The Supreme Court Redefines Marriage Part 2
July 26, 2015 Time: 24:21
Summary
Dr. Craig offers counsel on where we should go from here in light of this historic Supreme Court decision.
Transcript The Supreme Court Redefines Marriage Part 2
KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. We are going to continue our discussion on the Supreme Court ruling on the redefinition of marriage. Dr. Craig, I think that is probably how we should refer to it – as the redefinition of marriage, as opposed to same-sex marriage or gay marriage. Do you agree?
DR. CRAIG: Yeah, I really do. In one sense it really has nothing to do with homosexuality. It is a matter of redefining what marriage is. The idea of gay marriage is really an oxymoron because the law cannot discriminate against two heterosexual men who want to marriage each other or a heterosexual man and a homosexual woman. The law has to be blind to sexual orientation. It has always been that way. Homosexuals have always had the right to marry in our country. But what you cannot do (until now) is have same-sex marriages because of the definition and the essence of marriage. So the issue really is the definition of marriage has been changed now by this court.
KEVIN HARRIS: A couple of more quotes from Judge Roberts. He says in his dissent,
Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us [the Court]. Under the Constitution judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a state change its definition of marriage and a state’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a state are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples or to retain the historic definition. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.
What do you think about that?
DR. CRAIG: I think this is illustrative of the constitutional question that these dissents are mainly concerned with. As Roberts says, whether or not same-sex marriage is a good idea is of no concern to the Court. He has no interest, at least as a justice, in the philosophical arguments for and against same-sex marriage.[1] His only concern as a Supreme Court justice is whether the American Constitution contains within it an implicit right for two persons of the same sex to marry each other. He says, I don’t see any such right in the Constitution. This has been made up by these five lawyers on the Supreme Court. But where I disagree with him is I do not think that the states have the right to define marriage either. It seems to me that marriage has an essence or a nature and regardless of whether or not it becomes legal for two persons of the same sex to marry that doesn’t make that a bona fide and genuine marriage – not if marriage has an essence or nature.
What Roberts would do would be to leave this issue up to the states to decide. But he thinks that the Supreme Court has no business in making this sort of decision. Their province is solely whether or not this is a constitutional right.
KEVIN HARRIS: What he said kind of struck a nerve with me when he says that stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept. Thinking about that, all this celebration – there are multitudes of people who are very angry about this. A lot of them are not very Christ-like. There is a potential for tremendous backlash against our gay neighbors. Pessimistically, I expect to see some violence. I pray that that is not the case. This is a disturbing thing to a lot of people.
DR. CRAIG: I don’t know. It could be. Roe v. Wade, as you know, did the same thing with the abortion issue. It took it out of the hands of the people and was decided by five justices on the Court. That then did result in social turmoil that made it very, very difficult for most people to go along with it. In fact, this is, I think, one of the interesting stories about the whole abortion debate is that I get the impression that even though abortion on demand was legalized by the Supreme Court more and more public opinion has tended to change to be pro-life in one’s personal lives – that one would not seek to do this and that it is killing unborn infants. The public opinion has gone the opposite way in this case. With respect to the same-sex marriage thing – there it is hard to imagine how public opinion could go the other way unless people’s fundamental rights begin to be trampled on in a significant way, whereas in Roe v. Wade you have the biological and medical evidence that you are killing unborn babies. Recently we’ve been horrified by this clandestine video of the Planned Parenthood doctor talking about selling the organs of these unborn infants and performing abortions in such a way as to not to crush the organs that would then be sold.
KEVIN HARRIS: Crush this but don’t crush that.
DR. CRAIG: It is so morally offensive so that even if it is legal (which it is – it is legal in this country because of the Supreme Court), in this case I think it does turn public opinion against abortion on demand because of its consequences. It is hard to imagine that same thing happening with regard to same-sex marriage.
KEVIN HARRIS: Can you give us a sense of Christian ethics just on that topic, and on the redefinition of marriage as well. Along the lines of the law can allow person X to sin but cannot force you to sin. So that is where we would protest in the event that it would compel one to go against one’s conscience but yet allow another . . .
DR. CRAIG: That is going to be the question – whether or not this could be used as a sort of cudgel against people who disagree with the politically correct view that same-sex marriage is just fine. For a person like myself, even though same-sex marriage may be legal, I don’t think that these are bona fide marriages. They are pseudo-marriages even though the Supreme Court has declared it to be legal because marriage has an essence which is heterosexual that doesn’t depend upon the changing opinions of the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States.[2] The question would be what if, because of these socio-cultural pressures now that will be brought to bear that, say, the tax-exempt status of religious colleges or universities should be removed or the tax-exempt status of churches, or even just corporate cultural pressures are brought upon an employee who doesn’t conform to the political correct orthodoxy and so finds himself passed over for promotion or maybe losing sponsors because he has declared himself a believer in traditional marriage? These kinds of cultural pressures can still be exerted as a result of this decision even if marriage between same-sex couples is said to be legal.
KEVIN HARRIS: If one is labeled as a bigot then all actions against that bigot are justified in the populist mind. If you are a racist we can ignore you, we can shame you, we can fire you because you are a bigot. Once bigotry is introduced and that label sticks, and it seems to have, then even the most loving Christian that has moral opposition to homosexual behavior is labeled a bigot. Therefore, you have got a big target on you, and anything that happens to you is justified.
DR. CRAIG: You know, I teach at Christian universities that have a code of conduct that excludes homosexual behavior. I don’t face these kinds of pressures. But when I talk to colleagues that teach at secular universities and colleges, both scientists and philosophers, these fellows are (I won’t say terrified) afraid to let their views be known because they said, If we were to say something about this we would lose our position. We would lose tenure or we would be passed over. They are muzzled because of this kind of pressure. It doesn’t need to be a kind of legal opposition to traditionalists. It can just be, as you say, these kind of cultural and corporate and university environments that are so hostile that you can lose your post or be passed over for a promotion or things of this sort, or lose a sponsorship. Those kinds of pressures can be brought to bear without violating any laws. I fully expect that we will see more and more of that because it is already there for our colleagues who teach or work in these sort of secular environments.
KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, where do we go from here? What do we need to do?
DR. CRAIG: I’ve suggested that there are two things that we, as a Christian church, must do. First I think we have to be resolutely counter-cultural. Like Roe v. Wade, Obergefell v. Hodges has changed American culture in a way that runs contrary to Christian teaching. I think more than ever we as Christians need to be ready to stand up and live counter-culturally and to recognize that we are living in a culture that is increasingly hostile to Christian values. I am afraid that the church may not be up to this task. I already talk with young Christians who are quite ready to compromise on this issue and to say that same-sex marriage is perfectly alright and thereby compromise scriptural teaching on this issue. I think as never before we need to be resolutely counter-cultural. I think that also implies Christian activism. We need to be involved as citizens in voting for candidates and in running for office if we feel called to do so to try to stand up for the rights of Christians in this increasingly hostile society. That is the first thing I think – to be resolutely counter-cultural and politically engaged.
Second, I think we need to continue our efforts to evangelize the American population. It has been rightly said that America is a nation whose people are as religious as the people of India but whose government is as secular as the government of Sweden. I think that is very true. We need to increasingly be involved in evangelizing the American people so as to change American culture in this way. I am encouraged when I see the results, for example, of the recent Pew survey on religious affiliation which shows that the mainline denominations are declining but evangelical Christianity is holding its own as a percentage of the American population, and it is even increasing in terms of absolute numbers as more and more people come to faith in Christ.[3] I think we need to redouble our efforts to be salt and light in the culture and to be evangelizing people.
KEVIN HARRIS: I’ve heard this same call from many leaders. It will take awhile, but we need to, by example, by prayer, by making our community strong, rebuild a culture of marriage, of the definition of marriage, what that is. They all say that it might take some time to do this – to rebuild it.
DR. CRAIG: Remember what I said about the way I think the majority opinion is slowly shifting on abortion. I think more and more people are becoming pro-life in the sense that they think it is morally wrong to do an abortion and they wouldn’t do it themselves. That doesn’t mean that they would not have it be legal. Remember there is a difference between what is legal and what is moral. But in terms of the morality of abortion, I think there we are rebuilding a culture of life in this country that is making abortion more and more an unpalatable option for people. We need to do that with regard to marriages, too. We need, as Christians, to have exemplary marriages and to build a strong community that emphasizes family, and so forth, so as to hold up heterosexual marriage as a bright and shining light that people can aspire to.
Let me say something else about this. I am really proud, frankly, of the way the Christian church led on this marriage issue. With respect to Roe v. Wade, we were fighting from behind. The decision occurred and ever since then Christians have been struggling to try to find some way to overturn it. But I think they learned their lesson from Roe v. Wade. When the same-sex marriage issue first began to come up, Christians were very proactive in getting state amendments passed declaring marriage to be a union between a man and a woman. There were referenda. They even passed the Defense of Marriage Act through the Congress of the United States – the Senate and House declared marriage to be between a man and a woman. It was signed into law by a Democratic president. We were way out ahead of the curve here in safeguarding marriage. What happened is the whole thing was undone by these unelected Court justices. This is a lesson to us that it is not enough to elect people to legislative or executive branches. We need to help our youth to see that a calling as a justice, as a judge, is a noble calling from God that they ought to undertake. In his dissent to the recent Supreme Court decision, Scalia observed, “Not a single evangelical Christian – a group that compromises about one quarter of Americans – or even a Protestant of any denomination sits on the Court.” That is a stinging indictment, I think, of the evangelical community. Our community has not inspired people with the vision of serving as a Supreme Court justice or serving as a judge. We have been underrepresented. We have been undone now because of that. We are reaping the whirlwind of our own passivity in this regard. It seems to me that we need to have a redoubled effort to be involved in all levels of government in order to bring about lasting change.
KEVIN HARRIS: With that many in the population we are also underrepresented in the entertainment industry and other very influential sectors. Why?
DR. CRAIG: We talked about science as well in the past, haven’t we? Where we haven’t given our young people the vision of becoming a scientist, so we don’t have Nobel Prize winners who are evangelicals even though a disproportionate number of Jews are Nobel Prize winners in science because the Jewish community has fostered the vision of becoming a great scientist in their community. We haven’t done that as evangelicals. We have been withdrawn and passive with regard to culture. That really needs to change.
KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, are you optimistic or pessimistic?
DR. CRAIG: I suppose one can be both.[4] I am very pessimistic that this decision will ever be reversed. I think that has been the lesson of Roe v. Wade – how difficult it is. If this could be reversed, I don’t think that the Supreme Court would ever declare marriage to be between a man and a woman. As Roberts says, that is not the province of the Court. What could happen maybe in some future generation is that the Court would turn this back to the states and say that it is up to the states to decide, not up to the Supreme Court. I could see that happening. In fact, in this very opinion that Kennedy wrote, he mentions some Supreme Court decisions that have been overturned by the Court. So there is precedent for this in this very area. Of course, the most famous of these would be the Dred Scott decision which more or less legitimated slavery and then was overturned by the Court. So it would be possible for a future Court – perhaps by a narrow 5-4 decision again – to say We were wrong to usurp the power to find this constitutional right. This is a decision for the states to make. The whole thing then can be replayed on the state level. But I am very pessimistic that the Court would ever say that marriage is between a man and a woman. In that sense I am pessimistic about this.
On the other hand, I remain optimistic about the future of evangelical Christianity in this country. Evangelical Christianity is increasing and I think as we redouble our efforts to evangelize the American population that the Christian church can continue to grow. I think that the effect of the revolution in Christian philosophy that has taken place over the last half century has still yet to be fully felt in popular culture. In that respect, I remain quite optimistic.
Let me just share with you one statistic that came out of a recent conference at Baylor University called “The End of Religion? An Essential Corrective to the Secularization Myth.” At this Baylor conference, they point out that it is not true that America is becoming more and more irreligious as some people claim. Gordon Melton is a professor at Baylor who shared the very surprising statistic that it was not until 1941 (not until World War II) that so much as 50% of the American population were church members. Prior to that date, less than 50% of the American population were church members. That percentage has continued to increase today until he says today about 78% of the American population are church members. He said this is unprecedented in any free society in the history of the world. Obviously, a lot of these people are merely nominal Christians, but I think it really does expose the myth of increased secularization and irreligiosity. It does provide the soil for a revival in American culture if these nominal Christians can be evangelized – brought to faith and discipled. There is the potential here for great revival in our country.[5]