This article first appeared in the Ask Hank section of the Christian Research Journal, volume 46, number 1/2 (2023).
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At present, two communities are heading toward each other with blinding speed. The first community, rightly expressed, founds the basis for marriage on a biblical worldview. The second roots marriage, and all that it engenders, in the LGBTQIA+ zeitgeist.
As Ryan T. Anderson explains, the biblical worldview holds that marriage “is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need both a mother and a father.”1 The LGBTQIA+ zeitgeist portends an entirely different perspective. A perspective made normative by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. A perspective perfectly aligned with the woke worldview. Incredibly, Justice Kennedy went so far as to insinuate that anyone who holds to marriage as biblically defined (thus, excluding same-sex couples) does so out of exclusionary motives. This despite the reality that virtually every redefinition of marriage, including his own, excludes someone (siblings, the polygamous, those underage, etc.).2
The radical redefinition of marriage ratified by the Supreme Court of the United States is of enormous consequence. Why? Of the three pillars of civil society — marriage, church, government — none is more significant than marriage. In light of its transcendent significance, woke revolutionaries are bent on obscuring anthropological, biological, and civil realities respecting marriage.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL REALITY. According to a consensus of sociological metrics, women and men enjoy strategic complementarity. As such, both are essential in the rearing of children. Fathers challenge their progeny in developmentally vital ways that mothers cannot, and mothers provide care and nurture in ways that fathers cannot. Social science statistics unambiguously support the strategic significance of “gender-differentiated parenting.” Neither mothers nor fathers are replaceable in the process.3
Yet this is precisely what woke revolutionaries are bent on doing. On replacing cisnormativity — or what is derisively dismissed as cisheteropatriarchy — with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, plus a variety of other woke identities.
BIOLOGICAL REALITY. The biological reality is that sexual reproduction requires male and female. Every organ in the human body is self-sufficient to perform its intended function—except one. Natural reproduction always requires a coupling of male and female. As Jay Richards insightfully notes, “Marriage protects, reflects, and reinforces this powerful complementary, reproductive part of our natures.” As such, marriage “is a comprehensive union of body, mind, emotion, and soul, a proper end of which is children.”4 Intercourse consummates marriage as a multifaceted mystery in which two people are forged together as one flesh. In mysterious union, a man and a woman procreate children fashioned in the image and likeness of their Creator.
Sexual union, however, is even more profound than biological procreation. It is ultimately a mysterious parable of Christ and His church (Eph. 5:31–32). The union of two people a poignant portrait of the unity of Christ and His bride. The parable has its roots in Genesis and bears ultimate fruit in Revelation. Human history rooted in the union of Adam and Eve and yielding its fruit in the wedding supper of the Lamb.
Nowhere in the biblical worldview is there room or place for the redefinition of this mysterious biological reality. And since marriage, as biblically defined, stands in resolute opposition to the woke worldview, the LGBTQIA+ community is bent on not only its redefinition but its eradication.
CIVIL REALITY. For the health of a civil society, both mother and father are necessary. As Barack Obama famously opined, “We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”5
Tragically, former President Obama’s worldview has experienced metamorphosis in reverse. What at first blush portended to be a great awakening morphed into a ghastly awokening.6 His capitulation to the redefinition of marriage contributed to opening Pandora’s box and releasing such unimaginable horrors as group marriage, polygamy, and transgenderism, replete with its puberty blockers and surgical savageries.
Apart from the hope of genuine spiritual revival, the opening of the box spells the death knell to civil society. Enshrining a false definition of marriage in our laws is tantamount to printing trillions of dollars or flooding the economy with counterfeit money. Everything is ultimately devalued.7
In the end, the redefinition of marriage has undermined the foundation of human civilization. Given the court’s reasoning, it’s hard to imagine how polyamory, polygamy, polyandry, even pedophilia will not likewise be blessed by the court. If there is no special virtue in opposite-sex marriage, is there any magic in the number two? And why arbitrarily assign eighteen as the magical age of consent? Once we abandon the biblical definition of marriage, there is no limit on where our unsanctified passions may lead us.
Unsanctified passions are why the redefinition of marriage is crucial to woke revolutionaries and why they ought to be a wake-up call to Christians. A call to be willing to do for truth what woke warriors are willing to do for a lie.—Hank Hanegraaff
Hank Hanegraaff is president of the Christian Research Institute, host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast and the Hank Unplugged podcast, and author of more than twenty books, including Truth Matters, Life Matters More: The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life (W Publishing Group, 2019)
NOTES
- Ryan T. Anderson, “Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It,” Backgrounder, March 11, 2013, http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2013/pdf/bg2775.pdf.
- Sean McDowell and John Stonestreet, Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2014), 43. See Justice Anthony Kennedy, United States v. Windsor (2013), www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12–307_6j37.pdf.
- Anderson, “Marriage,”; see also David Popenoe, Life without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society (New York: The Free Press, 1996).
- Jay W. Richards, “To Defend Marriage, We Should Learn a Lesson from Apologetics,” Christian Research Journal 35, 4 (2012): 40, https://www.equip.org/articles/to-defend-marriage/
- Barack Obama, “Obama’s Speech on Fatherhood,” Apostolic Church of God, Chicago, June 15, 2008, Real Clear Politics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/obamas_speech_on_fatherhood.html.
- Josh Earnest, “President Obama Supports Same-Sex Marriage,” The White House, President Barack Obama, May 10, 2012, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/05/10/obama-supports-same-sex-marriage; Becky Bowers, “President Barack Obama’s Shifting Stance on Gay Marriage,” Politifact, May 11, 2012, https:// www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/may/11/barack-obama/president-barack-obamas-shift-gay-marriage/.
- Richards, “To Defend Marriage,” 40.,
