There doesn’t seem to be a more sensitive issue in the news today than the topic of gay marriage. I tend to sit on the fence with this one. I am morally opposed to gay marriage as I am to homosexual activity. The problem for me is I have a live-and-let-live attitude in life. I don’t think just because I believe something to be morally wrong that it shouldn’t be allowed.

I used to not be all that opposed to gay marriage being recognized by the state, as long as the state did not tell me I had to perform the weddings. I do consider this to be primarily a state issue, but I have to say the aftermath of Proposition 8 in California has got me reconsidering the issue.

I believe very much in the separation of church and state. I would love for everyone to be Christian and believe in the death and resurrection of Christ as the sole source of their salvation. I would also like it if everyone shared the same morality that Jesus espoused and recognized that things like pornography, premarital sex, homosexual activity, gossip, believing in any God other than the triune God, and skipping church on Sunday were wrong.

While the activity is condemned as sinful in the Bible, nowhere is anyone actually condemned for being what we call a homosexual. Plenty of people in Paul’s Corinthian congregation were evidently tempted by the activity. Paul addresses these same people as saints. Paul doesn’t shun them for their sinful temptations, but he does warn against falling prey to and giving into those temptations, the same as he warns those with heterosexual temptations against falling prey to their particular struggles in life. No one is condemned for “being” anything but guilty of sin.

But I hardly think we do anyone any great service by locking them up for those activities. I don’t want to force these ideas on anyone, partly because I don’t think keeping them from these activities is going to save them — only Christ can do that. Secondly, I don’t think making these activities illegal helps or protects anyone. I see a reason for drunk driving laws, and laws against murder including abortion, rape, theft and perjury. These laws protect me and other innocent people, or at least ensure that justice is possible to some degree after the crime has been committed. I don’t see how a law against people skipping church is going to protect me from anyone. And I don’t think a law or proposition that doesn’t permit two men or two women to call themselves married is going to protect me or traditional marriage.

I like traditional marriage as it has been defined — one man and one woman. I also happen to think the current laws governing no-fault divorce have done more to destroy this than anything, though. If we are serious about protecting traditional marriage we would do well to revisit those laws, as I think they are more corrosive to traditional marriage than allowing homosexual couples to visit each other in the hospital.

However, I have been aghast at the backlash many churches and private citizens have been dealt in the wake of Proposition 8. It has not endeared me at all to the gay community or their cause. Windows being broken, and harassing people at their places of work and business for expressing their political opinion and supporting it monetarily is not endearing behavior.

Furthermore, when I hear of churches being sued because they refuse to marry homosexual couples in a state that does allow it I begin to think that my previous understanding of tolerance is misguided. I’m all for tolerance, but tolerance should not mean mandatory acceptance.

Bror Erickson is pastor of the First Lutheran Church in Tooele. He is a graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Ind.