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Do Gay weddings introduce sin into the law for the first time in history?
December 3, 2014 December 3, 2014 lotharson gay marriage, patriarch, progressive christian, universal healthcare	Abortion, Conservative, homosexuality, Moral, Progressive Christianity
I found a pretty worrisome article I want to respond to.
Gay 'marriage' a 'sign of the apocalypse': Russian Patriarch
MOSCOW, July 22, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his Sunday sermon this weekend in Kazan Cathedral in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, Primate, of the Russian Orthodox Church, warned against the extraordinary rise in many western countries of the homosexualist movement. Kirill said that the trend of legalizing "gay marriage" is "a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse."
It "means people are choosing a path of self-destruction," he said. He said he supports the recently passed national ban on homosexualist propaganda that has prohibited the Gay Pride festivities that have become a prominent feature of national life elsewhere.
"Lately, we have enormous temptations, when a number of countries opting for sin is approved and justified by the law, and those who, acting in good conscience, are struggling with such laws imposed by a minority, being repressed," Kirill said.
He added that everything must be done to prevent the approval of sin "on the spaces of Holy Russia." Otherwise, "the people are embarking on the path of self-destruction".
The sermon came the Sunday following the passage in Britain of the Cameron government's so-called "equal marriage" bill. Religious leaders and democracy campaigners both strenuously warned the government that its passage would seriously threaten foundational democratic freedoms.
Colossal forces have set out "to convince us all that the only value is the freedom of choice," said the patriarch, "and no one has the right to infringe on that value, even when a person chooses evil, even when a person chooses a socially dangerous behavior."
Even the most perfect laws, however, cannot eradicate corruption, lies, evil and confrontation, he said: "These can be eradicated only by the person who has made a free choice in favor of the good."
In recent months, Kirill's has emerged as the strongest and most uncompromising religious voice in Europe against the apparently unstoppable political juggernaut of the international homosexualist movement. His comments yesterday follow his warning at a meeting in Moscow in May this year with Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, where he said, "Today we have a very dangerous development, the laws regarding same-sex marriages and adoption of their children which go against the moral nature of man."
"If people choose this lifestyle," the Polish news service Interfax quoted him saying, "it is their right, but the responsibility of the Church is to say that it is a sin before God".
What the Russian Orthodox Church is concerned about, Kirill said, "is not the fact of the existence of this sin – it has always existed. But we are deeply concerned that for the first time in the history of the human race sin is being justified by law. This opens up the prospect of a dangerous development, which will contribute to the moral degradation of society."
I don't feel any hatred towards patriarch Kirill. However I do believe that his utterances reflect an extraordinary ignorance which should put to shame the Russian orthodox Church.
In my last post, I explained why we've strong grounds for doubting that homosexuality is sinful. In other words, I fail to see how to commit oneself to a loving same-sex relationship is to "choose evil". But that isn't what shocked me in this article.
I was dumbstruck by the sentence: "But we are deeply concerned that for the first time in the history of the human race sin is being justified by law. ".
It's so obviously wrong that no educated priest should ever make such a mistake. I just can't understand how a patriarch could state this.
This assertion implies that:
– laws about racial segregation weren't sinful
– laws discriminating Christians in Islamist countries aren't sinful
– laws of Nazi Germany against Jews weren't sinful
– laws of Russian communists against religious people weren't sinful
and so on and so forth.
That's crazy talk.
I feel the duty to say I am in no position to judge Patriarch Kirill as a moral person. I don't know him and there might be many domains where he outshines me.There is no way I can say I'm a better man than he is.
But I think he's intellectually and probably also morally completely wrong on that particular issue.
He's worryingly reflecting a strong trend within modern American Evangelicalism, namely that of focusing on sexual ethics while ignoring or often even upholding injustices in other areas.
I'd say that unlike laws about gay marriage, laws protecting much more the rights of billionaires than those of poor children and old people suffering from illnesses are unequivocally wicked and sinful.
Actually, there are many Conservative Evangelicals outside America who agree and strive for social justice as well besides their activism against what they see as sexual perversions.
Still in the US they tend to focus the greatest part of their moral indignation on gay people and abortion and much less on the ordeals real children outside their mother's womb are going trough.
(I'd personally not say that ALL conservatives act in this way but this picture illustrates rather well the positions many of them hold.)
It goes without saying I must write that with fear and trembling because I'm really far from being perfect myself. And I also think it's vital to resist the tendency of numerous progressive Christians to treat harshly any opponent to gay marriage.
My goal here is not to judge them as moral persons but to call them to reconsider their sense of priorities. And I'd like a greater number of them to imagine the unnecessary pain a sick child of unemployed parents might feel.