TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE VERSUS THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TRUTH OR DARE

By James Wilson

If a single event galvanized the movement toward recognizing homosexual marriage it must be the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998.  Shepard encountered two men in a Laramie, Wyoming, bar and left with them.  They later pistol whipped, tortured, and lashed him to a fence.  Death came six days later in a hospital; his murderers serve consecutive life sentences.  His case is the catalyst for anti-hate laws protecting gays; it is the spiritual catalyst for re-defining marriage.  The narrative is that Shepard was killed by heterosexual rednecks venting homophobic rage; it says we must guarantee it never happens again.  Films, theatrical and book projects have told the story – the most famous being The Laramie Project.  Trouble is, the narrative is a lie.

The torture and murder of this 21-year-old man was as brutal and criminal as it is portrayed to be.  But Aaron McKinney – principal killer – was Shepard’s sometime lover. His motive for the crime was to steal some ten thousand dollars worth of meth-amphetamine from Shepard.  McKinney has admitted in interviews that he fabricated his anti-gay rage defense; he has also admitted the drug theft was his motivation.  Although some law enforcement people deny Shepard was a drug dealer police investigator Ben Fritzen declares drugs and money were the motivation for the attack.  As horrible as was this crime, it had nothing whatever to do with Shepard’s sexual orientation, his being a sometime male prostitute, or any sort of intolerance. 

Yet judge after judge – in defiance of law and constitution – and now some state legislatures – decide for “tolerance” and “marital equality” in an effort to prevent a repetition of what never happened in the first place.

Principal battlegrounds right now are federal courts of Australia and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the US.

Some argue the facts don’t matter.  Tolerance and acceptance – they say – is a good in itself and we should continue our national march in this direction regardless of its sources.  (Never mind the legalized bigotry practiced against business people who wish to operate their businesses in accordance with traditional and even Biblical values.  This list lengthens on a daily basis.)  But this logic presupposes the kind of tolerance/acceptance expressed in authorizing gay marriage is good for all concerned.  Reality is it is bad for all concerned.

In every nation hosting gay marriage long enough for studies to be conducted the gay marriages are documented to be inherently unstable and short-lived – with noteworthy exceptions.  Homosexual fidelity is (usually) found to mean returning to the relationship after adultery; authentic monogamy is rare.  Domestic violence occurs at much higher rates than in the heterosexual community.  Worst – in my view, but difficult to document, — is the reality that gays imagine they will find peace in marriage but – when nothing changes – a deeper despair than before.  Their problem is not intolerance.

Heterosexual unions also suffer.  Straight couples become less likely to marry when marriage definitions are neither stable nor reality-based.  Married couples become more likely to divorce.  Children of hetero homes, subjected to a drumbeat of politically correct propaganda, are more likely to become relationally confused and de-stabilized.  This is much more prevalent for children in gay households.  Nobody wins.

Do we want to subject our children to a game of cosmic truth or dare?  Of course not; nobody – gay or straight – wants that.  But given the flight from reality inherent in the debate over marriage – all over the world – and the outright lies most media report as truth while suppressing the facts of such pivotal cases as the Matthew Shepard murder, there is little that reason can accomplish.  This can only lead us – I hope – to contemplate the bankruptcy of our fallen reason against the wisdom of the King of the universe.  He says He perfects His strength in our weakness.  Let us fall on our faces and beg Him to do just that.

The National Day of Repentance is October 3-4 – Yom Kippur.   Repentance is neither more nor less than the re-focus of our attention on God and away from our binding dysfunction.  Today the question of what marriage is – and how committed Christians are to it– is at critical mass in Australia and the United States – and perhaps other nations as well.  Would all who honor God on this day pray for the resurrection of authentic marriage in heaven and earth?  Would we re-commit to practicing it in the grace of the Lord Christ?  That would be a two-pronged act of repentance.

Our God provides a road to abundant life.  Time has come to be walking it to the exclusion of all others.