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This father told me that because of that test, 90 percent of Down syndrome children are now aborted. Ninety percent. That's genetic engineering, and that's a culture issue. Just changing laws isn't going to change that culture.

It should be more difficult to get an abortion. It's too easy, and it's even harder in secular western Europe than it is here. How do you make it more difficult, yet not push people back in the back alleys? That's not pro-life. I don't have it all figured out, and I want to seriously work on the question.

But a genuine pro-life agenda will be focused on the throwaway culture. The throwaway culture is why those Down syndrome kids are being thrown away. You can't accept the throwaway culture in every other area like what we do to the environment, our consumption, and the rest, then somehow change on abortion.

Still, for your entire career you've advocated a prophetic voice on social issues. Isn't the prophetic voice usually associated with articulating the bottom line without compromising on pragmatic grounds like cultural opposition or secondary effects? Wilberforce's Slavery Abolition Act created "back alley" slavery that made life much worse for slaves. But Wilberforce didn't see that as an argument against abolition.

I don't think that abortion is the moral equivalent issue to slavery that Wilberforce dealt with. I think that poverty is the new slavery. Poverty and global inequality are the fundamental moral issues of our time. That's my judgment.

People make the mistake of defining prophetic by politically left and right categories, and that the further left or right you are, the more prophetic you are. They're not biblically prophetic; they're politically ideological. I think the prophetic stance right now in the pitched legal stalemate on abortion is abortion reduction. Instead of endless, meaningless debates about the law and constitutional amendments, let's actually save some unborn lives. People can disagree with my stance, and say the constitutional amendment to ban abortion is the prophetic stance. I don't believe it is.

On the issue of gay marriage, the prophetic stance, I think, is dialogue. It's talking to each other.

But you're calling for more than just dialogue, right? In your book, you say the way to ensure civil rights for gay and lesbian people and equal protection under the law for same-sex couples is "civil unions from the state and even spiritual blessings for gay couples from congregations prepared to offer them."

I believe in equal protection under the law in a democratic, pluralistic society. At Focus on the Family, I had this discussion with James Dobson's policy people, and they basically support equal protection under the law, too. Some would debate whether civil unions are necessary for that, or whether other legal protections are adequate. And that's a fair discussion.

I don't think the sacrament of marriage should be changed. Some people say that Jesus didn't talk about homosexuality, and that's technically true. But marriage is all through the Bible, and it's not gender-neutral.

I have never done a blessing for a same-sex couple. I've never been asked to do one. I'm not sure that I would. I want churches that disagree on this to have a biblical, theological conversation and to live with their differences and not spend 90 percent of their denominational time arguing about this issue when 30,000 children are dying every single day because of poverty and disease.

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May 2008, Vol. 52, No. 5