As promised in an earlier post, here is a piece written by Rev. Davidson outlining his reasons for voting NO on the so-called Marriage Amendment, which will be on the ballot as issue #1 next Tuesday.
While the Marriage Amendment finds supporters and detractors, both with solid arguments and justifiable conclusions, the core of this impending Amendment is fallible. It is fallible simply because the government is in no position to impose and sanction a level of morality upon the people of this Commonwealth.Who amongst us has been found so flawless and righteous that we can put ourselves in the seat of the scornful and determine what morality should look like. As a member of the clergy, I am offended that I am not trusted to make spiritual decisions about who should and should not be married…I must be told overtly what marriage means. It becomes clear that this level of government entanglement could potentially lead us down a slippery slope towards additional Amendments that allow the government to exercise its authority in matters that citizens should be free to make decisions about. If one follows the same Bible that I do, as a Baptist minister, the God that is understood does not force anyone to even follow HIM, but suggests that He is a knocker, who is waiting to be let in. Even He allows us to exercise free will, but in doing so, expresses unconditional love for us.
Furthermore, Jesus articulated, just before His Ascension, “ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” (Acts 1:8b) The directionality of His discourse is just as important as what He said. His purpose was to inform His disciples and us, that our first witness, our first experience of changing the conditions under which we live, is to take care of home. We have not cleaned up our own houses, at this point, and until we do, we, nor the government, is in position to clean up anyone else’s house. Jerusalem was the home of many of the disciples, so He was telling them that before you transition outside of your own home, you must make sure that I am firmly planted and rooted in your home and then you can spread to your community/neighborhood, and then to places where hope is lost, but the first place that we must correct is our individual houses. We are not yet in position to dictate what others should do in their house, because ours are so filled with filth and inconsistency!
While I do not support, nor would I participate, in the marriage between two individuals of the same-sex, I do not want the government to dictate to me that this is what I should believe.In addition, this proposed Amendment is redundant; as it is already illegal for Commonwealth citizens to marry individuals of the same sex…what is it that is trying to be hidden? Half of current heterosexual marriages are ending in divorce, will there be an Amendment condemning the practice of divorce as well? In this Commonwealth, we have children who have no homes, we have seniors and others who cannot afford medicine and health care, we have overcrowded prisons, we have social programs being under-funded and un-funded, we have transportation concerns, un-funded educational mandates, underpaid police officers, firefighters, and educators, inferior technology in various corners of the Commonwealth, unequal access to a myriad of programs designed to promote equity, rising costs of a College education (the list could continue)…but we focus our attention on defining something that has already been defined…defining marriage should be the least of our concerns, we need to define how we are going to address the real issues, and we will then find ourselves on the path to success.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his speech, “I See the Promised Land” talked about how he received a letter from a young lady who concluded by saying that she was happy that he didn’t sneeze after he was stabbed near his heart because if he had sneezed, he likely would have died due to the proximity of the stab to the main arteries of his heart. He then went on to discuss all of the things that he would have missed “If He had sneezed.” He said “If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy, which were, dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.”
We must not sneeze in our handling of this Marriage Amendment, because if we sneeze, we will give the government a level of authority that it should not have! If we sneeze, we will be focusing on peripheral, and not real issues! If we sneeze, we will be allowing the government, not the church, to impose its morality on the citizenry! If we sneeze, we will redefine what has already been defined! If we sneeze, seniors, and others like them still won’t be able to afford health care and prescription medication! If we sneeze, the working poor will still struggle to make ends meet! If we sneeze, some children still will be without sufficient food and supplies! If we sneeze, transportation will still be of great concern!If we sneeze, college tuition costs will continue to rise! If we sneeze, our civil servants (teachers, fire-fighters, and police officers) will still be underpaid!
This issue is neither Republican nor Democrat…please don’t sneeze on November 7, 2006!
Todd C. Davidson, Senior Pastor
Piney Grove Baptist Church
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Vivian– At your prodding, I am responding to this article.
The Rev. Davidson’s first assertion, “the government is in no position to impose and sanction a level of morality upon the people,” is patently false. Animal sacrific is not allowed. Utah was not allowed into the Union until it made polygamy illegal. Prostitution is illegal in Virgina. A man’s will is required to provide for his wife and children, even though the Bible says that only males inherit, and the firstborn son gets a double portion. (The orthodox get around this via life insurance policies.) The government repeatedly imposes its morality on us.
Second, this amendment says nothing about what a church and its pastor may or may not due, only what the state will recognize. The problem he notes is with existing state law, § 20-28: “If any person knowingly perform the ceremony of marriage without lawful license, or officiate in celebrating the rites of marriage without being authorized by law to do so, he shall be confined in jail not exceeding one year, and fined not exceeding $500.” I fully support the repeal of this law, and I think it violates the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In his third paragraph, the reverend mentions many of the problems facing our state and nation, and says we should not be spending time on this issue. Another poster decried the fact that it went though the legislature so quickly. I guess you can’t please everyone.
The Martin Luther King, Jr., speach is nice, but not particularly on point. He mentions all of the things he would have missed had he sneezed. Then the Rev. Davidson follows that nice paragraph with all litany of things that the passage or defeat of this amendment will not affect in the least.
(I do think he mispoke there in the last paragraph, too: “…we will be allowing the government, not the church, to impose its morality on the citizenry.” I’m sure he did not mean he wants the church to impose its morality on us.)
BTW, I did not previously post a rebuttal here, because I have tremendous respect for men of the cloth, and did not wish to appear in any way to be showing disrespect to such a man.