Column on DOMA ruling: on SCOTUS and Church

Just this week, the Supreme Court handed down two long-=awaited cases dealing with gay marriage. Before I became a minister, I taught judicial process, so I am well positioned to look at issues of law and Christian ethics in regard to its decisions. Our eldest daughter came to visit this week, and I recalled with her my consternation at President Clinton’s craven political calculation to sign the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and his recent discovery that he should not have singed it.

Some of our readers may be a bit confused how the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment, directed toward states, could be used as a gloss on the fifth Amendment, dealing with the national government. Ever since 1954 when the Court struck down state-imposed school segregation in the District of Columbia, the Court ruled tha the liberty portion of the due process clause of the 5^th amendment was made more clear and precise by the wording of the 14^th Amendment.

Justice Kennedy has made a long personal journey himself. he signed on to the :anti-sodomy” decision in the eighties, but authored its repudiation I at the start of the new century. It is striking how often the word, dignity, appears in his decision. Part of equal protection analysis is determining if a law’s distinction is based on the creation of a ‘suspect” class of citizens. Kennedy over and over refers to the bigotry and bias inherent in the DOMA law. Equal protection means that government needs a reason to separate classes of people, especially if they are a minority class who has been subject to invidious discrimination. To him, we cannot admit two standards, two classes of marriage, or we run afoul of the sense of the words on the court’s edifice, equal justice under law. For years, the court has ruled marriage to be a fundamental conern for the liberty, the private decision for a couple. Now it has been extended to more of our citizens.

Some in the church will see the case as preaching the gospel to the church, and others decry it as an intrusion into matters of private morality and an attempt to dictate a new morality apart from religion to our citizens. For forty years, my own denomination, the PCUSA, has struggled with the issue in varying ways, in a see-saw of tolerance and prohibitions. Part of the struggle has been one of Biblical interpretation. Some pull the relatively few comments against same-sex relations and seek to make a principle from them. Some have moved a long way on the issue. Jim Wallis, the religious evangelical but  political liberal, has moved a long way a the issue and has come to the point where he sees people of good will able to take up either side of the issue. He is troubled by the wholesale rejection of the young of the judgmental, hypocritical, and negative morality of so many church leaders.

For me the Supreme Court decision has something to teach the church about ethics as a consistent approach. It calls the church toward a responsible view of sexual ethics across the board for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Both are called to the same ethic of love with an aspiration toward fidelity and the knowledge that chaste behavior is rarely fully practiced. it calls us to a high definition and support of the remarkable pledge of marriage to be faithful to one’s partner for a lifetime. It calls us to treat all people with dignity, as they deserve as reflections of God’s image and the face of Jesus Christ. Marriage is a sacred public bond to announce a private and intimate circumstance. May marriages live fully and well for both church and sta