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Monday Miscellany, 6/15/26

Monday Miscellany, 6/15/26

Last updated on: June 15, 2026 at 7:38 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 6/15/26 2026-06-15T07:38:07-04:00 Gene Veith

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Churches that accepted gay marriage are now pressured to accept polyamory. Oregon referendum would ban hunting, fishing, & slaughtering livestock. And extraterrestrial life would disprove evolution.

Churches That Accepted Gay Marriage Are Now Pressured to Accept Polyamory

One argument for same-sex marriage is that it would counter the promiscuity of gay culture, so that homosexuals could live in faithful, committed relationships like any other married couple. But churches that bought that logic are now being pressured to accept polyamory, the practice of having multiple romantic partners at the same time.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is considering a rule requiring clergy, whether men or women, who are married, whether to someone of the opposite sex or the same sex, to be monogamous. That is, to live faithfully with one’s spouse.

This has created a firestorm of outrage in the church from the denomination’s feminist, LGBTQ, and social justice commissions. The Advocacy Committee for Women and Gender Justice claimed that such a requirement would “regulate the private lives and relational structures of individuals in ways that risk harm rather than healing.”

The Advocacy Committee on LGBTQIA+ Equity claimed that the monogamy rule would reinforce white privilege and would impose “a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family” that “privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians.”

The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy urged rejection of the monogamy rule, urging instead a task force to study “diverse understandings of relationships.”

Polyamory is not to be confused with polygamy, in which a man has multiple wives. That is “hierarchical” and “patriarchal.” It is a form of marriage. The activists do not want that. Polyamory is simply having multiple partners. Advocates claim that the group members have “romantic commitments” with each other, but describe it not as marriage but as “ethical non-monogamy.”

A Religious News Service story on the subject says that the monogamy requirement for clergy, which must be approved at the denomination’s convention in Milwaukee June 29-July 2, “seems unlikely to pass. To date, only the presbytery that submitted the overture on monogamy, the Presbytery of Sierra Blanca in New Mexico, has endorsed it.”

The story says that polyamory will be the next big issue in progressive church bodies. It quotes the Rev. Claudia Aguilar Rubalcava, director of engagement for the LGBTQ-affirming More Light Presbyterians: “I think it is the next big conversation that most mainline denominations will have.”

The Episcopal Church is reportedly squabbling over the issue. And the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (not to be confused with the Lutheran Church-Canada with which the LCMS is in fellowship) is already preparing resources to discuss “ethical non-monogamous relationships.”

HT: Bob Foote

Oregon Referendum Would Ban Hunting, Fishing, & Slaughtering Livestock

Oregonians will likely vote on a referendum that would ban hunting, fishing, and slaughtering livestock in the state.

Initiative 28 would eliminate the current exemptions for wildlife sports and animal husbandry in the state’s law forbidding cruelty to animals. The initiative is being pushed by an animal rights organization called People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act (PEACE).

According to a news story,

The initiative would also ban conducting scientific research on animals, using animals in rodeos, operating a commercial poultry business and castrating or neutering livestock in the Pacific Northwest state.

These activities are currently exempt from Oregon’s animal cruelty laws, but under the proposal, they would be treated as a criminal offense ranging from misdemeanor abuse to assault.

The only exceptions would be killing an animal in self-defense and in the course of veterinary care.

Outdoors groups, farmers, and restaurants are, of course, opposing the referendum. So are state politicians of both parties. The story quotes state senators Anthony Broadman, a Democrat, and David Brock-Smith, a Republican, who addressed the economic impact of the measure:

‘Buying locally raised foods at the local farmers market would be outlawed while restaurant and grocery prices would increase substantially due to the need to ship meat and dairy products in from out of state,’ Broadman said.

‘Hunting and fishing for food is a part of Oregon’s heritage and for many of us, part of who we are.’

To get on the ballot, a referendum petition needs 117,000 valid signatures. The final official count is 126,115. (NOT 720,000, as incorrectly reported by National Review.) Assuming the signatures pass muster, the people of Oregon will vote on the measure in November.

Extraterrestrial Life Would Disprove Evolution

We’ve been blogging about the prospect of finding extraterrestrial life and the religious implications of such a discovery. (See Would Evidence of Aliens “Shatter” Christian Beliefs? and We Are Not Alone in the Universe.)

I came across a different take from Casey Luskin, a geologist and associate director of the Discovery Institute. He wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Wire entitled Would Little Green Men Prove Evolution Wrong? with the deck, “How the discovery of extraterrestrials could point to one omniscient designer.”

If intelligent life on earth evolved from random processes, what are the chances those same processes were repeated on another planet? Luskin explains:

According to mainstream biology, Darwinian evolution is blind and unguided. This means that the likelihood of evolution on another planet independently generating humanoid life like humans is infinitesimally small. Scientists recognize this.

Writing about ET life, the late University of Chicago paleontologist David Raup noted that “the majority of evolutionary biologists find the chance of an independent evolution of a recognizably humanoid creature to be essentially nil.” Or, as the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently wrote in the New York Times, the existence of “humanoid” aliens would “shock” him, “violating everything we know about biodiversity.”

The reason for Tyson’s “shock” is that such a high degree of similarity would be extremely unlikely to evolve independently. Even Richard Dawkins once wrote that it is “vanishingly improbable that exactly the same evolutionary pathway should ever be travelled twice.”

Any kind of life would require something like DNA and a host of complex molecules. After bringing up a number of details, Luskin concludes,

If alien life does exist — and that’s still a very big “if” — and if it looks or works even remotely like human biology, then it did not arise by blind evolution, and those similarities didn’t occur by chance. Their complexity was intelligently designed, and their similarities trace to a common designer.

So, could aliens be the designers? No, because these aliens could not create themselves. Speaking philosophically, if we go back to the beginning, there can only be one ultimate designer: an unevolved, superintelligent, supernatural, transcendent being. Most people call that God.

aliens and intelligent design

mainline liberal Protestantism

Oregon referendum on animal cruelty

polyamory

same-sex marriage

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