Monday, May 06, 2013

Why resist the triumphal 'gay' narrative?

William Edgar, "Some Thoughts on Gay Rights" (Reformation 21, April 2013):
The rise of gay rights, including, now, the all but inevitable legal support for same-sex marriage at home and abroad, has the effect of a tidal wave: better get out of the way, or be drowned in obscurity. Sure, there will be ups and downs, advances and setbacks. But things are moving fast. Two Presidents have changed their minds about the subject. President Obama, in a very public announcement last spring, declared that his views had "evolved," followed by his second inaugural address, where he actually called for gay marriages. And former President Bill Clinton has recently disavowed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which he had signed into law seventeen years previously. Linda Hirshman, a retired lawyer, has written a compelling story of how gay rights have basically been established. The title, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution (Harper), is surely overstated. Yet we read of the month-by-month advancement of the cause of homosexual, as well as bisexual and transgendered people. We risk being rather swept up into the narrative unless we have strong powers of resistance.

The narrative! How can we not be swept along by the stories of gay people, once terribly maligned, and now stepping out of the closet to a more tolerant world? In my own family, I can cite a poignant example of just such a story. My wife's uncle John, her mother's brother, is gay. For years he and his partner had to live a clandestine life. Everyone sort of knew, but did not accept his circumstance. His own mother never met Louis, his partner, as she could not have abided such an aberrant reality, in her view. Now, some 65 years into their partnership, they were able to marry, under the new Manhattan statute. Right away a moving article was written about the couple in New York Magazine, one of the leading publications of the city.

What can Christians who hold to the "traditional" view of marriage say in these circumstances? Do we have a counter-narrative that is as forceful, or more so, than that of the "triumphal gay revolution?" I believe we do. Where is it? ... Read more >>
[Hat tip to J.M.]

1 comment:

Sheldon said...

There is something truly diabolical about this recrudescent 'gay narrative'. The image that comes to mind, at times, is that of the macabre gathering of snivelling, gloating, grunting hoard of repulsive ghouls and goblins at the stone table before the White Witch kills Aslan in the first Chronicle of Narnia.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ojlE_RyU3A/T5B7_hGGDUI/AAAAAAAAAmA/ejY_5QTQVr0/s1600/Steinbordet+1.jpg