With California’s Proposition 8 overturned and public support for same-sex marriage on the rise, social conservatives appear to be shifting their focus from preventing gay marriage to combating straight divorce. What’s the impetus for this change? And is the right really ready to punt on the issue of same-sex couplings?
•House Not In Order In a guest editorial for the Christian Post, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler contends rising divorce rates hinder the ability of evangelicals to claim moral high ground in the culture wars. The tendency to see divorce as somehow less problematic than gay marriage or abortion represents “an indictment of evangelical failure and a monumental scandal of the evangelical conscience.” The fact that evangelical Protestants divorce at rates proportional to society as a whole “creates a significant credibility crisis when evangelicals then rise to speak in defense of marriage.” If anything, Mohler argues, “divorce harms many more lives than will be touched by homosexual marriage. Children are left without fathers, wives without husbands, and homes are forever broken. Fathers are separated from their children, and marriage is irreparably undermined as divorce becomes routine and accepted.”
