As I was driving home yesterday from church, I heard Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson speak to the Commonwealth Club here in the SF Bay Area. When asked what he would do about the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, he stated (I’m paraphrasing) that sexual orientation makes no difference in the military because it really doesn’t matter. That statement got me to thinking about the continual debate about homosexual marriage. Does sexual orientation really matter in marriage?

This question should be about the understanding of marriage first, rather than about one’s sexual orientation. The debate is far too often about rights than about the nature of marriage. If we take Genesis 2 as an interpretive grid, then marriage is about a man and a woman becoming one flesh. But since our society has essentially cast this standard out the window, then of course, anything goes in marriage.

How about marrying oneself? That’s right, who really needs two people to marry in the first place? Well, it has happened. Gene Veith reports for World:

30-year-old Jennifer Hoes has set the date for May 28. She has her wedding dress, her friends and family have their invitations, and the dinner will cost $22,000. The wedding itself will be in the city hall of Harleem. Apparently, in the anything-goes marriage laws of the Netherlands, the wedding will be legal.

She told Dutch and German newspapers that she will vow to “love, respect and honor” herself in good times and in bad. “We live in a ‘Me’ society,” she said. “Hence it is logical that one promises to be faithful to oneself.”

I ask this next question with genuine sincerity, “With marriage between a man and a woman no longer a concern, what is to stop marriage from being anything a person wants it to be?” Why couldn’t marriage be between a human being and his/her dog? There are actually many people in this world who love their dog more than any other person. If fact, I am sure there is probably a grass-roots movement (always a term used to try to make something sounds passionately legitimate) somewhere that is arguing for this very thing. And then, I have no idea why polygamy is looked down upon as morally wrong in this cultural climate. It seems if marriage is left to the privacy of one’s beliefs (often an argument for homosexual marriage), then why should anyone impede on one’s ‘rights’ for polygamy?

It truly is a slippery slope. The Gospel is the only thing that can penetrate through all of this. Left to the political world and the public square, the answer always appears to be legislation and the Supreme Court. But as one can see, this does not stop the Netherlands or other countries from adopting such measures. You can legislate morality, but you cannot legislate one’s heart. As Jesus said in Matthew 15:19: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Such news items should lead Gospel-soaked Christians to be a greater light in the world than ever before. As Paul noted in Romans 10:14-15:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

The good news is our only hope–and our world’s only hope.