The Affirmation Declaration

Introduction

This document presents a rebuttal to the now famous (or, in my case, infamous) Manhattan Declaration. I only rebut the portions of the Declaration that deal with same-sex marriage—specifically, the Preamble, the introductory portion of the Declaration section, and the Marriage sub-section.
....

Preamble

The Christian call to compassion is more than a religious obligation for the Christian. It is a byproduct of the beating heart of Christ at work within the regenerated spirit of all Christians. The charity that emanates from the heart of Christ does not make room for His children to pick and choose those to whom they will extend compassion. We are not afforded the freedom of being moved by the suffering of one group, while overlooking and/or causing the suffering of another.

Indeed, the inconsistency of such religiosity was one of the chief criticisms our Lord had against the Pharisees of His day that group of religious leaders who mastered the form of godliness, but who were quick to judge, condemn, and cruelly treat those they deemed unworthy of God's grace.

For far too long, members of the GLBTI community have been the recipients of the very oppression and suffering that the MDAs claim to fight through compassionate outreach. Our Lord would call such a claim hypocritical. As He did with the Pharisees of old, He would accuse these people face to face, and challenge the sincerity of their convictions. Unfortunately, many Christians are, today, so convinced that they alone uphold the blood-stained banner of Christian truth that they would reject any such challenge out of hand, being so blinded by religious ideology that the possibility of growth and change would be as practically impossible as Christ so often found it to be in the case of the Pharisees.

Still, as hopeless a cause as it must have seemed, Christ repeatedly challenged the Pharisees not to attack those He disagreed with, but, no doubt, in the sincere hope that somewhere, somehow their eyes would be opened and they would be able to see past their religious rhetoric and tap into the heart of God. In a manner reflective of Christ's own approach to religious contradiction and hypocrisy, we intend to directly challenge the claims of the Manhattan Declaration in an effort to compel the adherents of that declaration to uphold the standards set forth by their own pens in extending to the GLBTI community the compassion they so proudly held up to the world as a sign of their convictions.


The text of the Affirmation Declaration rebuttal.

Sign the Affirmation Declaration. I did. The sponsors of the Manhattan Declaration are busy gathering signatures, so let us be busy about supporting religious leaders who stand up for justice and equality.