Honouring same-sex ‘marriage’?

22 July 2003

The Canadian government intends to redefine marriage to allow same-sex unions, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announced after a cabinet meeting last month.¹  Legislation to legally recognize same-sex ‘marriages’ is expected to be ready very soon.  If the federal legislation passes, Canada would join Belgium and the Netherlands as the only countries to allow such unions.

After Chrétien pledged to make gay and lesbian ‘marriage’ legal throughout the country, the Province of British Columbia on 8 July joined Ontario in legalizing same-sex ‘marriage.’  This BC decision came from a Court of Appeal, which ruled that gays and lesbians have a right to be married.  The three judges ordered that the definition of marriage be redefined, declaring it to be a union between any two individuals regardless of gender.²

Chrétien’s proposed legislation will be referred first to the Supreme Court of Canada and then will be put to a vote in the legislative body, the House of Commons.

Naturally, Bible-believing Christians throughout Canada are shocked by the possibility of such legalization.  One AiG supporter, Joan Goosen, has written a commentary on the social turmoil now facing Canada.  She is one of the key members of a local committee that is organizing a major AiG conference (with Ken Ham speaking) in Abbotsford, British Columbia this fall.

Joan told AiG that her interest in creation outreach came out of recent experiences she faced when re-entering a public university.  Joan indicated to us that ‘in every single course and in almost every single textbook, it’s just assumed that we evolved.’  She added, ‘That worldview is so prevalent in our culture, and consequently, absolutes cease to exist.  Without a Creator, there is no right or wrong.’

At the same time, Joan believes that ‘creation evangelism can be an effective tool to address the moral chaos so evident in Canada and to present the message of the gospel.’

As she reveals in her guest commentary, below, there is a ‘Genesis connection’ to this Canadian controversy over what constitutes a marriage.

A commentary by Joan Goosen, British Columbia, Canada

Why should marriage be only between a man and a woman, and how come that definition is being challenged?  According to Vancouver Sun (BC) columnist Barbara Yaffe, ‘[m]arriage is a convention entirely dreamed up by human beings.  It can be whatever human beings decide it will be.’  Really, and since when? 

Only after marriage’s origin has been clarified, can marriage be rightly defined and the current challenge understood.

The meaning of marriage, like anything else, is directly tied to its origin.  If God created a literal Adam and Eve at a literal point in history as Genesis records, then marriage was the Creator’s idea, not ours.  Quoting Genesis directly, Jesus taught in Matthew 19:4-6 that not only did the Creator in the beginning make them male and female, He also instituted their union—becoming one in marriage.

Echoing the sentiment of many today, columnist Yaffe, when asked why Parliament should preserve a form of religious discrimination in secular law regarding the definition of marriage, said this: ‘Those opposed assert that marriage is a historic and holy institution sanctified by God.  But whose God?  And whose definition of holy?’  So how did we get from a culture that used to recognize the Creator and His laws, which included the definition of marriage, to one of rejection?

Our culture was formerly based on creation—belief that a Creator made life and, consequently, had the right to define right and wrong.  But that’s no longer true.  Why not?  From the moment they start school, to the time they graduate from university, today’s youth are taught that they have evolved from some nondescript form of primordial slime billions of years ago.  They are further taught about millions of years of death and struggle, and about a history of the world which is in direct opposition to that given in the Bible.

At its heart, evolution implies that there is no God, or that any ‘god’ is certainly far removed from the God of the Bible.  Evolutionist Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker put it this way:  ‘Evolution made it possible to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist.’  Consequently, by removing the Creator from society’s consciousness, truth ceases to be objective and becomes subjective.  Humans—you, me, everyone else—can decide truth for him or herself.  Sound familiar?

Genesis creation is not a side issue—it’s the foundation of our Christian faith.  The Apostle Paul tells us that creation speaks of a Creator; evolution tells us life evolved by chance.  These opposing foundational beliefs of origins will directly or indirectly influence every aspect of society’s thinking and behaving.  It’s time for the church to wake up to this fact and expose the false ‘science’ of evolution, for until we do, every Christian doctrine will be challenged, including marriage and its definition.

Rather than a human institution, subject to fickle interpretation, the Divine origin of marriage necessitates that we define it as the Creator did—the union of one man and one woman.

Pray for this vital, growing AiG ministry as it attempts to reclaim the culture and restore a faith in the accuracy and authority of the Bible from its very first verse.

References and notes

1. The Federal Cabinet made the decision not to appeal superior court decisions made at the provincial level that say that excluding same-sex marriages violates equality rights. Return to text.
2. Currently, provincial governments are responsible for overseeing the procedural requirements for a marriage ceremony and for issuing licenses; the federal government is responsible for defining what constitutes a marriage. In the Province of Ontario, same-sex ‘marriages’ are already taking place as couples are taking advantage of a ruling by a court of appeal that provided a new definition of marriage as a ‘voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others.’ Return to text.

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