The Gay Marriage Stance that Divides American Churches

Officially, this is the story of a heroic blunder. The backstory behind Barack Obama’s declaration in favor of gay marriage on May 9 is worthy of an episode of “The West Wing,” the television show showing the backstage of the American presidency. Or rather, it brings to mind “Veep,” a hybrid of the previous show, where the hero is the vice president and her perpetual complex of inferiority. Because it was really with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that it all started. His accidental remark in favor of gay marriage on May 6 was denied by the White House straight away. However, three days later, pressed for a reaction, Barack Obama followed the footsteps of his running mate in an interview with ABC.

Between these two events, almost 72 hours had passed — 72 hours during which, according to the official story, the American president consulted with his teams, his associates, weighed the pros and cons, before solemnly taking a personal position on the matter, which could almost remain anecdotal. But more importantly, the ongoing electoral campaign led the White House to do some calculations. How many votes could be won? How many lost? Speaking out in favor of gay marriage was taking the risk of seeing the back of a proportion of American churches, and notably losing the support of the black ministers who, back in 2008, had campaigned for the election of the Democratic candidate. To take position against it would have meant securing those votes without antagonizing the traditional Democratic electorate, who would in any case not have voted for the Republican candidate.

In the electoral market sprung from the issue of gay marriage, the White House opted for an audacious stance. Symbolically, Barack Obama follows a line of progress. Electorally, he will compensate for the votes lost among the religious with those won among the gay and lesbian community, around four million strong, all the while rallying opinions among his own party. If opinion polls still show a majority of Americans to be opposed to gay marriage, nothing is set in stone. In the United States, where religious freedom is a constitutional element of society, churches and faiths are many and overlapping. And on the topic of gay marriage, they are no longer united — far from it.

Whereas in France the Catholic Church grabbed hold of the American President’s declaration to send a firm and threatening message to François Hollande, a great number of American churches nowadays do support gay marriage. In its May 14 issue, The New York Times argues that, much more than a conflict between religious and secular people, gay marriage is now a battle that pits “church versus church, minister versus minister and Scripture versus Scripture.” In short, even though a majority of religious people remain positioned against same-sex marriage, in the United States the lines are blurring, to the point that it makes the French church look like a reactionary monolithic block. Among the American clergy, there are many who invoke the Bible to justify their disapproval while others, like Lutheran pastor Susan Schneider in Madison, Wisconsin, do not hesitate to distance themselves from a Bible that forbids its followers from eating shellfish and wearing mixed-fiber clothing as much as it does the union between two people of the same sex.

Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Catholic — the multitude of faiths puts churches in competition. Behind the electoral market, there is also a religious market, where the aim is not to win votes, but indeed to swell the ranks of the flock. This does not make these religious people any less commendable and goes well to illustrate the idea that monopolies are much more a vehicle for conservatism than progress, including in religious matters. In this sense, the United States, which invented the anti-trust legislation, remains faithful to its history and way of doing things. While in France, the Civitas institute denounces gay marriage for the last harbinger of a Red and secularist France, the American model reminds us that at the crossroads of religion and society, there still remain a great number of unbeaten paths.