Michael Horton illuminates a point I keep trying to make to my fellow conservatives about the moral and theological reason for why same-sex marriage makes so much sense to younger people, such that they can’t imagine why older Christians object. Excerpt:
Both sides trade Bible verses, while often sharing an unbiblical—secularized—theological framework at a deeper level. If God exists for our happiness and self-fulfillment, validating our sovereign right to choose our identity, then opposition to same-sex marriage (or abortion) is just irrational prejudice.
Given the broader worldview that many Americans (including Christians) embrace—or at least assume, same-sex marriage is a right to which anyone is legally entitled. After all, traditional marriages in our society are largely treated as contractual rather than covenantal, means of mutual self-fulfillment more than serving a larger purpose ordained by God. The state of the traditional family is so precarious that one wonders how same-sex marriage can appreciably deprave it.
Same-sex marriage makes sense if you assume that the individual is the center of the universe, that God—if he exists—is there to make us happy, and that our choices are not grounded in a nature created by God but in arbitrary self-construction. To the extent that this sort of “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” prevails in our churches, can we expect the world to think any differently? If we treat God as a product we sell to consumers for their self-improvement programs and make personal choice the trigger of salvation itself, then it may come as a big surprise (even contradiction) to the world when we tell them that truth (the way things are) trumps feelings and personal choice (what we want to make things to be).
Yes. Yes. This. Horton has said this so clearly, and illuminates, for Christians at least, the core theological issue at the center of the SSM discussion. Plus, this:
The secularist mantra, “You can’t legislate morality,” is a shibboleth. Defenders of same-sex marriage moralize as much as anyone. They appeal to dogmas like freedom of choice, individualism, love, respect, acceptance (not, tolerance, mind you, but acceptance), and excoriate religiously traditional opponents as hypocritical in failing to follow the loving example of Jesus. The agenda is plainly as ethical as any other. Whatever is decided at state and federal levels, a certain version of morality will most certainly be legislated.
How would someone who believes that sin is unhappiness and salvation is having “your best life now” make a good argument against same-sex marriage? There is simply no way of defending traditional marriage within the narrative logic that apparently most Christians—much less non-Christians—presuppose regardless of their position on this issue.
Glitter_Glitter 
Trizlaw 
ChurchLady108 
Civil law is a framework created by human beings which allows us to live in civil peace with each other. Religious precepts or canons or doctrines offer human beings a framework or discipline telling us the way to be saved. God’s law, and commandments, are fully known only to God, but to the extent that God exists, and issues commandments, they are self-executing and without appeal. By definition, God is omnipotent.
All of these CAN overlap, and usually do. What a human being is willing to put up with from their neighbors, what a human being demands from their neighbors as a matter of right, is certainly informed by a given human being’s religious beliefs. There have been human societies that believed if an individual who had offended the gods was not executed forthwith, the gods would visit terrible (if somewhat capricious) vengeance on all and sundry. Cotton Mather, a quintessential Calvinist and Protestant, denounced “sinful toleration” as a denial that there is any True Faith at all. Needless to say, his notion of The True Faith was not the “Whore of Babylon” pontificating in Rome.
The USA was founded on the notion that the federal government was not competent to sort out which faith, if any, might be the True Faith. Eventually this was adopted with regard to the states as well, initially in the constitutions of states admitted after the original 13, and then in the expoundment of the 14th Amendment.
Where does SSM fit into this? There is no reason that the civil law cannot further the cause of civil peace by licensing same sex couples, or by declining to do so. Evidence that the capricious gods will punish us all is notably absent. Many churches teach that in order to be saved, you’d better not mess with this stuff. They may be right. They can go right on teaching this, just like religious bodies teach that you should not drink alcohol, eat pork, oysters, crabs, lobsters, and shrimp, wear make-up and jewelry, play cards, etc.
There is also no constitutional reason that citizens who believe homosexuality is in one sense or another harmful should not take this into consideration in voting on what looks like a sound basis for civil peace in their opinion.
Once again: Lawrence v. Texas properly applied the hallowed constitutional right to be left alone. The demand for marriage licenses is a demand for recognition, approbation, and celebration… which is not a constitutional right, and which the general civil community may or may not grant.
Regarding this MTD shibboleth…. “Let’s talk about MTD, like we did last summer. Let’s talk about MTD, like we did last fall…” It’s a fad, like the twist and the locomotion. It is a term of no more significance than most other social science in this wordy century.