Evangelical: We're Losing Fight Against Gay Marriage
A pro-family organization has admitted this week that it is losing the battle on same-sex marriage, particularly among young people.
In an interview with World Magazine, Focus on the Family Chief Executive and President Jim Daly said that people in their 20s and 30s were especially likely to support same-sex marriage.
Daly was asked by the magazine how evangelicals were doing in their efforts to support traditional marriage, in comparison to the success they have had advocating against abortion.
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He answered: “We’re losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don’t know if that’s going to change with a little more age – demographers would say probably not.
“We’ve probably lost that. I don’t want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.”
A Gallup poll released last week found that for the first time, a majority of Americans (53 percent) think same-sex marriage should be recognized by law as valid. Forty-five percent are against it. Gallup had tracked the issue since 1996 and every year until this year, more Americans were on the opposing side of legalizing gay marriage.
A recent poll by the Human Rights Campaign also found that the majority of Christians (68 percent) support protection for the LGBT community from discrimination and a slim majority (52 percent) oppose the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars same-sex marriage on a federal level and gives states the right not to recognize unions performed in other states.
Daly suggested that the church use the emerging trend as an opportunity to gets its own house in order.
“We’ve got to look at what God is doing in all of this,” he said.
“Have we done such a poor job with marriage, is He so upset with our mishandling of it in the Christian community, along with our lust of the flesh as a nation, that he is handing us over to this polygamy and same-sex situation in order to perhaps, drive the Christian community, the remnant, into saying ‘OK, there’s no no-fault divorce in our church?'”
Daly said he had met one gay activist who asked him why Christians were so upset with homosexuals for having a try at marriage when they themselves had not done so well with it.
“We’ve got to look at our own house, make sure our marriages are healthy, that we’re being a good witness to the world,” said Daly.
“Then we can continue to work on defending marriage as best as we can.”
