Recently in Same Sex Marriage Blogalogue Category

It just turns out that he won't debate it with me.

Last fall, Rod and I agreed, at the behest of our then-editor, Patton Dodd, to hold a friendly "blogalogue" on same sex marriage.  It was in the aftermath of California's Prop 8 passage.  I went to Dallas and met Rod, and even shot this video on his front porch. 
We started earnestly but quickly petered out.  I wrote, Rod didn't respond.

When we finally reconnected, Rod said that he'd decided to bow out. The antagonistic comments on his blog were too much, he confessed, and he just couldn't keep the pace with deleting all of those that didn't meet his standard for civility.

Several of you have been dropping comments under other posts, asking why this much-pimped series petered out so quickly.  Well, here's the deal: Rod chose to stop the blogalogue very shortly after it started. Both of us were inundated by comments that were, well, less than kind.  Rod has a more stringent comment policy on his blog, and he found himself constantly monitoring and deleting comments that didn't meet his standards. 

Although it is possible for Rod to rejoin the blogalogue, I'm doubtful.  My Bnet editor and I are thinking about asking another conservative blogger to join the conversation, so I'll let you know when we relaunch it.

Rod,

Happy New Year!  I'm glad that we've decided to get back into our blogalogue this month.  I know that lots and lots of readers want us to tackle the biblical evidence one way or another regarding same sex marriage.  And I know you'd like to return to Lisa Miller's essay in Newsweek.  I also want to defend myself against the constant stream of criticism that I'm on the "slippery slope."  Let's be sure to get to all of that.

But to begin the new year, I thought we could admit something to one another, and to our readers: what, for each of us, do we consider the biggest weakness of our side's argument regarding same sex marriage?  I'll go first.

It seems to me that for those of us who favor SSM, the biggest weakness tends to be an avoidance of taking seriously the six verses of the Old and New Testaments that deal explicitly with homosexual behavior.  I know that some liberals will excoriate me for this, for there is a phalanx of books by liberal scholars that deals with the biblical passages in which homosexuality is mentioned.

But I'm not so much talking about the academic version of pro-SSM Christians, but the more popular level.  In fact, I think that Miller's essay and Jon Meacham's editorial preface to the same issue of Newsweek are cases-in-point.  While I arrive at the same destination as Meacham on this issue, I cannot agree with him that those who marshall biblical evidence against SSM are guilty of "the worst kind of fundamentalism."

So there it is.  I think that pro-SSM Christians too often avoid the biblical passages that deal explicitly with homosexuality.

I will endeavor to avoid that weakness as we continue our blogalogue this month.

Some of you have asked what happened to the Same Sex Marriage Blogalogue between me and Rod Dreher.  Well, between Thanksgiving, an email snafu, Rod's vacation and lingering stomach flu, then my stomach bug, we've taken a month hiatus.

I'm currently composing a post on the "slippery slope" danger that I'm constantly accused of in the comment section, but I plan to hold off on posting it until January.  I hope that then, once we're through the holidays, Rod and I can consistently blogalogue for about a month.

So, stay tuned...

In the meantime, I encourage you to read the Pomomusings post, Enough with the Bible, Already!

Rev Dave writes,

"Keep rocking the quadrilateral" Ha! +1 tripp!

As a transplanted Methodist, I had a similar thought (and we were just this week teaching the quad to our Confirmation class).

Though I wasn't brought up in that tradition, it seems to me that the quadrilateral is the most honest depiction of how we determine our beliefs. The four exist in tension, and all are needed. As much as some would like to believe otherwise, it is just not possible to base our beliefs on scripture alone. We always filter what we read through these other lenses. Even when we don't know we're doing so.

Anyway, I appreciate Tony's thoughts here on experience. I won't bore with extensive details, but my mind and heart were completely changed by an experience I had (in a seminary classroom no less!). In a pastoral care class I met several gay men. As they talked about their faith, one said - and I hope I never forget this - "This is what I know for sure: I am 100% a man, 100% a Christian, and 100% gay."

It was, in the ineffable way of such times, a holy moment; an intrusion of God's Spirit on my entire being. I gained a new understanding of what it means to follow Jesus that day, and I'm a completely different person, a completely different disciple, a completely different pastor, because of it.

I say it would be inhuman not to include experience in this discussion. For experience is a valid, important, age-old (you might even call it traditional!) teacher.

I'm adding another one today since I found what BudCath had to say interesting:Thanks for your comments. I would love for America to be guided by golden rule, but it is not and never has been. Indians, slavery, jim crow,...

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