Recently a conservative Republican U.S. Senator publicly announced he
will no longer stand in opposition to same sex marriage. Rob Portman,
Senator from Ohio, held two different Cabinet posts in George W. Bush’s
Administration, served in the House, and was widely mentioned as a
potential 2012 vice presidential pick.

In a column in the Columbus Dispatch, the senator attributed his change
of heart to the fact that, a couple of years ago, his son, then a freshman
at Yale, announced to his parents that “he is gay.” The senator says his
previous opposition to same sex marriage was “rooted” in his “faith
tradition” but that his son’s same sex attractions have caused him to
think through his position “in a much deeper way.” He wants his son
to have a happy and meaningful life relationship just as he and his wife
of 26 years have had and as he hopes his other two children will also
experience.

In order to reconcile his Christian faith with this desire for his son,
Senator Portman writes, “Ultimately it came down to the Bible’s
overarching themes of love and compassion.”

Not to second-guess a U.S. senator, but is affirming someone’s
homosexuality really compassion? Conservative activist and mom,
Andrea Lafferty issued a tongue-in-cheek press release the day Senator
Portman announced his switch. In it, she explains that, because her son
told her he’s a drunk driver and has been driving drunk regularly, she’s
now changing her position against drunk driving. The analogy should
give our lawmakers pause.

The younger Mr. Portman told his parents he knew for awhile he was
attracted to males. But it’s interesting it all came together when he got
to Yale. There, a recent sensitivity training encouraged “understanding”
and “compassion” for students who admitted engaging in prostitution,
bestiality and incest.

Prominent Minnesota preacher John Piper, called Senator Portman’s
column a “sad article.” Minnesota is having its own discussion about

legalizing same sex marriage. Piper is very concerned about a certain
line of thinking in Portman’s decision that is, in his words, “swaying
people in that direction.”

Pastor Piper says Senator Portman errs in inferring that “for his son to
be happy he must be given the right to ‘marry’ (so called) another man.”
He says, in coming to this conclusion, Senator Portman is “elevating
happiness, as he understands it, above biblical guidelines of what makes
you happy.”

Piper says Portman and others are “abstracting the term happiness out
of its biblical context and definition and giving it a meaning that they
want” and then using that as a “warrant to justify a relationship the
Bible proscribes.”

Secondly, Piper says that self-defined biblical themes are being used to
nullify or cancel out, biblical commands. Senator Portman defines love
and compassion his own way, but that way conflicts with warnings in
the Bible against living a life characterized by acting out certain sins,
one of them being homosexual behavior.

This shows neither love nor compassion.