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The Newsweek cover story on "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage" has understandably raised the ire of religious conservatives. As many have pointed out (as did Mollie Hemingway, our new columnist, on the GetReligion website yesterday and today), the so-called case is not much of a case, and at many points, seriously misrepresents the views of those it argues against.

It starts at the beginning:

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does … . The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered.

This is astonishing, for it not only misrepresents religious conservatives, but also Jesus and Paul—all in one fell swoop.

"Have you not read," Jesus once said, "that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matt. 19, ESV).

"Husbands, love your wives," Paul wrote, "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her … husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh' " (Eph. 5).

Where, oh where is this supposed New Testament indifference to marriage? Christ deserves our primary loyalty, yes, but the New Testament never suggests an indifference to other loyalties, to family, to neighbor, to the world.

While we do not expect Newsweek to excel in theological or biblical argument, we do expect that respected magazine to practice good journalism—like presenting the actual arguments of one's opponents, and being fair to the context of quoted sources. Neither of these things happened in Lisa Miller's piece.

But that's not the most amazing thing that happened in the most recent edition of Newsweek. That was revealed in the Editor's Desk column by Jon Meacham, who set up Miller's cover story. Unfortunately for Miller, Meacham inadvertently but essentially concedes that the religious case for traditional marriage may be stronger than he lets on.

The first sign that an argument is nearly over is when the opposition begins by calling you names. Meacham notes that conservative Anglicans have "declared that their opposition to the ordination and the marriage of gays was irrevocably rooted in the Bible—which they regard as the ‘final authority and unchangeable standard for the Christian faith and life.' "

To which Meacham adds, "This conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism."

We wish we could set aside the hyperbole, for surely this type of "fundamentalism" is not worse than the violent kind that practices terrorism. But we suspect that Meacham, an intelligent writer, knows very well that in using that phrase—"the worst kind of fundamentalism"—he is trying to get his readers to emotionally associate biblical fundamentalism with the worst kinds of fundamentalism.

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December (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 53