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by John Helmberger
Chief Executive Officer Minnesota Family Council If they weren’t so sadly mistaken, I’d be almost amused at the barrage of letters from hostile writers that appeared in the state’s largest newspaper following the MFC-sponsored Minnesota Pastors’ Summit on November 10th — amused not because what they wrote was funny (it wasn’t), but because it was so far from the truth. (See our PFN cover story for an account of this historic event.) One after another, the letter writers blasted Grace Church Eden Prairie, Minnesota For Marriage (MFC’s marriage amendment project), and the pastors who participated in the summit for being hateful, mean, homophobic, bigoted, and so on. They wrote with such certainty about what we said and did at the summit that you’d think they had all attended it themselves! If they had, they would have heard a message very different from what they decried in their letters. In reality, their descriptions of the summit couldn’t have been further from the truth. As the pastors who appeared at the noon press conference emphasized, the summit was not anti-gay. It was not about whom or what we are against. It was about what we are for — preserving marriage between one man and one woman as what is best for children, families, and society. The pastors at the press conference, and speaker after speaker throughout the day, reiterated that we are called to respond to homosexuals as God does — with love and compassion. Not a false love that affirms ultimately destructive choices in the name of “tolerance” and “openness”, but love that has the courage to speak the truth even if it goes counter to our culture. Which brings me to the ultimate irony of the other side’s accusations of hatefulness. What they call “love,” “compassion,” and “tolerance” is really anything but loving or compassionate. Distilled down to its essence, their message is simply this: love and compassion mean affirming others and their choices even when they are wrong or when their choices are harmful to them or to society, because confronting them would impose your values on them. This is not love or compassion. We don’t let children play in a busy street, no matter how much they protest. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” even if taking the car keys invites abuse. Real love cares enough about others to speak the truth about the consequences of their choices, even when doing so means risking a hostile response. Regarding same-sex “marriage,” it is not loving or compassionate to homosexuals or to children to brush aside the health risks of the homosexual lifestyle and officially endorse it with legal recognition. What society honors, people will ultimately embrace. Legal recognition would ultimately mandate teaching homosexuality to children in public schools as a “normal,” “healthy” alternative lifestyle, with grave consequences for the children who are so misled. It’s not loving or compassionate to intentionally deny children the nurture of a mother or a father. However, this is precisely what legalizing same-sex “marriage” would do, not as a tragic exception, but by design — despite mountains of sociological research irrefutably demonstrating what we know instinctively — that children do best with both a mom and a dad. It’s not loving or compassionate to future generations to so gut marriage of any real meaning that it disappears, along with its benefits to society. This is already happening in Europe, where same-sex unions have been legal in some countries for a number of years. As a result, in those countries cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, and single-parent households are alarmingly on the rise. So don’t be deceived by the false accusations that it’s hateful or bigoted to defend marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The other side’s strategy is to intimidate the majority into silence with this lie. The truly loving and compassionate thing to do is to make sure that marriage is preserved as the union of one man and one woman for future generations of children and families. The well-being of our society depends on it. |
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Minnesota Family Council / Minnesota Family Institute 2855 Anthony Lane South, Minneapolis MN, 55418-3265 Phone 612.789.8811, FAX 612.789.8858, www.mfc.org |