Joe Carter’s Sim­ply Bizarre “Solu­tion” To Same-Sex Civ­il “Mar­riage”

Joe Carter, a senior writer for The Gospel Coali­tion and asso­ciate pas­tor at one of David Platt’s satel­lite cam­pus­es, gave his two cents on the debate that is cur­rent­ly rag­ing over gay mar­riage by giv­ing what he believes is a solu­tion. If you just read the first few para­graphs of the arti­cle you might think that Carter is head­ing in the right direc­tion and will come to a Bib­li­cal solu­tion, after all, he does under­stand that you can­not change the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage and main­tain that mar­riage isn’t fun­da­men­tal­ly changed.

“As Abra­ham Lin­coln was fond of ask­ing, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” “Five,” his audi­ence would invari­ably answer. “No,” he’d polite­ly respond, “the cor­rect answer is four. Call­ing a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”

Like Lincoln’s asso­ciates, many of our fel­low citizens—including many Christians—appear to fall for the notion that chang­ing a def­i­n­i­tion caus­es a change in essence. The attempt to change the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage to include same-sex unions is a prime exam­ple. Sim­ply call­ing such rela­tion­ships “same-sex mar­riages,” many believe, will make them mar­riages. Such rea­son­ing, how­ev­er, is as flawed as think­ing that chang­ing tail to leg changes the func­tion of the appendage.”

While it would seem right to com­mend Carter for under­stand­ing this sim­ple truth about real­i­ty and the essence of mar­riage in a time when post­mod­ern thought reigns supreme, I can not com­mend him or his solu­tion. After estab­lish­ing that there is real­i­ty that you can­not change, like the num­ber of legs a dog has or def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, he soon falls into — or syn­the­sizes — into the same post­mod­ern thought that is detached from real­i­ty that he is warn­ing his read­ers about.

“What do we do about homo­sex­u­al cou­ples who have ordered their lives around the legal fic­tion of same-sex mar­riage? French says, “I want­ed gay cou­ples to enjoy mar­riage-equiv­a­lent legal pro­tec­tions but with­out chang­ing the legal def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage.” That was always a possibility—and still is. We don’t need to attempt to rede­fine real­i­ty and call a tail a leg to achieve this objec­tive. The solu­tion is, and always has been, to pro­mote civ­il unions.”

Carter’s solu­tion to gay mar­riage is to pro­mote civ­il unions for same-sex cou­ples. This solu­tion reveals that Carter is miss­ing the real prob­lem with gay mar­riage. The issue, or real­i­ty, that is con­fronting us is not an issue of def­i­n­i­tion, it is an issue of moral­i­ty. The rea­son Amer­i­ca — and every oth­er nation — should reject gay mar­riage is found in Proverbs 14:34 “Right­eous­ness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any peo­ple.” If any nation wants to be exult­ed they must sub­mit to the author­i­ty of God, or as Psalm 2 puts it the rulers of the nation must “kiss the Son”.

God is not judg­ing Amer­i­ca on if we pass a triv­ial test of if we are defin­ing sin in accor­dance with real­i­ty. He is judg­ing Amer­i­ca on if we are known for our sin or our right­eous­ness. Carter goes on to point out that a civ­il union doesn’t have to imply a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship and this is why he believes it is a prop­er solu­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians keep mar­riage based in real­i­ty and homo­sex­u­als get all of the ben­e­fits and gov­ern­men­tal incen­tives of a het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage, but we will call it a civ­il union. This is how Carter wants to uphold real­i­ty.

What Carter fails to under­stand is that the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage is root­ed in real­i­ty because of the God giv­en laws and order behind it. In Gen­e­sis 1:27 we see the order of gen­der that God cre­at­ed mankind in His image and He cre­at­ed them male and female. In Gen­e­sis 2 we see the order of mar­riage that there is a hus­band and a wife. We see this set order reflect­ed in Exo­dus 20 when God com­mands mankind “Thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery.” Of course we see this order reflect­ed in the var­i­ous sex­u­al laws giv­en in Leviti­cus and Deuteron­o­my, and this order is upheld thought the rest of Scrip­ture. It is through the set order of mar­riage between one man and one woman and the fol­low­ing laws attached to it that we right­ly con­clude the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage is between one man and one woman only.

In Carter’s solu­tion we find an accep­tance of the def­i­n­i­tion of real­i­ty but a rejec­tion of the set moral­i­ty that shapes the def­i­n­i­tion. A civ­il gov­ern­ment is not mere­ly to rec­og­nize the def­i­n­i­tion of the insti­tu­tion mar­riage, they are to uphold the jus­tice of God (see Romans 13:1–7). Iron­i­cal­ly, to believe that a nation is hon­or­ing God and observ­ing real­i­ty by tol­er­at­ing sin and in some cas­es would be reward­ing it, is noth­ing more than an abom­i­na­tion to God and a sin­ful fan­ta­sy.

Joe Carter’s solu­tion is mere­ly a syn­the­sis of sin in an attempt to move his read­ers to the left while still feel­ing like they are con­serv­ing tra­di­tion­al mar­riage. I would encour­age you as a read­er to remem­ber Proverbs 14:34 and give no room to the immoral­i­ty of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in our nation in false called same-sex mar­riage or in a wicked civ­il union that would reward sin. Remem­ber “Right­eous­ness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any peo­ple.”