What Should Christians think about Today's Historic SCOTUS Decision?

Actually, I don't intend to answer that question here. I can't. To do that, I'd need to write a book--well, probably more than one. (And I intend to.)

What I can do here is warn against certain sweeping claims about what Christians should think. More precisely, I want to warn against an all-too-common practice among Christians today when it comes to homosexuality and same-sex marriage: The tendency to think that all Christians, to be truly Christian on this matter, must agree with us.

First, an obvious point: While Christianity might have something to say about who we should and shouldn't have sex with, it isn't a religion about who we should and shouldn't have sex with. Christianity is about who God is and what God has done, who Christ is and what Christ did. Christians are followers of Jesus. And Jesus said nothing about gay sex.

The Christian debate about homosexuality and same-sex marriage is not a debate about the heart of the faith.

Beyond this obvious point, Christians need to move past false or overgeneralized claims about the motives of their Christian opponents.

Conservatives have a tendency to portray Christians who are progressive on this issue as sell-outs to secular culture. In doing so, they ignore the fact that Jesus' command to love our neighbors as ourselves sits at the heart of progressive Christian arguments on this issue.

By contrast, I have liberal Christian friends who dismiss conservatives on this issue as ignoring both Christ's command that we love our neighbors as ourselves and Christ's call not to judge, lest we be judged ourselves. But in offering such a sweeping assessment, they ignore my Christian friends who earnestly wish they could support the intimate relationships of their gay friends, who are pained by what they see as a divine requirement to condemn those relationships--who wish it were otherwise, but who can't see another way to interpret what they take to be God's word.

Let me be clear: There are plenty of conservative Christians who are not motivated by love for their gay and lesbian neighbors. There are plenty who invoke the slogan "Love the neighbor but hate the sin" without paying any attention to what comes before the "but". There are plenty of Fred Phelpses in the world. Many are just less honest and open about their bigotry.

But this doesn't mean that all conservatives on this issue are homophobic in their hearts. It doesn't mean that every conservative is insincere about the desire to love their gay and lesbian neighbors.

I believe, and have argued, that their belief about homosexuality operates as an impediment to their expressing that love properly--that they are unwittingly feeding their gay and lesbian neighbors poison based on the false belief that it is medicine. But I also believe that these Christians would weep and repent were they to realize that the doctrines informing their relationships with gays and lesbians really are as soul-crushing and anti-Evangelical as my experience with gay and lesbian friends teaches me they are.

Where I disagree with these Christians isn't at the level of their intentions and their sincerity. And while I take today's ruling to be a cause for celebration, I don't think every Christian who believes otherwise is therefore a bad Christian. I think they're mistaken, but that doesn't mean they aren't striving to live by the law of love as best they can.

Likewise, let me be clear that there are surely plenty of progressive Christians who haven't wrestled deeply with the issue of same-sex intimacy in the light of their Christian commitments and values, who are just going with the flow, following the prevailing trends. But to treat such motives as the core of the progressive Christian stance is to ignore or fundamentally misunderstand what progressive have been arguing for years.

The birthplace of progressive Christian support for same-sex marriage isn't found in secular culture. I would argue--and in fact have argued--that the causation moves in the opposite direction: Secular culture has come to see same-sex relationships differently because the spirit of agapic love has taken root there.

Gays and lesbians are not only a minority, but an easy out-group to scapegoat and marginalize. If you're straight, then a prohibition on gay sex is no prohibition at all. Hence, such a prohibition has, for the majority, the effect of offering easy righteousness. "I can feel morally superior without expending any effort, because whatever I do at least I'm not one of those fa**ots."

If there's a reason why our broader culture has moved away from this, it isn't because of an anything-goes secular permissiveness that would allow the heterosexual majority the moral freedom to have sex with people they have absolutely no desire or inclination to have sex with. It's because of empathy. It's because, over the last forty years, gays and lesbians have been really heard for the first time in history. People have put themselves in their shoes. They have asked themselves the question at the heart of the Golden Rule: What would I want done to me, if I were in their place?

Christian reformers on this issue argue that when we really pay attention to our gay and lesbian neighbors, it becomes increasingly clear that "How do we love the sinner while hating the sin?" is the wrong question.. The right question is this: What can we take to be a sin while still loving our neighbors as we should.

And loving attention to our gay and lesbian neighbors teaches us that calling all same-sex intimacy a sin is doing harm to them, the kind of real harm that love must stand against. Contestable biblical interpretations and natural law arguments must give way before what loving attention teaches, or we end up loving our own beliefs more than we love our neighbors.

This progressive view isn't about selling out to secular culture. It's about trying to live by Christ's command to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Christians may disagree with my take on these issues, just as I disagree with them. But these lines of disagreement can't and shouldn't be treated as the dividing line between real Christians and sell-outs, or between real Christians and homophobic bigots wearing the cloak of Christian righteousness to justify their prejudice.

All Christians should strive to love their gay and lesbian neighbors as themselves, and should wrestle sincerely with what that call to love demands. All Christians should strive to rise above the whims and vagaries of secular culture, informing their life and values in relation to God, not Hollywood.

But there are Christians celebrating today's SCOTUS decision who embrace both of these things. There are Christians bemoaning it who embrace both. Recognizing these facts should be a starting point for any serious attempt to decide what Christians should believe about today's historic decision.

If we don't start there, we will model pugnacity and prejudice instead of Christian love.

Same-Sex Marriage in Oklahoma (!!!)...and Gov. Mary Fallin's Response

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court refused to take up an appeal of a lower-court ruling that declared Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. This paved the way for same-sex marriage here in Oklahoma. It was a joyful day for many couples, including a number of friends of mine, who suddenly had a right they'd been denied their entire lives: the right to marry the person they love in their home state.

In other words, for the first time in their lives, gay and lesbian Oklahomans found themselves free from the systemic legal discrimination that Oklahoma has enforced for its entire history (even writing it into its constitution in 2004).

And while friends of mine cheered and cried in joy, while many rushed off to get their marriage licenses and lined up in churches and courthouses to finally receive the legal recognition they'd always been denied, the Governor of our state, Mary Fallin, issued a public statement condemning the decision and its implications.

Earlier today, one of my friends said how grateful he is that his belief system doesn't force him "to stand against love and commitment." Apparently, Mary Fallin's belief system does. For this, I pity her. Consider how hard it must be to be forced by your beliefs to utter words of outrage and condemnation in the face of the joy and tears and hugs of people who love one another, who finally are free to express their love and commitment in the public way that the state has always made available--for everyone but them.

How sad it must be, to feel obligated to throw wet towels on love and laughter.

Here is the wet towel she threw:

"The people of Oklahoma have the right to determine how marriage is defined. In 2004, Oklahomans exercised that right, voting by a margin of 3-1 to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

"The will of the people has now been overridden by unelected federal justices, accountable to no one. That is both undemocratic and a violation of states' rights. Rather than allowing states to make their own policies that reflect the values and views of their residents, federal judges have inserted themselves into a state issue to pursue their own agendas.

"Today's decision has been cast by the media as a victory for gay rights. What has been ignored, however, is the right of Oklahomans – and Americans in every state – to write their own laws and govern themselves as they see fit. Those rights have once again been trampled by an arrogant, out-of -control federal government that wants to substitute Oklahoma values with Washington, D.C. values."

Fortunately, as wet towels go, this statement wasn't very wet--and it didn't have much effect on the celebrants.

Let's briefly consider the details of Mary Fallin's claims. As she sees it, Oklahoma should be free to continue to practice marriage discrimination against its gay and lesbian citizens, in defiance of the court ruling that doing so violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

She thinks it is the right of the people of Oklahoma, if the majority so chooses, to systematically exclude a portion of its population from access to the social goods of marriage. For her, this is a matter of "state's rights" and "democracy." Put simply, she thinks it is the right of the majority of the state to exclude select minorities from equal access to legally-conferred social goods, if that so happens to be in line with the majority's values.

But we live in a republic where democratic rule is not absolute. It is not absolute because the founders of this country recognized the importance of protecting individuals and minority groups from a distinct danger: the tyranny of the majority. What the majority of a state has the right to do is and has always been constrained by considerations of individual rights and the obligation of the government to preserve equality and liberty in the face of majorities that sometimes don't care about these things.

The question, then, is this: Does the majority in Oklahoma have the right to systematically exclude persons with a homosexual orientation from access to a valuable social good that the state provides to persons with a heterosexual orientation--namely, marital recognition for their intimate partnerships (and the attendant legal rights and protections).

Put another way, do the people of Oklahoma have the right to legally discriminate against gays and lesbians when it comes to marriage? (For those who are under the impression that there is no legal discrimination going on, see here).

This amounts to a question of justification. Legal discrimination can, in some cases, be justified. For example, the state can justifiably exclude the blind from access to driver's licenses. But legal discrimination is the kind of thing that requires justification. Absent a compelling state interest, legal discrimination violates both the political philosophy on which this country was built and the founding documents that express that philosophy.

The federal courts ruled, in effect, that the State of Oklahoma failed to meet this burden when it comes to its same-sex marriage ban. Hence, the ban was declared an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of persons to receive equal treatment under the law.

In the face of this, does Mary Fallin explain what she thinks is wrong with the federal court rulings? Does she build the case that legal discrimination is justified in this case?

She mentions the values of the people of Oklahoma, as if this were a sufficient basis for justifying the ban. But "majority values" in a state are precisely the sorts of things that cannot, by themselves, justify discriminatory treatment under the law. "Majority values" supported Jim Crow laws in most southern states. The majority can be wrong, its values unjust. If laws are discriminatory, then majority values have to give way. The alternative is to open the door to the untrammeled tyranny of the majority.

If the federal courts made a mistake, then we need to look at where the mistake lies, by looking at the substance of the court arguments. Does Fallin do this?

No. Instead, she throws a red herring. She asserts that the federal judges in question here--who were duly appointed according to the procedures written into federal law--are "unelected" and "accountable to no one." This sounds like she disapproves of the federal judicial system in this country, and thinks it should be radically restructured.

But even if she's right--even if there are good reasons to be unhappy with the design of our federal judicial system--why is that relevant in this case? Does she think the purported flaws in the federal judicial system have compromised the soundness of the ruling against Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban? If so, she needs to show that this is so. Simply calling the federal judges "arrogant" and "out-of-control" shows us nothing--except that Mary Fallin can fling put-downs.

If you want to show that a flaw in the federal judicial system has compromised one of its rulings, you show this by, first of all, showing that the ruling is unsound. She makes no effort whatsoever to do that. Hence, her vague unhappiness with the way that federal judges get their positions is nothing but irrelevant distraction.

Think of it this way: Our judicial system is at the front lines of our nation's founding commitment to ensure that legal discrimination is not taking place, or when it is, that there is a sufficiently compelling reason for it. Given this fact, Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban is clearly suspect. A court ruling against it sounds quite reasonable. If Fallin thinks that, despite this, the ruling is wrong, she needs to dig into the substance of the arguments and identify the flaws. Vague complaints and put-downs simply won't do.

What we have here is a fallacy taught in most freshman-level critical thinking classes: the ad hominem fallacy, which is roughly the mistake of attacking a person instead of their views and arguments. Instead of speaking to the substance of the federal rulings, Mary Fallin calls the judges names while vaguely deriding the system that put them in office.

We deserve better than freshman-level logical fallacies from out governor. Really, we do. Until we get it, those who are enjoying their new-found freedom to marry should treat Mary Fallin's statement for what it is: not so much a wet towel as a dirty dishrag.

Hobby Lobby and Religious Conscience: Two Reasons to Doubt the Freedom of Religion Argument

There is much about the recent Hobby Lobby ruling that I'm not qualified to comment on, but I have some concerns about a key claim in this case--namely, that the business owners' freedom of religious conscience offers grounds for justifying the Supreme Court's decision. There are two problems, in my view--although my thinking on both is still evolving. The first strikes me as less serious than the second.

1. Religious conscience needs to be responsive to matters of fact.

Suppose Pastor Bob refuses to officiate at the wedding of Pat and Alex on the grounds that he is religiously opposed to same sex marriage. If, as a matter of fact, Pat and Alex are a heterosexual couple, then no court of law would treat his religious opposition to same-sex marriage as a legitimate basis for refusing to marry them. And if Bob sputters that it is a matter of religious conviction that this man and woman are in fact both men--well, I doubt that will fly if the facts don't line up with the conviction.

In other words, there is the moral premise of Bob's argument--which is derived from his religious convictions. And then there is the factual one--which isn't a matter of religious belief and shouldn't be.

In the Hobby Lobby case, there is the the moral premise: The rather complex conviction that a form of contraception which operates by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg is wrong because fertilized eggs are persons who are thereby being deprived of their lives. And then there's the factual claim that the four forms of contraception at issue function in this way.

But it does not appear that, as a matter of fact, the four forms of contraception operate in this way. Three (the two "morning after" pills and the hormone-releasing IUD) operate primarily to prevent fertilization, while the fourth (the copper IUD) kills sperm cells. With respect to the two "morning after pills," extensive research indicates that these do not prevent implantation in the cases where they fail in their primary function.

It may be true, however, that when the IUD's fail in their primary function and conception happens anyway, the fertilized egg is considerably less likely to implant than it would be in the absence of the contraceptive. Absent any contraceptive, on average only 40% of fertilized eggs implant. IUD's may lower this percentage considerably.

But in that case, the effect on implantation appears to be a side-effect of the contraceptive's use. Given the standard 40% success rate for implantation, someone who is trying to get pregnant is a greater threat to the lives of fertilized eggs than an IUD-user--since it is likely that the IUD-user will never flush out a fertilized egg because the IUD will prevent the egg from being fertilized in the first place. But I doubt Hobby Lobby is going to start condemning couples attempting to conceive of slaughtering innocent babies wholesale. After all, the deaths of more than half of the zygotes they produce is a side-effect of the effort to become pregnant, not the aim of it.

The moral status of a medicine's side-effects is different from the moral status of its primary intended effect. Hobby Lobby could argue that any medication which substantially increases the probability that fertilized eggs won't implant even as a side effect of its use violates their religious conscience. But if their religious faith entails commitment to this broader ethical principle, consistency would call for more sweeping employer involvement in regulating the health-care options covered by a health plan. For all we know, numerous medications prescribed for a range of purposes have an impact on implantation chances. (At least the IUD makes it unlikely that this side-effect will ever happen, since it is highly effective at preventing the conditions under which such a side-effect will arise.)

So: If Hobby Lobby isn't interested in sweeping involvement in health-care choices, then it doesn't seem as if they really are, as a matter of religious conscience, committed to this broader ethical principle after all. And if what they're committed to is the narrower one, their religious conscience at best calls for condemning those who use IUD's in part to achieve what is ordinarily a side-effect (as in when someone takes a medicine with psychotropic side-effects for the sake of those side-effects). If their religious conscience really does push them towards the broader principle, then the substance of their religious conscience calls for a level of intrusion into health care options that is far more burdensome on the insured than what the Supreme Court was considering--leading to a different set of worries about the ruling.

Of course, all of this is premised on the facts about the four contraceptives being as described above--and while I am relying on what I've read about them, I'm not an expert. So this line of concern hinges on what the facts are--but that's part of my point here. This can't and shouldn't be seen as merely a matter of religious conscience. If the facts don't fall in the right way, the principles derived from religious conscience don't apply. And there is reason to think this is the case here.

There is, however, a deeper concern about the relevance of religious conscience that I think may be more decisive.

2. A health care plan is a form of compensation that gives employees a means of paying for their health care--and in this way is like a paycheck.

Here's the concern in a nutshell: Hobby Lobby sees its religious conscience as compromised when it's required to offer a health care plan that can be used to pay for certain types of contraceptives. But the paycheck that Hobby Lobby pays out to each of its employees can be used to pay for those same types of contraceptives. If the latter doesn't compromise Hobby Lobby's religious conscience, why should the former?

A health insurance policy is sometimes viewed as a product--but no one wants a health insurance policy for its own sake. They want it for the sake of paying for the healthcare products and services they many need. Hence, it is more natural to see a healthcare policy as a way to pay for a certain class of products. Insofar as it is the latter, offering a healthcare policy that covers the normal range of healthcare products is like offering a salary in a form that can be used to buy the normal range of things money can buy.

When Hobby Lobby pays its employees, they are providing them with the means to buy porn. They are providing them with the means to visit Nevada prostitutes. Money, in our society, has by social agreement been invested with a very broad purchasing power. A normal healthcare policy, by contrast, can be used to buy far fewer of the things that offend the values of Hobby Lobby's owners. That's true even if the policy covers morning after pills and IUD's.

Does the fact that our monetary system empowers money-possessors to buy porn entail that Hobby Lobby's conscience should be opposed to paying its employees with money? I suspect Hobby Lobby would say no. They could explain that the decision about what to do with the money Hobby Lobby gives them lies with the employee, not with Hobby Lobby--and if the employee decides to use it on porn, that's not Hobby Lobby's fault, even if Hobby Lobby provided the money that was used for this purpose. So Hobby Lobby hasn't done anything wrong. The company hasn't been forced to violate its corporate conscience.

That, of course, is exactly what Hobby Lobby should say about the money they give to their employees. But if so, why shouldn't they say exactly the same thing about the health insurance policies they give to their employees?

Unless a sufficiently potent distinction can be made here, it becomes hard to justify the claim that Hobby Lobby's religious conscience is being violated by offering a broad health insurance policy covering the usual range of health care products and services. If their conscience is being violated, then they should be complaining about the violation of religious conscience that comes from offering a paycheck in a form that can be used to buy the usual range of things (including porn and divorce lawyers and emergency contraceptives) that our society makes available for purchase.

And if this isn't about religious conscience, it becomes instead about the desire to use their position as the provider of health insurance to constrain employee choices. Instead of this being about Hobby Lobby's desires to follow its religious values, it becomes about Hobby Lobby's desire to use its position to impose its religious values on others--to make their employees act according to the values of Hobby Lobby's owners, by controlling what the compensation provided to employees can be used to do.

And if this sort of control is deemed acceptable, what follows? Will it become legitimate for employers to pay their employees with cash cards that can only be used to purchase employer-approved goods and services?

In the end, the Hobby Lobby case is about the clash between the liberty of businesses and that of individual employees. When companies do whatever they please, their choices can sometimes restrict the options and freedoms of those who work for them. In a world where workers largely depend on business owners for their livelihoods, workers are susceptible to exploitation and undue control when owner decisions about how to run their business are unregulated. Business owners should have considerable freedom to decide how their businesses are to be run, of course. But if the exercise of the power they have as owners is wholly unregulated, it is individuals who pay the price--in terms of fewer choices and opportunities.

The Hobby Lobby decision strikes me as ultimately being about this balance between the liberty and welfare of business owners on the one hand and workers on the other. And the Supreme Court decided in favor of business owners in a way that, as I see it, sets a very disturbing precedent.

A Thought on DOMA's Demise and the Christian Discussion to Follow

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States of America struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which has blocked federal benefits to married same-sex couples. They also let stand a lower-court ruling that overthrew California's Prop 8 (which would have banned same-sex marriage in that state).

They didn't assert a fundamental right of same-sex couples to be married, but the momentum here is unambiguous and, I think, inevitable. Given the generational divide on this issue--the broad and growing acceptance of homosexual couples and relationships among young Americans--we are seeing an accelerating move towards the normalization of same-sex relationships. The traditional categorical condemnation of same-sex romantic and sexual intimacy is steadily being cast off.

Conservative Christians are likely to see this as a tragic cultural shift away from the teachings of God, and will thus double down in their opposition, calling with renewed urgency for Christians to resist being sucked in by cultural "permissiveness." But these conservative voices, while still strong in most branches of Christianity, are confronting growing opposition from within. More and more Christians are adopting a progressive stance on the topic of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

There has been a long tendency for conservative Christians to paint these internal critics of the traditional view as nothing but sell-outs to secular culture.