What Wenll Berry Got Right About Gay Marriage | Christopher C. Roberts | First Thgs

Contents:

• WHAT WENLL BERRY GOT RIGHT ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE
• WENLL BERRY EXPOUNDS ON GAY MARRIAGE
• WENLL BERRY GAY-MARRIAGE SPEECH ONLE
• WENLL BERRY’S ANE REMARKS ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE

WHAT WENLL BERRY GOT RIGHT ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE

In January, at Geetown College Kentucky, Wenll Berry ma a speech clarg his support for gay marriage. The first half of this say is mostly about abortn, but the January gay marriage material has been adapted to nstute the send half.

In both January’s vio and last week’s say, Berry says that our current polil impasse over gay marriage is absurd, sce, he claims, liberals and nservativ are lludg the ln that ernment has thory over marriage, as if ernment uld genuely btow or whhold the right to marry. Berry reasons that if our society is gog to suffer this false policizatn and image fict rights, then we should not whhold such rights om homosexuals.

WENLL BERRY EXPOUNDS ON GAY MARRIAGE

My article also lamented that makg his se, Berry moniz his opponents, tegorilly dismissg ncerns about gay marriage as bigotry. Here is what Berry fails to image, but what his analysis helps to expla: chasty for gays and lbians is possible, but, like any type of chasty, requir profound muny support, or else, our culture, feels like potls lonels. What is the equivalent hospaly that the Christians should learn to offer homosexuals?

How n we beiend gays and lbians wh apparently tractable orientatns? Christian opponents to same-sex marriage want the ernment to treat homosexuals as a special tegory of persons subject to discrimatn, siar to the way that Ain-Amerins and women were tegorized the past, cultural and enomic cric Wenll Berry told Baptist misters Kentucky Jan. Berry, a prolific thor of books, poems and says who won the Natnal Humani Medal 2010 and was 2012 Jefferson lecturer for the Natnal Endowment for the Humani, offered “a sort of general claratn” on the subject of gay marriage at a “Followg the Call of the Church Tim Like The” nference at Geetown College.

WENLL BERRY GAY-MARRIAGE SPEECH ONLE

“I mt say that ’s a ltle wonrful to me that 40-odd years of takg stands on ntroversial issu, and at great length sometim, the two tim that I thk I’ve stirred up the most passnate opposn has been wh a ty ltle say on puters (his 1987 say “Why I Am Not Gog to Buy a Computer” published Harper’s led some to acce him of beg anti-technology) and half a dozen or a dozen sentenc on gay marriage. “Christians of a certa disposn have found several ways to tegorize homosexuals as different as themselv, who are the tegory of heterosexual and therefore normal and therefore good, ” Berry said. What is unclear, he said, is why they sgle out homosexualy as a perversn.

“The Bible, as I poted out to the wrers of Natnal Review, has a lot more to say agast fornitn and adultery than agast homosexualy, ” he said. And yet none of the offens — not all of them together — has ma as much polil/relig noise as homosexual marriage. Another argument ed, Berry said, is that homosexualy is “unnatural.

“If n be argued that homosexual marriage is not reproductive and is therefore unnatural and should be forbidn on that acunt, mt we not argue that childls marriag are unnatural and should be annulled? “One may fd the sexual practic of homosexuals to be unattractive or displeasg and therefore unnatural, but anythg that n be done that le by homosexuals n be done and is done by heterosexuals, ” Berry ntued. “The odst of the strategi to nmn and isolate homosexuals is to propose that homosexual marriage is opposed to and a threat to heterosexual marriage, as if the marriage market is about to be rnered and monopolized by homosexuals, ” Berry said.

WENLL BERRY’S ANE REMARKS ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE

Berry said “so-lled tradnal marriage” is “for sure sufferg a statistil failure, but this is not the rult of a homosexual plot.

“If I were one of a homosexual uple — the same as I am one of a heterosexual uple — I would place my fah and hope the mercy of Christ, not the judgment of Christians, ” Berry said. “When I nsir the hostily of polil church to homosexualy and homosexual marriage, I do so rememberg the history of Christian war, torture, terror, slavery and annihilatn agast Jews, Mlims, black Ains, Amerin Indians and others.