Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

More on San Fran Fight

I posted yesterday on how the San Francisco board of supervisors ignore the other important issues besides homosexuality that the "Battle Cry" evangelical youth movement addresses: violence and casual sex in the media, mindless consumerism, etc.  Now this article in Sojourners, the left-wing evangelical magazine, also notes approvingly the range of problems that the Battle Cry attacks, but blames the group for starting the single-minded focus on the homosexuality fight by going to San Francisco in the first place:

If you want to make a symbolic stand, why not go to the town where Desperate Housewives is filmed? Or host the rally in New York City where Sex and the City is set. A gathering outside the studios of MTV also would be rich with symbolism.

I simply cannot understand why so many evangelicals consider same-sex marriage as the prime threat to the virtue of heterosexual families. Honestly, which has ruined more marriages: The extramarital affairs that are so brazenly celebrated on Desperate Housewives or the decision of two men or two women who love each other to make their lifelong commitment public?

Can the point he raises, as far as it goes, really be denied: isn't there insufficient focus among traditionalist Christians today on problems like easy divorce, consumerism, etc., which directly involve or affect so many more people than same-sex marriage would?  I think that one can agree with this while still entering several caveats to the argument:  (1) To say that same-sex marriage is not as great a threat as other things does not entail that one can't still oppose same-sex marriage.  (2) The Battle Cry group apparently does attack the other problems as well; that they stage one of their rallies in San Francisco and focus on criticizing homosexual behavior does not mean that's their only focus overall.  (3) If you're choosing hedonistic places in which to protest, San Francisco has had its share of public hedonism to rival New York and LA; it's hardly been all "lifelong committ[ed]," nesting couples.

Tom

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