Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage is to be between one man and one woman.

— The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 25.1

Same-sex marriage is a legal or social union between two people of the same sex recognized as a marriage. Scripture identifies marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman (Gen. 2:24-25) and forbids homosexual sexual relationships (Rom. 1:24-27), so a union between two people of the same sex does not constitute a marriage in the biblical sense, whatever legal recognition it may be given.¹ Affirming this narrower definition is a matter of what marriage actually is, not an unjust denial of benefits to a class of people.¹

Confessional Witness

The 1689 London Baptist Confession states plainly, “Marriage is to be between one man and one woman; neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife, nor for any woman to have more than one husband at the same time.”² It further states that marriage was ordained “for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and the preventing of uncleanness.”³

Biblical Basis

Genesis 2:24-25 establishes marriage as a one-flesh union of a man and a woman; Romans 1:24-27 names homosexual relations among the consequences of a culture’s turning from God. Together these texts give the biblical basis for defining marriage as necessarily heterosexual, so that homosexual unions fail to meet Scripture’s own definition of marriage.¹ Because Scripture also assigns civil government the task of restraining evil and promoting the public good (Rom. 13:1-14; 1 Pet. 2:13-17), and heterosexual, monogamous marriage serves that good by providing the ordinary setting for raising children, a state’s marriage law affirming that definition is itself doing a legitimate part of that work.¹

Historical Development

The Netherlands became the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage, on April 1, 2001; most Western nations followed over the next decade.¹ In the United States, the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges held that the right to marry extends to same-sex couples and required all fifty states to license and recognize same-sex marriages, overriding many state laws, several enacted by voter referendum, that had defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.¹ The case arose from James Obergefell’s suit to be listed as the legal spouse of his partner John Arthur, who had died of ALS, on Arthur’s Ohio death certificate; the couple had married in Maryland because Ohio did not then recognize same-sex marriage.¹

Opposing Views

Advocates for same-sex marriage argue, first, that two people who love each other should be permitted to marry; second, that marriage carries practical, legally protected advantages, from shared insurance to next-of-kin status, that a same-sex couple is unfairly locked out of without it; and third, that neighbor love itself, biblically understood, means leaving a couple free to order their own relationship as they choose.¹ The Obergefell majority itself framed the right to marry as “a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person,” extending to same-sex couples.¹

Objections and Responses

Opposing same-sex marriage is unjust, since it denies a class of people a fundamental right others enjoy. Branch answers that biblical justice does not mean letting people do whatever they choose; its content is set by God, not by a couple’s own preference. On that basis he follows Daniel Heimbach’s argument that affirming marriage’s traditional definition “can be no injustice, because along with the public interest of justifying laws favoring marriage as a social institution comes the public interest in connecting procreational sex with getting fathers and mothers to set aside their separate individual interests long enough to raise their own children.”⁴

If two people love each other, that should be sufficient grounds for their marriage. Branch argues by analogy that the church has never granted mutual love this kind of authority on its own. A husband who claims to have fallen out of love with his wife and in love with another woman gains no legitimate claim to remarry her by that profession; the church names what he has done adultery. Two close relatives who profess love for one another are barred from marrying regardless (Lev. 18:6); the church names that incest. On the same logic, two people of the same sex declaring their love for each other have not thereby shown that a marriage exists between them.¹

Restricting marriage to one man and one woman is an arbitrary line that could just as easily be drawn elsewhere. Branch argues the opposite: once marriage’s definition is no longer anchored to sexual difference, no principled stopping point remains. He cites a 2014 Massachusetts case in which three women claimed to be married to one another after a legal marriage between two of them and a “handfasting” ceremony with the third, and a 2021 account of a polyamorous male “throuple” raising two children, as evidence that abandoning the one-man-one-woman definition does not stop at same-sex couples.¹

Related Doctrines

References

J. Alan Branch, 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), chap. 41, “Are Christians Being Unfair If They Oppose Same-Sex Marriage?” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 25, “Of Marriage,” para. 1. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 25, “Of Marriage,” para. 2. ↩
Daniel Heimbach, quoted in Branch, chap. 41. ↩