Recently, a straight Christian couple in Australia vowed to divorce if gay marriage is legalized there. While few people go to such extreme and public lengths in protest, they aren’t really breaking any new ground, as followers of Jesus have been arguing for decades that same-sex marriage essentially cheapens the sacred institution itself. Further (as we see in our Aussie friends) those same folks often make the claim that Gay Marriage as an entity actually adversely impacts their personal spousal partnership.
Of all the arguments you’ll ever hear on the subject, this one is easily the flimsiest and most frightening: that gay people marrying devalues anyone’s straight marriage, like a foreclosed house taking down property values in the neighborhood. Marriage isn’t a community exercise, it’s a lifelong covenant between two people; before God (if they claim faith) and before friends and loved ones as witnesses. They are not beholden to anyone but their spouse in honoring, nurturing, or preserving that union after their wedding day. We don’t have a marital Board of Directors or a group of spousal shareholders to answer to here. We have our husband or wife. They alone get to speak to our performance and they alone get to retain or fire us.
I’ve been married for nearly 18 years now, and during all that time exactly two people on the planet have had a direct impact on the strength and sanctity of my marriage. Every single day my wife and I work together diligently to have a vital, honest, loving relationship and we’re the only ones who can make that happen or keep it from happening—period. The idea that anyone else’s marriage affects ours is fairly ridiculous to both of us, and it should be to anyone fully invested in honoring their own marital vows.
Ultimately this isn’t about your theology, it’s about the fading fine art of minding your own business. It’s about honoring Marriage as an institution (if you are married) by realizing that you’re not a local corporate franchise, you are a unique (if you will) “mom and pop” organization expressing what love looks like in the precisely beautiful, once-in-History union you’re a part of.
Even if you believe that same-sex marriage is sinful or immoral (which is your right), claiming that it does any sort of residual collateral damage to you or your spouse says more about the fragility of your relationship than it does about the LGBT community as a viable threat. For all the public discourse about what a “Biblical Marriage” is, the Scriptures give a lot less instruction on how to be married, than they do about how to be a loving, decent, compassionate person within or without it. Yet even when the text speaks directly on matrimony itself, it does so with expectation that married people will work out those words in the confines of their own covenant relationship. It never implies implicitly or openly that we get to police other people or they us. Interestingly, the same folks claiming that gay people are damaging Marriage, aren’t nearly as vocal about the rampant infidelity, abuse, and divorce out there in so many heterosexual marriages. In those cases, they don’t view those people as a threat and are quite able to separate themselves from the greater married world when it suits them.
It all comes down to attention. I work part-time as a personal trainer, and at first many new clients come in worried about being embarrassed in front of other more fit, more experienced people in the gym. I assure them by reminding them, “When those folks are on the floor, they are so focused on what they’re doing and working so hard, they don’t have the time or energy to be worrying about you. They’re just trying to survive.”
Would that more straight married Christians lived like that.
A Facebook acquaintance recently lamented the fact that “homosexuals are tearing apart the family unit”. I wonder whose “family unit” he was referring to. I know it isn’t mine. My family unit is pretty spectacular and secure because it exists independently of those outside my house, regardless of sexual orientation or any other possible variable. I have authority and direct influence regarding only one family unit on the planet. That’s how this life works.
As a father, my own Dad-ness is not affected by how other fathers parent their children; my son-ness not impacted by the other children out there in the world. Likewise, as friend, sibling, co-worker and in every other role I get to play here, I and those I am in relationship with work out the specific sacredness that exists there.
The difficult pill for so many Christians to swallow is this: Gay people have families; caring, beautiful, flawed, loving ones. They daily navigate complicated relationships with siblings, parents, children, and yes even spouses (and In-Laws). They live lives together in deep community marked by all the compassion, frustration, intimacy, laughter, heartache, and richness that you share with your own family.
If you can’t admit and respect that, and if you find yourself somehow threatened by any other person’s pursuit of happiness or expression of Family, that’s likely a you problem. There’s something incredibly troublesome when we as people of faith require others to believe what we believe, or worse, when we act as if their refusal to believe what we believe or practice what we practice in any way devalues our faith experience.
Straight Christians, when you got married you didn’t make those flowery vows to all married people, before or since. You didn’t profess your undying love and commitment to an institution. You didn’t expectantly join the ranks of a club or fraternity or corporation.
You didn’t get married to Marriage.
You pledged to a person; promising to love your spouse as faithfully and passionately and completely as you could for the rest of your life. That’s all you are obligated, expected, and qualified to do.
The bottom line: If your marriage is adversely affected by anyone else’s marriage (straight or gay), you probably don’t have a very good marriage.
That should be cause for great worry.
Outside of your spouse, the only person who can really threaten your marriage, is you.
