If you’ve ever been in a debate with someone about gay marriage, one of the conversation stoppers that proponents often throw out is this: “How does gay marriage hurt traditional marriage?” Or more personally, “How does my gay marriage corrupt your straight marriage?” The thinking goes like this. What two people do in the privacy of their own home ought not concern you, even if they choose to reinvent society’s most basic institution. After all, who are you to judge someone else’s pairing? If some people want to call gay unions a “marriage,” what’s that to you? [read the rest at ERLC.com]
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NY Times reporter calls for incivility
I have been watching with some interest the ongoing Twitter conversation between Ryan Anderson and New York Times reporter Josh Barro. Anderson supports the traditional marriage position, and Barro has been arguing that those who hold Anderson’s view are not worthy of civility. Barro says that such persons should be treated with the same intolerance that we would give to segregationists. For anyone paying attention to the current cultural climate, none of this is surprising. Still, it is jarring to see such a bald expression of intolerance from a New York Times reporter. I encourage you to read Ryan Anderson’s two blog posts chronicling the conversation (here and here). Anderson…
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Ryan Anderson on Marriage at Stanford University
Last April, Ryan Anderson made the case for traditional marriage at a conference at Stanford University. As far as the non-religious case for marriage goes, this is as good as it gets. The video above has highlights from the speech and subsequent debate with questioners. Below is Anderson’s full presentation followed by the entire Q&A with the audience. Whatever you do, don’t miss the Q&A.
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The difference between birth control and contraception
Karen Swallow Prior has written a crash-course in the difference between birth control and contraception at Christianity Today. If you didn’t know that there was a difference, this article is definitely for you. A couple of items here are noteworthy: 1. Prior takes on Rachel Held Evans and others who confuse “birth control” with other medicinal uses of the pill. She writes:
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The executive order has an exemption after all… but it’s not enough
Last week, I wrote about two different groups petitioning the President about a forthcoming Executive Order (EO). News reports said that the EO would prohibit government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. A group of prominent religious leaders wrote the President asking him to include religious exemptions, but a group of legal scholars wrote asking him to do the opposite.
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Are religious liberty and pluralism at odds?
John Inazu has a fascinating piece at Christianity Today about religious liberty vs. LGBT rights. I encourage you to read this so that you can better understand how we’ve landed in the pickle we’re in right now. Inazu also offers three predictions about where things are going in the very near future:
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Is the government obligated to disfavor Christians?
In my last post, I highlighted an open letter sent to President Obama last month requesting a religious exemption in a forthcoming executive order. Yesterday, a group of legal scholars sent a letter to the President requesting the exact opposite. If you want to understand the logic of those who care little for religious freedom, you need to read this letter. I will highlight one salient section. It reads,
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Are Christian Colleges free to be Christian?
Are Christian colleges still free to be Christian in this country? You may think that an unserious question, but if you’ve been paying attention to recent events surrounding Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, you know it’s a very pressing question indeed. Last month, Gordon College President Michael Lindsay added his signature to an open letter asking President Obama to include a religious exemption in a forthcoming executive order. The executive order will bar federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus any group receiving federal funds would be subject to this order. Those who signed the letter—including Rick Warren, Gabe Lyons, and several others—are…
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Are evangelicals changing their views on gay marriage?
Jim Hinch has a rather ambitious analysis of evangelical piety at Politico titled, “Evangelicals Are Changing Their Minds on Gay Marriage: And the Bible isn’t getting in their way.” The title reveals the fundamental flaw in this article. The flaw also appears in the fact that Hinch treats members of the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ as bellwethers of evangelical opinion. Hinch appears to be a little fuzzy as to what an evangelical is. These are very strange evangelicals indeed—those who give little heed to the authority of scripture and who are members of liberal mainline churches.
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Grateful but Sobered by the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Verdict
I have said before, and I will say it again that Obamacare’s contraception mandate forces one of the most egregious violations of religious liberty in our nation’s history. It forces pro-life business owners to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion-inducing birth control methods. For this reason, there was much at stake today in the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. That is why I breathed a sigh of relief when the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby earlier today. In a narrow decision (5-4), the Court ruled that the federal government cannot run roughshod over the religious liberty of its citizens. In short, the Court found that the government…