience that isn’t a communally shared phenom. This is not such a bad thing in life that people have to pull such stupid, indecent, unfair and illogically rigid terms for NOTHING and no one that’s ever done any good.
We have history, facts, logic and experience to teach at any time and STILL…
why not see that homosexuality has always been a fact of life and always will be and it’s not at all the worst that could happen.
I laugh at that stupid statement
“Question homosexuality”.
What I say to that is-the question was answered already! Ad nauseum, ad infinitum. The answer has presented itself for all our human existence and doesn’t have to be asked again.
Bottom line: to keep questioning homosexuality and extolling that others do is like questioning why the world isn’t flat and perhaps we’d all be better off if it were.
There’s an answer to that too.
Because it isn’t, and how would you know?
I am glad to see that other people see that this “children are best raised by biological parents” argument against SSM is an insult to adoptees and adoptive parents.
Regan:
Having a gay child is never a tragedy…
True. Having a gay child is. If the parents don’t want to have anything to do with the child, after they discover that he or she is gay, the gay child should basically tell them to screw (which, in Boston, means, says “go away”). There are other options.
Regan,
great list
There ARE definitely evangelicals we should be dialoguing with, but i’d encourage us to look more to the “emergent” movement of evangelicals…the Brian McLaren, Don Miller, etc kind of folks, since their movement is the fastest growing and they seem to have at least enough epistemelogical humility to listen to us for a moment.
Haggard and his ilk are just working in service of an economic ideology.
Of that list, I especially love no’s 6 and 7. We don’t hear these points talked about hardly at all.
What always confused me about the “We can’t allow gays to marry because it’s worse for the children” is where do they think those children will be coming from? Unless gay couples are going to be kidnapping children from straight couples, then even if gays were inherently worse parents than straights (a concession you will never hear me make outside of a conditional), this argument is completely pointless.
Gays would either:
create children of their own via artificial insemination or some other means–children who would otherwise never exist, and so never could have the “ideal” of straight parents.
adopt children who have no parents at all, much less the Ozzy and Harriet ideal parents.
become foster parents for children whose parents were far worse than even the dreaded “gay couple”.
There ya go, Skemono,
Gay people have no children that either heterosexuals didn’t give to them, or that God did because it’s their biological child.
All fair, legit and a better arrangement.
I’ve long past hated how easily heterosexuals appoint themselves parents, and screw that job up royally.
Not only that: the legislature, clergy, and educational systems would rage against any restrictions.
Seems beyond dumb to restrict the very people who don’t have children accidentally, casually or without license and examination-to NOT marry.
In favor of people who evidently don’t give a damn about marrige, children or commitment.
It’s insane to have prejudice against people who don’t naturally procreate, in an overcrowded world, overburdened with diseased, poverty stricken and ignorant masses of people who do.
Cruel and stupid world, and these bastions of morality and compassion….just don’t get it.
“Seems beyond dumb to restrict the very people who don’t have children accidentally, casually or without license and examination-to NOT marry.
In favor of people who evidently don’t give a damn about marrige, children or commitment.
It’s insane to have prejudice against people who don’t naturally procreate, in an overcrowded world, overburdened with diseased, poverty stricken and ignorant masses of people who do.”
You go girl, tell it like it is Regan!