Reformed Free Publishing Association
On June 26 the US Supreme Court (SC) effectively legalized homosexual marriage for the entire nation. But this was not the first time that the SC redefined marriage (as far as US law is concerned). In this article in the Wall Street Journal James Taranto explains that in 1981 the SC decided that male headship in marriage is a form of sexual discrimination that is unconstitutional. Thus, in 1981 the SC did away with the traditional (and biblical) view of marriage as a union between a man and a woman in which the husband is the head of his wife.
In place of the traditional view of marriage the SC adopted the view that in marriage the man and his wife are equal. This view is commonly referred to as the egalitarian view of marriage. Taranto’s argument is that having adopted the egalitarian view of marriage the SC, following the rules of good logic, must approve of homosexual marriage. He explains that when marriage is redefined in such a way to view the sexes as equal then in marriage “husbands and wives are . . . already interchangeable.” The logic is sound. If a man = a woman, then it stands to reason that a man could just as well marry another man instead of a woman.
It has become increasingly clear that homosexuality is not merely an attack on what the Bible teaches about marriage. The homosexual movement is part of society’s full frontal assault on everything that the Bible teaches about sex and gender. This has become increasingly clear with transgenderism (and essential part of the LGBT movement) coming to the foreground because of Bruce Jenner. The homosexual movement denies God’s creation of the sexes and their differences. The movement denies the need for people to identify themselves or behave according to the gender God gave them at birth. Gender identity and behavior is a matter of an individual’s preference to be male and/or female. For the LGBT movement there is no real difference between the sexes.
All of this is to say that it won’t do simply for the church today to affirm what God’s word teaches about the sin of homosexuality. But the church must also affirm what God’s word says about what it means to be male and female. The church must know, confess, and put into practice what the Bible teaches about the roles of husbands and wives in marriage and in the family. While we are testifying that it is wrong for men to marry men or women to marry women, are we ready also to testify that it is sinful for a man to refuse to rule over his wife? Are we ready to testify that it is sinful for a woman to rule her husband? Are we ready to say something about the place of mothers in the home?
We condemn homosexuality. But do we really know the difference between men and women?
