In his minority dissent in the 2015 Obergefell decision that legalized so-called gay marriage in all fifty states, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed a level of righteous indignation that unfortunately seems to be fading very rapidly from the public square:

“The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. . . . As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?”¹

The question in the title of this article is circulating again in evangelical communities from a few different quarters. It’s a question many thought was already settled. Should Christians attend a gay marriage ceremony? No, they should not.

Lamentably, many have whiffed it on this question and are now leading sheep astray, saying they can in good conscience attend a gay wedding. But the first chapter of Romans could not be more clear: It is not only those who practice homosexuality who are under God’s wrath and judgment, but also those who “give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). The word that is translated “give approval” in this verse is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as “consent” and can be glossed “to sympathize with.” No matter how you may try to internally justify the meaning of your attendance at a gay wedding, the public meaning is clear: you have consented to it.

A number of biblical responses have already been written that ably defend the orthodox position. But I have yet to see anyone take an ontological angle on this question with the appropriate level of outrage. Evangelicals should not be outdone by Justice Roberts in hating what is evil and holding on to what is good (Rom. 12:9). So I ask with him, Just who do we think we are?

Marriage, even marriage between non-believers, is a divine institution created by God and defined by him in the very beginning. Marriage ceremonies, Christian or not, are irreducibly about reality and nature. Even if they ignore the supernatural — as some have wondered if their attendance makes a difference if the wedding ceremony is explicitly Christian or not — they cannot ignore the natural. And nature could not be more clear about the non-reality of so-called gay marriage. These relationships, as Paul states in Romans 1:26, “contrary to nature,” they are literal contradictions.

Jesus clearly affirmed the binary, complementary logic of marriage defined as one man and one woman in covenant union in Matthew 19, when he brings together Genesis 1 and 2:

“He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”‘?” (Matthew 19:4–5).

Don’t miss Jesus’ biblical-theological reasoning: the onto-logic of what grounds (“Therefore”) a man joining together in a one-flesh union with a woman — what we call marriage — is God having made mankind male and female from the beginning. This is simply what marriage is: it is a male-female covenantal union. It is, necessarily, sexually complementary. If you don’t have sexual complementarity, one male and one female, you simply do not have the required ingredients for a marriage. Two can only become “one-flesh” through the complementary sexual act. Our sexual organs, regardless of our internal feelings, bear witness to this reality. Men are ontologically oriented to women, and women to men. It really is that simple. All other acts may be sexual, but they are not definitionally “sex.” And a marital covenant can only be joined by those who can legitimately uphold this one-flesh union.

Why is this relevant? To return to the question in the title, Can a Christian attend a gay marriage ceremony? I answer, No! They literally cannot, because the ceremony they may decide to attend is not a marriage at all. It is a legal fiction — and a blasphemous, anti-Christ one at that. As Paul teaches in Ephesians 5, marriage was instituted by God to teach the world about Christ’s love for his bride, the church. So-called “gay marriage” was instituted by man to teach the world about man’s love for himself.

So the real question is, why would any Christian want to attend a ceremony that is celebrating something they know is a lie and an affront to their Creator? This question is related to a host of other questions about the Christian’s duty to bear witness to the truth and not lie: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16).

For those who conclude that a Christian can attend such a ceremony, I want to know where the line is. These are no longer hypothetical questions:

Would you attend a wedding ceremony for someone you know is already married to someone else?

Would you attend a wedding ceremony for a throuple?

Would you attend a wedding ceremony for a friend who is “marrying” their cat?

Would you attend a wedding ceremony for a friend who is “marrying” a potted plant?

If you say yes to any of the above, the situation is more dire than I thought. If you say no, then you are inconsistent and should rethink your position on attending a gay wedding.

You may consent to a lie, but that doesn’t make the lie any more real, or true, or good. Instead, all you’ve done is lied to yourself or borne false witness to your neighbor and the world.

Christians cannot attend gay marriage ceremonies, because they do not exist. Christians may, on the other hand, attend gay mirages. Their attendance would just say more about them than the mirage they are leading everyone to conclude really does have water.

1. Obergefell v. Hodges https://perma.cc/FKG4-KZF6 ↩︎