By Robert King

robert.king@indystar.com

This is one of two stories exploring the opposing views on a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage.Here's the other side of the story.

When the Rev. Ron Johnson Jr. was still a teen, his parents began opening their home on Sundays to people in the community who were having marital problems, people who were separated or divorced, and even singles giving thought to taking the plunge for the first time.

His father, the younger Johnson recalls, would ask a woman how her week went and she might turn and scowl at her husband and say it was rough because he has anger issues. The elder Johnson would ask the man about his temper and maybe even get a public confession. Then he'd turn to the other men in the group and ask if anyone else was wired with a short fuse. Inevitably, hands would go up. The discussion would go on from there.

"It was Jerry Springer on Holy Spirit steroids," Johnson said.

The signs of success were immediate. What started with a few couples exploded quickly to 80 people streaming into the family home for Sunday marriage counseling sessions that might go on for hours. Thirty years later, the Sunday sessions continue, but at the Living Stones Church in Crown Point, where the younger Johnson is now the pastor.

Marriage — the traditional, heterosexual, lifelong, covenant-with-God kind — is serious business for Johnson. Not just because he has been married for 29 years and has eight children, but because he leads an alliance of pastors pushing for a constitutional amendment that would indelibly define marriage in Indiana as between one man and one woman.

Johnson and others pushing hardest for the amendment are concerned that the time-honored institution is in trouble from those who want to change its definition into something much more abstract. Failure to pass the amendment means an activist judge could strike down Indiana's existing marriage law, they fear.

Here is the Rev. Ron Johnson making the case for traditional marriage.

Opening Pandora's box?

If same-sex marriages were to become legal, they say, the same arguments used in the current debate could be applied to new forms of marriage and sexuality. Already,there are organizations that exist to promotepolygamy — not necessarily in Indiana, but nationally — and some see that as the next domino to fall.

"There's an old African proverb I came across that says, 'Don't move a fence until you know why it was put there.' We're getting ready to move some fences here," Johnson said.

"We are literally opening a Pandora's box of perversion in this country," he said, "and there will be no stopping where this thing goes."

Gay rights groups and others who oppose the marriage amendment make their case in terms of freedom and equality. They cast it as a matter of civil rights, with immediate implications for the couples who want the right to wed.

But the groups who want to preserve traditional marriage — those seeking passage of marriage amendment that would essentially ban gay marriages — say this issue is much bigger than individual desires. They say it goes to the underpinnings of human society.

"In my opinion," says Johnson, "what we're tinkering with here is the entire cornerstone and building block of Western civilization, which is no small matter."

Johnson isn't alone in his view that preserving traditional marriage is crucial to the health of civil society.

"I don't think there's any logical stopping point once you go beyond the time-tested boundaries of one man and one woman," said Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana.

If two men are allowed to marry, Clark asks, then why not three? Why not four?

"Wherever you draw the line, that's the next boundary that people will go after," Clark said. "There are people out there who are very open in saying that we shouldn't have marriage or family at all."

Same-sex marriage is a more radical altering of the family structure, said Curt Smith, president of the Indiana Family Institute, than China's policy of limiting families to one child, which created an imbalance of men to women. Same-sex marriages will mean lower birthrates and fewer children raised by both of their natural parents. The result, he says, will be problems that mirror those of broken homes.

Traditional marriage between one man and one woman, Smith said, is elemental to healthy families, and one of the building blocks of a strong nation. It is an ideal, he says, held up since the Code of Hammurabi and the ancient Greeks, one "recognized across all times and centuries."

What the definition of marriage would become, if the current one is expanded, isn't clear to Johnson. During testimony Monday before the House Judiciary Committee, he said it could lead to "sexual anarchy," a characterization that drew several scoffs.

"When a river has no boundaries, it is actually what we call a swamp," Johnson said. "And there are all kinds of nasty critters and scary critters that are roaming around swamps."

Faith-based beliefs

Fundamental to concerns about the direction of the family, for many supporters of the amendment, is a faith-based belief that marriage was created by God, that it was intended to be between one man and one woman, that it is an ideal reinforced by human anatomy and that the presence of both masculine and feminine role models in a home is vital to the healthy development of children.

"We have to have that true masculine and that true feminine in harmony, and that can only really be played out when a man and a woman are in that marriage relationship," said Greg Wallace, executive director of Hope & New Life Ministries, which advises churches on how to minister to people with same-sex attractions.

Wallace said he lived what he described as a gay "lifestyle" for eight years before deciding to renew his commitment to his Christian faith. After doing so, he came to believe God's perfect design for marriage was one between a man and a woman. For the past 26 years, he's been married to a woman he says he has grown closer to over time.

Wallace acknowledges the church has done poorly in its outreach to the gay community, and he is less certain than others about the implications for society if same-sex marriage comes to pass. But he is convinced that the vast majority of gay people are not interested in the right to marry. They just want to be left alone. Pushing for marriage rights, he said, are a vocal minority of activists.

Like Johnson and others, Wallace shares a concern frequently voiced by traditionalists — that allowing same-sex marriage could have repercussions with regard to free speech. Churches and other congregations with long-held beliefs about the sinfulness of gay behavior eventually could face lawsuits, they fear, even hate-crime charges, if they stick to the doctrine they've been teaching for centuries.

"I think the religious liberties become front and center if you have same-sex marriage, not in an alarmist way, but it is just a logical progression," said Smith, of the Indiana Family Institute.

Others warn that public schools will begin teaching children that same-sex marriage is acceptable, even if that contradicts the religious beliefs of their parents. There are concerns that everyone from wedding photographers to cake makers and wedding venues would face discrimination lawsuits if business owners — based on their religious beliefs — refused to accommodate same-sex couples.

"I don't think these are far-fetched," Smith said. "I don't think they are alarmist either."

To be certain, the faith community in Indiana — and the nation — is far from monolithic in its views of the marriage amendment and same-sex marriage in general. Some denominations now allow gay clergy or offer blessings of same-sex unions. About 300 Hoosier faith leaders signed a letter opposing the amendment. Some surveys show that even among evangelical Christians — where support for the marriage amendment is strongest — there is a softening of views towards same-sex marriage among younger believers.

Scriptural law

But, clearly, the core of the opposition to same sex marriage — and the motor propelling the push for defining marriage in the state constitution — is an argument based on traditional readings of Scripture.

The first chapter of Genesis, said Dean Bouzeos, a pastor who is executive director of The Gathering Place in Greenwood, explains how God created man in his own image "male and female." Later references in Genesis identify gender roles. In other texts he cites, the city of Sodom was destroyed because of depravity and homosexuality.

In the Christian gospel of Matthew, Bouzeos notes, Jesus cites Hebrew scriptures and says a man and a woman shall come together in marriage. The Apostle Paul wrote in his epistles about a litany of sins that bring God's judgment, including homosexual acts.

"I think," Bouzeos said, "there is pretty clear evidence in Scripture."

Such certainty is not limited to evangelical Christians. Rabbi Yisrael Gettinger, of Congregation B'nai Torah in Indianapolis, said his Orthodox Jewish tradition is equally clear that homosexual activity is, biblically speaking, "outlawed."

"One cannot be more certain of something being inappropriate if it's called an abomination in the Bible," Gettinger said. "Those are not my words. Those are the Bible's words. Those are God's words."

Some contend that faith should not be the basis for deciding public policy, but pastors like Johnson say everyone in this debate brings a worldview to the table — be they believers or not.

"At the end of the day," Johnson said, "somebody's worldview is going to prevail."

Yet even among the most steadfast supporters for traditional marriage, there is an acknowledgment that marriage has been weakened by other things, such as high divorce rates and people who choose to live together out of wedlock. There is also a recognition that same-sex relationships are a fact of life in modern America.

The key is whether the state follows the lead of gay activists and recognizes those relationships as marriage.

"People can live however they want. They can do whatever they want," said Clark, with the American Family Association. "But, as a matter of public policy, marriage is the union of a man and a woman. If marriage becomes anything any group desires or wants it to be, it loses its importance. If marriage means anything, it means nothing."

Gay couples, said Smith, with the Family Institute, are free to live as they see fit.

But there's one thing they shouldn't be allowed to do: "They don't get to redefine marriage for the rest of us."

To Johnson, who with his wife, Marion, now leads marriage encounter weekends for couples, and whose parents have been nurturing marriages for decades, the union of a man and a woman in marriage is something precious that needs protecting.

"God created marriage. God established the principles for marriage, and if we follow God's wisdom," Johnson says, "we enjoy the benefits of marriage."

Call Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter at @Rbtking.

A ban or a definition?

Is the HJR-3 amendment a "ban" on same-sex marriage or a "definition" of marriage?

The Rev. Ron Johnson Jr., pastor of Living Stones Church in Crown Point, objects to the notion that this debate is about a marriage ban, as groups, including many gay activists who seek the defeat of the amendment, have called it. The referendum would ask voters whether they agree with the statement: "Only a marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Indiana..." As Johnson puts it: "Nobody is trying to ban marriage. We are trying to protect marriage from a redefinition of marriage. Marriage is already in existence. I would say to those people that you already have the freedom to live as you are choosing to live. However, you do not have the freedom to redefine marriage for the rest of us."