This from religion editor Cody Lowe of the Roanoke Times (my hometown newspaper):

Attitudes toward marriage need a good, hard look

Now…Cody’s interviewee is an Episcopal priestess who comes from an angle pretty foreign to my own; some of her suggestions are well wide of the mark, of course. But I honestly wonder if she is on to something–because it’s something that the whole “gay marriage” debate has caused me to think about at length.

We have never questioned (well, at least not recently) the way of things when it comes to pastors acting as the agents of the state in the signing of marriage licences. This is because our society hadn’t until recently fallen so far into its state of depravity that we would actually consider calling a “union” between two people of the same sex “marriage”. Now, that is the law of the state of Massachusetts–and it is entirely conceivable that this abomination is coming soon to a state near you.

This being the case, how ought evangelical pastors to respond? To paraphrase that good native Virginian Patrick Henry, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me…I refuse to be the stooge of any state that would so preposterously redefine ‘marriage’”. Practically, what this means is that I will continue to engage in the blessing of Christian marriages, weddings between two people who, after counsel, I am convinced are committed to marriage as instituted in the Bible. I will do this in any state or country where I am called upon to do so. What I will not do, however, is to sign any marriage license in any state which has defined marriage in a manner contrary to my Biblical convictions. In other words, if a couple were to ask me to marry them in the state of Massachusetts, and if that couple were to meet the qualifications that I impose, my answer would be, “certainly! I will marry you! If, though, you want your marriage to be recognized by the state of Massachusetts, you’ll have to attend to that on your own; I will not sign a Massachusetts “marriage” license; since that state has chosen (illegally, by the way) to arrogate to itself the prerogative to redefine the very institution of marriage, and since that redefinition is an affront to all that is right and holy regarding the institution of marriage, I cannot in good conscience place myself in the position of lackey to that state in its folly.” Or something like that…

Ironically, I did perform a wedding in Massachusetts last year–my only one so far–about a week or two at the most after their law changed. I did sign the marriage license–but only because I had agreed to perform this wedding long before Massachusetts had the audacity to do what it did. I will not do it again–unless the voters of Massachusetts assert their constitutional prerogative to overturn the decision of their rogue Supreme Court.

My call to my fellow evangelical pastors is to establish a similar position. After all, if a state or nation is so arrogant as to tinker with the very foundation of marriage itself, we are under no obligation to act as accomplices…