Jesus would approve of same-sex marriage if He were walking the earth today, President Jimmy Carter declared during an interview broadcast recently at HuffingtonPost.com. Not only that, he would also think at least some abortions are okay.
Carter, who made much of his Christian faith during his 1977-81 administration, told HufPo that he thinks the Son of God and Savior “would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else.” He added that “I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else.”
Carter said that “I think everybody should have a right to get married, regardless of their sex. The only thing I would draw a line on — I wouldn’t be in favor of the government being able to force a local church congregation to perform gay marriages if they didn’t want to. But those two partners should be able to go a local courthouse or to a different church and get married.”
And while he conceded that he’s always had “a problem with abortion,” he thinks Jesus would probably be okay with killing a pre-born baby that was conceived during rape or incest, or if the pregnancy somehow endangered the mother. “I have a hard time believing that Jesus would approve abortions unless it was because of rape or incest or if the mother’s life was in danger,” he told the mostly pro-abortion HufPo audience. He also recalled that while he struggled with the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that sanctioned abortion on demand, “my oath of office was to obey the Constitution and the laws of this country as interpreted as the Supreme Court, so I went along with that.”
The 93-year-old former president was interviewed as part of a promotion for his new book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, which includes his thoughts on the role his faith played in his political career.
During the interview, Carter said that his Christian faith has “always been important in my life…. I’m a born-again Christian, so-called, I’m a Baptist. I taught Sunday school the day before yesterday, I’ll be teaching again next Sunday.” He insisted that he had “never run across any really serious conflicts between my political obligations and my religious faith.”
However, at least one prominent Christian leader took issue with that claim. In a Facebook post, evangelist and global humanitarian Franklin Graham said he had to “respectfully disagree” with Carter on homosexuality. “He is absolutely wrong when he said Jesus would approve of gay marriage,” declared Graham. “Jesus didn’t come to promote sin, He came to save us from sin. The Bible is very clear. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.”
Quoting the apostle Paul’s scriptural condemnation of homosexuality (Romans 1:24-27), Graham wrote that God “defines sin in His Word — it’s not up to our opinion, the latest poll, or a popular vote. What is very troubling is that some people may read what President Carter has said and believe it, whether it was this week or from a video three years ago that is now re-circulating. God loves us and gives us the truth in His Word. He warns us of the serious consequences of sin.”
Photo: AP Images
