USA Today recently reported that formally breaking up is as hard to do for gay couples as is finding a state that will marry them.

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in only one state, Massachusetts. Same-sex couples can form legal civil unions in four states: Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire. And they can enter into domestic partnerships in California, Oregon, Maine, Washington, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

Many of these couples only travel to these states to ratify legally binding unions and live in other states. Now, it seems many are seeking a divorce from their partner, but are finding it virtually impossible to secure. Getting a divorce is proving especially tough for gays in the 43 states that have explicitly banned or limited same-sex unions.

In Rhode Island, for example, the state's top court in December ruled that gays married in neighboring Massachusetts cannot get a divorce in the state because they are not legally married; lawmakers have never defined marriage as anything but a union between a man and a woman.

USA Today reports that a judge in Missouri is deciding whether a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts can get an annulment. Missouri banned gay marriage in 2001 and one conservative lawmaker in that state has urged a judge not to grant an annulment to the couple. Cases like this will only proliferate in the future as our country seeks to come to grips legally with same-sex relationships.

Given the clear teaching of Scripture regarding homosexuality, it is no surprise that such confusion has resulted from some governments putting their imprimatur on that which God has forbidden. When the great exchange of Romans 1 is made and even celebrated, moral chaos is bound to ensue.

Hopefully, by God's grace, these "divorces" will lead some gays out of darkness and into the marvelous light of God's redeeming love in Christ Jesus. Every follower of Christ is an illustration that sin will not have the final word in this world and it is the Gospel that restores order to the chaos and gives hope for every moral rebel.  

Spring and early summer serve as the season for the official meetings of church denominational bodies across the evangelical world and in recent years, issues of sexuality and gender have boiled on the front burner.

This year will most certainly be no exception as bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church in America and various mainline meetings and synods convene to do their yearly business.

Some denominations such as the SBC and PCA presently have confessional statements that reflect a complementarian position.  Many other denominations, particularly the mainline churches, are debating issues such as the propriety of ordaining women, homosexuals and transgendered individuals.

Issues of human sexuality and gender are already under consideration by the United Methodist Church, leaders of which are meeting this week in Forth Worth for the UMC's quadrennial meeting. The UMC General Conference this year has before it two landmark petitions aimed at changing the church's current policy on homosexuality.

One petition seeks to define marriage as "the union of two loving adults," while another states that homosexuality "is a subject about which Christians disagree." The upshot of these petitions is an attempt by homosexual activist groups to gain the affirmation of "transgendered" persons serving in UMC pulpits and other roles within the church.

In the UMC at least, the momentum is already rolling toward full affirmation of the substance of these petitions.  As the meeting convened last week, young Methodists from the Mosaic Youth Network greeted delegates outside the Forth Worth Conference Center with a 24-hour "drumming and rally" in support of gay and "transgender" church members.

In 2006, the UMC's highest council affirmed the appointment of "transgender" minister Drew Phoenix as pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in Baltimore, Md. The church court agreed that while the denomination bars self-avowed practicing gay clergy from ordination and does not support gay unions, the UMC Book of Discipline is silent on gender change.          

The team at CBMW wants to encourage complementarian delegates who hold to the Bible's teaching on God's good plan for men and women to stand firm at these denominational meetings. Standing by while such proposals pass allows Scriptural errors to be introduced and solidified into the church.  Let those who affirm God's clear teaching on these issues not shrink back in silence.

If you are not a delegate this year, please pray that God will give wisdom to the leaders and laypeople who are participating in these meetings. The church ultimately changes through the Holy Spirit opening blind eyes and unstopping deaf ears to the truth of His inspired Word.

The latest issue of The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is now in print. The Spring 2008 edition offers a new format, which will include regular contributions in the following sections: Essays and Perspectives, Studies, the Sacred Desk, and Gender Studies in Review (click here for the table of contents). For a description of the new format, see the editorial by JBMW's new editor, Denny Burk.

Some highlights:

Mark Dever: "It seems to me and others (many who are younger than myself) that this issue of egalitarianism and complementarianism is increasingly acting as the watershed distinguishing those who will accommodate Scripture to culture, and those who will attempt to shape culture by Scripture. You may disagree, but this is our honest concern before God. It is no lack of charity, nor honesty. It is no desire for power or tradition for tradition's sake. It is our sober conclusion from observing the last fifty years" ("Young vs. Old Complementarians").

J. Ligon Duncan III: "The gymnastics required to get from "I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man," in the Bible, to "I do allow a woman to teach and to exercise authority over a man" in the actual practice of the local church, are devastating to the functional authority of the Scripture in the life of the people of God" ("Why ‘Together for the Gospel' Embraces Complementarianism").

Micah Carter: "Must Jesus, as the Christ, have been male? If Christian theology desires to place itself under the inspiration and authority of Scripture, then the answer must be yes" ("Reconsidering the Maleness of Jesus").

Ray Van Neste: "Our culture is infatuated with youth and encourages you not to grow up. . . . If you would be men, you must reject this siren song and swim against the tide. You must diligently seek to throw off immaturity and to grow up" ("Pursuing Manhood").

John Piper: "God designed the relationship between a husband and his wife to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. This is the deepest meaning of marriage. And that is why ultimately the roles of headship and submission are so important. If our marriages are going to tell the truth about Christ and his church, we cannot be indifferent to the meaning of headship and submission ("The Beautiful Faith of Fearless Submission (1 Peter 3:1-7)").

The essay by Ray Van Neste and the essay by Randy Stinson and Christopher W. Cowan are available online now. Click here for subscription information for the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Cultural commentators have repeatedly observed in recent years that many of today's young men lack motivation and direction. It is not out of the ordinary for even thirty-something year-old males still to be living with (and supported by) their parents and lacking any real plan to pursue a vocation and provide for a family. For many men who do marry, it is more and more common to find that their wives are the primary bread-winners. While she is establishing herself in the workplace, he is often content in his low-demand, low-income job—with his video game appetite and other toys fully funded by her. He has no work ethic, no career, no future, no clue. The role of provider was once seen as an essential and noble aspect of manhood. But for too many of today's young men, being responsible to provide for a family is neither necessary nor desired.

Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story entitled, "Men Receiving Alimony Want A Little Respect." The article reports that gender discrimination in alimony was ended by the Supreme Court nearly 30 years ago. However, in that time, "few male beneficiaries have stepped forward to talk about it." "But today's men," writes Anita Raghavan, "are shaking off the stigma of being supported by their ex-wives." Raghavan interviewed several of these men, and the article's subtitle says it all: "Modern males say living off the ex-wife is no cause for shame."

Apparently, we've come a long way, baby.

Alimony is the money that a court orders a higher-earning spouse to give to their husband or wife following a divorce. While divorce itself is a travesty that has ripped apart and scarred countless families, my focus here is on how modern men respond to yet another opportunity to abdicate their role as provider-even as provider for themselves.

One of those interviewed in the WSJ article is John David Castellanos, a Hollywood actor who receives alimony from his ex-wife—to the tune of $9,000 per month. According to Castellanos and a growing number of men, they sacrificed their careers for the sake of their wives' careers. Now they want some "payback" to maintain their marital standard of living. Others seek alimony—not due to marital sacrifices—but so they may continue to have their toys fully funded. After his divorce, Phillip Upton, a shop foreman, "couldn't have afforded the $20,000-a-year cost of maintaining his 1960s-vintage collection of cars with outsized motors." According to the divorce settlement, he receives about $40,000 a year from his marketing executive ex-wife. "Had I not gotten that," Upton contends, "I would have lived a different lifestyle."

Surely, our culture is rejoicing over this advance in gender equality, right? The fact that the relatives of one woman call her alimony-receiving ex-husband a "deadbeat" would seem to indicate otherwise. The woman herself says, "In some instances, alimony has become akin to a social-welfare program provided by working women to their ex-husbands." After the court ordered her to make sizeable alimony payments, another ex-wife was even more blunt: "Why the courts don't tell a husband, who has been living off of his wife, to go out and get a job is beyond my comprehension." Indeed.

How should Christians respond? As R. Albert Mohler Jr. has written, "We understand that men were made for work, and that a man's responsibility is to care and provide for his wife and family." It is not merely that men seeking to live off of their wives (ex- or otherwise) are "deadbeats"—more seriously, they are abdicating their God-given responsibility to work and be providers. Contrary to the men interviewed, this is undeniably a cause for shame. Men were not made to live off of the income of others; they were made to labor. Even if a man has no wife or children, his responsibility to work remains—not only to provide for himself but so that he might provide for others who are in need (note especially the biblical concern for widows and orphans).

Scripture attests from the beginning that man was created for work (Gen 2:15), and it consistently chastises the lazy (e.g., Prov 18:9; 19:15; 21:25). "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat" (2 Thess 3:10). Beyond this general biblical expectation that men are to labor, Scripture assigns men the primary responsibility to be providers for others—especially a wife and family. After the Fall, it is Adam who undergoes pain and toil in working the ground (Gen 3:17-19)—understood as his primary area of responsibility. Paul commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25). While this involves more than provision, it can hardly include less. Concerning the care of widows, Paul writes, "But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse then an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8). While one may argue that the "anyone" includes both men and women, surely the husband bears the primary responsibility. Paul expected wives and mothers primarily to care for the home and nurture children (1 Tim 5:10; Titus 2:5). Thus, the apostle considers a man's role as provider to be so significant that he equates abdication with denying the faith.

This phenomenon reported by WSJ is simply a further symptom of a culture filled with men who have no idea what it means to be a man. And, unfortunately, the church has not remained unaffected. Christians must respond to this crisis of manhood by exhorting our young men to be men. We must be intentional in raising our boys to be providers—to accept primary responsibility to support a wife and family. I do not need to know (now) what specific vocation my six-year old son will follow when he grows up. What I do need to know (now) is that I'm raising a future provider, so that he may nourish and care for others who will depend on him.

May the church not merely decry the manhood crisis; may we confront it by bringing up godly, noble men. As we do, let us continually point our young men to the one whom they are to model, Jesus Christ: a divine Husband who sacrificially provides for his bride (Eph 5:25-27). And let us be eternally thankful that he expects no "payback" from her.

Editor's note: As reported Tuesday on Gender Blog, the Anglican Church in Australia has been fighting a battle over biblical truth on the issue of women's ordination for much of the past two decades. Anglicans there recently moved to ordain women as bishops, but one group of women known as ‘Equal but Different' (EBD) has organized to contend for biblical truth in Australia. EBD formed in 1992 in response to a push for female ordination by the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia (ACA). The organization exists to promote and defend the biblical pattern of relationships between men and women in both the church and home. Gender Blog interviewed Claire Smith, one of the group's leaders. Today is the second of a two-part interview with her. 

Gender Blog: How has your group been received among Anglicans in Australia?

Claire Smith: We are aware and have contact with Anglican women and men around the country who have remained faithful to the biblical teaching. As best we can, we try to represent, encourage and minister to those people - some of whom have had to leave their churches rather than sit under ministry they consider to be conflict with Scripture. They are grateful for the ministry of EBD.

Others who believe the Scripture teaches identical roles for men and women have not been so accepting. Robust debate is one thing, but regrettably, some members of the EBD Steering Committee have been verbally persecuted for their attempts to promote and defend biblical teaching.

Gender Blog: What do you see as being at stake with the issue of gender roles in the church and home? What are some of the mischaracterizations of complementarianism that you are hearing in your country?

Smith: What is at stake with the issue of gender roles is primarily the authority of Scripture as God's inspired Word, and beyond that, the temporal and spiritual welfare of individuals and the strength of families and churches, since these are matters of Christian obedience and the blessings that come from living according to God's wisdom.

Some egalitarians of course seek to justify their position from the Scriptures, but invariably they do not accept the plain reading of the text; and/or allow one text of Scripture to silence others they do not accept; and/or base their arguments on rare or novel meanings of Greek or Hebrew words; and/or depend on historical reconstructions as the background for NT texts so as to marginalize the text's application to the modern church; and/or overlook the non-culturally specific reasons the NT writers use for their teaching about the different responsibilities of men and women, such as Genesis 1-3, the relationship between Christ and the church, and the relationships within the Trinity.

The most recent misrepresentation of the complementarian view is that it justifies domestic violence and abuse. The Sydney Diocesan Synod in 2007 passed a motion saying that such aberrations cannot be justified by, and are entirely contrary to, the biblical complementary pattern of relationships for women and men. Domestic violence and psychological and spiritual abuse are contrary to God's Word and contrary to the loving headship of a husband, and intelligent, voluntary submission of a wife.

Gender Blog: Does the fact that the group is composed entirely of women take some of the heat off the issue? Do you find that you have more credibility in asserting this teaching among women in Australia or are they merely dismissive of your views?

Smith: A founding rationale of EBD was that this issue was one in which ‘a woman's voice' needed to be heard and that men who were seeking to oppose identical ministries for both genders could easily be dismissed as ‘sexist' or ‘misogynist.' In this respect, it has been helpful to be a ministry organized by and directed to women.

Increasingly however, as the not-unrelated question of homosexual and lesbian clergy and same sex unions appears on the horizon, often promoted by the same proponents of women's ordination, EBD may have to rethink our focus on ministering to and speaking only for women. Thankfully these innovations, although accepted in other Australian denominations, have not as yet gained sufficient momentum within the ACA to force legislative change. Praise God and may it ever be so!