I don't think many of the
people who voted for the (state of
Missouri's) marriage amendment to
the state constitution are mean-spirited
people. *Many of them are probably
very religious people who can quote
the passages of Scripture which seem
to say that homosexuality is wrong.*
They are probably people who see
themselves following God's Will,
just like the priest and Levite in
the Good Samaritan story.
Which brings us back to the
moral of the Good Samaritan Story.
The story makes Jesus' point: that
the duty to love outweighs the commands
of individual passages of Scripture
(but not Scripture as a whole). We
can't get around doing the hard work
of discerning what is the most loving
thing to do in any situation we encounter.
We even have to risk becoming unclean
if the law of love calls for it.
- How does the law of love (not
individual Scripture passages) call
us, as a culture and as a Church,
to respond to homosexuals?
It seems
to me that it calls us to treat gays
as we would anyone else — lovingly.
If we condemn a heterosexual person
to a life of forced celibacy we would
call that immoral, inhumane, and
illegal. If we forcefully prevented
a heterosexual couple from having
children it would likely be called
obscene and dehumanizing. If the
government told heterosexuals who
they could and could not marry, there
would be full scale revolt.
- If treating
heterosexual people this way would
not be loving, how is it loving to
treat homosexual people this way?
In Mark 7:15-16 Jesus says,
| 7 15 Nothing that enters a
person from outside can make that
person impure (unclean); that which
comes out of the person, and only
that, constitutes impurity. 16 Let everyone
heed what they hear! |
In the same spirit, homosexuals cannot
make us, our children, our country,
our culture, our Church, or our institution
of marriage unclean. Only that which
comes out of us, like our fear, prejudice,
hatred, and insensitivity towards gays
or anyone else can make us unclean.
— Rev. Garry Richmeier, C.P.P.S.,
"No Room for 'Unclean' Homosexuals";
The New Wine Press, September
25, 2003, Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 865
