The Judges Have Become the Accused
To whom was Paul writing in Romans 1:18-32, and what was his form of discourse? The answer seems obvious to most students of Romans, including most preachers who use this as a text. Certainly Paul was writing to Christians in Rome, and therefore the letter has relevance to all Christians, us as well. That is the reason the letter was circulated to churches all over the Roman Empire and later was included in the canon of the New Testament.
As to the form of discourse, few have tried to explain it in any other way except that it was straight-forward enunciation of Paul’s theological position. It was Paul’s introduction of himself to the Roman Christians since he was on his way to join them. According to this interpretation, all the passages in Romans are Paul’s own position, what he wanted to advocate.
To be specific, Paul wrote, “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Rom. 1:26-27, NRSV). And finally, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die – yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them” (Rom 1:32, NRSV).
As a whole, Romans 1:18-32 is an indictment of the Gentile lifestyle insofar as even the Gentiles recognize a moral order that ought to be followed, but is not being followed. The consequences are built into that natural order, and when they occur the sinners ought to know they have brought this on themselves.
What if this indictment were not Paul’s idea of how things ought to be talked about, but Paul’s re-statement of a position he is about to contradict? That, of course, would change everything. It would not be Paul saying, “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.” It would be someone else saying that. And what would Paul’s response be? It begins with Romans 2:1 where Paul enunciates the law and grace doctrine, concluding that “we ought not to judge one another” but should love one another.
For one thing, if Paul were quoting ideas from others, that would solve the problem of why Romans 1:18-32 is so out of character with the rest of the letter. But is there any solid rationale for attributing those ideas to others whom Paul is merely paraphrasing in order to dispute?
It so happens there is.
Calvin Porter of Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis has done a thorough study of Romans 1:18-32. His conclusions came to my attention in an article by Don Burrows written October 1, 2013 for Unfundamentalist Christians, which appeared on the Patheos website.
Calvin Porter begins his discovery by noting that in Rom. 1:18-32 the pronoun “they” occurs 13 times with third person plural verbs over and over. Paul is really focused on the contrast between those people and others. Who “those people” are becomes clear in 2:1 where Paul switches abruptly to “you”. Here Paul uses the vocative, o anthrope, “Oh man”. Who is this person being called out to pay attention to what follows? Porter and other recent scholars are convinced the “man” is one who uses judgmental rhetoric against others (as in the passages above, in Rom 1:18-32). Such rhetoric should not be used, Paul is about to insist. Judgmental rhetoric was common practice among Jews of that time, as well as on the part of Gentile converts to Judaism. Porter concludes, “Paul…challenges, argues against, and refutes both the content of the discourse and the practice of using such discourses. If this is the case, then the ideas in Rom. 1.18-32 are not Paul’s. They are ideas which obstruct Paul’s Gentile mission, theology and practice.”
Why this is not clear in even our most recent translations of the Bible has to do with language and cultural distance from the time Paul lived. In making any translation of the Bible there are a lot of choices to make between one possibility and another. Translation committees discuss and vote on these things. They try to keep the big picture in mind, including what their predecessors had concluded and what is consistent with “synthesized truth” from Scripture (and other sources); that is to say, they try to be consistent with their theological positions. For that reason conservative Christians tend to prefer the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible while mainline Christians will go with the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). There are many versions, depending on the extent to which the translators also rely on and include certain points of view from new sources or social sciences. All of them, however, will wait until an argument about some disputed passage becomes standard before daring to propose it in their latest translation project. Having a theological stance and using it to make decisions about how passages of Scripture should be translated is unavoidable, and it is possible to do this responsibly; but it should be clear that is what is being done, rather than insisting the translation is bias-free words straight out of the mouth of God.
It will be some time before Porter’s argument is standard. I will not wait.
I have resolved the matter for myself. I believe Porter’s case is sound even though it is not widely accepted yet, and even though it will make no dent in the conservative position that homosexuality is a sin and Paul was against it.
To be clear, what I think Porter has demonstrated is that Paul was arguing against legalism, namely that the law of the Old Testament still applies to any and all forms of moral turpitude. Even the so-called natural law, a.k.a. the common-sense view of morality, has been addressed by Christ. Christ fulfilled the salvation issues. They are no longer issues. What we have now is love and mutuality issues.
Paul was a world class debater. Any study of his ministry makes it obvious that Paul was argumentative. That was how he proposed to get the Gospel of Christ Jesus included among the hot topics of the times. In debate it is important to try to control the definition of terms. In Romans Paul was doing that by characterizing the legalists’ point of view, in his own words, as legalism. Then he had a clear page to describe salvation by grace as infinitely preferable. His target audience was Jews in the Diaspora and their Gentile fellow-travelers. Once in a while he took on “pagan” Gentiles (Acts 19) or philosophical Gentiles (Acts 17:16-34), but in Rome he knew the Christians were what we would call “Messianic Jews” and Gentile believers of the type Peter found Cornelius in Caesarea to be. The final fracture of Christianity and Judaism had not yet taken place. Paul proposed a theological break-through, a step beyond the legalism represented in the Torah (particularly in Leviticus).
Paul’s message was that Christ has fulfilled the law. The law, with all its dividing the just from the unjust, us from them, and the saved from the damned was transformed into a new order in which grace abounds, forgiveness is unconditional, and love reigns. All it takes for this to be operational in one’s daily living is to accept the premise that Christ effected this salvation, both here in this world of struggle and hereafter unto all eternity.
This was a monumental undoing of the old way of thinking and it ran counter not only to rigid Jewish concepts of morality (many of which have been inherited by rigid Islam and conservative Christians) but also to the everyday notion that surely murderers, rapists, tyrants, and their ilk must be of a moral class more dangerous and detestable than we are, despite our petty foibles and lapses from good behavior.
There is, and always has been, an issue with regard to “grace”. It can become moral libertarianism. Paul recognized this in his letter to the Christians in Corinth who had concluded, “If nothing we do can impair our salvation, then we can do whatever we like.” Lax moral behavior became a problem, not the least part of which was that profligate behavior was socially and culturally offensive and put the Christians in a bad light, making it harder to proclaim the Gospel. Paul was adamant that high on the list of acceptable Christian behaviors was to be respectable and respectful. A good Christian honored the emperor and good slaves honored their masters.
That, of course, led to the issue of justice, which has been very much in the spotlight over the past few centuries. When is it permissible and even expedient for Christians to object to injustice? One response has been that in order to proclaim the Gospel we need to resist injustice and to be seen doing so. Whenever injustice is condoned by the Church it brings Christians into a bad light making it harder to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world. The Church needs to protect its reputation and expand Christ’s Kingdom, in addition to promoting human dignity and honor, which is a humanitarian imperative shared by all people.
That leads to the issue of what forms of protest and rebellion are permissible. Since the “law of love” is paramount, demonstrating how love contrasts to injustice can be persuasive. That should be tried first. Beyond that is passive resistance to injustice, standing in its way to prevent its perpetuation and extension. If that, too, fails there may need to be active resistance and use of force to prevent further injustice.
Beyond even that is confronting evil. Not the trivialized forms of intention often labeled evil, as in “Iago was evil!” but that which exceeds intentionality and has expanded into an uncontrolled force that, if undeterred, threatens human existence. Even against evil on this scale we are not totally impotent. Even vast evil can be analyzed into contributing factors that are independently identified and opposed.
Paul’s notion of grace does not obviate the role of morality. There is still morality to be advocated, despite modern rhetoric to the contrary.
So, how does all this impact how we LGBTIQ people are respected in the Church?
Supposing that Romans 1:26-27 is not to be used as a re-statement of the law to condemn same-sex behavior and same-sex relationships and civil rights, does that mean that same-sex behavior and relationships are condoned?
Not necessarily. There are unacceptable behaviors and relationships even though they have no impact on the efficaciousness of what Christ did for us. Breeding children to be used as an energy source, as in several science fiction scripts, is one example; rape of one’s 4 year-old stepdaughter would be another. So the principle is established. The question then is whether LGBTIQ behaviors and relationships fit into a proscribed category.
To make the argument one way or another requires a different set of ethical principles based on other scripture passages. That is a whole different discussion. Apparently that is a debate between conservatives and liberals, to use current jargon to delineate two sides. For the most part, liberals are open and inclusive of LGBTIQ persons and accepting, or at least tolerant, of our behavior and relationships. Conservatives are not. Liberals tend to frame their rationale for acceptance of us and all sorts of other diverse human types by saying that we, too, are human beings deserving respect and dignity. That is the broad humanitarian perspective. For most Christian liberals the matter is settled by the conclusion that being same-sex oriented is not a matter of free choice. Therefore, it is not a moral issue. Since we are born, or “wired”, or created with this orientation, behaviors expressive of this orientation are normal. Again, conservatives balk, arguing that the same psychologists, who insist same-sex orientation is something we are born with, also agree that some pathological individuals are also born that way and must refrain from acting out their pathology, or be restrained. Even in situations where the individual is arguably the only victim, as in the case of alcoholism, the right choice is to admit the addiction and never touch a drop of alcohol again. Sobriety leads to a more productive, happy and extended life. The flaw in applying this principle to us is that sexual abstinence and a celibate life does not lead to those same benefits for most of us. What results from denying our true identities and suppressing our natures is frustration, loneliness and despair. Liberals agree with us that this cannot be God’s will for us, so biased as God is toward peace, love, joy, fulfillment and abundant life.
What we have with this new way of understanding Romans 1:26-27, then, is not a way to overcome the impasse between liberal and conservative Christians that might lead to full acceptance of LGBTIQ people in all branches of the Church. Even if this passage of Romans and all the others were shown to be unfounded as a basis for condemning us, as the passages can be and have been for nigh-onto fifty years, the interpretations would still be rejected by some and the discrimination would continue. The Church is as polarized as before, perhaps more so.
The consequences of this can be serious, as when conservative Christians mount a campaign in Africa in support of criminalization of same-sex behavior, relationships and even discussion. The results take us beyond frustration, loneliness and despair into persecution, prosecution and incarceration, as well as disenfranchisement, terrorization, victimization, torture, murder and suicide. It is simply impossible to imagine how support of this agenda can fail to bring eventual global disrepute on the Church, which Paul was so against. In other words, the shoe is on the other foot. It is not homosexual people and their actions that Paul was targeting for condemnation in Romans 1:26-27, but judgmental, legalistic, condemnatory rhetoric being used by Christians. The judges have become the accused.
NOTES:
Burrows’ commentary is available at www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2013/10/romans-126-27-a-clobber-passage-that-should-lose-its-wallop/
Porter, C. “Romans 1.18-32: Its Role in the Developing Argument”. New Testament Studies, vol. 40, issue 2, April 1994, pp. 210-228. Cambridge University Press.
February 15, 2014
What Would it Take for the Church of Christ in Thailand to Become Gay Friendly?
It is a marketing strategy to try to get one’s business labeled gay friendly. Often this means that gay and lesbian people will be not only permitted to obtain service but will be treated cordially. It also means that the business does not cater exclusively to gay clientele. It should mean that obvious gay people will be accorded equal rights with everyone else the enterprise serves and that gay people are not remarkable in that environment. It sometimes means that the business being mentioned is not like other similar businesses in discriminating against gay customers. To choose to have one’s business called gay friendly indicates the owner knows that gay people might otherwise be skeptical about how fully they will be welcomed due to past experiences or prevailing attitudes. The hospitality industry has been the most conspicuous in choosing to announce that an establishment is gay friendly, or in refraining from saying so. Grocery stores and supermarkets, for example, have never needed to do this because no doubt has ever arisen that being obviously gay will alter access to products.
It will come as no shock, I presume, to assert that the churches in Thailand are not gay friendly. To illustrate and illuminate this general criticism, for it is a criticism and not praise, I will make several more theoretical assertions and observations:
- The more obvious and important one’s homosexual orientation is the more one will experience exclusion, marginalization and discrimination as a person in the churches in Thailand.
- The higher in the hierarchy of leadership a gay person rises the greater the intolerance will be to his or her homosexuality and having a role, and the more likely it will be that his or her sexual orientation will be a barrier and cause of controversy.
- Unacceptability of homosexual persons into leadership has become official and homosexuals are disappearing from leadership ranks.
- Churches in Thailand have not undertaken any official discussions of gender diversity and scholarly religious books and articles advocating gender diversity are not available in Thai.
About how many gay Christians in Thailand are there?
Social scientists have done many studies of how many gays there are, and those have been reconfirmed around the world, including Thailand. Those who are and always have been exclusively attracted to males, plus those who are predominately attracted to males with no actual experiences of sex with a female (6 and 5 of the Kinsey scale of 0-6) are 10% of the population. A Kinsey 3 has had equal experiences of gay and heterosexual sex; those bi-sexual males are 11% (nearly 12%) of the population.
Let’s say there are 200,000 church members in Thailand and half of them are male. 10% of that would be 10,000 homosexuals. Now let’s say that half of the gay males are not in the church, especially if they are publically identified as gay or katoey in the unfriendly church; that leaves 5000. About half of all Christians are in the Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT), so the number of Kinsey 5s and 6s would have to be around 2500. Very few of the 600 CCT congregations would have no homosexual men or boys; some would have several.
According to recent Kinsey Institute studies, about 3 to 7% of women are Kinsey 5 and 6. Let’s say 5%, or half as many as there are gay males. That would be 1250 lesbians in the CCT. The total would then be 3750 gay and lesbian members in the CCT but with a statistical potential of at least twice that many.
Although these statistics are estimates, they point to the probability that gay and lesbian Christians are not just a scattered few, but are in the thousands.
These, obviously, are statistical approximations based on the probability that the incidence of homosexuality in Thai Christendom is similar to society at large. There is one factor that makes that questionable, and it is the same factor that makes solid statistical gathering difficult. Let us look at that factor now.
The Church in Thailand is not gay friendly.
I must limit my observations to the branch of the Church in Thailand with which I am familiar, the Church of Christ in Thailand. Before turning to that I will simply assert that the other four officially recognized Christian entities in Thailand are less likely to be gay friendly than the CCT. The Roman Catholic Church is responsive to positions and pronouncements from Rome (the Vatican hierarchy) and H.H. the Pope in particular has reiterated a hard line on sexual matters over the last fifteen years; homosexuals or suspected homosexuals, for the first time in Thailand, are supposed to be prevented from Roman Catholic seminary education. I do not know how rigorously this Vatican policy is being enforced. The Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelical Fellowship in Thailand have anti-gay stances and are in the vanguard in pressing for homosexual stigmatization.
The Church of Christ in Thailand traces its roots back to the mid-nineteenth century missionary movement. Missionaries came from the Presbyterian and Baptist churches in the USA. Later missionaries in the CCT have come from the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), Presbyterian Churches in Korea, the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of Europe and North America and the Uniting Church of Australia, among several others. Some of those churches have adopted progressive positions toward gender issues, but that shift has come too late to influence the CCT.
In fact, the trend in the CCT is away from progressive theology in the life of the church. It is my personal recollection that in the mid-1980s there were several high profile gay or semi-closed gay CCT personalities (semi-closeted, “out” to a few, but not actually hiding). They included the pastors of two of the largest churches, the directors of two national church departments, the heads of two CCT institutions, four of sixteen members of the CCT’s most visible evangelistic institute, and at least ten mid-level workers and pastors out of a total of some 100 at the time. Then in 1997 a new constitution of the CCT was adopted which included lists of qualifications for various types of leadership in the church as well as lists of factors that would disqualify a candidate. “Rak ruap phate” was listed officially as a factor to be considered. The phrase means literally “love in a shared sex” the idea being that both lovers share the same sex but there is an attempt to avoid saying so. “Ruam phate” means to have sexual intercourse, so by adding “rak” (love) as the first word, the phrase becomes “coital love” although the attempt was to translate the word homosexual. The more it is thought about the cloudier it becomes. Thai psychologists and activists are proposing new terms for homosexuality, which is a gender orientation and not a type of activity. This subtlety is widely lost when these matters are discussed.
The “constitutional questions” asked of CCT ordinands are not officially defined or expounded on, so it is possible for a man to say “no” meaning “I have never had sex with a male,” or “I am not in love with a man,” or “I am not a homosexual,” or “I am not in love with sex with a male.” Nevertheless, the constitutional stipulation can and has been used to disqualify gay persons from service and leadership in the CCT. Finally, after fifteen years, mostly through retirement, all the positions filled by gay leaders in the 1980s have been filled by non-gays and the young gay men of the 1980s have been frozen in their low and mid-level positions and have learned not to ever let their true gender identity become an issue. Most gay seminary students over the past fifteen years have adopted the 1950s-1960s strategy of getting married to hide their orientation or possibly to sublimate their proclivities.
The case could be made that the attitude in the CCT is costing the Church valuable leadership. I am convinced that the Church is also scaring away and not attractive to a generation of increasingly open and accepting young people who could benefit from a friendly religious family. But the CCT is more concerned about avoiding the sorts of divisive fights that have characterized the ancestor denominations such as the Presbyterian Church (USA). What’s more, the new major patrons of the CCT are Presbyterian mission agencies in Korea, who have not been shy about warning the CCT not to jeopardize relationships with them by proposing openness toward homosexuals.
What would it take?
In this essay I am not going to argue the pros and cons of the CCT embarking on a strategy to reverse its anti-gay, unfriendly trends in attitude. But I want to identify certain requirements if it were to be done.
First, the CCT would have to become warm and welcoming. I have mentioned at least two groups who need to feel sincere warmth and welcome, closeted gays inside the Church and gays outside the Church looking for a spiritual home and family. In Thailand these days there are some transsexual and transvestite persons who would be interested in finding a friendly and accepting group to meet their social hunger, and who are imaginative and creative in ways that could contribute to a more vibrant Christian fellowship. In other words, these people have needs but they also have gifts to bring. I want to quickly assert that in some cases faith is not the first priority for a convert. The only evangelistic strategy that is worthy of the name Christian and that works with those who have been victimized, marginalized and excluded is to provide unconditional acceptance first and then proclaim the Gospel. Given these conditions, hurting people would grow more open to the Gospel message as their other needs are being met. This has to happen at the local level, first.
In order for the leaders at the local level to turn warm and welcoming they have to lose their homophobia. Homophobia is triggered by being in the undesirable presence of homosexuals. Obviously, the persons expressing homophobia have to know or suspect that a person is homosexual to have that reaction with regard to that person. But general anti-homosexual prejudice can result in anti-gay expressions such as jokes or snide remarks. Many gay people have been hurt or alarmed by such incidents, even when the speaker never intended to target anyone present. So if gay people are to feel welcome, local religious leaders (pastors and elders) will have to show consistent positive regard and respect for gay, lesbian and transgender people, and that will involve consciousness-raising and prejudice reduction efforts. This can be done. It takes planning and effort. It also takes skilled trainers who have a training program developed and ready to implement. Obviously such an undertaking has to be initiated from a higher ecclesiastical level.
A slower, more incremental approach is to “let nature take its course,” and trust that greater inclusiveness will once again become the trend. There is reason to believe it will, since it has worked that way consistently in the past, such as with regard to the trend toward women in leadership; but it is slow and it is meeting waves of resistance.
The resistance to homosexuality in the Church becomes verbalized in terms of theology. In the Protestant Church, where the CCT is, after the Enlightenment which was the intellectual stimulus for the Protestant Reformation, the Holy Bible is the sole authority for theology. Some branches of Protestantism, including Presbyterians, have attempted to summarize the doctrines of the Bible in creeds, confessions and catechisms in order to standardize and clarify what the Bible says. The text of the Bible is dense, sometimes contradictory and difficult to assess. Theoretically, the CCT also maintains that the Holy Bible is the authority in faith and life and that the CCT’s creeds and confessions are guidelines for deciding what Scripture means when there are questions of interpretation or application.
In order for any of the constitutions, creeds, confessions or catechisms of the Church to be changed it must be shown that the Bible supports that change. It is not enough to insist that social, cultural, political, humanitarian, scientific or intellectual issues overwhelmingly favor such change. So, if the CCT were to change the phrases that proscribe homosexual behavior (and thus invalidate homosexual people), it would have to be clear that the Bible has not authorized any such ostracism.
That is, in fact, the core issue.
The Church is of two minds about what the Bible mandates. There are scholars lined up on both sides of the issue. The battleground is the key texts: the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, laws in the book of Leviticus, writings of Paul such as Romans 1, and a few other texts. The texts are so few, in fact, that it should be possible to sort out the issues.
Basically, scholars on the liberal, progressive side in the last 30 years argue that these texts have been mishandled by translators and interpreted out of context. Every one of the texts can be shown to have nothing to say about modern homosexuality. There is no Biblical warrant for saying that homosexual orientation or behavior is wrong. Scholars on the conservative side in the last 30 years have refused to retranslate the texts in question, and ignore the arguments for doing so. They tend to rely on related or parallel issues to argue for the inclusion of homosexuality under the heading of sexual morality in behalf of an agenda (not a doctrine) of family values. Each side has created a realm of discourse and refuses to engage the other on their terms. The reasons for this reluctance are many. Essentially, however, the debates that have taken place have failed to convince those who were arguing. The only major resolutions in favor of the liberal, progressive side tend to have come after the defection of enough of the conservative side to swing the vote. Another way to look at these debates is that they either get nowhere or they split the denomination. This is as much the reason that the CCT has refrained from examining the gay issue as the sense that the CCT has no social mandate to do so.
What options do we have?
It is unlikely that the CCT will become gay friendly.
Gay and lesbian Christians in the CCT have adopted the Thai social mode of being non-confrontational, non-aggressive, passive and quiet. They are not a force for change. They are largely invisible and prefer to remain so. The gay and lesbians outside the Church are not enough of a potential asset for the CCT leaders to take the risk of controversy and near-certain losses of support and members by suggesting a change in policy and practice in order to recruit and welcome them.
The actual situation is that gay and lesbian oriented people are in the CCT and welcome to remain as long as there is nothing obvious about their being homosexual and as long as they do not mind obfuscation and evasion when they seek ordination as pastors, elders or deacons. For many LGBT people this is already the way they live, discreetly, low-profile, unobtrusively never letting their sexual orientation show and never discussing the matter.
This leaves homosexual activists with no natural allies in the CCT. If being invisible as a homosexual is not a viable option for an individual, then participation in the CCT is more confined these days. Membership by katoeys, for example, is possible and lay activities can be done in most congregations. But discussion or debate will not be welcome. As in Thai society at large, overt expressions of gay orientation will be tolerated but not accepted. The gay person will find himself or herself categorized, otherized, and sometimes avoided insofar as she or he insists that one’s sexual orientation is important to one’s identity. There is even less chance that one’s minority orientation and perspectives will be accepted as a valuable asset. As mentioned, the number of persons who would insist on this in the Church is not large because controversy is counter-cultural.
The effect is that homosexual orientation is a topic to be avoided.
There is no modern literature in Thai on being a gay Christian. A boy who grows up in the Church and discovers he is gay moves into a zone of half-light and haze. He cannot find Christian answers to his concern and confusion. There is a large chance that whatever advice he may receive will misdirect him and contradict what he may come across from modern secular sources.
There is no alternative Christian group in Thailand, that I know of, where one’s gay identity is acceptable and considered valuable, where one’s person is considered an asset, where one can hear about and respond to God who loves gay people unconditionally and offers them the same chances to respond and grow as non-gay people find in other churches. Thai evangelists and pastors have no viable suggestions available about where a gay Christian might go to be a full participant in the life and mission of a congregation.
There is no advocacy voice in the CCT to defend gay and lesbian young people when they are bullied and abused. No unit of the Church can be called on to speak for or to offer sanctuary to gay people when they are attacked (as happened on February 20, 2012 within 200 meters of First Church of Chiang Mai).
These things do not exist but they suggest starting places.
Wherever, in the paragraphs just above the phrase “there is no…” appears, it could be written by a more optimistic writer, “There is not yet….” Gay Christian literature could be written. A gay-friendly worship group could begin to meet. An advocacy voice could be organized.
August 2013
Why Is Gay Marriage Complicated?
The issue of gay marriage is complicated, first of all, because society is conflicted about homosexuality. Part of society will fight the emergence into plain sight of any identifiable group of LGBTIQ people. That is where the opposition comes from about the GAY aspect of gay marriage.
The other term, MARRIAGE, is complicated because of overlapping interests. In the USA and many western countries there are four interests: (1) Individuals are asserting the right to be in charge of their own marriage and relationships. Indeed, they assume they have that right. (2) The Church often claims ownership of marriage because it is sacred, the wedding is a sacrament, the whole thing is an act of God. Even churches that do not think of the marriage ceremony as a sacrament on a par with baptism reserve the right to decide whose marriages they will approve, conduct, and bless. (3) Societies, and by that I mean cultural affinity groups, exercise a powerful influence on marriage by validating and rewarding persons of whose marriages they approve. One cultural goal is often the preservation of cultural identity and unique traditions (although from within the group the culture may seem standard, normal and “right”, rather than unique). (4) Governments seek to maintain social order, one sensitive aspect of which has to do with clarity about legal social units. Governments tend to be concerned about the welfare of children and try to make it clear who has responsibility for what aspects of child welfare. In the end, the state tends to back-up such basic items as education, health, and sometimes food and housing, in cases in which families are not functioning to provide these things for the “citizens of the future.” Thus, governments also reserve the right to define what a family is, sometimes calling it marriage which they reserve the right to define and name, too.
One initially attractive suggestion is simply to assign rights with regard to marriage to each of these four sectors. (1) Let the individuals involved decide who to live with. They do that anyway. (2) Let the churches decide who to let in and who to keep out, which they do. (3) Let the cultures associate however they see fit, with whomever, and recalling and re-enacting whatever shared lore they remember – as they now do. (4) Let governments treat all citizens equally without being involved in social engineering; the individual would be the largest social unit the government needs to recognize, while political units are designated solely according to geographical residency.
That minimalist approach has been rejected. For simplicity’s sake, I will say there are two factors in this rejection: children and civilization.
Children are vulnerable and need protection; that protection comes from secure relationships and dependable nurture. Since adults have a distressing propensity, these days, for deviating from responsibility for their children, society (the collective individual) must provide for children who are abandoned or neglected. Since society tends to be fragile in direct proportion to the amount of mobility individuals have, which currently is a large amount of mobility, governments must then provide for abandoned and neglected children. It is the civilized thing to do.
“Civilization” is the sum total of intellectual and physical developments which function together to optimize the welfare and happiness of an identifiable on-going mega-population.
Civilization is not particularly fragile, but it is valuable. Without it life would be far more perilous and arduous. Civilization is what integrates and focuses intellectual and physical pursuits, but it is an abstraction without substance. It is a concept that functions by consensus in particular contexts with regard to specific issues. It is powerful because of the wide extent of agreement about its value. Its effectiveness is compromised by the way judgment is suspended about so many of its constituent issues.
It happens that one of the key concepts of civilization is that the family (and not the individual) is the basic social unit. It is families which function to provide the benefits of society, including, very importantly, the welfare of children.
Since “civilization” is a synthetic principle whose purpose is to integrate, most if not all civilization issues are integrated, including the family and therefore marriage. This is a long way around to saying that it is civilization that mandates the integration of the “four interests”. In civilization there should be an integrated, systematized understanding of marriage.
Until recently (in historic terms) there was such an integrated consensus. Individuals, church(es), societies, and governments were of one mind that marriage was the act of forming a family composed of one man, one woman and their children, if any. Other social configurations were not a family. They might be legitimate social units, such as clans or guilds. Or they might, as in the case of bigamy and bastard children, be illegitimate although quite real. In every case they were not families. The thing that instituted them was not marriage. Throughout this time it was tacitly understood that all four vested interests would have a say about marriage in general and about every particular marriage.
These days there are major changes taking place, with predictable contention. First, individuals embarking on marriage no longer give much consideration to the other three interests. The Church is usually not included in the decision to marry. Indeed, families and friends are also expected to agree to whatever the individuals have decided. In order to mitigate tension on this score, a large percentage of couples live together and even have children before marshaling the church, the community and the civil authority to ratify the relationship; by that time most disagreement will have disappeared, and more important the individuals will have proved to themselves that they want the marriage to be permanent.
By the same token, when the relationship is ending, it is usually over long before the government is contact and a legal divorce is decreed. The Church is typically officially consulted, if at all, only when there is to be a re-marriage. In other words the couple usually has total charge of the relationship to the extent that any objection by the Church, family or friends will create a distance between the individuals and those who object. The role of others, outside the individuals in the marriage, is to agree, if they want to have any more to do with those individuals.
Anyone who tries to insist that marriage has not undergone great change has not been paying attention. In contemporary civilization marriage and family are not what they used to be. Nor is it apparent that civilization is crumbling because this facet has come under new systems of control. It seems, in fact, that a new consensus has emerged that still integrates the roles of the four vested interests. The main change is simply that “necessary prior consent” has been replaced by “optional subsequent assent”. “On bended knee” is a cliché. “Asking permission from the father of the bride,” is either a joke on an insult to the bride. In fact, the traditional wedding is an anachronism that is being maintained in the interest of cultural harmony and because of more immediate benefits that accrue to those who participate in a major celebration.
The situation being what it is, with the individuals authorized by common consent to design their own marriage and family, it should be a simple matter, almost automatic, to design a marriage between two atypical individuals. Indeed, this barrier has already been breached with regard to inter-racial couples, inter-generational couples, and physically unusual couples (including those needing fertility assistance of almost every type). Furthermore, fragmented families are accommodated: one parent families, foster parent families…the list would be quite long.
What makes same-sex marriage contentious is essentially the bias against everything same-sex. Same-sex marriage is already possible on the same basis as all other marriages. Namely, subsequent assent is what is sought. It is absurd to say that two people who have been living together and have two pre-teen children are not a family simply because they have not had a marriage ceremony and their marriage has not been legally registered by the state. If a marriage is what starts such a family, they are married. If they are married, then marriage is not caused by a ceremony or by legal registration, and the marriage is not prevented or invalidated without them. They are married by virtue of the facts of their life.
I think it is time to claim the term marriage. Two gay couples who are friends of mine have come to different conclusions. Steve continues to say, every time he writes about it, that he and Jose were “legally married”, as if other marriages are illegal because they are not recognized by a government. Gordon calls his marriage to Eugene a civil union because that is what the Illinois legislature prefers. I would like for people to just say they’re married when they are.
We may, if we are being consistent, conclude that marriage is NOT defined by the Church, and not by the government. They only define the circumstances under which they will provide services and recognition. As gay people we do not have to agree with inconsistent counter-cultural definitions of human institutions, including marriage. If Harry and Mary are married because they say they are and live like a married family, then Gary and Perry can too. It is inconsistent, as well as unjust and malicious, for the government (I’ll leave the Church out of this for now) to agree that Agnes and her three kids are a family although she has no husband, and that Wilbur and Wilma are married although Wilbur is now living with a Thai woman in Udorn, and that Seth is John’s son even though John’s wife was inseminated by a fertility clinic with semen from an anonymous donor or donors – but Laverne and Laura are not married and not a family with the two children they brought into their marriage as infants, and that Patrick is ineligible to adopt Paul’s son as his son, too, even though they have been loving and nurturing the boy since they were married ten years ago.
What is inconsistent is this: in all cases two people are legally entitled to register their marriage except cases in which the two people are the same sex. The determination of marriageability has been turned over to the individuals involved except in our case. In all those other cases the Church and families can be ignored and are not necessarily consulted. In all those cases only minimum age (and sometimes citizenship) matters. With us there is an exception.
With gay couples such things as cultural values, social traditions, religious objections and historical precedent may be dragged back in to justify the government’s pandering to popular opinion that same-sex couples and relationships should not be validated.
So the issue of gay marriage is not as complicated as it appears to be.
Here are the facts: marriage is the name for establishment of a family unit. We can establish family units. Therefore we can consider ourselves fully married when we have established such a family unit.
The Church’s definition of marriage is about their aspects and understandings of marriage. The government’s definition of marriage is about legal rights and responsibilities and does not permit or prevent everything else. But if government laws are unfair or inconsistent that needs to be addressed. This is what the marriage equality movement is striving for: fair legal rights. We are not agitating for the right to be married. That right has already been procured by those who brought about changes in marriage customs and practices. We just want the laws to recognize our civil rights as they do everyone else’s.
June 2013
The issue of gay marriage is complicated, first of all, because society is conflicted about homosexuality. Part of society will fight the emergence into plain sight of any identifiable group of LGBTIQ people. That is where the opposition comes from about the GAY aspect of gay marriage.
The other term, MARRIAGE, is complicated because of overlapping interests. In the USA and many western countries there are four interests: (1) Individuals are asserting the right to be in charge of their own marriage and relationships. Indeed, they assume they have that right. (2) The Church often claims ownership of marriage because it is sacred, the wedding is a sacrament, the whole thing is an act of God. Even churches that do not think of the marriage ceremony as a sacrament on a par with baptism reserve the right to decide whose marriages they will approve, conduct, and bless. (3) Societies, and by that I mean cultural affinity groups, exercise a powerful influence on marriage by validating and rewarding persons of whose marriages they approve. One cultural goal is often the preservation of cultural identity and unique traditions (although from within the group the culture may seem standard, normal and “right”, rather than unique). (4) Governments seek to maintain social order, one sensitive aspect of which has to do with clarity about legal social units. Governments tend to be concerned about the welfare of children and try to make it clear who has responsibility for what aspects of child welfare. In the end, the state tends to back-up such basic items as education, health, and sometimes food and housing, in cases in which families are not functioning to provide these things for the “citizens of the future.” Thus, governments also reserve the right to define what a family is, sometimes calling it marriage which they reserve the right to define and name, too.
One initially attractive suggestion is simply to assign rights with regard to marriage to each of these four sectors. (1) Let the individuals involved decide who to live with. They do that anyway. (2) Let the churches decide who to let in and who to keep out, which they do. (3) Let the cultures associate however they see fit, with whomever, and recalling and re-enacting whatever shared lore they remember – as they now do. (4) Let governments treat all citizens equally without being involved in social engineering; the individual would be the largest social unit the government needs to recognize, while political units are designated solely according to geographical residency.
That minimalist approach has been rejected. For simplicity’s sake, I will say there are two factors in this rejection: children and civilization.
Children are vulnerable and need protection; that protection comes from secure relationships and dependable nurture. Since adults have a distressing propensity, these days, for deviating from responsibility for their children, society (the collective individual) must provide for children who are abandoned or neglected. Since society tends to be fragile in direct proportion to the amount of mobility individuals have, which currently is a large amount of mobility, governments must then provide for abandoned and neglected children. It is the civilized thing to do.
“Civilization” is the sum total of intellectual and physical developments which function together to optimize the welfare and happiness of an identifiable on-going mega-population.
Civilization is not particularly fragile, but it is valuable. Without it life would be far more perilous and arduous. Civilization is what integrates and focuses intellectual and physical pursuits, but it is an abstraction without substance. It is a concept that functions by consensus in particular contexts with regard to specific issues. It is powerful because of the wide extent of agreement about its value. Its effectiveness is compromised by the way judgment is suspended about so many of its constituent issues.
It happens that one of the key concepts of civilization is that the family (and not the individual) is the basic social unit. It is families which function to provide the benefits of society, including, very importantly, the welfare of children.
Since “civilization” is a synthetic principle whose purpose is to integrate, most if not all civilization issues are integrated, including the family and therefore marriage. This is a long way around to saying that it is civilization that mandates the integration of the “four interests”. In civilization there should be an integrated, systematized understanding of marriage.
Until recently (in historic terms) there was such an integrated consensus. Individuals, church(es), societies, and governments were of one mind that marriage was the act of forming a family composed of one man, one woman and their children, if any. Other social configurations were not a family. They might be legitimate social units, such as clans or guilds. Or they might, as in the case of bigamy and bastard children, be illegitimate although quite real. In every case they were not families. The thing that instituted them was not marriage. Throughout this time it was tacitly understood that all four vested interests would have a say about marriage in general and about every particular marriage.
These days there are major changes taking place, with predictable contention. First, individuals embarking on marriage no longer give much consideration to the other three interests. The Church is usually not included in the decision to marry. Indeed, families and friends are also expected to agree to whatever the individuals have decided. In order to mitigate tension on this score, a large percentage of couples live together and even have children before marshaling the church, the community and the civil authority to ratify the relationship; by that time most disagreement will have disappeared, and more important the individuals will have proved to themselves that they want the marriage to be permanent.
By the same token, when the relationship is ending, it is usually over long before the government is contact and a legal divorce is decreed. The Church is typically officially consulted, if at all, only when there is to be a re-marriage. In other words the couple usually has total charge of the relationship to the extent that any objection by the Church, family or friends will create a distance between the individuals and those who object. The role of others, outside the individuals in the marriage, is to agree, if they want to have any more to do with those individuals.
Anyone who tries to insist that marriage has not undergone great change has not been paying attention. In contemporary civilization marriage and family are not what they used to be. Nor is it apparent that civilization is crumbling because this facet has come under new systems of control. It seems, in fact, that a new consensus has emerged that still integrates the roles of the four vested interests. The main change is simply that “necessary prior consent” has been replaced by “optional subsequent assent”. “On bended knee” is a cliché. “Asking permission from the father of the bride,” is either a joke on an insult to the bride. In fact, the traditional wedding is an anachronism that is being maintained in the interest of cultural harmony and because of more immediate benefits that accrue to those who participate in a major celebration.
The situation being what it is, with the individuals authorized by common consent to design their own marriage and family, it should be a simple matter, almost automatic, to design a marriage between two atypical individuals. Indeed, this barrier has already been breached with regard to inter-racial couples, inter-generational couples, and physically unusual couples (including those needing fertility assistance of almost every type). Furthermore, fragmented families are accommodated: one parent families, foster parent families…the list would be quite long.
What makes same-sex marriage contentious is essentially the bias against everything same-sex. Same-sex marriage is already possible on the same basis as all other marriages. Namely, subsequent assent is what is sought. It is absurd to say that two people who have been living together and have two pre-teen children are not a family simply because they have not had a marriage ceremony and their marriage has not been legally registered by the state. If a marriage is what starts such a family, they are married. If they are married, then marriage is not caused by a ceremony or by legal registration, and the marriage is not prevented or invalidated without them. They are married by virtue of the facts of their life.
I think it is time to claim the term marriage. Two gay couples who are friends of mine have come to different conclusions. Steve continues to say, every time he writes about it, that he and Jose were “legally married”, as if other marriages are illegal because they are not recognized by a government. Gordon calls his marriage to Eugene a civil union because that is what the Illinois legislature prefers. I would like for people to just say they’re married when they are.
We may, if we are being consistent, conclude that marriage is NOT defined by the Church, and not by the government. They only define the circumstances under which they will provide services and recognition. As gay people we do not have to agree with inconsistent counter-cultural definitions of human institutions, including marriage. If Harry and Mary are married because they say they are and live like a married family, then Gary and Perry can too. It is inconsistent, as well as unjust and malicious, for the government (I’ll leave the Church out of this for now) to agree that Agnes and her three kids are a family although she has no husband, and that Wilbur and Wilma are married although Wilbur is now living with a Thai woman in Udorn, and that Seth is John’s son even though John’s wife was inseminated by a fertility clinic with semen from an anonymous donor or donors – but Laverne and Laura are not married and not a family with the two children they brought into their marriage as infants, and that Patrick is ineligible to adopt Paul’s son as his son, too, even though they have been loving and nurturing the boy since they were married ten years ago.
What is inconsistent is this: in all cases two people are legally entitled to register their marriage except cases in which the two people are the same sex. The determination of marriageability has been turned over to the individuals involved except in our case. In all those other cases the Church and families can be ignored and are not necessarily consulted. In all those cases only minimum age (and sometimes citizenship) matters. With us there is an exception.
With gay couples such things as cultural values, social traditions, religious objections and historical precedent may be dragged back in to justify the government’s pandering to popular opinion that same-sex couples and relationships should not be validated.
So the issue of gay marriage is not as complicated as it appears to be.
Here are the facts: marriage is the name for establishment of a family unit. We can establish family units. Therefore we can consider ourselves fully married when we have established such a family unit.
The Church’s definition of marriage is about their aspects and understandings of marriage. The government’s definition of marriage is about legal rights and responsibilities and does not permit or prevent everything else. But if government laws are unfair or inconsistent that needs to be addressed. This is what the marriage equality movement is striving for: fair legal rights. We are not agitating for the right to be married. That right has already been procured by those who brought about changes in marriage customs and practices. We just want the laws to recognize our civil rights as they do everyone else’s.
June 2013
No Case, After All
Finally we come to the Church’s trump card. It’s about what we do.
Without conceding one way or the other that being born queer is an innate natural condition that cannot be called sinful, the Church (that is some parts of the Church, in the very great majority) still maintain that sexual actions by queer-gay-lesbian people are sinful. “You can’t do that !” they rant.
Why not?
There are two basic reasons. I will mention some of the sub-arguments to remind us how intrusive, inconsistent and unjust those charges are. The two basic reasons for objecting to the way we have sex is (1) that those ways defy the laws of nature, (2) and they defy the laws of the Church.
NATURE
Other writers, including, superlatively, John Boswell, have covered this more thoroughly and thoughtfully than I am able to do in an essay of this scope. I’m tempted to let it stand and refer doubters to those better expositions about how “natural law” entered Christian theology and moral discourse.
Essentially the homo-haters these days are saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”
Laying aside the issue of “creationism” (based on literal Biblical interpretations) and “evolutionism” (which doubts there ever was a particular human couple who were the un-evolved first parents), the doubters are either very unsophisticated, very uninformed, or very stubborn.
I talked with a young seminary student whose simple conclusion was that gay sex had to be wrong because human anatomy isn’t built for it. Pressed, she insisted two women don’t have at least one piece of necessary anatomical equipment, and two men have trouble finding “where to put it” because the available orifices were made for other functions. The seminary teacher (me) didn’t press the student to confirm or deny that a heterosexual married couple might do similar things, and “Would that also break the laws of nature?”
A conservative family-values Christian foundation continues to argue that “queer sex is contrary to nature: animals don’t do that, therefore it is not natural.” I wonder what would destroy their argument. If we had documentation that any sexual animal species naturally engaged in same-sex activity would that prove that it is not universally unnatural? One scientist has already identified 450+ species which engage in same-sex (non-procreative) sexual activity for a wide variety of reasons. It is widely agreed by zoologists that the argument that queer sex is unnatural cannot be substantiated by observation of nature.
Gay Christians tend to understand that the Church is really opposed to frivolity and fun. The Church is telling us that sex is not supposed to be about pleasure but about procreation. “If you don’t do it to make babies, don’t do it.” Thus, birth control is wrong, sex out of wedlock is wrong, solo sex is very wrong. Trying to calculate fertility periods is not so wrong because it doesn’t work. Interrupted coitus is OK, too, even though semen is spilled (which is why they say masturbation is wrong); withdrawal may be OK, perhaps because it is so agonizingly hard to do and so unfulfilling that it must build character.
Consistency on these things is not the Church’s strong point.
MORALITY
The Church feels safe in its role as the guardian of morals. But the Church still has to have a rationale for opposing gay sex. The Church’s arguments have tended to cluster around three points: (1) logic, (2) family, (3) and scripture.
Logic or common sense is the least mentioned and most relied-upon negative response to homosexuals. This argument either begins with or prominently contains such phrases as “everybody knows” and “it is obvious.” It is a variation on the nature argument but without clear references. The idea is that since the conclusion is so clear there is nothing to be gained by going over the steps to get there.
What is really obvious is that this line of thought is a fairly thoughtless point of view, not a line, in fact, because it never moves. It is actually a way to keep from dealing with the issue. While this common sense argument is not helpful in official statements, it is what a preponderance of Christians rely on to arrive at their homophobia and loathing of us. The whole idea of homosexuality is so repugnant that their minds rebel at the prospect of dealing with it. In other words, no intellectual strategy is going to change the opinions of the very large majority of the anti-gay Christian population.
In my experience only two forces will make a difference.
First, the Church’s gradual shift towards inclusiveness will eventually, with glacial inevitability, move the Church.
Second, the crisis of actually having to deal with one’s own sexual orientation or a close friend or relative’s homosexuality sometimes does what no amount of reasoning and explaining can do. The most avid homophobes are vulnerable to change when this crisis engulfs them.
Family is the most popular line of argument these days that uses conceptual rationale. With or without recourse to theology or philosophy, the proponents of family construe homosexuals as opposition. In order to do this they have to control the definitions of the terms. The word “family” is defined precisely to conform to the binary, heterosexual norm. A family is a man and woman and their offspring. When pushed, family advocates will allow into their definitions some others. Children born outside the family may become members of it by being adopted. Orphans can either migrate to the care of the larger family (grandparents might take over) or into another family. As children grow older their relationship to parents, siblings and extended family may change, gradually or suddenly, sometimes radically. Even family advocates have to agree that a family is constantly evolving and every family is unique.
Family advocates will, in fact, generally agree that almost any family configuration is possible, even though some are not ideal. For example, the ideal may be a man and woman as mother and father, but if one were to die the other could carry on. A single parent family is not best, but better than some alternatives. If the widowed parent marries again that restores the ideal family, according to family advocates, even though the intrusion of a step-parent is legendary in its likelihood to malfunction.
What would be unacceptable to family advocates is for the widow to take in a person of the same sex as the next spouse. Consider, however, what would be acceptable: Family advocates would prefer for a rape victim to go ahead and bear an illegitimate child and struggle to raise it. Probably it would even be acceptable for a single woman to be artificially inseminated and have a child [for example, a widow whose dead husband had the foresight to deposit semen in a fertility clinic’s bank]. But it would be unacceptable for a homosexual couple to do similar things.
What begins to be clear is that about any family pattern can be acceptable as long as there is no homosexual in a parental role in it. In other words, Christian family advocates are concerned to control the definition of a parent.
Actually, it is only the role and definition of the father that is bothersome. If a woman produces a child she’s the mother. If she raises a child she’s the mother. But who the father is, is only automatic and essentially unquestioned when the male has been confirmed by one and all in that role. To confirm a male in the role of father, it is not enough to know that he contributed to the DNA that resulted in the child. To be in the father-role the male must carry out a social script.
What is then to prevent an outsider from performing the father’s role? Nothing. If stepfathers can do it, the issue is settled. It takes a large measure of intrusiveness to object that the father is invalid because of the way he does or could have sex with the spouse who is the mother. If the child is nurtured the father is doing his duty. The creation, validation and performance of the father is a societal issue. Period.
Is the status of the human male so precarious? Is that what family advocates are concerned about? If so, it is not the welfare of the children that is at issue. Family advocates do not usually become aggressive unless the male role is being challenged. The longer one looks at this and the deeper one questions its dynamics, the more clear it is that what bothers family advocates about homosexuality is the undermining of male status.
They do not want a woman to look like she can get along well without a male to help her parent the children. They do not want a woman looking like she can perform the father/male role in any way. They do not want a male-male couple confusing the issue of what a family is, because in such a family sooner or later both males will assume both roles and that undermines the model. The fact that this shared role and role hand-off happens in almost every heterosexual family, and is a plus, is irrelevant to family advocates because it is the model that counts.
The objection of family advocates is not about how homosexuals have sex after all. It is all about maintaining a male-superior family model. Since the anti-gay debate is not their real concern, engaging them in debate on these “family” terms will get us nowhere.
Scripture only enters the discourse when we are subjected to some sort of Church court. Only when we are charged with being Biblical law-breakers will we be confronted with verses of the Bible and their interpretations.
As a relevant aside, it is also true that whenever verses of the Bible are cited against us we are, ipso facto, in a sort of Church court, being prosecuted and judged. Ironically, this most commonly happens in the context of what is supposed to be worship. Any worship service in which a trial takes place is (a) a desecration of worship, (b) and unjust, for the accused have no right to respond. This is supposed to be offset by the right of the accused to repent, which is predicated on the premise that (a) the accused will no doubt agree to the charges and repent, (b) and that the event is then transformed into a celebration in which God is given (delayed) praise and thanks. If the accused continues to believe that the charges are wrong or unfounded, then the event ends inconclusively, and (a) the worship that was supposed to take place has been prevented at least for some participants, (b) the event was misrepresented and the trustworthiness of the institution is undermined, (c) the accused is entitled to feel offended by the accusation and proceeding, as long as there is no opportunity for rebuttal by fair counsel. Even with the likelihood of a sinner repenting some of these trials are unfair simply because the accused is in no condition to understand or respond to the charges. It would be unfair for a pastor to look down from a pulpit, point an accusing finger at a gay teen who has just come out, and say, “Do you repent?” That is just prolonging the injustice rather than opening the door for fair response.
Accusatory desecrations of worship are very common in evangelical churches. They result from a failure to discern the difference between prosecution and prophesy. In pre-Christian times, the role of a prophet was sometimes to utter prophesy and at other times to pronounce judgment. The difference in the two is that in prophecy the prophet is saying “if…then” pointing to consequences of certain actions. It is a type of urgent guidance. In accusation, the prophet is pronouncing sentence on a guilty party as a result of a process that had taken place previously and to which the convict had been present and entitled to understand the charges, the arguments, and the results and had been represented by wise counsel; or some educational or communal development that was equivalent to this.
It is not fair to demand that every gay person accused in a Christian court represent himself or herself. In other words not every gay person really needs to master the Biblical texts and theological arguments. Every accused person is entitled to have someone or some agency serve as their defense. Does this happen? Do churches supply defendants with people to speak for them? Is it not rather that the Church court declares, “We have discussed all this before. These things are wrong. Did you do them or not? How do you plea?” In effect, the only reply an accused can make is to agree or disagree with the authority of the court, because the arguments have gone on before the case was brought to it. Does this not seem like aborted justice? Anyhow, the outcome of the issue is whether the accused will stay inside the court’s jurisdiction or leave it.
When some entity of the Church proclaims homosexual activity is wrong, the response should be, “We are entitled to hear what your best scholars have said pro and con on that, and we are entitled to have these scholar’s opinions evaluated in light of the best scholarship from other sources. We are going to decide on staying or leaving based on how you have done your homework.”
In any court of law the easiest cases to prosecute are those in which the defendant provides his or her own defense. We should never submit to that. Any Church entity that says, “We do not have to provide you defense attorneys,” is an unjust court with no legitimacy. Do not pay any attention to it.
What when? Are homosexual acts moral or immoral?
The best answer is that they are moral or immoral on exactly the same bases that heterosexual actions are. They are not immoral because they are done by two persons of the same sex if the very same actions done by heterosexuals are not immoral. First, there must be agreement to this principle of judgment.
Then there needs to be agreement on the principles by which all sexual activities are evaluated. For example, if any sexual activity is permissible for the purpose of emotional release, spiritual edification, intellectual curiosity, enhancement of bonding, expression of love, or any other purpose than to produce offspring, then sexual activity is not in principle just for the survival of the human species. That should end the debate about whether gay sex is permitted or not.
The argument may now have been reduced to one point: “God has said no.”
If, after all has been said, we still come to this impasse, it is time to gather the books onto the table and seat the best informed people we can recruit to review the arguments and see if there is any point missing, any line of thought not covered. Is there any reason to do the debate again?
In my seminary class there was an entering student whose one strong point was his conviction that he was called to be a pastor. His ability to do seminary level course work, however, was poor. Finally, after a second semester of failing grades, the dean told him to go home. “But God has called me to be a pastor,” the student objected. The dean responded, “God has not told us the same thing.”
It is possible for two different and contradictory conclusions to emerge about God’s will. Why is this not one of those occasions when, for a time at least, contradictory conclusions can be equally honored and people holding those divergent opinions entitled to dignity?
CONCLUSION
I have argued that the Church has been inconsistent, unjust, and harmful to its own interests and to the lives and honor of people under its care.
The Church, whenever, it officially refuses to give a fair hearing to informed theological disagreement with its anti-homosexual stances, and whenever it refuses to respond to the well supported academic and pastoral reasons, rather than simply measuring public opinion or standing firm on previous positions, is intellectually wrong in either its processes or in its conclusions, or both. Harm that this does to people and to the mission of the Church is going to come under judgment.
The Church is not infallible. It has made mistakes in the past and the Church has changed its mind about many issues. There is both Scriptural and historical evidence for this. Even the texts of the Bible have been transmitted and translated in ways that needed to be corrected. Interpretations have more often been changed, as has been necessary as circumstances changed. The texts used against homosexual practices are under scrutiny. There is credible evidence that those texts have been translated and interpreted to support an anti-gay agenda. But it is not up to untrained gay young people and laity to prove their cases and defend themselves. They cannot be justly tried for infractions of scriptural injunctions that are debatable. Debate on scriptural interpretation is always decided by consensus, which takes time. The Church’s record on this is one of its darkest legacies.
Nor will the cases prevail if the real issues are hidden and the ones made public are spurious. These are cases that cannot be won.
But the deeper we look at the rationale for charging gay people with sin because of their sexual practices, the more it is clear that there are no valid charges being brought. Gay sex is contrary to the laws of nature? The official Church has largely dropped that. Gay sex is wrong as everybody knows? This is simply a way to avoid studying the issues. Gay sex is destructive of the family or society? Gay sex is not procreative, but neither is a good deal of heterosexual sex. Gay sex is contrary to scripture? We will not yield until the text and meaning of scripture can be agreed upon; until then the matter is unsolved and judgment must be withheld or injustice will result.
My reason for writing is to offer aid and comfort to gay young Christians who are intimidated and confused. I am not doing this by writing to these young people, but writing to the Church to be one more voice saying, “Look at what you’re doing!”
October 2012
Without conceding one way or the other that being born queer is an innate natural condition that cannot be called sinful, the Church (that is some parts of the Church, in the very great majority) still maintain that sexual actions by queer-gay-lesbian people are sinful. “You can’t do that !” they rant.
Why not?
There are two basic reasons. I will mention some of the sub-arguments to remind us how intrusive, inconsistent and unjust those charges are. The two basic reasons for objecting to the way we have sex is (1) that those ways defy the laws of nature, (2) and they defy the laws of the Church.
NATURE
Other writers, including, superlatively, John Boswell, have covered this more thoroughly and thoughtfully than I am able to do in an essay of this scope. I’m tempted to let it stand and refer doubters to those better expositions about how “natural law” entered Christian theology and moral discourse.
Essentially the homo-haters these days are saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”
Laying aside the issue of “creationism” (based on literal Biblical interpretations) and “evolutionism” (which doubts there ever was a particular human couple who were the un-evolved first parents), the doubters are either very unsophisticated, very uninformed, or very stubborn.
I talked with a young seminary student whose simple conclusion was that gay sex had to be wrong because human anatomy isn’t built for it. Pressed, she insisted two women don’t have at least one piece of necessary anatomical equipment, and two men have trouble finding “where to put it” because the available orifices were made for other functions. The seminary teacher (me) didn’t press the student to confirm or deny that a heterosexual married couple might do similar things, and “Would that also break the laws of nature?”
A conservative family-values Christian foundation continues to argue that “queer sex is contrary to nature: animals don’t do that, therefore it is not natural.” I wonder what would destroy their argument. If we had documentation that any sexual animal species naturally engaged in same-sex activity would that prove that it is not universally unnatural? One scientist has already identified 450+ species which engage in same-sex (non-procreative) sexual activity for a wide variety of reasons. It is widely agreed by zoologists that the argument that queer sex is unnatural cannot be substantiated by observation of nature.
Gay Christians tend to understand that the Church is really opposed to frivolity and fun. The Church is telling us that sex is not supposed to be about pleasure but about procreation. “If you don’t do it to make babies, don’t do it.” Thus, birth control is wrong, sex out of wedlock is wrong, solo sex is very wrong. Trying to calculate fertility periods is not so wrong because it doesn’t work. Interrupted coitus is OK, too, even though semen is spilled (which is why they say masturbation is wrong); withdrawal may be OK, perhaps because it is so agonizingly hard to do and so unfulfilling that it must build character.
Consistency on these things is not the Church’s strong point.
MORALITY
The Church feels safe in its role as the guardian of morals. But the Church still has to have a rationale for opposing gay sex. The Church’s arguments have tended to cluster around three points: (1) logic, (2) family, (3) and scripture.
Logic or common sense is the least mentioned and most relied-upon negative response to homosexuals. This argument either begins with or prominently contains such phrases as “everybody knows” and “it is obvious.” It is a variation on the nature argument but without clear references. The idea is that since the conclusion is so clear there is nothing to be gained by going over the steps to get there.
What is really obvious is that this line of thought is a fairly thoughtless point of view, not a line, in fact, because it never moves. It is actually a way to keep from dealing with the issue. While this common sense argument is not helpful in official statements, it is what a preponderance of Christians rely on to arrive at their homophobia and loathing of us. The whole idea of homosexuality is so repugnant that their minds rebel at the prospect of dealing with it. In other words, no intellectual strategy is going to change the opinions of the very large majority of the anti-gay Christian population.
In my experience only two forces will make a difference.
First, the Church’s gradual shift towards inclusiveness will eventually, with glacial inevitability, move the Church.
Second, the crisis of actually having to deal with one’s own sexual orientation or a close friend or relative’s homosexuality sometimes does what no amount of reasoning and explaining can do. The most avid homophobes are vulnerable to change when this crisis engulfs them.
Family is the most popular line of argument these days that uses conceptual rationale. With or without recourse to theology or philosophy, the proponents of family construe homosexuals as opposition. In order to do this they have to control the definitions of the terms. The word “family” is defined precisely to conform to the binary, heterosexual norm. A family is a man and woman and their offspring. When pushed, family advocates will allow into their definitions some others. Children born outside the family may become members of it by being adopted. Orphans can either migrate to the care of the larger family (grandparents might take over) or into another family. As children grow older their relationship to parents, siblings and extended family may change, gradually or suddenly, sometimes radically. Even family advocates have to agree that a family is constantly evolving and every family is unique.
Family advocates will, in fact, generally agree that almost any family configuration is possible, even though some are not ideal. For example, the ideal may be a man and woman as mother and father, but if one were to die the other could carry on. A single parent family is not best, but better than some alternatives. If the widowed parent marries again that restores the ideal family, according to family advocates, even though the intrusion of a step-parent is legendary in its likelihood to malfunction.
What would be unacceptable to family advocates is for the widow to take in a person of the same sex as the next spouse. Consider, however, what would be acceptable: Family advocates would prefer for a rape victim to go ahead and bear an illegitimate child and struggle to raise it. Probably it would even be acceptable for a single woman to be artificially inseminated and have a child [for example, a widow whose dead husband had the foresight to deposit semen in a fertility clinic’s bank]. But it would be unacceptable for a homosexual couple to do similar things.
What begins to be clear is that about any family pattern can be acceptable as long as there is no homosexual in a parental role in it. In other words, Christian family advocates are concerned to control the definition of a parent.
Actually, it is only the role and definition of the father that is bothersome. If a woman produces a child she’s the mother. If she raises a child she’s the mother. But who the father is, is only automatic and essentially unquestioned when the male has been confirmed by one and all in that role. To confirm a male in the role of father, it is not enough to know that he contributed to the DNA that resulted in the child. To be in the father-role the male must carry out a social script.
What is then to prevent an outsider from performing the father’s role? Nothing. If stepfathers can do it, the issue is settled. It takes a large measure of intrusiveness to object that the father is invalid because of the way he does or could have sex with the spouse who is the mother. If the child is nurtured the father is doing his duty. The creation, validation and performance of the father is a societal issue. Period.
Is the status of the human male so precarious? Is that what family advocates are concerned about? If so, it is not the welfare of the children that is at issue. Family advocates do not usually become aggressive unless the male role is being challenged. The longer one looks at this and the deeper one questions its dynamics, the more clear it is that what bothers family advocates about homosexuality is the undermining of male status.
They do not want a woman to look like she can get along well without a male to help her parent the children. They do not want a woman looking like she can perform the father/male role in any way. They do not want a male-male couple confusing the issue of what a family is, because in such a family sooner or later both males will assume both roles and that undermines the model. The fact that this shared role and role hand-off happens in almost every heterosexual family, and is a plus, is irrelevant to family advocates because it is the model that counts.
The objection of family advocates is not about how homosexuals have sex after all. It is all about maintaining a male-superior family model. Since the anti-gay debate is not their real concern, engaging them in debate on these “family” terms will get us nowhere.
Scripture only enters the discourse when we are subjected to some sort of Church court. Only when we are charged with being Biblical law-breakers will we be confronted with verses of the Bible and their interpretations.
As a relevant aside, it is also true that whenever verses of the Bible are cited against us we are, ipso facto, in a sort of Church court, being prosecuted and judged. Ironically, this most commonly happens in the context of what is supposed to be worship. Any worship service in which a trial takes place is (a) a desecration of worship, (b) and unjust, for the accused have no right to respond. This is supposed to be offset by the right of the accused to repent, which is predicated on the premise that (a) the accused will no doubt agree to the charges and repent, (b) and that the event is then transformed into a celebration in which God is given (delayed) praise and thanks. If the accused continues to believe that the charges are wrong or unfounded, then the event ends inconclusively, and (a) the worship that was supposed to take place has been prevented at least for some participants, (b) the event was misrepresented and the trustworthiness of the institution is undermined, (c) the accused is entitled to feel offended by the accusation and proceeding, as long as there is no opportunity for rebuttal by fair counsel. Even with the likelihood of a sinner repenting some of these trials are unfair simply because the accused is in no condition to understand or respond to the charges. It would be unfair for a pastor to look down from a pulpit, point an accusing finger at a gay teen who has just come out, and say, “Do you repent?” That is just prolonging the injustice rather than opening the door for fair response.
Accusatory desecrations of worship are very common in evangelical churches. They result from a failure to discern the difference between prosecution and prophesy. In pre-Christian times, the role of a prophet was sometimes to utter prophesy and at other times to pronounce judgment. The difference in the two is that in prophecy the prophet is saying “if…then” pointing to consequences of certain actions. It is a type of urgent guidance. In accusation, the prophet is pronouncing sentence on a guilty party as a result of a process that had taken place previously and to which the convict had been present and entitled to understand the charges, the arguments, and the results and had been represented by wise counsel; or some educational or communal development that was equivalent to this.
It is not fair to demand that every gay person accused in a Christian court represent himself or herself. In other words not every gay person really needs to master the Biblical texts and theological arguments. Every accused person is entitled to have someone or some agency serve as their defense. Does this happen? Do churches supply defendants with people to speak for them? Is it not rather that the Church court declares, “We have discussed all this before. These things are wrong. Did you do them or not? How do you plea?” In effect, the only reply an accused can make is to agree or disagree with the authority of the court, because the arguments have gone on before the case was brought to it. Does this not seem like aborted justice? Anyhow, the outcome of the issue is whether the accused will stay inside the court’s jurisdiction or leave it.
When some entity of the Church proclaims homosexual activity is wrong, the response should be, “We are entitled to hear what your best scholars have said pro and con on that, and we are entitled to have these scholar’s opinions evaluated in light of the best scholarship from other sources. We are going to decide on staying or leaving based on how you have done your homework.”
In any court of law the easiest cases to prosecute are those in which the defendant provides his or her own defense. We should never submit to that. Any Church entity that says, “We do not have to provide you defense attorneys,” is an unjust court with no legitimacy. Do not pay any attention to it.
What when? Are homosexual acts moral or immoral?
The best answer is that they are moral or immoral on exactly the same bases that heterosexual actions are. They are not immoral because they are done by two persons of the same sex if the very same actions done by heterosexuals are not immoral. First, there must be agreement to this principle of judgment.
Then there needs to be agreement on the principles by which all sexual activities are evaluated. For example, if any sexual activity is permissible for the purpose of emotional release, spiritual edification, intellectual curiosity, enhancement of bonding, expression of love, or any other purpose than to produce offspring, then sexual activity is not in principle just for the survival of the human species. That should end the debate about whether gay sex is permitted or not.
The argument may now have been reduced to one point: “God has said no.”
If, after all has been said, we still come to this impasse, it is time to gather the books onto the table and seat the best informed people we can recruit to review the arguments and see if there is any point missing, any line of thought not covered. Is there any reason to do the debate again?
In my seminary class there was an entering student whose one strong point was his conviction that he was called to be a pastor. His ability to do seminary level course work, however, was poor. Finally, after a second semester of failing grades, the dean told him to go home. “But God has called me to be a pastor,” the student objected. The dean responded, “God has not told us the same thing.”
It is possible for two different and contradictory conclusions to emerge about God’s will. Why is this not one of those occasions when, for a time at least, contradictory conclusions can be equally honored and people holding those divergent opinions entitled to dignity?
CONCLUSION
I have argued that the Church has been inconsistent, unjust, and harmful to its own interests and to the lives and honor of people under its care.
The Church, whenever, it officially refuses to give a fair hearing to informed theological disagreement with its anti-homosexual stances, and whenever it refuses to respond to the well supported academic and pastoral reasons, rather than simply measuring public opinion or standing firm on previous positions, is intellectually wrong in either its processes or in its conclusions, or both. Harm that this does to people and to the mission of the Church is going to come under judgment.
The Church is not infallible. It has made mistakes in the past and the Church has changed its mind about many issues. There is both Scriptural and historical evidence for this. Even the texts of the Bible have been transmitted and translated in ways that needed to be corrected. Interpretations have more often been changed, as has been necessary as circumstances changed. The texts used against homosexual practices are under scrutiny. There is credible evidence that those texts have been translated and interpreted to support an anti-gay agenda. But it is not up to untrained gay young people and laity to prove their cases and defend themselves. They cannot be justly tried for infractions of scriptural injunctions that are debatable. Debate on scriptural interpretation is always decided by consensus, which takes time. The Church’s record on this is one of its darkest legacies.
Nor will the cases prevail if the real issues are hidden and the ones made public are spurious. These are cases that cannot be won.
But the deeper we look at the rationale for charging gay people with sin because of their sexual practices, the more it is clear that there are no valid charges being brought. Gay sex is contrary to the laws of nature? The official Church has largely dropped that. Gay sex is wrong as everybody knows? This is simply a way to avoid studying the issues. Gay sex is destructive of the family or society? Gay sex is not procreative, but neither is a good deal of heterosexual sex. Gay sex is contrary to scripture? We will not yield until the text and meaning of scripture can be agreed upon; until then the matter is unsolved and judgment must be withheld or injustice will result.
My reason for writing is to offer aid and comfort to gay young Christians who are intimidated and confused. I am not doing this by writing to these young people, but writing to the Church to be one more voice saying, “Look at what you’re doing!”
October 2012
Gay Despair: The Christian Contribution
A friend of mine was marching in a gay pride parade in Chicago when he saw a woman on the side of the street holding a poster that read, “Please forgive us for the hurt the Church has caused you.”
I’ve been thinking about that for months. My thoughts have congealed into two: (1) Well, it’s a start. (2) What has the Church done?
I’ve been in the Church all my life. I ought to know what the Church has done. Ironically, it’s only after being sidelined by the Church that I have gained a multi-dimensional view of what the Church has done to hurt gay and lesbian people. (For brevity, please allow me to adopt the current shorthand of combining gay men and women into one group).
First, from a Christian perspective what the Church has done is to adopt society’s bias, myopia, and paranoia about gay people. The Church, in fact, created a large measure of that societal attitude beginning from the middle of the Christian era [Boswell says it really began in the 13th century] or earlier [Fone traces it back to the second or third century]. The Church bent its own theological principles to create a specter that did not exist and does not comport with reality. The Church forsook its honesty by distorting Biblical passages to serve its anti-gay perceptions.
Second, from the gay perspective what the Church has done is (1) to confront gay people with the lie that being gay is part of being sinful; (2) to insist that being gay is a choice; (3) to propose that there is a remedy for being gay; (4) to make renunciation of being gay a condition for full acceptance into the Church; and (5) to foster escalation of misunderstanding about homosexuality into hatred of gays.
Let’s stop mincing words.
When the Church equates homosexuality with other sinful human conditions, those who speak in the name of the Church are lying. It is not true that homosexuality is a sinful condition. There is no scientific justification for continuing to say that people have a choice about their sexual orientation. The Royal College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued unequivocal declarations that one’s sexual orientation is unchangeable and that therapies to change it do not work and can possibly do great harm. The scientific argument is closed. The question is settled. Now how is the Church going to respond? We are waiting.
When people are created/born in any condition for which they have no choice, that condition is not their fault. They are not guilty. That condition is exempt from moral culpability. When the Church calls genetic, inborn conditions sin, the Church has a choice either to reverse its position in order to be consistent with the irrefutable scientific facts, or to be judged wrong by history and rendered untrustworthy and eventually irrelevant.
A lot of time and resources have been expended on disputing what the Bible says about homosexual behavior. We don’t need to go over that line of argument any more. It does not actually matter whether or not specific verses of scripture can be marshaled up to repudiate homosexuality. If being homosexual is an innate condition it is not a sin. Some other interpretation must be found for those verses. The verses themselves cannot be used to disprove the scientific facts without resorting to a circular argument, which is a breach of logic: “scripture is always right; scripture says being gay is sinful; science says being gay is natural; therefore science is wrong because science is contrary to scripture and scripture is right.” The fact is, the Church has reversed itself a number of times when it was found to be teaching things which were not factual, and this ought to be another one of those times.
Insofar as the Church is serious about its assertion that “outside the Church there is no salvation,” extra ecclesia est nulla salus, the exclusion of any population raises eternal issues. Unless there is some other door into “everlasting life” all homosexuals are prevented from having any hope of redemption. This is the message that gay people have been receiving for the last several hundred years. Insofar as gay people agree with the theology of salvation, hopelessness is inevitable. We cannot change our nature so we were born damned.
As it happens, the majority of gay people in Christian societies divide into three groups: (1) those who have abandoned the Church, (2) those who have found enclaves in the Church where homosexuality is not damned, (3) those who ignore the theology and condemnation of the Church, assuming that there is a missing link that still connects them validly to the Church. There is a fourth group of gays, however, who are often among the more serious Church members, who understand the Church’s teachings, agree with the Church’s authority, and try to conform to the Church’s dictates. It happens that the Church’s condemnation of homosexuality may be confined to homosexual behavior. On second thought, by some, it is not one’s inclination/orientation that is sinful but one’s actions. Exactly what actions are sinful is yet another sticking point, but refraining from all sexual actions should certainly suffice. Celibacy is mandated. Actually, the Church has traditionally taught that celibacy is a spiritual gift given to some. For those branches of the Church which require clergy to be celibate, discernment of the gift for celibacy is one of the tests of who should be ordained. Gay sex is prohibited on two bases: (1) that it is performed by two people of the same sex, (2) and/or that it is non-procreative. The point is that sexual activity is prohibited for all gay people, whether or not they have spiritual gifts to appreciate and benefit from a celibate life. It is hard to imagine how sexual abstinence for life can be acceptable when it is imposed and not discerned as a spiritual benefit. Enforced celibacy leads to many dire outcomes, which all eventually coalesce as despair.
All of this notwithstanding, my strongest objection to the Church has been that it fails in one of its main missions. An essential purpose of the Church is to prefigure a society on earth as it is in heaven. In this society polarities common to earth will be reversed. Those who are despised, neglected, rejected and forgotten will be rescued from those states of oblivion and installed with honor, dignity and nobility. Those basking in power, wealth and privilege will be displaced. A mission of the Church is to create that sort of society in which the “last, least and lost” are rescued and included in the feast of abundant life. That mission is to begin immediately. As soon as any individual “accepts Christ” that becomes his or her personal agenda and shared objective. The job of the Church is to maximize opportunities, to encourage and support those called to particular stratagems, and to celebrate the accomplishments of those people and groups as God works through them.
Unfortunately, the Church has been diverted, undertaking such other roles as gatekeeper and guardian as its primary functions. Then the Church has been further diverted to be guardian, not of those in mission nor even of those who are recipients of mission, but of power and truth. Wherever did the Church become entrusted with this two-fold responsibility? Church history suggests that this diversion got into really high gear when Constantine nominated the Church as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the Church grew quickly to like being an instrumentality of Empire. Yet, surely Power and Truth are aspects of God. In whatever way they are not qualities of God they are irrelevant to the Church’s mission to be a model of God’s reversed values. The curious logic by which the Church justifies being protector of Truth and administrator of Power is to assume that inasmuch as the Church is the visible Body of Christ on Earth, and Jesus Christ is one with God the Father, then the Church must be God on earth (in conjunction, theoretically, with the Holy Spirit (whose authority is, nevertheless, minimized and ignored)). It could be that we have stumbled on the Church’s basic error, that somehow the Church is authorized to defend God. Such astounding arrogance is the root of vast failure.
Of all the multitudinous, diverse failures of the Church, I will, in this context, mention one in particular: the failure to guide and nurture gay children. This, to my mind, is very grievous and aggravating.
In Christian society the rejection of gayness in children is nuanced. Tendencies toward sexual diversity are treated as deviations from the normal. Children are trained away from such tendencies. Minority status is a disadvantage to be avoided by minimizing whatever indicators may appear. Whenever those indicators are behavioral, behavioral modification is undertaken. This is the parents’ role, first of all. Society will step in when parents falter. When society also fails, the deviation and the deviant will be judged. Punishments are contextual. In the case of deviation toward homosexuality, the consequences can be severe (even capital) or they may be mild, occasional shunning, depending on the society and circumstances.
The point is a gay child in such a Christian society learns that optimizing opportunities and sometimes even survival depend on minimizing an aspect of her or his character and personality in ways that are inconsistent with his or her nature. The chances are a child has already learned that certain types of character and behavior are considered abnormal before she or he recognizes his or her own orientation and identification as part of that abnormality. Realization of this conflict between “who I am” and “what society requires me to be”, which the child has somehow to manage, causes considerable anxiety and confusion. To the extent that Church and society provide no guidance and affirmation to the child that she or he is essentially OK, the Church and society tend to doom the child to a range of impossibilities: the impossibility of being normal, acceptable, conformative or included. Faced with impossibilities, despair develops.
Again, plain language.
Whoever dooms a child to despair is abusing the child. All the sanctions against child abuse pertain. As with child sexual abuse or physical abuse, the guilt of the emotional abuser is not ameliorated by the fact that the impact of the abuse may not debilitate the child right away. It is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the charges against the abuser that the child does not suffer at the time and may be an adult before the full consequences of the abuse are manifest. Actually, it is usually with the onset of adolescence that the impact begins to do damage. That is when the young person begins to feel trapped, first feels terror and gives in to despair.
What I am saying is that when the Church is the perpetrator the Church is guilty. More than that, when the Church is unrepentant and unforthcoming there is no closure for the abused person. The alienation between the Church and the gay person may be complete and irreversible.
Having written this in this judgmental tone, I now admit and rejoice that there is a part of the Church that has taken stands against the intellectual dishonesty and emotional abuse I have described. There are also individuals within the larger part of the Church who disagree with the homophobia and hatred buried within their part of the Church. The woman sitting on the street side was no doubt one of them. Readers of this essay are likely to be others.
That woman was a better theologian than most in the Church I have been castigating and calling to task. She knew the place to begin. There will be no progress toward ending the despair and healing the hurt until the Church can take up that woman’s plaintive plea and say, “Forgive us.”
October 2012
I’ve been thinking about that for months. My thoughts have congealed into two: (1) Well, it’s a start. (2) What has the Church done?
I’ve been in the Church all my life. I ought to know what the Church has done. Ironically, it’s only after being sidelined by the Church that I have gained a multi-dimensional view of what the Church has done to hurt gay and lesbian people. (For brevity, please allow me to adopt the current shorthand of combining gay men and women into one group).
First, from a Christian perspective what the Church has done is to adopt society’s bias, myopia, and paranoia about gay people. The Church, in fact, created a large measure of that societal attitude beginning from the middle of the Christian era [Boswell says it really began in the 13th century] or earlier [Fone traces it back to the second or third century]. The Church bent its own theological principles to create a specter that did not exist and does not comport with reality. The Church forsook its honesty by distorting Biblical passages to serve its anti-gay perceptions.
Second, from the gay perspective what the Church has done is (1) to confront gay people with the lie that being gay is part of being sinful; (2) to insist that being gay is a choice; (3) to propose that there is a remedy for being gay; (4) to make renunciation of being gay a condition for full acceptance into the Church; and (5) to foster escalation of misunderstanding about homosexuality into hatred of gays.
Let’s stop mincing words.
When the Church equates homosexuality with other sinful human conditions, those who speak in the name of the Church are lying. It is not true that homosexuality is a sinful condition. There is no scientific justification for continuing to say that people have a choice about their sexual orientation. The Royal College of Surgeons, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued unequivocal declarations that one’s sexual orientation is unchangeable and that therapies to change it do not work and can possibly do great harm. The scientific argument is closed. The question is settled. Now how is the Church going to respond? We are waiting.
When people are created/born in any condition for which they have no choice, that condition is not their fault. They are not guilty. That condition is exempt from moral culpability. When the Church calls genetic, inborn conditions sin, the Church has a choice either to reverse its position in order to be consistent with the irrefutable scientific facts, or to be judged wrong by history and rendered untrustworthy and eventually irrelevant.
A lot of time and resources have been expended on disputing what the Bible says about homosexual behavior. We don’t need to go over that line of argument any more. It does not actually matter whether or not specific verses of scripture can be marshaled up to repudiate homosexuality. If being homosexual is an innate condition it is not a sin. Some other interpretation must be found for those verses. The verses themselves cannot be used to disprove the scientific facts without resorting to a circular argument, which is a breach of logic: “scripture is always right; scripture says being gay is sinful; science says being gay is natural; therefore science is wrong because science is contrary to scripture and scripture is right.” The fact is, the Church has reversed itself a number of times when it was found to be teaching things which were not factual, and this ought to be another one of those times.
Insofar as the Church is serious about its assertion that “outside the Church there is no salvation,” extra ecclesia est nulla salus, the exclusion of any population raises eternal issues. Unless there is some other door into “everlasting life” all homosexuals are prevented from having any hope of redemption. This is the message that gay people have been receiving for the last several hundred years. Insofar as gay people agree with the theology of salvation, hopelessness is inevitable. We cannot change our nature so we were born damned.
As it happens, the majority of gay people in Christian societies divide into three groups: (1) those who have abandoned the Church, (2) those who have found enclaves in the Church where homosexuality is not damned, (3) those who ignore the theology and condemnation of the Church, assuming that there is a missing link that still connects them validly to the Church. There is a fourth group of gays, however, who are often among the more serious Church members, who understand the Church’s teachings, agree with the Church’s authority, and try to conform to the Church’s dictates. It happens that the Church’s condemnation of homosexuality may be confined to homosexual behavior. On second thought, by some, it is not one’s inclination/orientation that is sinful but one’s actions. Exactly what actions are sinful is yet another sticking point, but refraining from all sexual actions should certainly suffice. Celibacy is mandated. Actually, the Church has traditionally taught that celibacy is a spiritual gift given to some. For those branches of the Church which require clergy to be celibate, discernment of the gift for celibacy is one of the tests of who should be ordained. Gay sex is prohibited on two bases: (1) that it is performed by two people of the same sex, (2) and/or that it is non-procreative. The point is that sexual activity is prohibited for all gay people, whether or not they have spiritual gifts to appreciate and benefit from a celibate life. It is hard to imagine how sexual abstinence for life can be acceptable when it is imposed and not discerned as a spiritual benefit. Enforced celibacy leads to many dire outcomes, which all eventually coalesce as despair.
All of this notwithstanding, my strongest objection to the Church has been that it fails in one of its main missions. An essential purpose of the Church is to prefigure a society on earth as it is in heaven. In this society polarities common to earth will be reversed. Those who are despised, neglected, rejected and forgotten will be rescued from those states of oblivion and installed with honor, dignity and nobility. Those basking in power, wealth and privilege will be displaced. A mission of the Church is to create that sort of society in which the “last, least and lost” are rescued and included in the feast of abundant life. That mission is to begin immediately. As soon as any individual “accepts Christ” that becomes his or her personal agenda and shared objective. The job of the Church is to maximize opportunities, to encourage and support those called to particular stratagems, and to celebrate the accomplishments of those people and groups as God works through them.
Unfortunately, the Church has been diverted, undertaking such other roles as gatekeeper and guardian as its primary functions. Then the Church has been further diverted to be guardian, not of those in mission nor even of those who are recipients of mission, but of power and truth. Wherever did the Church become entrusted with this two-fold responsibility? Church history suggests that this diversion got into really high gear when Constantine nominated the Church as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the Church grew quickly to like being an instrumentality of Empire. Yet, surely Power and Truth are aspects of God. In whatever way they are not qualities of God they are irrelevant to the Church’s mission to be a model of God’s reversed values. The curious logic by which the Church justifies being protector of Truth and administrator of Power is to assume that inasmuch as the Church is the visible Body of Christ on Earth, and Jesus Christ is one with God the Father, then the Church must be God on earth (in conjunction, theoretically, with the Holy Spirit (whose authority is, nevertheless, minimized and ignored)). It could be that we have stumbled on the Church’s basic error, that somehow the Church is authorized to defend God. Such astounding arrogance is the root of vast failure.
Of all the multitudinous, diverse failures of the Church, I will, in this context, mention one in particular: the failure to guide and nurture gay children. This, to my mind, is very grievous and aggravating.
In Christian society the rejection of gayness in children is nuanced. Tendencies toward sexual diversity are treated as deviations from the normal. Children are trained away from such tendencies. Minority status is a disadvantage to be avoided by minimizing whatever indicators may appear. Whenever those indicators are behavioral, behavioral modification is undertaken. This is the parents’ role, first of all. Society will step in when parents falter. When society also fails, the deviation and the deviant will be judged. Punishments are contextual. In the case of deviation toward homosexuality, the consequences can be severe (even capital) or they may be mild, occasional shunning, depending on the society and circumstances.
The point is a gay child in such a Christian society learns that optimizing opportunities and sometimes even survival depend on minimizing an aspect of her or his character and personality in ways that are inconsistent with his or her nature. The chances are a child has already learned that certain types of character and behavior are considered abnormal before she or he recognizes his or her own orientation and identification as part of that abnormality. Realization of this conflict between “who I am” and “what society requires me to be”, which the child has somehow to manage, causes considerable anxiety and confusion. To the extent that Church and society provide no guidance and affirmation to the child that she or he is essentially OK, the Church and society tend to doom the child to a range of impossibilities: the impossibility of being normal, acceptable, conformative or included. Faced with impossibilities, despair develops.
Again, plain language.
Whoever dooms a child to despair is abusing the child. All the sanctions against child abuse pertain. As with child sexual abuse or physical abuse, the guilt of the emotional abuser is not ameliorated by the fact that the impact of the abuse may not debilitate the child right away. It is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the charges against the abuser that the child does not suffer at the time and may be an adult before the full consequences of the abuse are manifest. Actually, it is usually with the onset of adolescence that the impact begins to do damage. That is when the young person begins to feel trapped, first feels terror and gives in to despair.
What I am saying is that when the Church is the perpetrator the Church is guilty. More than that, when the Church is unrepentant and unforthcoming there is no closure for the abused person. The alienation between the Church and the gay person may be complete and irreversible.
Having written this in this judgmental tone, I now admit and rejoice that there is a part of the Church that has taken stands against the intellectual dishonesty and emotional abuse I have described. There are also individuals within the larger part of the Church who disagree with the homophobia and hatred buried within their part of the Church. The woman sitting on the street side was no doubt one of them. Readers of this essay are likely to be others.
That woman was a better theologian than most in the Church I have been castigating and calling to task. She knew the place to begin. There will be no progress toward ending the despair and healing the hurt until the Church can take up that woman’s plaintive plea and say, “Forgive us.”
October 2012
Jesus Was Gay?
I read this week that Sir Elton John has made headlines claiming that Jesus was gay. The quote was:
JESUS was GAY - according to the gospel of SIR ELTON JOHN.
Source: An article by US Editor Pete Samson in the February 19th Internet issue of The Sun.
The singer makes his controversial claim about the Lord in a new US interview that will enrage America's Bible belt.
Elton, 62, declares as he pours out his heart to a magazine: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."
He adds: "Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East - you're as good as dead."
I am ready to agree that Jesus was gay.
I am not only ready to accept, I am ready to insist, that Jesus was gay, black, feminine, Hispanic (in Texas, for example), Christian (in Burma, for example), a migrant, an immigrant, a liberal, and that Jesus was in Auschwitz, in Salem (you know when), at Gettysburg, in Stalingrad ... wherever people are suffering Jesus is there, and radically one of them ... not just for them, but with them, one of them.
If Elton John needs Jesus to be gay for him, Jesus will be glad to be gay. Jesus let the "loose woman" wash his feet and dry them with her hair, and you know what THAT meant. You aren’t sure? Well, use your imagination.
The theological problem doesn’t come when we are one of those who are tortured, marginalized, abused, terrorized, or suffering, but when we are one of the abusers, the corrupters, the despots or the bigots. When we then claim Jesus is on our side, we will likely hear, "I never knew you" (Matthew 7:23). Strom Thurman, James Dobson (no relation) and Jerry Falwell cannot expect to be in the same line-up as their victims unless they were radically transformed in a process that went unreported. The trouble comes to even more of us when we are decent and basically good, and not involved, just minding our own business and keeping our noses clean. We will be surprised to find the fence is too razor sharp to sit on, and the weight of our non-involvement will weigh too heavily to keep us from being sliced right up the ... well, it isn't a pretty picture.
But, I think Sir Elton was referring to Jesus’ gender orientation for which there is inadequate evidence to draw a firm conclusion one way or another. However, to say there is a grey area here is already going to offend those clinging to the buckle in the Bible belt.
February 2010
JESUS was GAY - according to the gospel of SIR ELTON JOHN.
Source: An article by US Editor Pete Samson in the February 19th Internet issue of The Sun.
The singer makes his controversial claim about the Lord in a new US interview that will enrage America's Bible belt.
Elton, 62, declares as he pours out his heart to a magazine: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."
He adds: "Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East - you're as good as dead."
I am ready to agree that Jesus was gay.
I am not only ready to accept, I am ready to insist, that Jesus was gay, black, feminine, Hispanic (in Texas, for example), Christian (in Burma, for example), a migrant, an immigrant, a liberal, and that Jesus was in Auschwitz, in Salem (you know when), at Gettysburg, in Stalingrad ... wherever people are suffering Jesus is there, and radically one of them ... not just for them, but with them, one of them.
If Elton John needs Jesus to be gay for him, Jesus will be glad to be gay. Jesus let the "loose woman" wash his feet and dry them with her hair, and you know what THAT meant. You aren’t sure? Well, use your imagination.
The theological problem doesn’t come when we are one of those who are tortured, marginalized, abused, terrorized, or suffering, but when we are one of the abusers, the corrupters, the despots or the bigots. When we then claim Jesus is on our side, we will likely hear, "I never knew you" (Matthew 7:23). Strom Thurman, James Dobson (no relation) and Jerry Falwell cannot expect to be in the same line-up as their victims unless they were radically transformed in a process that went unreported. The trouble comes to even more of us when we are decent and basically good, and not involved, just minding our own business and keeping our noses clean. We will be surprised to find the fence is too razor sharp to sit on, and the weight of our non-involvement will weigh too heavily to keep us from being sliced right up the ... well, it isn't a pretty picture.
But, I think Sir Elton was referring to Jesus’ gender orientation for which there is inadequate evidence to draw a firm conclusion one way or another. However, to say there is a grey area here is already going to offend those clinging to the buckle in the Bible belt.
February 2010
What's a Gay Christian to do?
The problem that we gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Christians have in a lot of churches these days is that we are told we are wrong to be the way we are. We will have to do something about the way we are in order to conform to the church’s theological standards. But most of us have been through that. We have done our level best to change and it was the wrong thing to try to do. Incredible as it first seemed, the thing that actually has to happen is that the traditional thinkers who are stuck and “change challenged” will have to change. And the first thing that has to change for Protestants is theology.
The basic stance of Christian GLBT theologians is that when Paul and the Pauline writers were mentioning homosexuality they were talking about the Greco-Roman era custom of male citizens of stature having sexual relations with young male consorts. Paul and the Pauline writers opposed it. But what was the homosexuality that was the object of their opposition? And what, exactly, was their level of objection?
Throughout the classical Greek period (say, 500 B.C. to 100 B.C.) and the classical Roman period (100 B.C. to 300 A.D.) it was assumed that gentlemen citizens of means had a wife as well as a young male consort (possibly among others). Those were not times when romantic love and chivalry abounded. The concern of the times was social order and that meant the need to preserve clear social distinctions between free citizens, freemen who were not citizens, and slaves. Laws and customs restricted who could be the citizen’s male consort. It was forbidden for the young protégé to be a citizen, and that eliminated close relatives. The young fellow might be a slave, of course, but was generally treated as a son and might, in fact, be later freed and adopted as a son and citizen with even the right to inheritance. In addition, social custom dictated that the young lover must be at least an older teenager in age, and willing to accept the passive sexual role. In theory, the sexual encounters were not to involve penetration, so the essential maleness of neither participant was violated, but it was especially important that the older citizen maintain his maleness. Still, the relationship was based on superior versus subordinate power exercised by a patriarchal male, as was the case with all the social relationships of that time.
The critical point for GLBT Christian thinkers is that this sort of same-sex relationship is not at all like modern same-sex relationships. So the first point of our argument with traditionalists is that the New Testament never talks about what we mean by homosexuality nowadays. The fact that Paul and Pauline writers objected to it is irrelevant from the outset. It is like trying to discuss what Paul said about exploring for water on the moon. It just isn’t there in the scriptures. In fact, we agree very much with those who oppose using (and thus abusing) power and status to subjugate and take advantage of others, sexually, politically, economically and otherwise. But this is not what is going on in very many same-sex relationships. Most long-term same-sex relationships are based on caring, concern, love; mutuality, sharing, equality; consent, agreement, commitment; and other aspects of social, cultural and (yes!) family values.
Furthermore, GLBT theologians are encouraged by several strata of scriptural testimony. In many, sometimes indirect, ways scripture neutralizes the current social stigma attached to GLBT relationships and character.
First, a number of same-sex relationships are mentioned in the Bible without reprobation. Often these relationships were in addition to heterosexual relationships and marriages, and in some cases even aided and abetted them. David’s intimate relationship with Jonathan (Saul’s son) is called by David “greater than” his love of women, one of whom (Michal, Saul’s daughter) became David’s first wife. Ruth’s close relationship with her mother-in-law Naomi, and the way Naomi helped Ruth generate a new marriage with Boaz, is one of the cleverest and most complicated intrigues in literature. Mary and Martha were apparently not married to anyone, although that is not evidence of their gender orientation. Nor is there any indication of gender orientation in the numerous pairs of New Testament same-sex missionary teams, both women and men, whose effectiveness Paul did not want compromised by scandal of homosexual activity, which the Jewish target group would not have accepted.
Second, there is even more encouragement from two New Testament accounts. The first convert to Christianity was the Ethiopian eunuch. Not only was his sexuality as a trans-sexual individual no impediment to his inclusion in the new Church, Jesus spoke of these surgically altered people as having rights in the Kingdom. Then Jesus also talked about those who are “born eunuchs” without being castrated. These could have been inter-sexual or (not impossibly) homosexual / homoerotic persons. Jesus says they, too, along with children, have a place in the Kingdom. Indeed, they are among the limited number receiving special mention in this regard.
The other case involved Jesus assisting a Roman military officer. The distraught centurion came in person to beg Jesus’ help for his critically ill “boy.” Matthew, who possibly witnessed the encounter, used the Greek term pais which means boy, but that was the term also for the young lover a citizen might have. That would help explain the urgency of the soldier’s feelings, which were clearly intense. Luke, who knew Greek language and customs and also the Jewish cultural biases, steered away from calling the patient pais and called him doulos, meaning a slave, which does not rule out the fellow being the centurion’s lover. Luke left open the question of why the Roman was so concerned about a mere slave…maybe he was just a compassionate individual (that would have been a rare trait in a Roman military career officer). In the account, the focus was on the faith of the Roman, a gentile. Christ’s validation of this faith would have scandalized the Jewish readers. But we notice that Jesus was not aggravated by this Roman’s effrontery, nor by his love for the “boy”, whatever kind of love it was.
All these cases are ambiguous. They do not necessarily add up to scriptural validation of homosexuality. But they cannot be expunged from scripture either, nor can they be turned around as has been attempted, to deny that scripture was either silent about or tended to countenance same-sex or same-gender relationships.
More directly to the point are the several so-called clear prohibitions in the Old Testament. These are often cited by the traditionalists to insist that scripture is opposed to homosexuality. Some of the interpretations are later impositions, as in the notorious case of Sodom. The earliest sources of the Genesis story of Lot’s defense of the angels says that the citizens of Sodom involved in the sacrilege included every last person in Sodom. Translations after the anti-sex campaign had begun makes the key word “men” turning it into an attempt at homosexual gang rape. For centuries the traditional Jewish interpretation has been that the sin was against traditions of hospitality, which the citizens of Sodom were going to violate. It was that which indicated the recalcitrance of Sodom so that not even ten people could be counted who respected God’s order.
The traditionalists’ trump card is the Leviticus holiness code. Here there are prohibitions against any number of things we would find irrelevant or ludicrous today. Almost all of these have been laid aside or reinterpreted except by the most conservative Ashkenazi Jews. Even fundamentalist Christians understand this, with the major exception of supposed homosexual practices mentioned in Leviticus. There “the lying of a man as with a woman” is still wrong and not to be tolerated. It is simply assumed that everyone agrees that this refers unambiguously to a homosexual sexual act. Yet there is no scriptural or cultural authority for that assumption. At the time the Old Testament book of Leviticus was written the phrase could have referred to the male who lay on the bottom with the female above taking the active role. The phrase probably did not refer to anything about penetration (although there is still some debate about that point). And furthermore, the judgment against it was that it violated the code of holiness and was “disgusting” or “improper” – not the much harsher terms that have been used lately (after the sixteenth century) such as “abomination.” However, presumably, offenders, for the good of the holiness of the whole community, could be subjected to harsh punishments, whether those punishments were ever actually imposed or not.
Even so, GLBT and many other Christian theologians refuse to accept any of the holiness code as still in effect. It was Paul, no less, who argued most persuasively in favor of it being laid aside in the new Church. Paul and the Pauline writers were adamant and they prevailed in convincing the Christian leadership to adopt the theological position that Christ had fulfilled the legal requirements of the holiness code. The code designated who was a Son of Abraham, a child of God, and subsequently a Christian. The old signs were that the individual was born to a family with lineage traced back to Abraham certified by the circumcision of the males, and that they kept a ritually kosher, pure intake of food. This seems to have been codified and (re)introduced in order to maintain the people’s identity during their Babylonian captivity. Paul argued that this was no longer necessary, and that, in fact, it obviated the work of Christ and negated the salvation-atonement which Christ had accomplished, throwing the believer back onto the impossible performance of the requirements of the law. So the holiness code of ritual purity and protection is moot, no matter whether it has been correctly interpreted by traditionalists or not. It doesn’t apply any longer.
But what does apply? There is an ethics in the Church and in the Body of Christ. It is, of course, the ethics of love. There is a two-fold standard by which actions (and inactions) are to be judged. Actions are good if they are in the loving best interests of other human beings, especially those in immediate or great need. And actions are good if they manifest love toward God, the source of life and goodness. However, these good actions are the result of, and never the cause of, our acceptability to God. God’s acceptance of us is unconditional just as a mother’s love is unconditional. The Gospel good news is that grace is unconditional.
That is, of course, an impossibly high standard to emulate. So our holiness, or sanctification, is a work in progress whereby we grow in our ability to manifest unconditional love, compassion and goodness. This is a hopeful, progressive theology, and it is made more effective by certain attendant features. Primary among the aides to living a holy life are the perpetual assistance of the Holy Spirit who aids one’s living as a child of God and whose presence ratifies our identity as heirs of the promise (that God will be our God and we will be God’s people) in place of ratification by the holiness code. Other help is supposed to come from the community of faith whose main purpose is to transmit the blessings and provide the benefits of mutuality. To be clear, the Church is an agent of encouragement and nurture, and not an institution charged to control and punish.
Furthermore, we GLBT Christians would like to be encouraged by the scriptural paradigm about how patterns of acceptance change. There is no serious doubt on the part of any of us, GLBT and traditionalist theologians alike, that circumcision is no longer a requirement for the people of God who accept Christ and the liberation Christ brings. This precedent proves that in some cases long-held traditions believed to be God-ordained can be laid aside. Another New Testament era change in attitude documented in Christian scripture is concerning the order of the expansion of the Kingdom of God. It seems that Jesus may have instructed that the Gospel was to be first presented to the Jews in the homeland, in Judea and Galilee, especially in Jerusalem. Then, when it had been accepted by them, it was to be taken to the quasi-Jews of Samaria, the land in the middle between Judea and Galilee. Finally, it would be taken to the Jews in the dispersion in distant lands. That was, in fact, the limit of the plan to have Jesus accepted as the Messiah, the Christ. However, already, even before the Gospels were written down, this plan was under revision. The vision was expanding exponentially as the converts began to multiply from the gentiles, those who had never been and never would be Jews. Luke, especially, among the Gospel writers, testifies that the signs of gentile acceptance and Jewish recalcitrance were there from the very start of Jesus’ ministry. So there is a scriptural basis for change, not just of strategy, but of the Church’s understanding of God’s will.
Throughout history previously narrow definitions of who have full rights in the Kingdom of God have expanded. Genealogy was replaced by acceptance of Jesus as the Christ. Then adherence to the holiness code was replaced by evidence of the Holy Spirit’s activity, as an indication of belonging. The Greco-Roman social status system was ignored in the egalitarian assemblies of Christians. Then the borders of the empire were broken and the Kingdom engulfed kingdoms. Lepers, untouchables, and every class of outcast were included everywhere the Church moved. Then other barriers fell, even though scripture was called upon to bolster discrimination and exclusion from full rights of some groups.
The pattern is clear. The trend is toward ever greater inclusion, expansion of perimeters, and fuller acceptance. Ironically, even though the Church is the world’s model for democracy and social equality, each of these shifts toward greater inclusion has taken a hard fight and sometimes the gains have been temporary before a new and more successful campaign had to be launched. The Church is often its own bitterest opponent in these endeavors. It sometimes almost seems that inclusion comes at the slowest possible pace and with the greatest possible resistance. A trend which is inevitable and which the Church ought to be promoting is opposed by the whole Church, then just by a majority, then just the vested elite or the traditionalists, and finally just by a radical fringe … unless there is a backlash and a relapse. Nevertheless, those who are excluded from full participation have history on their side.
But these changes take generations, not just decades. What are we to do in the meantime?
Naturally, there is a wide variety of opinion on whether to be passive, active, aggressive or militant. The majority, unfortunately, seem to have taken the path of withdrawal from the Church. The more the churches dither and the more they pander to those who hate us, the more GLBT Christians remove themselves from the Church and the fewer are the GLBT young people who get involved in the first place. For GLBT theologians this is not a good choice.
Obviously, the option for most GLBT Christians who remain in the Church is to stay committed to the struggle for justice, for equality and for parity. We won’t rest until we have achieved these goals and rescued the Church from its error in excluding and marginalizing us. We owe it to the Church which God loves and in which we were born and grew into knowledge of Christ, to work for the Church’s change of attitude. This is a way of struggle and sacrifice, and it is not for the faint-hearted or the impatient. Along the way we will try to find congregations and communities who are open and accepting of us providing welcome and allowing us to exercise our gifts. We are grateful to the United Church of Christ, to the Metropolitan Community Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, to “More Light” congregations and similar enclaves in many denominations, and to some churches in other continents than North America, for taking definite strides toward welcoming us to stay or join. Honestly, though, these places where we are welcome tend to be clustered, while we are spread pretty evenly around the world.
For LGBT Christians in the vast majority of the world’s churches, trying to find a safe home can be full of risks and dangers. Taking the high road and espousing common cause is a viable option for a few. This essay is about GLBT Christian theology, but there is a still broader circle that expands the issues in the discussion and therefore the breadth of the campaign. As if the defeat of the traditionalist theology were not a large enough goal, there are those who are pondering such theological issues as the parthenogenetic birth of Jesus of the Virgin Mary, the androgynous nature of Christ, and the feminine nature of the Creator God. Why are we so intent as homosexual, bisexual and transgendered Christians to align ourselves and gain acceptance by heterosexualists and their predominantly patriarchal leaders? Are the ones who are discovering a circle with a still greater circumference not our allies? There is really no need to wait to be permitted into the nave of the Church and a still longer wait to be allowed into the chancel. If this newly developing community of inquiry hasn’t yet fully realized its theology, they might value our insight and we would certainly benefit from theirs. Then it would someday be the role of the ones we left behind to do the catching up.
October 2009
The basic stance of Christian GLBT theologians is that when Paul and the Pauline writers were mentioning homosexuality they were talking about the Greco-Roman era custom of male citizens of stature having sexual relations with young male consorts. Paul and the Pauline writers opposed it. But what was the homosexuality that was the object of their opposition? And what, exactly, was their level of objection?
Throughout the classical Greek period (say, 500 B.C. to 100 B.C.) and the classical Roman period (100 B.C. to 300 A.D.) it was assumed that gentlemen citizens of means had a wife as well as a young male consort (possibly among others). Those were not times when romantic love and chivalry abounded. The concern of the times was social order and that meant the need to preserve clear social distinctions between free citizens, freemen who were not citizens, and slaves. Laws and customs restricted who could be the citizen’s male consort. It was forbidden for the young protégé to be a citizen, and that eliminated close relatives. The young fellow might be a slave, of course, but was generally treated as a son and might, in fact, be later freed and adopted as a son and citizen with even the right to inheritance. In addition, social custom dictated that the young lover must be at least an older teenager in age, and willing to accept the passive sexual role. In theory, the sexual encounters were not to involve penetration, so the essential maleness of neither participant was violated, but it was especially important that the older citizen maintain his maleness. Still, the relationship was based on superior versus subordinate power exercised by a patriarchal male, as was the case with all the social relationships of that time.
The critical point for GLBT Christian thinkers is that this sort of same-sex relationship is not at all like modern same-sex relationships. So the first point of our argument with traditionalists is that the New Testament never talks about what we mean by homosexuality nowadays. The fact that Paul and Pauline writers objected to it is irrelevant from the outset. It is like trying to discuss what Paul said about exploring for water on the moon. It just isn’t there in the scriptures. In fact, we agree very much with those who oppose using (and thus abusing) power and status to subjugate and take advantage of others, sexually, politically, economically and otherwise. But this is not what is going on in very many same-sex relationships. Most long-term same-sex relationships are based on caring, concern, love; mutuality, sharing, equality; consent, agreement, commitment; and other aspects of social, cultural and (yes!) family values.
Furthermore, GLBT theologians are encouraged by several strata of scriptural testimony. In many, sometimes indirect, ways scripture neutralizes the current social stigma attached to GLBT relationships and character.
First, a number of same-sex relationships are mentioned in the Bible without reprobation. Often these relationships were in addition to heterosexual relationships and marriages, and in some cases even aided and abetted them. David’s intimate relationship with Jonathan (Saul’s son) is called by David “greater than” his love of women, one of whom (Michal, Saul’s daughter) became David’s first wife. Ruth’s close relationship with her mother-in-law Naomi, and the way Naomi helped Ruth generate a new marriage with Boaz, is one of the cleverest and most complicated intrigues in literature. Mary and Martha were apparently not married to anyone, although that is not evidence of their gender orientation. Nor is there any indication of gender orientation in the numerous pairs of New Testament same-sex missionary teams, both women and men, whose effectiveness Paul did not want compromised by scandal of homosexual activity, which the Jewish target group would not have accepted.
Second, there is even more encouragement from two New Testament accounts. The first convert to Christianity was the Ethiopian eunuch. Not only was his sexuality as a trans-sexual individual no impediment to his inclusion in the new Church, Jesus spoke of these surgically altered people as having rights in the Kingdom. Then Jesus also talked about those who are “born eunuchs” without being castrated. These could have been inter-sexual or (not impossibly) homosexual / homoerotic persons. Jesus says they, too, along with children, have a place in the Kingdom. Indeed, they are among the limited number receiving special mention in this regard.
The other case involved Jesus assisting a Roman military officer. The distraught centurion came in person to beg Jesus’ help for his critically ill “boy.” Matthew, who possibly witnessed the encounter, used the Greek term pais which means boy, but that was the term also for the young lover a citizen might have. That would help explain the urgency of the soldier’s feelings, which were clearly intense. Luke, who knew Greek language and customs and also the Jewish cultural biases, steered away from calling the patient pais and called him doulos, meaning a slave, which does not rule out the fellow being the centurion’s lover. Luke left open the question of why the Roman was so concerned about a mere slave…maybe he was just a compassionate individual (that would have been a rare trait in a Roman military career officer). In the account, the focus was on the faith of the Roman, a gentile. Christ’s validation of this faith would have scandalized the Jewish readers. But we notice that Jesus was not aggravated by this Roman’s effrontery, nor by his love for the “boy”, whatever kind of love it was.
All these cases are ambiguous. They do not necessarily add up to scriptural validation of homosexuality. But they cannot be expunged from scripture either, nor can they be turned around as has been attempted, to deny that scripture was either silent about or tended to countenance same-sex or same-gender relationships.
More directly to the point are the several so-called clear prohibitions in the Old Testament. These are often cited by the traditionalists to insist that scripture is opposed to homosexuality. Some of the interpretations are later impositions, as in the notorious case of Sodom. The earliest sources of the Genesis story of Lot’s defense of the angels says that the citizens of Sodom involved in the sacrilege included every last person in Sodom. Translations after the anti-sex campaign had begun makes the key word “men” turning it into an attempt at homosexual gang rape. For centuries the traditional Jewish interpretation has been that the sin was against traditions of hospitality, which the citizens of Sodom were going to violate. It was that which indicated the recalcitrance of Sodom so that not even ten people could be counted who respected God’s order.
The traditionalists’ trump card is the Leviticus holiness code. Here there are prohibitions against any number of things we would find irrelevant or ludicrous today. Almost all of these have been laid aside or reinterpreted except by the most conservative Ashkenazi Jews. Even fundamentalist Christians understand this, with the major exception of supposed homosexual practices mentioned in Leviticus. There “the lying of a man as with a woman” is still wrong and not to be tolerated. It is simply assumed that everyone agrees that this refers unambiguously to a homosexual sexual act. Yet there is no scriptural or cultural authority for that assumption. At the time the Old Testament book of Leviticus was written the phrase could have referred to the male who lay on the bottom with the female above taking the active role. The phrase probably did not refer to anything about penetration (although there is still some debate about that point). And furthermore, the judgment against it was that it violated the code of holiness and was “disgusting” or “improper” – not the much harsher terms that have been used lately (after the sixteenth century) such as “abomination.” However, presumably, offenders, for the good of the holiness of the whole community, could be subjected to harsh punishments, whether those punishments were ever actually imposed or not.
Even so, GLBT and many other Christian theologians refuse to accept any of the holiness code as still in effect. It was Paul, no less, who argued most persuasively in favor of it being laid aside in the new Church. Paul and the Pauline writers were adamant and they prevailed in convincing the Christian leadership to adopt the theological position that Christ had fulfilled the legal requirements of the holiness code. The code designated who was a Son of Abraham, a child of God, and subsequently a Christian. The old signs were that the individual was born to a family with lineage traced back to Abraham certified by the circumcision of the males, and that they kept a ritually kosher, pure intake of food. This seems to have been codified and (re)introduced in order to maintain the people’s identity during their Babylonian captivity. Paul argued that this was no longer necessary, and that, in fact, it obviated the work of Christ and negated the salvation-atonement which Christ had accomplished, throwing the believer back onto the impossible performance of the requirements of the law. So the holiness code of ritual purity and protection is moot, no matter whether it has been correctly interpreted by traditionalists or not. It doesn’t apply any longer.
But what does apply? There is an ethics in the Church and in the Body of Christ. It is, of course, the ethics of love. There is a two-fold standard by which actions (and inactions) are to be judged. Actions are good if they are in the loving best interests of other human beings, especially those in immediate or great need. And actions are good if they manifest love toward God, the source of life and goodness. However, these good actions are the result of, and never the cause of, our acceptability to God. God’s acceptance of us is unconditional just as a mother’s love is unconditional. The Gospel good news is that grace is unconditional.
That is, of course, an impossibly high standard to emulate. So our holiness, or sanctification, is a work in progress whereby we grow in our ability to manifest unconditional love, compassion and goodness. This is a hopeful, progressive theology, and it is made more effective by certain attendant features. Primary among the aides to living a holy life are the perpetual assistance of the Holy Spirit who aids one’s living as a child of God and whose presence ratifies our identity as heirs of the promise (that God will be our God and we will be God’s people) in place of ratification by the holiness code. Other help is supposed to come from the community of faith whose main purpose is to transmit the blessings and provide the benefits of mutuality. To be clear, the Church is an agent of encouragement and nurture, and not an institution charged to control and punish.
Furthermore, we GLBT Christians would like to be encouraged by the scriptural paradigm about how patterns of acceptance change. There is no serious doubt on the part of any of us, GLBT and traditionalist theologians alike, that circumcision is no longer a requirement for the people of God who accept Christ and the liberation Christ brings. This precedent proves that in some cases long-held traditions believed to be God-ordained can be laid aside. Another New Testament era change in attitude documented in Christian scripture is concerning the order of the expansion of the Kingdom of God. It seems that Jesus may have instructed that the Gospel was to be first presented to the Jews in the homeland, in Judea and Galilee, especially in Jerusalem. Then, when it had been accepted by them, it was to be taken to the quasi-Jews of Samaria, the land in the middle between Judea and Galilee. Finally, it would be taken to the Jews in the dispersion in distant lands. That was, in fact, the limit of the plan to have Jesus accepted as the Messiah, the Christ. However, already, even before the Gospels were written down, this plan was under revision. The vision was expanding exponentially as the converts began to multiply from the gentiles, those who had never been and never would be Jews. Luke, especially, among the Gospel writers, testifies that the signs of gentile acceptance and Jewish recalcitrance were there from the very start of Jesus’ ministry. So there is a scriptural basis for change, not just of strategy, but of the Church’s understanding of God’s will.
Throughout history previously narrow definitions of who have full rights in the Kingdom of God have expanded. Genealogy was replaced by acceptance of Jesus as the Christ. Then adherence to the holiness code was replaced by evidence of the Holy Spirit’s activity, as an indication of belonging. The Greco-Roman social status system was ignored in the egalitarian assemblies of Christians. Then the borders of the empire were broken and the Kingdom engulfed kingdoms. Lepers, untouchables, and every class of outcast were included everywhere the Church moved. Then other barriers fell, even though scripture was called upon to bolster discrimination and exclusion from full rights of some groups.
The pattern is clear. The trend is toward ever greater inclusion, expansion of perimeters, and fuller acceptance. Ironically, even though the Church is the world’s model for democracy and social equality, each of these shifts toward greater inclusion has taken a hard fight and sometimes the gains have been temporary before a new and more successful campaign had to be launched. The Church is often its own bitterest opponent in these endeavors. It sometimes almost seems that inclusion comes at the slowest possible pace and with the greatest possible resistance. A trend which is inevitable and which the Church ought to be promoting is opposed by the whole Church, then just by a majority, then just the vested elite or the traditionalists, and finally just by a radical fringe … unless there is a backlash and a relapse. Nevertheless, those who are excluded from full participation have history on their side.
But these changes take generations, not just decades. What are we to do in the meantime?
Naturally, there is a wide variety of opinion on whether to be passive, active, aggressive or militant. The majority, unfortunately, seem to have taken the path of withdrawal from the Church. The more the churches dither and the more they pander to those who hate us, the more GLBT Christians remove themselves from the Church and the fewer are the GLBT young people who get involved in the first place. For GLBT theologians this is not a good choice.
Obviously, the option for most GLBT Christians who remain in the Church is to stay committed to the struggle for justice, for equality and for parity. We won’t rest until we have achieved these goals and rescued the Church from its error in excluding and marginalizing us. We owe it to the Church which God loves and in which we were born and grew into knowledge of Christ, to work for the Church’s change of attitude. This is a way of struggle and sacrifice, and it is not for the faint-hearted or the impatient. Along the way we will try to find congregations and communities who are open and accepting of us providing welcome and allowing us to exercise our gifts. We are grateful to the United Church of Christ, to the Metropolitan Community Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, to “More Light” congregations and similar enclaves in many denominations, and to some churches in other continents than North America, for taking definite strides toward welcoming us to stay or join. Honestly, though, these places where we are welcome tend to be clustered, while we are spread pretty evenly around the world.
For LGBT Christians in the vast majority of the world’s churches, trying to find a safe home can be full of risks and dangers. Taking the high road and espousing common cause is a viable option for a few. This essay is about GLBT Christian theology, but there is a still broader circle that expands the issues in the discussion and therefore the breadth of the campaign. As if the defeat of the traditionalist theology were not a large enough goal, there are those who are pondering such theological issues as the parthenogenetic birth of Jesus of the Virgin Mary, the androgynous nature of Christ, and the feminine nature of the Creator God. Why are we so intent as homosexual, bisexual and transgendered Christians to align ourselves and gain acceptance by heterosexualists and their predominantly patriarchal leaders? Are the ones who are discovering a circle with a still greater circumference not our allies? There is really no need to wait to be permitted into the nave of the Church and a still longer wait to be allowed into the chancel. If this newly developing community of inquiry hasn’t yet fully realized its theology, they might value our insight and we would certainly benefit from theirs. Then it would someday be the role of the ones we left behind to do the catching up.
October 2009