By Viola Larson
It’s helpful when LGBTQ organizations admit where they are really headed in their advocacy, as More Light Presbyterians has done with their recent article, “In-Laws and Out-Laws.” The article is written by Donna Riley who is an author for MLP. She is also bi-sexual, a Presbyterian deacon and a teacher of engineering at Smith College. She is advocating not only for same sex marriage but also for non-marriage relationships. As she puts it:How do we fight for the freedom to marry and yet ensure that it remains a true freedom — freedom to marry balanced equally with the freedom not to marry? How can we as a movement resist heteronormativity within and without marriage, and build new ways of being in relationship?
Obviously Riley is not talking about relationships as in dating but as in fornication which is sex outside of marriage such as in Hebrews 13:4. And it makes sense. Those who see one kind of sexual sin as acceptable will certainly see another in the same way. And it surely leaves those who accept the biblical view of marriage being only between a man and a woman standing in a lonely place. But history and culture has left the church standing in lonely places many times.Riley is advocating for singles in relationship to have the same rights as married couples including parental and citizenship rights as well as health care. She is actually asking for a total breakdown of society. We are all aware of those women whose parent had multiple live-in boy friends who molested them as children. Parental rights in such cases would be a travesty. And who is to sort out all of the problems?But what is important when reacting to Riley’s article is to have a clear understanding that within the Church marriage is to be honored. Again see Hebrews 13:4. This honoring of marriage does not degrade the position of single persons at all but it does insist that marriage is a special calling, a special position that entails a difference between single life and married life.
