Civil rights are again in the news. A month after Charlotte, North Carolina passed an LGBT anti-discrimination measure, the state general assembly convened a special session for the first time in 35 years just to pass a law that blocks such measures. That LGBT rights continue to be debated provides an opportunity to revisit a prediction about the frightful consequences of same-sex marriage.
The prediction
Conservatives claimed that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope. Once we legalize this change, what will come next? Will people demand to marry their children or pets or sex toys?
Many traditionalists back in the sixties had their own version of this: “Once black folks can marry white folks, who knows what’ll come next?”
The sky didn’t fall after Loving v. Virginia eliminated laws against mixed-race marriage in 1967, and it didn’t when the Netherlands became the first country to grant same-sex marriages in 2001 or when Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize them in 2004.
And despite what conservatives said a year ago, the sky didn’t fall when the United States legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 with the Obergefell decision.
Don’t open that Pandora’s Box labeled “same-sex marriage”!
It hasn’t been quite a year since Obergefell, but it’s easy to forget the hysteria that surrounded it. For example, fellow Patheos blogger Dwight Longenecker didn’t wonder what would come after same-sex marriage. He knew: the U.S. would become a police state.
Hold your arms out for balance, and let’s step through the prediction made two years before Obergefell. First, he points to an article titled “Legalize Polygamy!” Written by a woman, it argues that a pro-woman attitude should allow women the freedom to enter into polygamous marriages. She argues that marriage is plastic—that it can be molded to take on new shapes.
America has dramatically rejected many of the marriage customs decreed in the Bible, so, yeah, marriage is plastic. But have you considered the consequences? Longenecker has.

Marriage is only plastic … because everything else is too. In other words, there is no such thing as Truth.

This big-T Truth presumably means objective or absolute truth. And here again I agree with Longenecker’s antagonist—I see no evidence for objective truth in issues that affect society such as morality or the definition of marriage. But Longenecker wails and rends his garments:

For the Catholic everything is connected. If marriage is plastic … then everything is plastic … Everything is up for grabs, there is no certainty and if no certainty, then no security.

Changing the definition of marriage pulls the thread that unravels the entire fabric of your reality? I guess it sucks to be you then, since we’ve already resoundingly rejected many of the Bible’s conceptions of the male/female relationship.
The Bible’s nutty interpretation of marriage

• “Do not intermarry with [those in the Canaanite tribes]” (Deut. 7:3).
• King Solomon famously had 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).
• A raped woman must marry her rapist (Deut. 22:28–9).
• “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Num. 31:17–18)
• God said to David, “I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” (2 Sam. 12:8). God has his complaints about David, but polygamy isn’t one of them.
• Paul said, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry” (1 Cor. 7:8–9). Marriage is clearly the second best option. Celibacy is what we should actually strive for.
• Paul also rejects divorce (1 Cor. 7:10–11).

The Bible isn’t much of a marriage manual.
The sky is falling!
Longenecker again:

In a society where anything goes everything goes…downhill fast. Where moral disintegration exists societal disintegration soon follows. Everything starts to come apart at the seams. Societal chaos threatens.

I missed how we conclude “anything goes” from expanding one institution of society to include a disenfranchised minority.

When there is no certainty in a society–no moral absolutes and no reason and no rules …

As for no moral absolutes … well, yeah. Why? Do you have any evidence of moral absolutes besides some vague feeling? And here again, the only one who imagines no reason and no rules is Longenecker himself.
And now the punch line:

When there is no certainty in a society–no moral absolutes and no reason and no rules, then something must be done. People demand security. As disorder and chaos increase people demand order and control.

But, of course, this dystopia that’s around the corner won’t seek out Longenecker’s Yahweh, darn it. This obvious answer will be right in front of us, but our fallen race will appeal to government, and the government’s way to provide order and control is a police state.

Thus the ultimate irony that those who wanted a society “completely free” from absolutes where everything was plastic will end up with a police state where nothing is plastic and the total control is drastic.

This breathless argument distills down to this:

1. A same-sex marriage proponent is now advocating that polygamy be legalized. See? Didn’t I say this would happen?!
2. (Here is where the argument teleports to Crazy Town.) A flexible definition of marriage means that everything is flexible. Absolutes of any kind and even truth itself are no more. Anything goes.
3. Moral disintegration and social chaos follow.
4. The public clamors for order, and government responds with a police state.

I’ve scanned Father Longenecker’s blog for posts about marriage since Obergefell. I count four of them, none of which revisits his bold prediction. And now I feel a prediction coming on: I predict we won’t see a retraction, just a closing of the ranks and an adoption of a not-so-bad reality.
The slippery slope argument is popular, but I reject it. The definition of marriage does change; that’s a simple fact of history. Instead of focusing on that, focus on the test that doesn’t change: does it cause harm?
Does polygamy cause harm? Does same-sex marriage cause harm? These are the questions to ask. As we near the anniversary of Obergefell, the answer so far is that it doesn’t.

The very being or legal existence of the woman
is suspended during the marriage,
or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband;
under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.
— Sir William Blackstone, 1765

Photo credit: Wikimedia
 

Christians often point to chapter 15 in 1 Corinthians as important evidence for the resurrection. This book, Paul’s first epistle (letter) to the church in Corinth, was written roughly a decade before the earliest gospel of Mark (written in c. 70 CE). This makes it the earliest claim for the resurrection of Jesus.
Let’s see if the story holds up. Here’s the section that many Christians point to:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to [Peter], and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have [died]. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1 Corinthians 15:3–8)

Claims about the dating of this important passage are all over the map. Some argue that it actually precedes Paul’s writing. They say that it appears to be in a different style, as if it were a creedal statement (like the modern Apostle’s Creed) that would have been recited by believers. That is, though Paul wrote this epistle 25 years after the crucifixion, it had been an oral creed since as early as a few years after Jesus’ death. They cite this as evidence that belief in the resurrection was years earlier than Paul’s writing.
But if it’s a creed, it’s not evidence. A creed is a faith statement—a statement of what people believe. It even sounds like one. There is no mention of time or location, like a police report or newspaper article would have, and “Christ died for our sins” isn’t an observation, it’s a faith statement.
Others propose a very different interpretation: that the different style suggests that it was added to copies decades after Paul wrote the original. The gap from the creation of this epistle to our oldest copy of it is about 150 years. That’s a lot of opportunity for hanky-panky as scribes copied and recopied the letter, especially during the early turbulent years of the new religion of Christianity. We can’t know for certain what the original said.
Let’s sift through some particulars from this book that undercut the view that this passage is an important bit of Christian evidence.

• Jesus was “raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” This is a reference to Jonah 1:17 (“Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights”), but how can the resurrection of Jesus be “according to” this scripture? That verse in Jonah is hardly a prophecy. And Jesus wasn’t dead for three days and three nights; he was out of action for a day and a half, from Friday evening to Sunday morning.
• Jesus appeared “to the Twelve”? But they were the Eleven after Judas was gone, and his replacement was elected after the ascension of Jesus.
• The gospels make clear that women were the first to see the risen Jesus. Why are they not on the list?
• “Christ died for our sins”? Here, the sacrifice of Jesus parallels the Old Testament animal sacrifices. But later in this chapter, Paul discards this by saying, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (15:17). So he’s apparently changed his mind, and now it’s the resurrection that is the saving act.
• Paul says, “and last of all he appeared to me also.” But the appearance to Paul as recorded in Acts 9:3–9 was a visionary sighting, and his companions at the time saw nothing. The same Greek word optanomai is used for each of the appearances: to Peter, the Twelve, the 500, James, the apostles, and then Paul. If the post-resurrection appearance to Paul was a vision, is that true of the others? If so, that contradicts the gospels.
• Later in the epistle, Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (15:22). This is nice symmetry—we didn’t do anything to get tarred with the brush of Adam’s sin, and we don’t need to do anything to get the redemption of Christ. He’s even clearer in another book: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Christians who celebrate Paul as an important and reliable source need to realize what comes along: Paul argues that all of us are going to the same afterlife.
• Paul says, “the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (15:28). This subordinate position for Jesus isn’t too surprising since our concept of a Trinity of co-equal persons was developed in the fourth century, but it does show that Paul would be shocked at how Christianity has evolved.
• Paul says, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable … it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (15:42–4). This makes clear that the resurrected Jesus was spirit, not flesh. This sounds a lot like docetism, a heresy that was rejected in the First Council of Nicaea. It also contradicts Luke’s physical post-resurrection Jesus: “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).
• We’re told that Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time.” But later, after Jesus rose into heaven, the believers were “a group numbering about a hundred and twenty” (Acts. 1:15). The 500 can’t have been too impressed with what they saw if they weren’t all believers. And if Paul’s claim is such compelling evidence, why didn’t any of the gospels include it? (More on the claim of 500 eyewitnesses here.)

Though an important bit of history, this chapter may not be as compelling as believers think.

The book [of Mormon] is a curiosity to me. 
It is such a pretentious affair and yet so slow, so sleepy, 
such an insipid mess of inspiration. 
It is chloroform in print.
— Mark Twain

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/8/13.)
Acknowledgements: I’ve gotten some of these points from The Atheist’s Bible Companion to the New Testament by Mike Davis and Nailed by David Fitzgerald.
Photo credit: Codex Sinaiticus project