GAY TRUTH

Author: Russel Moore. Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Merritt wrote an article for the Daily Beast accusing conservative Christians of hypocrisy and unchristian behavior for suggesting that some persons’ consciences won’t allow them to use their creative gifts to help celebrate same-sex weddings . Since I was a key example of this hypocrisy, I’ll respond to that charge. At issue is a response I made, reposted this week over at the Gospel Coalition , helping a Christian wedding photographer think through whether he ought to work for a same-sex wedding. In the photographer’s question, he grapples with the question of how his conscience ought to play in this decision not only as it relates to weddings of people who, for all he knows, might be involved in all sorts of unbiblical behavior. Powers and Merritt suggest if he refuses to photograph one “unbiblical wedding,” he ought to “refuse to photograph them all.” As a matter of fact, they say, to do anything else is to be “seen as a hyp

- by Keith Pavlischek Jonathan Merritt , a blogger and journalist, who I’m told is associated with the progressive wing of Evangelical Christianity , recently published a blog post, MLK[Martin Luther King] would agree with Kirsten Powers on serving same-sex couples . The upshot of Merritt’s blog is that Christian photographers, bakers, and florists and the like should, (1) as a matter of Christian ethics and morality be willing to offer their services at gay weddings or other such events, since that, according to Kirsten Powers, is what Jesus would do; and (2) Christians and others should be required by law to serve at “gay weddings” or some similar type event, even if it would violate their conscience to do so. These are two related although distinct questions. I will leave (1) to others. My focus will be on (2). Now, I’m generally not concerned with asking questions such as “What would Jesus do?” A resort to that type of rhetorical question is typically evidence of an immature

There are three obvious questions from the recent scrap about gay marriage. Today’s post is for those that have been sleeping for the past week and missed the controversy all together. If you suffer from gay-marriage-controversy overload, you may have missed the newest twists and turns, which is a shame because you missed some really good writing. Today I want to give a round-up of what others have written, and direct you to some of the better posts on this issue. But first a little history: in the past few months gay “marriage” has been legalized in 17 states. Most of these saw marriage legalized by judges, and a few saw the turn at the ballot box. Since then there has been a tidal wave of additional lawsuits in the remaining 33 states that ban it. Every indicator is that those bans will fall as well. In the meantime, some same-sex couples have sued bakers, photographers, and florists who have declined to provide their services to gay weddings. Denny Burk has a powerful article de