Out: Using Holy Week to push gun control.That's so 2012. In: Using Holy Week as a news hook for pushing same-sex marriage.
Last April, I noted how liberal theologian and Washington Post "On Faith" contributor Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite used the week leading up to Easter as an opportunity to shame Christians towards getting rid of their firearms, twisting and contorting Christian Scripture to back her position. While gun control is still a hot topic in the news, the Center for American Progress fellow has moved on to "marriage equality" as the liberal cause celebre to cynically tie to the holiest week on the Christian calendar:
“Holy Week” is when Christians remember the last days of Jesus of Nazareth, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. This week is central to the Christian calendar, and to a Christian theology that celebrates that love, despite all the harm human beings do to one another, is stronger than hate.
As a Christian minister and a theologian, I believe the deep meaning of Holy Week is that the love of God is, indeed, stronger than all the hate and violence that is so tragically rampant in human life.
[...]
The prevailing wisdom is that the Supreme Court will rule narrowly, rather than broadly in these cases. The justices may, in the majority, be unwilling to rule decisively for full equality while attempting not to rule out the constitutionality of gay-marriage.
But because it is Holy Week when these cases will be argued, the extravagant impossible possibility of love triumphing over hate should give us hope for a sweeping win for equality in the most important civil rights cases in a generation.
Never mind that Jesus did speak definitively on the original design for marriage as God created it, and, you guessed it, it's one man-one woman:
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” [Matt. 19:3-6]
Now, to be fair, Brooks Thistlethwaite is a liberal opinion writer and she's entitled to her opinions. That being said, On Faith is wont to feature and highlight liberal political and theological opinions. Indeed, as the screen capture from yesterday shows, editors highlighted her item but gave much smaller print to a piece by a traditional marriage defender Ryan T. Anderson.
What's more, if you navigate the On Faith page today, you won't find Anderson's piece, headlined "In defense of traditional marriage." In fairness, however, it is a bit old, published on March 20 while the On Faith page's archive goes back to just March 22.
