Now that homosexual ersatzimony has become the law of the land, people who were opposed to the social contrivance in principle, will have to decide whether they will continue to oppose it in practice.

There are Christians of my acquaintance who are against the legalization of same-sex “marriage” and concerned about religious liberty, but cannot see how their attendance at a gay friend’s wedding would undermine those values and their Christian witness. On the contrary, they believe that declining the invitation would be hurtful to their friend, damaging to the friendship, and contrary to the ethic of Christian love.

Preparing for the day

Although homosexuality affects only about 2 percent of the population, most people know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who is gay or lesbian. I know several, as probably do most of you. As more decide to take advantage of the social and financial benefits of marriage, the chance that we will be invited to a ceremony, whether by a coworker, friend, cousin, son, or daughter, becomes increasingly likely. Before the invitation hits our mail box, it is essential for Christians to think through our response by asking ourselves,

• What do I really believe about same-sex “marriage” and its validity?
• What would my attendance signify?
• What effect(s) would my attendance have?
• How can I best support a gay friend or family member who decides to “marry”?
• What would Jesus do?

The question of validity 

Morally, since Jesus never gave any expressed or implied approval for same-sex “marriage,” it has no biblical warrant. To the contrary, when the subject of marriage came up, Jesus reaffirmed its intrinsic and exclusively heterosexual nature, adding that it is not for everyone. While He mentioned eunuchs specifically, the exception would also apply to homosexual pairings who, like eunuchs, can form emotional attachments, but cannot fulfill the purpose of marriage nor conform to its design.*

Lacking any sanctifying institution for homosexual sex, the numerous biblical proscriptions against it stand, regardless of a “committed” relationship, church blessing, legal union, or civil “marriage.”

From a legal standpoint, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rightly defined a “just law” as one that conforms to the Law of Nature and Nature’s God. Since marriage is based on the complementary design of Nature as created and ordained by Nature’s God, a same-sex coupling can never be a legitimate marriage, regardless of the pronouncements of five robed oracles.

Caesar is free to grant those couplings special privileges and benefits if he so desires, but he has no legitimate claim to call those couplings “marriage,” any more than he has to call two sodium atoms “salt.”**

The significance of attendance

A wedding is a solemnizing ceremony. Attendees come to witness, honor, and celebrate the joining of two people in the bonds of marriage. During and after the ceremony, audience participation is encouraged through liturgy, songs, and celebratory expressions—applause, cheers, toasts, well wishes—all of which serve to validate the ceremony and what it represents.

A Christian who thinks that by attending he can support his gay friend but not gay “marriage” is sorely mistaken. Attendance, in and of itself, is more than a show of support for the individual parties involved, much more; it dignifies a transmogrified sexual union and the institution sanctioning it.

Even passive attendance confers approval, most pointedly when the Officiant perfunctorily asks, “Does anybody have any reason why these two should not be married?” and the believer, not wanting to be impolitic and break with decorum, remains silent.

The effect(s) of attendance

Across the country, organizations and individuals are being sued and forced out of business for refusing to offer adoption services to same-sex couples, promote the “virtues” of homosexuality to their foster children, hire gay church youth workers, and provide services for same-sex weddings.

Some, like former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, have lost jobs and livelihoods for simply expressing support for natural marriage. Others, like Oregon bakery owners Melissa and Aaron Klein, have lost their businesses, been fined, and had their assets seized for providing their services to homosexual customers, but not for same-sex weddings.

When a Christian attends a gay wedding, he undermines the courageous stand for religious freedom these people are making for him, at great personal cost. He adds credence to the opinion that religious objections to “marriage equality” are fig leaves for animus and bigotry toward gays. It’s an opinion that has gained currency in courts and legislatures and is causing the erosion of “conscience clauses” and “religious exemptions” in the public and private sectors.

Supporting my gay friend

Christian friendship is not based on approval or agreement, but love—sacrificial other-centeredness that seeks the supreme good of others, desiring them to become the persons they were created to be: children of the Father, formed in the image of the Son, and indwelt by the Spirit.

Christ demonstrated that love not by affirming us in our sins, but by dying for our sins, calling us to repentance, and showing us how to live according to His life-giving principles. He who commanded His disciples to love as He loved, also said, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline.” And those He loved felt the sting of His rebuke on numerous occasions, and were instructed to follow His example (“If your brother sins, rebuke him”). Because they were their brother’s keeper, as we are ours.

Loving our friends and relatives, gay or straight, is not supporting them in their lifestyle decisions, it’s walking alongside them, encouraging them to live in accordance with the created purpose of sexuality, and challenging, even rebuking—yes, rebuking! —them when they willfully choose otherwise.

Attending a gay friend’s wedding, while well-meaning, is actually contrary to Christ-love, just as it would be for attending the marriage of a friend who left his wife for his “soul mate”; a house-warming party for cohabiting couple; or a friend’s abortion party (yes, there is such a thing).

Christ-love demands that I graciously decline the invitation with an honest and clear explanation of my reasons. To go-along-to-get-along is to allow my fears about my friend’s feelings and his relationship with me, to overcome my concern for his soul and his relationship with God. That’s not love; it’s cowardice.

And while our friendship, if close, should survive, and even thrive, honest disagreement and loving reproof, there is always the risk it will cause a rift, possibly permanently. Did not Jesus warn that He came “to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,” and, I add, friend against friend?

However, the outcome of a rebuke lovingly done (“seasoned with salt and full of grace”) is on God and the receiver, not deliverer. For, as in all things, the yardstick of Heaven is not outcomes, but faithfulness. The measure of which is not when it’s easy, at the ballot box, but when it’s hard, as in telling a friend or relative no.

WWJD?

On the other hand, I think Jesus just might attend a gay “wedding”—if only to do what His people have failed to do: break the pregnant silence after “Does anybody have a reason . . .” with a withering response, making it piercingly clear that, as equally offending to Him as tearing asunder what He has joined together is the joining together what He has left asunder. I imagine it would cause hurt feelings, enflamed tempers, and bruised egos, with a few convicted hearts—the same things experienced by those who, two millennia earlier, experienced His rebuke.

——

*It is often argued that if sterile heterosexuals can marry, so should same-sex couples. However, marriage, like humanness, is based on design, not function. A human being is no less a human being because of defect, disease, or stage of development or decline. Similarly, a marriage is no less valid if the man and woman cannot have children. Although their union is incapable of fulfilling a primary marital function, it, unlike a same-sex union, conforms to the marital design and essence.

**The production of salt (NaCl) is consummated by the chemical union of one sodium (Na) atom and one chlorine (Cl) atom. Marriage is consummated by the physical union of one man and one woman. In both cases, it is the complementary design of the constituent parts that make the thing what it is. Two sodium atoms, or two chlorine atoms, do not salt make. And two men or two women do not a marriage make.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Regis Nicoll is a freelance writer and a BreakPoint Centurion. Serving as a men’s ministry leader and worldview teacher in his community, Regis publishes a free weekly commentary to stimulate thought on current issues from a Christian perspective. To be placed on this free e-mail distribution list, e-mail him at centurion51@aol.com.