As Schaeffer himself describes it, he grew up “evangelical royalty” in the world of his father’s work. However, as he grew older he became more distant from the evangelical movement and later joined the Greek Orthodox church. While Schaeffer is still a Bible-believing Christian, his views on many issues have changed.

Although Schaeffer personally believes that homosexuality is immoral, he argues that his personal views should not be imposed in the public sphere. Because America is a pluralistic democracy where people hold many different religious views, “no one can claim they own America.” Hence, law should not be based on one group’s beliefs, but on what is fair for society. Schaeffer argues that gay marriage should be allowed in the name of fairness for homosexual couples. The law, he says, should not discriminate. However, Schaeffer is also a strong proponent of religious liberty. Religious groups should not be forced to recognize relationships which go against their teachings, just as his own Greek Orthodox church is not required to give Communion to a non-member.

Schaeffer also takes evangelicals to task for their unfair and often hypocritical treatment of homosexuals. According to Schaeffer, evangelicals have singled homosexuality out as a sin worse than other sexual sins such as adultery and divorce. He says this was easy to do because homosexuals are a very small minority, instead of, for example, the 50% of Christian marriages that end in divorce. This, Schaeffer says, is costing evangelicals much of their credibility as a moral voice.

The rest of the panelists presented a variety of views on the topic.

Terri Phoenix, who married her lesbian partner in Massachusetts, argued that opposition to homosexual marriage was based purely on religious grounds and that the Constitution prevents discrimination. She went so far as to argue that all relationships between consenting individuals, including polygamous ones, should be recognized so long as they are consensual, however she agreed that religious groups should not be forced to recognize these relationships. Dr. Cohen argued for gay marriage based on equality. However he also argued that modern social services have eliminated much of the need for marriage as a bedrock of society, saying “do we want a society that relies on pairs of people to care for each other?”, but added that he was unsure if he supported legal polygamy. Dr. Roedder argued that better maternity and paternity leave as well as pre-marriage counseling are better ways to protect marriage than not allowing gay marriage.  Tami Fitzgerald provided a counter-weight to their arguments, strongly opposing gay marriage and arguing against it on both moral and practical grounds. She stated that marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of the family system which has served humanity well for millenia. Therefore, it makes little sense to change a working formula. She countered arguments about discrimination by saying that “every law is about discrimination: and that we have some protected classes such as age, sex and race, but “who you choose to have sex with is not a basis for special rights.”

I had a chance to speak with Frank Schaeffer following the discussion and got to ask him a few questions. First I asked, what about Christians such as William Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe who were driven by their religious views to take part in politics and became forces for good in the world? He replied by saying that they lived in a different day and age, when a higher percentage of the population of their respective countries were Bible-believing Christians, and therefore they were able to be effective through politics whereas such tactics will not work today and are also unfair to the large percentage of American society which does not follow Christianity. I also asked him about how we determine law, since all laws are based on morality. He agreed that all laws are based on morality, but said that the moral code that governs state conduct is different from the morality that governs everyday life. What Christians need, he says, is a shift in method from engagement in politics to engaging people. Rather than forcing change from the top, we should work at changing people’s opinions.

My own take on this debate is somewhat nuanced. I agree with most of what Frank Schaeffer says about evangelical Christianity being too fixated on and hypocritical about homosexuality. And I agree that this has hurt evangelicals. And I definitely agree that Christians should engage the people instead of trying to enforce change from the top. However, I don’t agree with his argument that gay marriage should be legalized because not allowing it is unfair.

The truth about life is that everything is about interest and incentives. Democratic government has an interest in being fair to its citizens, because citizens control the government.

The reason I don’t agree with allowing gay marriage is because the current marriage policies of most US states are not unfairly discriminatory. Unfair discrimination occurs when a group is denied something for no reason other than their identity. No one in the United States is discriminated against when getting a marriage license. Any person, regardless of sexual orientation, can marry any other person so long as that other person is of the opposite sex. Now, some people might not want to marry someone of the opposite sex, but that is not the law’s problem. Some people might complain that this discriminates against them by keeping them from marrying the person they love, but a lot of heterosexuals don’t get to marry the person they love either. The idea that having heterosexual-only marriage is unfairly discriminatory is based on the idea that the love between a homosexual couple creates discrimination in the law, but laws are based on logic, not emotions.

In short, it is not in the state’s interest to upend its current, fair, policy and base new legislation off of emotional attachment. Since the current policies are not discriminatory, there is no need to change them.

With that said, most segments of the church have tragically failed to minister to the homosexual community. We have pursued opposition to gay marriage for the wrong reasons, and have linked the issue to closely to the Christian message in a tragic way. This has resulted in the gay marriage debate becoming a microcosm for battle over a whole host of cultural issues, which leads to two sides which are spectacularly unable to consider other views. Hopefully, more panels like tonight’s excellent discussion will go a long way towards changing this.

In this year of our Lord 2008, UNC dogmatically promotes “intellectual freedom” and is opposed to discrimination on the basis of “religion” or “creed.” Chancellor Thorp has stated his “profound commitment and support of Carolina’s efforts to achieve a diverse and inclusive community.” According to him, “Diversity constitutes a strategic goal of our Academic Plan and a key element of our aspirations for being a great university.”

This the mantra of a university that ended a thirty year tradition of a Christmas tree display in Wilson Library because there was a “diversity of feelings and opinions about it.” In other words the display’s implication no longer fits the university’s creed. But fear not! “The Friends of the Library will continue to provide a seasonal event in Wilson Library on Dec. 11 that will include the telling of winter-themed folktales.” Yes! Now that’s more like it; it’s not offensive, stale, and stupid. Hear ye, hear ye: “All holiday celebrations must involve politically correct bull crap.”

I wonder what the members of the General Assembly who chartered the UNC system would say. After all, their language is a far cry from the neutral, we are a blank slate, fill us in, language of today’s UNC. I’m talking about the General Assembly that offensively commanded, by law, that if “any student shall deny the being of a God, or the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, or shall assert, and endeavor to propagate among the students any principle subversive of the Christian religion, he shall be dismissed.”

What a distance we have come. Today the law should be written as follows: “if any student shall be offended by the female orgasm he/she/whatever shall be dismissed.” After all, if there is, as the university asserts, such a “diversity of feelings and opinions” about a non-descript Christmas tree, and that diversity prompted the end to a thirty year tradition, what, I wonder, is the diversity of feeling about an “I Heart Female Orgasm” event in which you can “learn how to have your first orgasm, or how to have better ones.”

I can see the class reunion of us, the future leaders of America, now: “Remember back in ’09? That certainly was a great female orgasm event; I met my wife there.”

I assume the women’s rights groups who promoted this and other like events on campus care about such problems facing our society such as unwanted pregnancy, fatherless homes, and violence against women. If so, may I suggest the solution to these and other related issues involve not the advertisement of a “FREE Sex Toy Raffle” in the name of “empowering women,” but a return to what the founders of UNC understood; that morality and religion (specifically Christian values) are the foundation for a healthy society. Let UNC Chapel Hill stop its dishonest jargon regarding non-discrimination and say what it means: that it is decidedly anti-religion (for, if it is for all religions, it is for none).

Now, having “killed God,” UNC rots in the rank stupidity of its own purposeless existence. God help us.