When President Obama told the Justice Department in February 2011 to stop defending a key federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, it was widely assumed the department would take a neutral position and sit on the sidelines.

But with little fanfare since that announcement, the Justice Department has actually started filing legal briefs arguing that the law in question — the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — should be overturned because, the department says, it is unconstitutional.

It is a remarkable turn of events for a Justice Department that just 15 months ago was defending the law in court. Many of those same attorneys who were defending it now are urging courts to strike it down.

“Everybody thought they were taking a neutral stance. They did not indicate they were going to actively attack its constitutionality,” Dale Schowengerdt, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, told Baptist Press. ADF, a Christian legal group, has worked to defend the law.

There are legitimate theological arguments on both sides of our political divide, but they are not equally well received. In America, it seems, one man’s moral teacher is another’s Torquemada — the difference is usually determined by party registration — and the returns on overt religiosity are mixed at best. As president, George W. Bush was repeatedly and pejoratively labeled “theocrat” for acknowledging his faith, and even the slightest intimation that his religious belief informed his political vantage point was perceived by the Left as symptomatic of an almost treasonous disrespect for the separation of church and state.

Throughout his political career, Barack Obama, too, has marshaled religious argument and imagery to his cause when politically expedient, but nary a whisper has followed his proclamations — even when his pastor of 20 years was exposed as an unreconstructed bigot. Obama’s appeals to religion and his claim to be “doing the Lord’s work” are cynical and mercurial enough to have pushed Michael Gerson amusingly to quip that, “even when Obama changes his views, Jesus somehow comes around to agreeing with him.” His varying use of Scripture has been nowhere more striking than with his gay-marriage “evolution.” Announcing his changed position on the issue to ABC News in May, Obama confirmed that he and Michelle are

Dan Savage spoke, and the Internet exploded.

He rejected the Bible as “bullshit” in a keynote address to high-school journalists, and then described students who chose to walk away as “pansy-assed.” Since being uploaded to YouTube on April 27, the video of his speech has received over 600,000 views. In describing those who had the courage to take a stand as pansies, Savage flouted his prominent “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign (started in the wake of the suicides of Tyler Clementi and other gay or gay-seeming youth), as well as his less well-known stance against effeminophobia within the gay community. His hypocrisy is painfully evident.

And yet, in the rush to (rightly) condemn, conservative responses have often overlooked the fact that Savage was on to something. In the past year, commentators including Elizabeth Scalia, Melinda Selmys, and Mark Shea have written articles to present the gay community as something other than simply an enemy. Each made clear their adherence to orthodox sexual ethics, but each nonetheless received a venomous response from many of their Christian readers.

On Wednesday (May 9), President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News. He noted that he and the first lady “are both practicing Christians,” and that his faith helped inform his shifting views on marriage equality. “When we think about our faith,” he said, “the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.”

In response, R&P interviewed Mark D. Jordan, a scholar whose interests range from the history of sex and gender to the rhetoric of Christian ethics. His books include The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1997); The Ethics of Sex (2002); Telling Truths in Church: Scandal, Flesh, and Christian Speech (2003); Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers (2006); and most recently Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality (2011). He is the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor at Harvard Divinity School. In the summer of 2012, he will join the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University as a Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities. –T.S.

What was your immediate reaction to Obama’s statements supporting the legalization of same-sex marriage?

MJ: I heard the news in two stages—like a classic double-take. First, I was surprised by the timing and wondered about the political effects. Why now rather than after the election? And if now, why not sooner? Did Biden really slip and force the issue? Then the double-take: No, wait, this is big. This is the President of the United States endorsing same-sex marriage only nine years after the Supreme Court struck down sodomy statutes. Nine years from criminal penalties to state-recognized marriage. Whatever happens next, that’s worth putting the tactical commentary on pause.

Jake Flannigan filmed every in-state basketball game played by Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy during the 2011–12 season. He saw Simeon’s star forward, Jabari Parker, score 40 points one day and block 12 shots another. But his lasting impression of Jabari was formed when the camera was off. After a home game in which Jabari barely missed a triple double, Flannigan, a producer at Comcast SportsNet Chicago, waited outside the locker room for an interview. Jabari never appeared. He had used another exit to return to the court for the jayvee game and was behind the bench passing out water.

“The other varsity players were out in the hallway, talking to girls by the snack stand,” says Flannigan. “The best player in the city was being the water boy for the jayvee. It’s hard to root against a kid like that. He’s on top of the world, but he’s incredibly humble.”

Humble isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind when describing a star athlete, but it’s the one most often used by people who have been around Jabari: the high school janitor, the hall monitors, the cheerleaders, even hard-bitten sports reporters and Chicago’s famously combative mayor. What makes this all the more surprising is that Jabari, 17, is not just the best high school player in the state. He’s the best high school player since LeBron James.

Last season the 6’9″, 220-pound junior led Simeon to a 33–1 record and a third straight Class 4A state championship. In April he was chosen the Gatorade National Player of the Year, becoming only the fourth nonsenior to win the award (after James, Greg Oden and Brandon Knight). Three months earlier USA Basketball had named Jabari its male athlete of the year for 2011, succeeding 2010 winner Kevin Durant, an NBA All-Star. Jabari got that nod after leading the U.S. to the gold medal and being named MVP of the FIBA Americas U16 championship in Cancún, Mexico, last summer.

“We don’t do God,” his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, insisted while he was Prime Minister. But since leaving office, Tony Blair has converted to Roman Catholicism, launched a faith foundation and yesterday gave his strongest endorsement of the church yet.

Speaking at a conference in London organised by the Holy Trinity Brompton Church, Mr Blair warned that a world without faith would be on a path towards “tragedy and disaster”. He explained how his “journey of faith” began in choir school in County Durham at the age of 10 after his father Leo, a “convinced atheist”, had suffered a serious stroke.

“The headmaster of the school called me into his study and he said ‘I think we should kneel and say a prayer for your father’,” said Mr Blair. “I said to him, ‘I should tell you my father does not really believe in God’. I will never forget what he said to me – he just said to me ‘but God believes in him, so let us kneel and pray’. That made a big impact on me.”

Mr Blair has repeatedly come under criticism for his personal beliefs which were a continual source of anguish during his time in office. Reflecting on it last year, he said he was “too sensitive or too cautious”, arriving at the conclusion that “if I started talking about religion, it was going to be difficult”.

A judge in the latest ACLU-generated Ten Commandments display case has suggested that the targeted high school cull out four commandments that refer to God in order to avoid a full-blown lawsuit. As reported by the Associated Press, the ACLU of Virginia has filed a complaint against the Narrows, Virginia, high school on behalf of an unnamed student who claimed the display, which is part of a larger exhibit of historically significant documents, makes him feel like an outsider because he is an atheist.

The ACLU is arguing that the display violates the First Amendment’s supposed separation clause, while the Giles County School Board, represented by the conservative legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel, insists that the Ten Commandments represent a crucial part of America’s historic foundation, and should be included with the other documents and illustrations in the display.

“Filing this lawsuit has not been easy, and I would not have done it if I were not genuinely disturbed by the Ten Commandments in the school,” the student in the case, referred to as “Doe 1,” said in a court document filed April 30. “I have had to go against school officials who have influence over my life and future.”

The school board is asking U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski in Roanoke to rule that the Ten Commandments can stay, explaining that a private citizen had paid to put up the exhibit of historic documents and illustrations. The board insisted that the exhibit isn’t intended to be an endorsement of Judeo-Christian faith, but is an effort to show students some of the documents that were important to America’s founding.

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

In the book that documents these findings, titled unChristian, David Kinnaman writes:

“The gay issue has become the ‘big one, the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimensions that most clearly demonstrates the unchristian faith to young people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward gays…has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends.  Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this  is one reason why.

In my experience, all the anecdotal evidence backs up the research.

Not long ago I reread The Pilgrim’s Progress in order to write commentary on it for my book blog. Reading slowly for notes and questions made me wonder if John Bunyan might have eavesdropped on the 21st century somehow, particularly in his description of Vanity Fair.

The thing that struck me most on this reading is that everything at Vanity Fair is for sale: not just property and goods, but intangibles such as honor, pleasure, delight, even religion. People too: husbands, wives, and children. Respectable items are on the market as well as disreputable, but the prices are set by men, not God. And there’s little correlation between price and value.

At the beginning of the “women’s liberation” movement, women claimed that the work of homemaking and child rearing should be paid in order to be considered valuable. But the reason there’s no salary for homemaking is because it’s invaluable—as we see now from decades of trying to get by with broken homes and outsourced child care. When a young woman at our church walked out on her family a few years ago, it took at least 10 of us, pitching in as we could, to make up (inadequately) for one wife and mother whose worth was far above rubies.

Dozens of faculty and staff at a Georgian Christian academic institute are resigning over a statement from school officials in which employees must pledge to refrain from activities including drug use, alcohol, adultery, and homosexuality.

Known as the “personal lifestyle statement,” around 50 members of the faculty and staff at Shorter University based in Rome, Ga., have chosen to resign rather than renew their contracts at the private school.

Dr. J. Robert White, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, which Shorter is a part of, told The Christian Post that the “lifestyle statement” is consistent with the convention’s position.

“We have not taken a specific position related to the ‘lifestyle statement,’” said White, “but the history of our convention, which goes back to 1822, has approved many resolutions regarding homosexuality as a sin and alcohol use as ill-advised.”

Despite the outcry from some faculty and staff regarding the statement, White did not believe the measure would be overturned.