“Marriage is a mess and homosexuals didn’t do it”

That’s the eye-catching headline of the latest blog post by one of Patheos’ newest writers, Rebecca Hamilton.  She’ll be hanging her hat over at a new blog called “Public Catholic,” devoting her time and attention to politics.  She knows whereof she speaks: Rebecca is in the Oklahoma House of Representatives and is (brace yourselves) a Democrat who happens to be Catholic.  Or vice versa.

At any rate, I can’t help but have warm fuzzy feelings for a politician whose official biography lists her occupation, simply, as “Writer.”

Back to the blog.  Rebecca writes: 

We focus our national attention on the definition of marriage under the law. We wear out our keyboards writing about it and revile one another over our positions on it. But despite the accusations and counter-accusations that season our debate, we ignore the home truths of marriage in this country today. The truth is, marriage has been a mess for quite some time. And homosexuals weren’t the ones who messed it up.

Homosexuals didn’t set off the epidemic of divorce in this country. Homosexuals didn’t create the millions of feral children who spend most of their time alone, raising themselves on video games, drugs and interactions with their peers. Homosexuals don’t cheat on our spouses. Homosexuals don’t break into our homes and yell and curse at our families. They aren’t the cause of the rising number of unwed births and the global pandemic of abortion. We did these things. Marriage is a mess and it was heterosexuals who messed it up…

…I have a public track record of supporting traditional marriage. I’ve got the scars to prove it. But I think that supporting traditional marriage, especially traditional marriage in the Christian sense, means more than being against same-sex marriage. I think that as Christians we are required to look past what we’re against and find what we are for. It isn’t enough for Christians to be against same-sex marriage. It certainly isn’t enough to do as some have done and whip people up into a rage and then cash in on that rage to advance your political career. That is just cheap demagoguery.

Leadership, especially true Christian leadership, mandates that we don’t just get people worked up against something. We have to lead them forward to something. In the case of marriage, we should be for true Christian marriage and we should live that kind of marriage in our own lives. Christians must be FOR marriage as a loving, giving, living institution that cocoons young children in a world of stability, positive discipline and love so that they can grow up and create loving homes of their own.

Read more.  I think hers is a voice we need to hear.