We need a national marriage amendment and we need it now.  We need it before any of the current seekers of the White House have the opportunity to shape the public debate.  Hillary Clinton has vowed she will never sign legislation to protect traditional marriage.  Barack Obama said in an interview in The Advocate, a leading homosexual rights publication that if he is elected president he will work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  John McCain has made it clear he believes marriage is a “states rights” issue. For that reason, he has declared that he will never support a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage. 

      But what will happen if marriage is left up to the states?  Do we have any examples of what might happen if states continue to pass conflicting laws concerning marriage?  The current conflict between Virginia and Vermont may well serve as a harbinger of what is to come if we continue to refuse to address marriage at the federal level.  Miller vs. Jenkins, a case before the Virginia Supreme Court involves the struggle between Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins. They are former homosexual lovers who, in 2000, left Virginia and entered into a civil union in Vermont.  They wanted children so Lisa agreed to be artificially inseminated so they could start a family with two mommies.   Shortly after their union Lisa gave birth to Isabella who is now six years old. 

     Not long after Isabella was born, Janet became abusive.  Lisa, stunned by the drastic turn of events in her life, turned to and embraced a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.  The relationship between Lisa and Janet ended and the battle for Isabella’s future began.  Janet won round one in Vermont convincing the state Supreme Court to award her parental rights based on the states civil union laws. The high court considered Janet to be a full marital partner and therefore deserving of full parental rights.  The court reached this decision even though Janet has no blood tie to Isabella and no adoption papers were ever filed.  Lisa’s fitness as a mother is not in question. She is the biological mother and yet the Vermont Supreme Court believes the civil union law is enough to link Janet to Isabella in a bond more viable than the bond of biological birth. 

     Lisa and Isabella are back in Virginia where Lisa has petitioned the court to grant her full custody.  Virginia has one of the strongest laws in the country prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions.  Based on the strength of that law, it is likely the Virginia Supreme Court will rule in Lisa’s favor.  If it does, the case will automatically go to the United States Supreme Court.  If the Virginia high court rules against Lisa it is likely the case will still end up before the Supreme Court.  Either way, the case will test and perhaps ultimately decide the validity of the marriage laws of every state in the union. 

     Matthew D. Staver, Founder of the Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law said, “This case is exceptionally important because the future of Isabella hangs in the balance.  Her future will be to either remain with her biological mother, Lisa Miller or potentially be ripped away from her mom and placed in a lesbian household and paraded as a political trophy of the homosexual agenda.  This case is also important because states must also have the sovereign authority to maintain their marriage policy as the union of one man and one woman, while rejecting same-sex unions.”

     In short, the civil union chickens have come home to roost.  Many argued when Vermont passed its civil unions law that the effect would be limited to Vermont.  I wonder if those who made this argument really doubted this day of reckoning would come.  The day when every law on the books in every state designed to protect traditional marriage would be challenged by a conflict such as this.  If Virginia loses its sovereignty in the area of the laws of marriage the sovereignty of every other state to define marriage will be in jeopardy. 

     Abraham Lincoln faced the prospect of a divided nation and he understood perfectly that no nation divided over a monumental moral issue would long endure.  In his much quoted “House Divided Speech delivered in Springfield, Illinois on June 16, 1858, Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved….I do not expect the house to fall….but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”  That is the choice before us today concerning same-sex marriage.  Either by edict of the United States Supreme Court or by the advance or attrition of common sense and biblical morality we will one day become a nation united concerning marriage. 

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A recent meeting of left-wing religious and political leaders produced an air of premature victory over those who would describe themselves as the traditional Christian right.  The meeting was sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank that boasts in its’ about us section that they hope to “expose the hollowness of conservative governing philosophy” and uniquely and effectively “engage in the war of ideas with conservatives.”  CAP was founded and is led by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and professor at the Georgetown University Center of Law.

 
     Christian Post Reporter Michelle Vu quoted Brookings Institute fellow and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. saying he was “surprised by the extent in which Sen. Barack Obama has been tormented by religious questions given the amount of effort he spent to think through and explain his faith in the public square.”  Dionne should not have been surprised that evangelicals would question Obama considering the comments he made on June 24, 2007 at the United Church of Christ in Hartford, Connecticut.  According to Manya Brachear of the Chicago Tribune Obama told the crowd, “faith got hijacked by the so-called leaders of the Christian right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us.”  And what issues, according to Obama, divides us?  Issues like “abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design.”  What does Obama think should unite us?  Issues like “raising the minimum wage, adopting universal health care, stopping genocide in Darfur, Sudan, ending the Iraq war and embracing immigration reform.” 
     In other words conservative evangelical issues like the definition of marriage, the sanctity of life, prayer, and answering the ultimate metaphysical question of our cosmological origins are divisive and should be abandoned.  But liberal (or progressive) evangelical issues such as better pay, universal health care, and genocide outside the womb are issues that unite and should be embraced by everyone.

 
     In early March of this year Obama told a town hall meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio that he was tired of questions about his religion.  He also told audience members that “they would feel right at home at his church in Chicago.”  That was just two weeks before the infamous video of Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor and mentor for 20 years, hit the public airwaves.  Obama took a break from campaigning in Ohio to speak at a fundraising dinner in San Francisco where he derided Ohio voters for being bitter and “clinging to” guns, religion, and anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiments.  All of these episodes from the campaign trail mean Obama should continue to expect “religious questions” that ask him to explain his faith.

     Dionne, who is Catholic, went on to say “in the Republican Party, you are seeing what we thought of as  the old religious right weakening very substantially” and pointed to McCain’s victory in the Republican primary even though the Christian right supported Huckabee as the primary evidence.  What Dionne obviously doesn’t understand is the dynamic of the 2008 Republican primary.  McCain’s victory was not a rejection of the Christian right but an affirmation of the old adage, “divide and conquer.”  If Fred Thompson had dropped out of the race before South Carolina instead of making South Carolina his last stand Huckabee would have won the state by ten points instead of losing by three points.  A divided Christian right opened the door for maverick McCain to gain the nomination as Romney, Huckabee, and Thompson cancelled each other out.  If the Christian right can unite before the Republican Convention they will still be a formidable force in the 2008 general election.

     It is no wonder Democratic candidates are talking more about faith this year.  Both of the Democratic front runners have paid consultants who are helping them to couch their liberal policies in religious language.  Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners is successfully driving a wedge in the evangelical community by helping to elevate poverty over abortion and the environment over homosexual marriage. In his book Onward Christian Soldiers, Deal Hudson, former Chairman of Catholic Outreach at the Republican National Committee says that left leaning evangelicals, “want to convince religious voters that their broader social program is as spiritually and morally equivalent in importance as the fight against abortion and related life issues such as fetal stem-cell research.”  Hudson calls this the “equivalence argument “which left leaning Catholics have long used to explain how they can be both Catholic and pro-abortion.  The strategy is to “create a large number of positions on a range of issues from health care to poverty and global warming, and assign each a single point.”  Using this system, prior to the presidential election of 2004 John Kerry was declared to be “the most Catholic Senator” in the Senate.

 
     There is no doubt the political playing field has changed since 2004.  Left leaning evangelicals are determined to counter the influence of conservative evangelical voters who, according to exit polls, contributed greatly to President Bush’s re-election.  All they have to do is siphon off between five and ten percent of these voters and a close election will see the country move to the left.  If the general election were held today I would have to say this strategy would succeed.  However, it’s a long way to November.  Once the democratic primary finally grinds to its inevitable conclusion, conservative evangelicals will begin to focus on what the democrat nominee really believes.  That focus may bring clarity to Christian conservatives and ignite the flame of resolve that will lead to the re-energizing of their involvement in the public arena.  
    

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