Marriage Under Attack --- How Do We Respond?

The cover story of the December 15, 2008 issue of Newsweek Magazine will be about "gay marriage" but from a decidedly different vantage point than we have thus far been hearing. The bold introduction under the subhead of the article reads, "Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side." A rather bold assertion. Equally provocative is the horrendous misappropriation of Scripture in the opening paragraphs. To avoid copyright violations (and polluting an otherwise excellent site with such fundament) I won't quote extensively. You can read it for yourself (http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653).

I don't think there is a need to argue and debate the issues, neither do I think we here, in this forum, need to go through a point by point refutation.

However, what I DO propose is the following: (1) we do more than express outrage in our own small communities by "preaching to the choir". (2) We express the same diligence in dealing with this as we do lamenting inaction and our own inability to effect change with regard to the various misdirected and flat out wrong practices around us. (3) We organize a full-out effort to counter the misappropriation and misapplication of the Scriptures.

I have several ideas, some probably too big to actually accomplish.

* Take out multiple page advertizement(s) in major national publications (eg. Newsweek itself, USNews, Time, Etc.) - laying out (1) the false teachings of the Newsweek article and (2) A correct interpretation. This would need to be a JOINT effort of clergy and laity - since the clergy definitely have the theological knowledge, but would certainly need the assistance of talented laity to help in copy-writing, illustration, layout, etc.

* Develop a website with similar/same content as above and make a concerted effort to drive traffic to it utilizing tools like Google Adwords, and other online advertising avenues as well as possibly smaller print advertisements, etc.

* Jointly develop a "letter-to-the-editor" response to Newsweek.

This are just a few that I can list before I need to pick up my son from school. No doubt there are many more creative ideas that the community can come up with. The main thing is to develop an ORGANIZED response - based on a proper theological framework.

The issue here is NOT Marriage, but this is a new/continued "Battle for the Bible" - the current skirmish just happens to be "Gay Marriage". The battle, however, has more decisively left the scholarly and theological realm and now is being waged in mainstream media with greater vigor than previously seen. This is different from Higher Critical scholarship and using arguments about whether or not the Bible is historical. NEWSWEEK here makes THEOLOGICAL claims about what the Bible teaches. It's one thing to deny that it's the word of God, it's another to reinterpret the Word of God to suit your own agenda.

So, how do we go about mounting a response?