Perhaps most strikingly, 64 percent of self-identified Millennial evangelicals support same-sex marriage. As the literal future of orthodox Christianity, it would be hard to paint their views as at odds with such orthodoxy. Rather, they are a portrait of that future—not of a post-Christian America, but a post-homophobic Christianity. That is the “new normal” that Obergefall does not singularly usher in but merely reflects. The world has changed. Christians and Christianity has changed, too. And again, I say, “Hallelujah!”
Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized? I sure hope so. Just as those orthodox Christians who still believe in strict, traditional gender roles have been increasingly mocked as absurd. Once upon a time, marriage constituted property—the wife was the literal property of the husband, and could not legally let alone culturally own anything of her own. The governing cultural norm was that women should be barefoot, pregnant and subservient.
Those norms were reinforced by religion, but our interpretation of religion, like the Constitution, is obviously influenced by contemporary conditions. We apply the Constitution to Internet regulations, even though the Founding Fathers definitely didn’t foresee such technological evolutions. And we demand our faith traditions stretch and grow as well.
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