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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged
In the Big D this week — and I do mean Dallas — the Southern Baptist Convention pushed for a national divorce from same-sex marriage.
That’s one of five major takeaways from the annual meeting of America’s largest Protestant denomination (albeit one with a declining membership number 18 years in a row).
More than 10,000 Baptists — representing 12,722,266 members overall — gathered at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas.
The takeaways:
1. The conservative evangelical denomination wants the 10-year-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent legalizing same-sex marriage overturned.
The Associated Press’ Peter Smith explains the convention’s position:
The wide-ranging resolution doesn’t use the word “ban,” but it left no room for legal same-sex marriage in calling for the “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.” Further, the resolution affirmatively calls “for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one women.”
A reversal of the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision wouldn’t in and of itself amount to a nationwide ban. At the time of that ruling, 36 states had already legalized same-sex marriage, and support remains strong in many areas.
However, if the convention got its wish, not only would Obergefell be overturned, but so would every law and court ruling that affirmed same-sex marriage.
The intensified focus on opposing LGBTQ+ rights represents “a shift from abortion, which was long the fixation of SBC resolutions prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” according to The Tennessean’s Liam Adams.
This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.
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