President Obama’s recent statement about homosexual marriage should not come as a surprise. He needs every help that he can get come November if he is to be re-elected. With thirty states already voting against the idea he is taking a calculated risk that frustration upon the part of the LGBT community and those who support their agenda, will mobilize them to vote for him even when the economy is an issue of far greater importance to us all.

How did we come to the point where we would think that two people of the same sex should have a legal right to the mutual and legally recognized agreement between heterosexual couples that has been a tradition throughout recorded history? There are two things that those of us who are Christian and adhere to a Biblical worldview should be aware of.

Firstly, there is an attack upon absolute truth that has been gaining momentum in a secular and post-Christian society. Where once Biblical truths, that had become part of culture and community with the spread of Christendom, were the accepted norm, this is no longer the case. Every previously held sacred truth is now suspect because it derives its authority from an order that is increasingly challenged by secularism. It is apparent that if an idea gains enough momentum it can reach a point where if the majority embrace it, then it must hold authority, no matter how suspect it was when first proposed. In this way two plus two really can equal five, or any other number that we may want the sum to equal.

The vast majority of our parent’s generation, regardless of their religious practice, would have abhorred the idea of ‘gay’ marriage. After all, “marriage is between a man and a woman!”. But that idea has been eroded by the rise of ideas of equality of opportunity and the constant beating of a civil rights drum. The very same people who yesterday were urging us all to celebrate diversity, are now asking us to create an equal opportunity for all, which undermines the diversity they wanted us to celebrate. Once a gay couple are married, what axe will they have left to grind, what diversity will they have left to celebrate. Today’s college age generation has seen so much of family brokenness and disfuntionality that they have no idea of what kind of family unit is supposed to be the norm and which best expresses God’s highest desire for the basic unit of society.

President Obama stated that he had listened to his daughters over the dinner table as they talked about their school friends. Some are apparently being raised by same-sex couples, and in the President’s words: “it would not dawn on (his daughters) that somehow their friends parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them”. He went on to say that something like that prompts a change of perspective. Yet in the very same interview he stated that he and his wife are practicing Christians.

These comments provoke a number of questions. What kind of Christian parent allows themselves to be influenced by the views that their ten-year-old and thirteen-year-old bring home from school, instead of clearly laying out to their children a Biblical point of view on the subject? If that kind of comment from a school-daughter influences not just the perspective but the decision-making and influencing role of an elected official, how might we expect our elected officials to respond to the views of their children on recreational drugs, under-age sex, and abortion issues, let alone the host of other social and fiscal issues being discussed in the school-room?

But secondly, this incident should serve as a reminder that the historic laxity on the part of the church on addressing issues of human sexual sin, has weakened our authority on the issue of gay marriage. While divorce, co-habitation and other ‘less than God’s highest and best’ practices are left unchallenged that which has been called the serial monogamy of the west has become a societal norm that leaves more conservative societies disdainful of our right to speak on anything with authority. As we look across the denominational spectrum we see our own churches torn apart by the homosexual issue. Sadly where some have chosen to take a stand they have paid the price by being evicted from their houses of worship.

We may derive encouragement from the fact that the majority of states in the United States have voted against the recognition of same-sex marriage, but without a spiritual revolution among tomorrow’s generation of leaders, it would seem inevitable that today’s normative thought will become tomorrow’s exception and the cultural landscape of the nation will be changed forever.