Jimmy Carter: 'I Believe Jesus Would Approve of Gay Marriage'
Gay marriage would be just fine with Jesus, according to former President Jimmy Carter.
Carter was interviewed Saturday by HuffPost Live. He has recently released a book titled, “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.”
During the interview, Carter was asked about his views on gay marriage. The former president replied, “(It is) no problem with me. I think everybody should have a right to get married regardless of their sex.”
Carter, whose book discusses his faith at length, was asked whether Jesus would approve of gay marriage.
“I don’t have any verse in Scripture,” Carter said, later adding, “I believe that Jesus would approve of gay marriage.”
“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” he said, according to USA Today.
Carter said, however, that a faith community should not be forced to perform a same-sex marriage if the church in question is opposed to gay marriage.
“The only thing I would draw a line on,” he said, is that “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 to a local courthouse or to a different church and get married.”
Carter’s liberal views are nothing new. In 2009, he severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention claiming the church discriminates against women. In a 2012 interview, he said he supported civil ceremonies for gays and affirmed his belief that no individual church should be forced to conduct a ceremony if it did not want to do so.
“Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things — he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies,” Carter told the Huffington Post.
Some took Carter to task on Twitter.
so Jimmy Carter im guessing you never heard of the story about the Two angels sent to get Lot the Genesis! or sodom and gomorrah?
— ⚜(0-0)⚜ 🐘(25-11)🐘 🙏🏿 🇪🇹🙏🏿🇭🇹 (@WKid901) July 9, 2018
Although Carter portrayed Jesus as aligned with liberals on gay marriage, this was not the case on abortion, Breitbart reported.
“I have had a problem with abortion. This has been a long-time problem of mine,” Carter said.
“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 said.
Carter said as president, he could not act upon his personal views.
“I’ve had that struggle, but my oath of office was to obey the Constitution and the laws of this country as interpreted by the Supreme Court, so I went along with that,” he said, according to Newsmax.
Despite that, Carter said during the interview that he never experienced “any really serious conflicts between my political obligations and my religious faith.”
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