Who am I ?
Is gay marriage another one of those absolutes?
The reality is that people like me have very strong feelings about the gay situation. I feel that the government should not be in the business of marrying anybody; that, in reality, what the government should do is recognize civil unions, both homosexual and heterosexual. That's what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you're religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved. I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us. Now, I have to say this. My wife and I differ on this issue. She goes to a church that does marry gay people. I don't. We go to different churches. That's all right. It seems to me that a gay couple could go to a church like hers and get their marriage blessed. They couldn't come to mine and get their marriage blessed. But I think it's up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn't be up to the government.
I'm a minister, and I serve as a minister in addition to being a university professor. I always found it very strange that, at the end of the ceremony, I had to say things like, "By the authority committed unto me by the state of Pennsylvania. ..." When did my authority come from the state of Pennsylvania? As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I thought my authority came from God and from the Holy Scriptures. All of a sudden, the ball game changes and I am no longer a servant of God; I'm a servant of the state. That kind of duplicity upsets me. I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.
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