Same-sex Marriage and the Incredible Shrinking Worldview

This week in arguments before the Supreme Court, advocates and opponents of same-sex marriage presented their cases in what could be the defining moment in the struggle that has emerged over the last two decades on this issue.  At issue was whether there would be a uniform federal right to same-sex marriage, and whether (though if the answer to the first question is “yes,” it’s hard to see how this one is still operable) states that do not have same-sex marriage will be required to respect lawful same-sex marriages concluded in other states, as the federal government was required to do in the Windsor decision two years ago.  Two issues, equal protection of the laws and full faith and credit, are at issue.

To say that both sides are passionate about this issue is something of an understatement.  For supporters of same-sex marriage, nothing less than the full panoply of rights available to every heterosexual citizen is at stake.  For opponents, the possibility of a legal right to same-sex marriage is viewed in apocalyptic terms, as the rough equivalent of destroying the pillars of Western Civilization itself. 

It is not my intent to make either argument here; I am foursquare behind the movement for same-sex marriage and think the religious arguments of opponents are silly.  Believe what you will, this is a nation of laws—a secular nation of laws—meaning that there needs to be a compelling social interest in discriminating against one group or another.  Adhering to antiquated notions of purity and following the dictates of sketchy authority don’t quite fit the bill.

I am still stuck, though, wondering why it is that conservative Christians are so adamantly opposed.  They cite Biblical passages decrying homosexuality, though unless they plan to adopt the entire Levitical corpus of laws, they are left only with passages of ambiguous meaning in the New Testament.  Given this, it seems to boil down to personal taste.  Biblical literalists, like Constitutional literalists, seem always to find support for their own prejudices in the “plain meaning” of whatever text they’re using.

But there’s more.  No Christian (or anyone else, for that matter) can claim he or she will be harmed by same-sex marriage.  No clergy will be forced to perform a same-sex wedding.  Christianity will not, as perpetual GOP also-ran Mike Huckabee has tried to claim, be outlawed.  This seems part and parcel of the on-going “War on Religion” meme that, while it is absurd as described, is buried in the genome of conservative Christianity.

What we’re witnessing here is an extension of the same hissy fit that leads some to argue that their religion is being devalued whenever society chooses secularism over dogma.  And though the battle over same-sex marriage is pretty bad, if opponents lose the next one will be worse because, bit by bit, their world is shrinking, and their sense of specialness is becoming more and more untenable. 

It’s not been an easy half-millennium, after all.  Beginning with Copernicus moving the Earth from the center of the cosmos and ending…well, it’s hard to say where it will end…so many certainties about the place of humanity, and of Christians, have been eroded away. 

We do not live at the center of the universe; Copernicus told us that, and subsequent scientists refined his faulty heliocentrism which was ultimately proved true.  Kepler and Galileo taught us that there was no divide between the heavens and the Earth, that all operated on the same principles.  Generations of scholars showed the construction of the Bible from multiple sources and, indeed, the construction of Christianity from pagan and Jewish roots.  Darwin and those who followed abolished the artificial distinction between humans and other animals.  We have swept away attempts to prove this or that “race” inherently superior.  Cosmology and physics have removed the need of a creator.  Secularism has removed Christianity from its privileged position in Western societies.

If one was convinced of one’s special place in a created order, it’s easy to see why one might feel under siege.

At every step, there were conservatives who fought to keep things the way they were, even when what they believed flew in the face of the evidence provided by our senses and reason.  And every time they have lost.  After each loss, rather than accepting it and attempting to assimilate new thinking to their faith—as the Catholic church, mainline Protestants, and liberal Christians have to varying degrees managed to do all along—they have retrenched and sought a new battleground for the struggle against the world.  Instead of adapting to a changing world, they childishly demand the world adapt to them.

Prejudice against homosexuals is surely one of the last redoubts in which conservative Christians, desperate to feel special, can barricade themselves.  They will add to the imprimatur of the Bible junk science “proving” the perils of same-sex marriage to children and society in an attempt to rationalize their prejudices.  And, when they are ultimately defeated (even if it’s not this time around) they will flee to another, more distant, spot for a last stand, and fight even harder for that vanishingly small sense of being important in a universe that just doesn't give a damn.

Until they grow up.