Voices of Faith: The Christian case for marriage equality

Although the Right Wing likes to claim that "Christians" oppose marriage equality, that's actually not true.  Increasingly, many Christians (those not of the loud Evangelical variety) are strong supporters of civil marriage, and in many cases, religious marriage too.

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Voices of Faith

This recent Op-Ed from the LA Times makes the case:

According to the Pew Forum, a majority of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics now favor legalizing same-sex marriage. So when our more conservative Christian kin claim that gay marriage is against God and against the Bible, we beg to differ. And since Christians are a "people of the Word," we look to the Bible to justify our thinking. That's essential to Christianity, although all too often we get it wrong, at least at first. 

....Most New Testament Greek scholars now point out that there are only three passages that deal with homosexuality in the New Testament — Romans 1:23-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 — and those passages don't deal with homosexuality as we define it today but rather with temple prostitution and other abuses. .....

Literalism, says LGBT activist and Episcopal priest Susan Russell, leads to using Bible passages as weapons. "Instead of taking the Bible literally," she says, "we should take it seriously, with deep faithfulness to the Old and New Testaments' core values of compassion, justice and peace." 

An ever-growing number of Christian clergy and lay people now believe that rejecting gay civil rights because of a literal adherence to certain verses directly contradicts these themes. They point out how these views are hurting all of the church, especially its most vulnerable members: young gay people who are convinced that their very essence is sinful. Furthermore, they can no longer support unjust laws that penalize committed same-sex couples and their families. 

That's why there were battles in MN between equality-minded Roman Catholics and their hierarchy.  We live in an era where the Episcopal Church now has a rite for blessing  same sex couples (many think full marriage is on the way church wide, although it is already happening in some Dioceses), the UCC, the Lutherans, Quakers, and others are also on this road.

CHRISTIANS do not oppose marriage equality.  And those who claim otherwise, are lying.