The media loves a Good vs. Evil story
On the program MediaBuzz which aired on April 5, there were rare moments of honesty. One of the panel of members of the media admitted that while 50 percent of the public considered themselves faithful Christians, only 10 percent of those working in newsrooms would classify themselves as such. The panelists all but admitted that they just didn’t understand Christians. The ten percent who are believers probably aren’t always candid about their feelings. Even when big names admit to religious motivations, they are treated with skepticism. When Bill O’Reilly said that he was inspired by the Holy Spirt to write Killing Jesus, his interviewer Nora O’Donnell of 60 Minutes was incredulous. She asked him if he thought he was “the chosen one.” Ms. O’Donnell is undoubtedly unaware that average Christians often are convinced that they are inspired by the Holy Spirit to take up a particular work.
This utter lack of understanding directly affects the coverage of the marriage debate and other issues involving the LGBTQ community. It doesn’t occur to them that Christians might be listening to a higher authority than ever-changing public opinion.
One of the panelists explained that coverage of the marriage debate is shaped by their colleagues’ desire to report on a “Selma Moment.” They want to see the debate as a clear battle between good and evil. They look back with envy on the day in 1965 when on a bridge in Selma, Alabama, the black victims of decades of living with the degradation of Jim Crow laws defied the tear gas, dogs, and the guns of the racist police. Because the television cameras and photographers were there to record it all, the world changed for the better.
It is understandable that the generation of reporters who came later would long for the same moral certainty, the same high calling.” Unable to understand why some people oppose the re-definition of marriage, they have decided to report the marriage controversy as a confrontation between the poor, discriminated against LGBTQ community and homophobic Christian bigots. They overlook the fact that in the current battle it is the Christian owners of small businesses who have been fined and driven out of business, while the same-sex couples have had no trouble finding photographers, florists, and bakers willing to participate in their ceremonies.
Christians do not hate LGBTQ persons. Most have relatives, acquaintances, co-workers, or friends in that community, and would not deny them anything that would be for their ultimate good. However, they believe that calling a same-sex relationship a marriage does not further the ultimate good of society in general or the couples in particular.
It is not that a same-sex couple may not (that is are not permitted) to marry, but that they cannot (are not able) to marry. The LGBTQ activists are not demanding real marriage, but that the definition of marriage be changed and changing the definition of marriage changes everything.
Marriage is not just about words said before witnesses, to be valid it must be consummated by the marital act. This is the one act of intimacy that makes the two one flesh. It is the act that can lead to the conception of a child who is the product of their love and belongs naturally to both.
Two persons of the same sex lack the physical complementarity necessary to consummate their marriage.
While LGBTQ activists feel it is unfair to define marriage in a way that necessarily excludes them, it is nature that sets the parameters. The state may order that birth certificates say parent one and parent two rather than father and mother, so that same sex couples pretend that a child conceived by surrogacy or artificial insemination donor is the child of two people of the same sex. However, this does not change the fact that somewhere the child has a real biological father or mother. The child will know that he has been deprived of a relationship with that parent, and will know that deprivation was not caused by the tragedy of divorce, desertion, or death, but by the planned, purposeful, premediated act of the people who supposedly have his best interests at heart.
Love wants what is best for the loved ones. While it would be easy to say, “Let them do what they want, how does it affect me?” , Christians believe that pretending that two persons of the same sex can marry creates an illusion that is not in the couples’ best interest.
On the other hand, the media is looking for a feel-good moment.
Dale O’Leary is a freelance writer, author ofThe Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality (which is available in Spanish and Italian) and One Man, One Woman. She writes for numerous publications and has spoken around the world.
