Alan Hurst on marriage, compromise, and changing minds

With Alan's permission, I am posting a version of a thoughtful comment he shared with the Law and Religion listserv:

“You shouldn’t worry about gay marriage and religious freedom,” I’ve occasionally been told. “In thirty years, pretty much nobody’s going to be religiously opposed to gay marriage, so gay marriage won’t interfere with anybody’s religion.” 

The people who’ve told me this generally meant well, but I think their willingness to think this sort of thing—and to imagine that believers concerned about religious freedom would find it comforting—is a testament to the ignorance about religion that pervades certain parts of our society. 

To begin with, few believers could possibly be comforted by someone saying, “You shouldn't worry about the long run because your religions will just change their minds on this issue anyway.” That statement suggests at least one of the following two ideas: 

1. that religious beliefs are entirely a product of time and culture, with no basis in any transcendent truth and no capacity to resist broader cultural movements. 
2. that religious beliefs opposing gay marriage are purely an irrational bias and, like religious opposition to interracial marriage, will gradually vanish as gay marriage becomes commonplace and believers' aversion to gay relationships is worn down by familiarity.

 These ideas are too big for me to try to refute here, and certainly there are people who believe them. But if you’re among those people, I hope you’ll consider for a moment how they sound to believers who disagree with you. In essence, when you say, “Your religion will change on this issue,” you’re saying either, “The beliefs you've built your life on have no basis in reality” or “Your bigotry has led you to misunderstand your own religion.” True or false, these two thoughts are quite the opposite of comforting to a concerned believer; indeed, they’re likely to convince some believers that you really don’t understand religion and that you really are out to get them.

But there’s a more practical reason not to tell believers that their religions will soon abandon traditional Christian sexual ethics: if you do, there’s a good chance you’ll be wrong.

Partially I say this because the analogy between religious racism and religious heteronormativity is at most superficially accurate. Traditional Christian teachings about sex just have a much different place in the church than American Christians’ teachings about race ever did—theologically, practically, socially, historically, etc. These things are simply not the same. Ross Douthat wrote briefly (but I think accurately) about this here.

And partially I say this because religion has always been international in nature, and like everything else it's getting to be more so. The heart of Christianity is moving from Europe and North America to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Within a few decades, China may be home to more Christians than any other country. American Catholicism has never been especially important to the Catholic church, and even we Mormons now have more members outside the U.S. than inside.

Although the gay rights movement is likewise an international phenomenon, it’s not likely to play out everywhere the same way it has here. There are some places where gay marriage will not be legal for the foreseeable future; there are others where legalization will not lead to the sort of pressure on traditionalists that has begun to be exerted here. So long as such places exist, their Christians are going to give some ballast to American Christian opposition to gay marriage. Indeed, to some extent it’s already happening—witness, for example, the ties springing up between conservative American Episcopalians and African Anglicans.

My prediction? I think religious opposition to gay marriage is going to be like religious opposition to premarital sex. The polls will move more rapidly than anyone used to think possible, and in a decade or two only 20% of Americans will think gay marriage is immoral. And then the graph will bottom out, and 20% of Americans will still be thinking that for a long time.

So, the upshot of all this: don’t proclaim too loudly that the present controversies are temporary because we’re all going to agree about all of this very soon. It’s rude: it tells believers you don’t take their beliefs seriously. It’s counterproductive: it will only heighten the fears of people who see gay marriage as a threat to their way of life. And there’s a good chance that it will prove to be wrong, and that we’re stuck for the foreseeable future with the hard work of drawing distinctions and making compromises. The sooner we all commit to it, the better.