When will more black pastors start putting time and energy into helping bring and keep families together instead of trying to keep gay folks apart?
Last week, the Florida Baptist Witness published a story online about a group of 40 black pastors gathering at a Tampa church to announce their support of Amendment 2, the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment that seeks to “protect traditional marriage” by prohibiting marriage between same sex couples.
“America is in moral freefall,” the story quotes Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., founder and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, as saying, “This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue in which we are believing that Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, rich and poor should come together.”
“Our job as clergymen is to speak out against the moral ills of our day and we’re saying marriage is right and we want people to vote ‘yes’ on Amendment 2,” Jackson said.
How exactly is keeping gay folks from getting married protecting “traditional marriage?”
Two-thirds of traditional marriages end in divorce. and that’s first marriages. The stats are even higher for second and third trips down the aisles. These are all supposedly heterosexual couplings. And among these divorcees are many Christians. Even members of the clergy.
How about clerics banding together to announce they will not perform weddings for couples who have not had extensive marriage counseling? Since so many people get married in churches - and all that’s required for this life altering and supposedly life long commitment is a blood test - this would seem like a good place to begin “protecting traditional marriage.”
Perhaps, those clerics who are trained only in theology, how to deliver a good sermon and manage a church, could become properly trained to provide pre-marital and post-marital counseling themselves.
Keeping homosexuals from legalizing their already existing relationships does nothing for their so-called cause of protecting marriage. Being proactive instead of reactive just might.
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