One day, gay marriage will be legal in all 50 states. It may take some time, but in the very near future our children will look back and wonder how it could have ever been otherwise. Much like a generation that cannot fathom what life was like without cell phones and iPads, our kids will never recall a world that did not include both heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage. Arguments against gay marriage will historically be regarded in the same manner that we regard arguments against integration and Civil Rights for the American Negro.

Recently, Gov. Chris Gregoire of Washington signed a bill into law that allows same-sex marriage, making his state the seventh in the nation to legalize the institution, following in the footsteps of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire. This decision, of course, has been met with praise and criticism. Various groups are preparing to mount a legal battle on multiple fronts in order to get the decision overturned. This may work in the short run, but in the long run, gay marriage is inevitable in the United States. I acknowledge this as both a Christian and a realist. Commenting on the decision, Lisa M. Stone, executive director of Legal Voice, a nonprofit that advocates gay and lesbian rights, said,

I am not, by nature, a conspiracy theorist. Again, I am a realist. And what seems painfully evident in the ongoing normalizing of homosexual relationships in the American milieu is the forward march of homosexuality out of a moral category and into a political/personal/privatized one. It has been a wise move on the part of the homosexual lobby and their constituents. By framing the conversation in non-moral terms and using the language of “not a choice,” it was not difficult to draw parallels to the American Civil Rights movement.  Nowhere was this more evidenced than by the recent backlash against Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon when she expressed that her homosexuality was, in fact, a choice, commenting,

Wayne Besen of LGBTQNation remarked that “[Nixon’s] statement was clumsy, irresponsible, inaccurate, and lent itself to exploitation by anti-gay activists.”[3] Within a few days, Nixon “clarified” what she really meant. If Nixon’s error is not corrected, this creates problems in both the civic and religious conversation. And so it goes. If there is nothing wrong with homosexual relationships, if it is all about “loving and committed families,” then it no longer becomes a morally indefensible position. On multiple occasions, Senator Jefferson Davis vehemently argued moral reasons for America’s Constitutionally-protected continued participation in the institution of slavery. We are horrified and scandalized that this was ever allowed to be argued on the floor of the United States Senate chamber. Future generations will be abhorred at the arguments made and wonder how homosexuality could have ever been categorized as a moral ill.^[4][5] Today, to consider the American Negro to be given to “crime and licentiousness” is considered racist, even if the American justice and penal system is disproportionately biased against black men. This is because we know that to “be black” is not a moral condition or act, but rather a state of being. You are born black.

The same is now said of homosexuality. Homosexuality is no longer an act one participates in. Homosexuality is now an identity. And if one’s sexuality is identity-constituting, it becomes more difficult to pass judgment. If a person is “born gay,” if it is not a choice, then placing it in a moral category seems a lot like what Jefferson Davis was attempting to do with the American Negro. And young men and women are beginning to roll their eyes. To them, it is nothing more than an alternative lifestyle that is determined by some external reality, some might even call that external reality God. And how could God make someone gay and then condemn them for it?

But, I’m not here to discuss theology. I’m here to discuss morality and politics.

To Be Continued…