{"id":19225,"date":"2011-09-14T16:26:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T21:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=19225"},"modified":"2011-09-14T16:26:46","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T21:26:46","slug":"robertsons-attack-on-the-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2011\/09\/14\/robertsons-attack-on-the-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Robertson’s Attack on the Family"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You may have already seen this:<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nReprehensible? Yes. Surprising? Sadly, no.<\/p>\nThree things occurred to me while watching this abomination.\u00a0First, these comments, coming as they do from a noisy \u2013 even obnoxious \u2013 political \u201cdefender\u201d of marriage, only serve to make the case for extending civil marriage to everyone. If, as Robertson apparently believes, marriage is nothing more than a contract that can be voided upon the incapacitation of a contracting partner, not an enduring, divinely sanctioned covenant, then he has no grounds whatsoever for claiming some special privilege for heterosexual unions.<\/p>\nSecond, during the 2005 controversy over the removal of Terry Schiavo\u2019s feeding tube, Robertson characterized the judge\u2019s order that the stricken woman be removed from life support as \u201cjudicial murder.\u201d In the video above, Robertson justifies divorce on the grounds that a woman with Alzheimer\u2019s is \u201cgone,\u201d that Alzheimer\u2019s is a \u201ckind of death.\u201d He goes on to say that he wouldn\u2019t \u201cput a guilt trip on\u201d a man who decided to abandon a wife who is, in Robertson\u2019s view, all but dead. Huh? So, in 2005 it was \u201cmurder\u201d to remove the feeding tube of Terry Schiavo, who every medical expert agreed was in fact \u201cgone,\u201d but in 2011 it\u2019s okay to abandon a spouse with Alzheimers,\u00a0despite the fact that\u00a0she continues to\u00a0be conscious, alert, and will even enjoy many moments of crystalline clarity? Again, he has made the case for those who wanted to end Schiavo\u2019s ordeal, even those who wanted it ended precipitously. Again, if his standard for \u201clife\u201d is so low that he counsels divorce and abandonment of an Alzheimer\u2019s patient, he hasn\u2019t a leg to stand on when someone wants to pull the tube from a woman in a persistent vegetative state.<\/p>\nLast, I\u2019m struck by the threadbare moral logic of someone like Robertson, who has been purporting to \u201cevangelize\u201d for over fifty years. Sorry, but in the Evangelical milieu of my youth, this kind of make-it-up-as-you-go-along thinking was prevalent, and extended to everything from practical ethics to the most profoundly important theological questions. Lacking any kind of magisterium beyond the motley collection of para-church ministries like the Christian Broadcast Network, Evangelical Christian leaders are used to \u201cwinging\u201d it, without any effective check by authoritative tradition, the reasoned arguments of theologians, or the binding statements of predecessors. You want to see absolute arbitrary\u00a0power in action? Check out any independent \u201cBible\u201d church on a Sunday morning. The sermon may be on the liberty of believers, but offer even a gentle contradictory word and you\u2019ll be out on your ear. It makes me appreciate Catholic moral theology, and it should make you appreciate it, too. Because whether you disagree with this or that, at least you know that the Church takes this stuff seriously. Or, to put it another way, you\u2019ll never read \u201cput a guilt trip on you\u201d in a papal encyclical.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may have already seen this: Reprehensible? Yes. Surprising? Sadly, no. Three things occurred to me while watching this abomination.\u00a0First, these comments, coming as they do from a noisy \u2013 even obnoxious \u2013 political \u201cdefender\u201d of marriage, only serve to make the case for extending civil marriage to everyone. If, as Robertson apparently believes, marriage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,650,92,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-mark-gordon","category-marriage","category-morality"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Robertson's Attack on the Family<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You may have already seen this: Reprehensible? Yes. Surprising? Sadly, no. 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