Posted on 05/29/2015 6:00:47 AM PDT by wagglebee
May 28, 2015 (BreakPoint.org) -- For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University, an evangelical school in the Quaker tradition.
At the beginning of the semester, she tells her students that “they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.”
Writing at FirstThings.com recently, she related how five years ago it was easy to find readings that challenged and even offended the evangelical college students “considering the secular bent of contemporary gender studies.”
But today, things are different. “Students now,” she says, “arrive in my class thoroughly versed in the language and categories of identity politics; they are reticent to disagree with anything for fear of seeming intolerant—except, of course, what they perceive to be intolerant.”
And what do they find “intolerant”? Well, in her class, an essay entitled “What is Marriage?” by Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson, which was the beginning of the book “What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense.”
In their article, Girgis, George, and Anderson defend what they call the conjugal view of marriage. “Marriage,” they write, “is the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other … that is naturally fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together.” They defend this view against what they call the “revisionist view” of marriage, which redefines marriage to include, among other things, same-sex couples.
“My students hate it,” Dr. Rine wrote. They “lambast the article.” “They also,” she adds, “seem unable to fully understand the argument.” And again, these are evangelical students at an evangelical school.
The only argument for conjugal marriage they’ve ever encountered has been the wooden proof-texting from the Bible. And besides, wrote Rine, “What the article names as a ‘revisionist’ idea of marriage—marriage as an emotional, romantic, sexual bond between two people—does not seem ‘new’ to my students at all, because this is the view of marriage they were raised with, albeit with a scriptural, heterosexual gloss.”
As Rine points out “the redefinition of marriage began decades ago” when “the link between sexuality and procreation was severed in our cultural imagination.”
And if marriage “has only an arbitrary relationship to reproduction,” then it seems mean-spirited to Rine’s students to argue that marriage by its very nature excludes same-sex couples.
And where do students get the idea that marriage “has only an arbitrary relationship to reproduction”? Well, everywhere—television, church, school, their homes, in youth groups.
Rine writes, “As I consider my own upbringing and the various ‘sex talks’ I encountered in evangelical church settings over the past twenty years, I realize that the view of marital sex presented there was primarily revisionist.”
In other words, once you say, “I do,” you get “the gift” of sex which is presented as “a ‘gift’ largely due to its [erotic], unitive properties, rather than its intrinsic capacity to create life.” Even in the Church, children have become an optional add-on to married life rather than its primary purpose.
What can we do to win back our children, our churches, and the culture? In our recent book “Same Sex Marriage,” Sean McDowell and I lay out a game plan. We offer strategies for the short-term and the long-term, with the ultimate goal: re-shaping the cultural imagination towards what God intended marriage to be, starting with the church. Come to BreakPoint.org to pick up your copy.
As Chuck Colson once said in a BreakPoint commentary about marriage, “We Christians are very good at saying ‘No.’ But we’ve got to get better at saying ‘Yes’: showing how God’s plan for humanity is a blessing. That His ways, including faithful, life-giving marriage between one man and one woman, lead to human flourishing physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Reprinted with permission from Break Point.
That's the problem right there.
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Bingo. It’s all about procreation.
Exactly. BC ruined morality in a way, and it is we heteroes who opened the door for this disgusting roll-over for homos.
Why? Because they don’t read the Scriptures and their leaders don’t either.
The US Supreme Court could do a lot about changing this perception were they to rule against gay marriage in the context of marriage between a man and woman for the fundamental purpose of procreation. But unfortunately they won’t.
That’s always been a weak argument to me, the best explanation I was ever given was in Catholic School.
It was the fact we were made in God’s Image and God Created (Designed) us.
Women was specifically designed for Man (Adam) and this is the natural design.
Man and Woman were meant for each other, designed for each other. Anything outside of this was an insult to God’s design for us (sometimes referred to the natural order)
Sinning against the natural order is a hate crime against God in other words.
They have convinced most people that anti-gay is the same kind of prejudice as when previous generations were anti-black. They control the media, education, an pop culture, and that’s how they are winning this debate.
I would add that when no-fault divorce became common and ordinary, that act was the beginning of the end. It was only a matter of time before living together and then queer sex marriages became the norm.
That's why muzzies and commies and atheists will never succeed in bringing about their version of Utopia.
All it takes is one single person to survive the purge to explain to people why the world that was once so "tolerable" has turned to utter crap.
The main argument to me is “what purpose does marriage serve”?
Tax breaks? Sexual exclusivity enforced by the state? Goading your friends for wedding gifts?
Same sex marriage is nonsensical for any other reason.
The institution of marriage was also established by God to illustrate the relationship God wants to have with man. Not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense of unity.
Immoral physical union undermines the spiritual union which God intended as a message to mankind that He loves us, and that we need Him.
Salvation is the choice to be unified with God through His Son Jesus Christ.
If we refuse to repent of sin (including homosexuality), then it is simply not possible to make that choice to receive His gift.
More young people are against abortion than the population at large. Sadly, the young are also pro gay marriage in greater numbers.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI predicted—because he grasped the PRINCIPLE involved—that acceptance of contraception would lead to acceptance of fornication, adultery, sodomy, and abortion, and would eventually destroy marriage entirely.
Contraception is a SPECIES of sodomy. I.e., sodomy is not just “anal sex.” Sodomy is any sex act that is intrinsically sterile, or HAS BEEN MADE sterile.
Since virtually all Christians accept contraception, they have NO PRINCIPLE to appeal to in order to oppose any other form of sodomy.
When you take out “Because God says so” all Christian arguments fall apart.
That broken link predates the church. If a man went to a prostitute for sex, neither party was doing it to make a baby.
No ... THAT'S the problem right there
The police all over America know EXACTLY what that means, and it has nothing to do with Christianity, but EVERYthing to do with being terrorized
I've used those words countless times before here in FR ... America is terrorized
There is no war on terror
There is a war WITH TERROR ... on the American people.
I'm incorporating these words and concept into my berating of the local school board I'm a member
YOU PEOPLE are to blame.
YOU'RE the ones conditioning our kids to be unquestioning drones, and you use fear to accomplish your socialist aims.
[But we’ve got to get better at saying ‘Yes’: showing how God’s plan for humanity is a blessing. That His ways, including faithful, life-giving marriage between one man and one woman, lead to human flourishing physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”]
ONE WAY: JESUS
That’s all true, but this is how it was explained to me in the second grade without any kind of sexual act involved in simple terms.
It explains the basis for these other explanations to build on.
The new generations demand to know deeply why something is important, otherwise they will dismiss it as not important and outdated.
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