When the U.S. Supreme Court decided to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide last Friday, prominent conservative Christians who oppose marriage equality wasted little time voicing their disapproval, saying it violated their religious convictions.
Louisiana Gov. and GOP candidate Bobby Jindal called the decision “an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians,” adding that “marriage between a man and a woman was established by God, and no earthly court can alter that.” Several conservative religious leaders such as Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention also expressed dismay, as did former Baptist minister and fellow GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who predicted that Christians would begin using civil disobedience to protest the ruling.
“I don’t think a lot of pastors and Christian schools are going to have a choice [but to protest the decision],” Huckabee said. “They’re either going to follow God, what they truly believe, or they will follow civil law.”
Yet even as Huckabee and others invoked God in their opposition to the court’s decision, the move to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide was actually lauded by a multitude spiritual leaders and religious communities across the country. In fact, despite conservative claims to the contrary, people of faith are deeply supportive of LGBT rights in the United States, as recent pollsshow majorities of nearly every major American Christian group now back marriage equality.
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Other progressive mainline Christian leaders also praised the move to grant LGBT people across the country the legal right to marry, like Nadia Bolz-Weber, a popular author and Lutheran pastor serving the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, and Amy Butler, Senior Minister of the historic Riverside Church in the City of New York. They were joined by some evangelical leaders as well, such as Rev. Jim Wallis, President of the Christian social justice group Sojourners.
“Today the Supreme Court affirmed that fairness under the law belongs to everyone. Today we took another step toward living up to our highest ideals,” Wallis said. “It is true, as Justice Kennedy said, that ‘the nature of injustice is that we don’t always see it in our own time.’ But when we do see it, we must act to overcome it.”