I’ve picked up my pen – er, pencil (or keyboard) – to try to give an attempt to explain to you where I’m coming from in regards to my sex ethic and decidedly Side A beliefs (i.e., the belief that gay sex is okay). I don’t want to make this a regular phenomenon, but I hope to outline my beliefs on the issue. I’m not trying to force anyone to accept my viewpoints, but I do believe there is a right and a wrong on this issue, and I’ll try to use as reconciliatory language as possible, but I apologize in advance if anything comes across harshly.
I initially thought I could side-step the so-called “clobber verses” because they are not my focus here, but I fast realized this would not be possible. I will try and address a few of these as briefly as I can.
Leviticus 18:22, 20:13
It is stunning to me that some Christians are willing to site Levitical mandates as a source of morality. If one desires to give Old Testament law, there is simply no way around justifying the commands, for we see even our Lord declaring, contra the Mosaic code, that “nothing that goes into a man can make him unclean”. Both Christ and his apostles explicitly freed us from the law. Some people try to distinguish between ‘moral’ and ‘ceremonial’ laws, but a clear test for determining members of each category must be presented, for the Torah itself makes no such distinctions. Because of the textual evidence (or lack thereof), and because I am uncomfortable adding distinctions where Scripture sees none, I do not buy the theory that there is a moral/ceremonial distinction to Mosaic law, and I have yet to hear a strong case for such a view. The breaking of any of the myriad laws is lawlessness. If these Levitical commands on male intercourse are binding, so is the Levitical command against menstrual intercourse, and all the other commands on any subject. I cannot explain all of the Mosaic code, and indeed much of it puzzles me, but I do not believe that it was not meant to be a static law given to all people for all time, and as people under Christ we are not to run to it as our guide.
Romans 1:26-27
If this passage is to be used to condemn homosexuality (or homosexual behavior, pick your lingo), one absolutely must accept the verse’s etiology (i.e., cause) of homosexuality. Paul clearly states that not only the actions but the desires of the people he’s talking about exists because of idolatry and (apparently) heterosexual immorality. For verse 26 begins, unambiguously, with the words ‘because of this’, directing the reader’s view upward to the actions described before. In fact, this brief stint on homosexuality is part of a passage that has nothing to do with sexuality, but a spiral of godlessness in the context of idolatry. To insist by reason of ‘face-value’ interpretation that this passage condemns all people engaging in homosexual sex, and yet not to accept the verse’s face-value cause of such a thing – that is, idolatry and immorality – is the height of selective biblical literalism. And those of us who are gay can tell you that we have not (most of us) engaged in idolatry nor in immorality leading up to the discovery of our orientation. It just is. Now I have heard the argument that this verse is communal: that is, because of general idolatry and immorality, God gave humanity in general over to homosexuality. However, this is not easily reconcilable with the rest of the passage, for in everything Paul assumes a direct impact on the practitioners of these sins, and chapters 1-3 do not condemn humanity in general, but each and every human individual specifically, Jew and Gentile. And we must ask if God a god who afflicts children for the sins of their fathers. Might I suggest not:
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin. (Deut 24:16)
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-3)
And so I see a God who is deeply personal. If we wish to interpret Romans 1 as condemning all gay people unambiguously (rather than those who, in worshipping idols and engaging in sexual immorality are given over to all sorts of sexual behavior, both natural to them and unnatural), we must also insist that every gay person is the way they are because of idolatry and immorality. You cannot claim Romans 1 condemns homosexual behavior, without recognizing that it also condemns the desire, and you must abandon all thought of biological or even psychological causes of sexual orientation outside of the context given in this passage. To be sure, Paul has nothing positive to say about the matter, and the thought of sanctioned homosexual relations probably did not occur to him, but when we come to Scripture we must come to it in context.
1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10
The issue here is over a word, αρσενοκοιτης, which I feel is of ambiguous meaning. Without going into a detailed lexical analysis (which I can go into sometime later if there is any interest), the word is far too rare to give a certain meaning. It probably has to do with some sort of homosexual behavior, but it may well be referring to pederasty, an all too common practice in many Greek cities. If I had my way, I would attach a footnote to the word (as is common in many Hebraic OT texts, if you pay attention) stating that the meaning of this word is uncertain. Translations that link this term to general homosexual behavior are modern, all of them originating within the past century. These verses are peripheral and may bolster a case once a case has been made, but deserve no place as centerpiece of the discussion on the Bible and homosexuality.
That is a brief overview, brief as I can make it, and the other passages I will let lie for the moment. But the discussion on homosexuality surpasses the scant few verses on it, and comes into that hazy area where we are not given a clear-cut example. We do not see manifest stories of homosexuality, and though one can go hunting for them, evidence is so shaky that I seriously question the results derived from such scavenging. (If you really want to see me get really offended, try asserting that David and Jonathan were gay, or even worse, Sam and Frodo, though that’s Tokienian and not biblical.) But I’m not ascertaining my morality strictly from specific biblical models but from biblical principles, and it is this – the derivation of morality – that is the true issue needing to be addressed.
“But if two men can get together and be ‘married’, then why not a man and a child or a man and a horse?”
Though many of us see this sort of statement as patently absurd, and indeed it is, there is a nugget of legitimacy there. The legitimate argument embedded in that phrase goes something like this: Morality is determinable only through a set of given examples, and so without a clear example to make an act moral, it is de facto immoral. In the Christian sense, this means that matters unaddressed by biblical stories and mandates are morally suspect, if not downright wrong. After all, mustn’t we have a gold standard from which to derive normality, morality, and holiness? On its surface, an appeal to a golden standard seems reasonable, but at its core, I believe, lies something wildly unreasonable and utterly untenable.
If we are only to derive our morality from specific biblical examples, we would be forever stuck in an ancient Hebraic culture. But even within biblical times, the view of morality shifted, for injunctions to kill the foreigner in one’s midst were later meliorated to commands of justice toward resident aliens. Times had changed, and cultures had changed, and so a stagnant view of God’s given law had to be rejected. Or for a more modern example, while it would be considered immoral in our culture to marry one’s cousin, the Indians in the Vaupez region of Amazonia consider any marriage within one’s language group to be incestuous and immoral, for those who speak the same language are considered ‘family’. For them, marriage to one’s cousin (who speaks a different language) is almost considered ideal. They don’t seem to suffer any genetic problems from this.
Morality then, must be derived from higher principles which, when applied to certain circumstances, generate rules for behavior. So there are two items that must be understood for any foundation of morality: the first is an understanding of the higher principles guiding your morality, and the second is an understanding of what you’re applying those principles to. I don’t wish to oversimplify an extraordinarily complex topic, but consider physics: there are a set number of fundamental laws that govern the entire universe. Now to understand what is going on in any particular region of the universe, you not only have to have the backing of these fundamental laws but you also have to understand the context in which they are applied. For example, the effect of a magnetic field on plasma is vastly different from the effect of the same field on a solid (and for that matter, a carbon solid or iron filaments).
If we take any other approach to morality, one that it is not based on a set of universal principles applied across domains, then we are left with a God who is arbitrary. The rules are simply the rules because he made them so, and he could simply have chosen a different collection of rules. And this is the god we are left with if we follow the golden standard approach, for however numerous, no set of examples will cover the entire spectrum of circumstance or culture. Is this the kind of God we desire to worship? It certainly isn’t for me, and nor do I think it is the God of the Bible, for he does not simply command us to be holy, but to “be holy, as I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16). Morality therefore is not arbitrary, and nor is it a list of rules simply because God likes making rules. It is derived from nothing less than God’s own character. As we understand his character better, we have firmer grounding for morality.
When it comes to the morals of sex, one first has to have an understanding of what it is. First, we know that both heterosexuals and homosexuals exist. (And indeed, bisexuals too.) Oddly, this is where I immediately begin to disagree with many of my conservative brothers and sisters, who insist that homosexuals are only heterosexuals that have been ruined in some way. However, this is less an existential objection than it is a moral one, for it is incapable of addressing both the personal stories of homosexuals and the mounting scientific evidence that it is an actual state of being not derived from psychological abuse or damage. (It also fails to deal with the existence of apparently homosexual creatures within the animal kingdom.)
Secondly, we know that sex is a powerfully and deeply binding experience. Divorce is painful, even for those without a religious objection to it. Dating break-ups, even if no sex has occurred, are also painful, and these are only the surface encounters of our sexuality. A couple in love can often be indicted for letting their other relationships slide because they are too enamored with each other. It seems that sexuality, and the physical sex act in particular, really does in some sense make one out of what used to be two. There is a Self, and there is an Other, and the two come together and make something new.
And lastly, we know that vaginal heterosexual sex can produce babies. This is how our species, along with a great many others, repopulates itself, and it must certainly be a necessary thing – else there would be very few of us here!
These are affirmed in Scripture: we see procreative sex (as it is fundamental to the very existence of human history), we see injunctions against divorce and commands for sexual fidelity, and the apostle Paul himself connects our theology of “Oneness” with sex itself, admonishing the Corinthian church saying, “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ ” So our reasoning has not led us to apostasy, but the Bible is silent on the matter of homosexuality and sexual orientation.
Now if anything, the primary aspect of sex seems to be the oneness of it. For we recognize sex as beneficial both to elderly couples and the otherwise infertile, and the desire for it is felt universally among people of all orientations. Not all couples reproduce, and not all find the same gender to be attractive, but all are moved to unity. Again, this is in keeping with Scripture, which has far more to say on the matter of marital faithfulness than it does about reproduction or orientation.
The second thing we must understand in developing a sex ethic is what principles we are basing our morality on. There are a lot of rules in the Bible, but what does the Bible have to say about the principles guiding morality?
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)
“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Here, then, is the source of all morality. But what about all the rules given, and what about our understanding of law and righteousness?
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. (Galatians 3:10-13, 23-25)
This is the Bible’s morality: love. And do not think it is a light thing, or that it is a good feeling one may get at the end of the day. Love is summed up in Christlikeness.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:10)
So our call to love – at whatever the cost to ourselves – is the ultimate source of all ethics. As both Paul and Jesus say, all the law is summed up in the command to love. If we wish to put forth a regulation to God’s children, we must first be sure, absolutely sure, that this regulation flows from the law of love, which lies – vast, mysterious, wild, untamed, and unknown – at the very heart of God.
Strangely enough, I have heard people say, and even tell me to my face, that the Biblical injunction against homosexuality has nothing to do with love: that love does not enter into the question, but it is just a matter of design, or what God has intended for human sexuality. Can there be any less Christian reasoning for a law? How does this reconcile with the New Testament as a whole? Simply put: it does not. This is an argument from man’s religion, and it is opposed to the grace of Christ and the New Testament understanding of law.
I believe that those within the ex-gay movement actually recognize this logic implicitly. This is why they try so hard – and so futilely – to connect homosexuality with an inherent lack of love, be it in psychological malformedness (usually blamed on parents) or in presumed violent or dangerous relationships. Neither of these stand up against anecdotal or, more importantly, scientific and psychological evidence, but the very fact that ex-gay groups will try and push this misinformation proves that they recognize that, in order for the command against homosexuality to be moral, it must stem from the law of love.
Where then does that leave me? What is in bounds and what is out of bounds? This is tough, but before I go on to enumerate my sex ethic more clearly, let me return to the question so often posed: what about bestiality and pedophilia?
We saw that sex is a unifying experience, and if this is true, bestiality and pedophilia are not only logical contradictions but also lack the love I spoke of earlier. Because sex is unifying, it must unite two beings that are capable of being united. Both members must be able to contribute and receive from the relationship on all levels of intimacy. This includes mental, emotional, and sexual ties. A child does not know what sexuality is, and neither is a child capable of relating mentally or emotionally on the level of an adult, and so pedophilia takes two objects which are by nature not relatable and attempts to unite them. Pedophilia also, in its true form, loses the desire for its object of affection once it matures, and thus violently and necessarily breaks the command of love. I do not speak of particular age limits (three thousand years ago quite large age gaps between a husband and wife were much more accepted, and Scripture passes no condemnation of it), but of the pathological desire to sexually have that which is helpless and immature. Though it is a hazy line, and different cultures assign that line to different ages, it does nevertheless exist. A man may teach a child, for that is what the child needs, and so love the child, but a man may not love a child as a spouse, for the child is not in nature comparable to an adult.
Bestiality is much the same, for a man can, after a fashion, love his dog, but he cannot expect his dog to fathom the rich sublimity of Chopin or his favorite well-versed poem or a story contemplating the divine. The union that runs between souls must necessarily bring together two beings that can relate along the varying levels of understanding that run within the other. To the human, containing the very image of God (though corrupted), nothing short of human will do. Otherwise the two are unable to relate. Both the perversions of bestiality and pedophilia are self-contradictory, and reduce the ‘lover’ to a mere seeker of personal passions, and the ‘beloved’ to an object or toy; they are naturally predatory. Reciprocity, and thus oneness, is lost, and sex is reduced to a collection of stimulated neurons, beginning somewhere in the nether regions and terminating somewhere in the brain.
But with two human beings, it is indeed possible for the two to sharpen each other, to sustain each other through a broken world such as ours, and to come to a deeper understanding of humanity and each other and the nature of self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness. For this is where sexuality leads us: to love, which we see exemplified in Christ – a love that puts its object of affection above itself and before itself. And so far as the relational, emotional, and intellectual unifying of two beings into the creation of a new and communal One, there is nothing lacking inherently in homosexual couples that their heterosexual counterparts have. The ‘complimentarian’ nature of heterosexuality is simply (and wonderfully) a physical difference, and not necessarily a spiritual or relational one, unless we begin to claim that the souls of women and men are fundamentally different before God. No two people are the same – we are all somehow Other to all our neighbors – and it is the working of Otherness into Oneness that is where the difficulty, and the triumph, of union lies. I am not trying to indicate that such a union is easy, nor that it is always a simple matter to turn one’s thoughts and actions to Christ in the face of a seemingly overwhelming and more immediate spousal relationship, but I am presenting the goals and ideals of such a union, its functionality and appropriateness, and the path which it can ideally take in the sanctification of the two.
The stipulation I have set on my sex ethic is that it must take that drive which seems inherent to nearly all of humanity and raise it from a simple biological response to something holy before God and beneficial to its participants. And like all things, it is holy when it brings us closer to God. Simple acts of pleasure (sex) are not enough for this, and neither are simple acts of pain (abstention). It is following the earthly pleasure straight along that path of worship to its source in that infinite fountain of all pleasures that makes earthly pleasure worth anything at all. And it is following the earthly pain straight along that path of loving obedience to its termination in that infinite treasure-store of grace and freedom that makes earthly pain worth anything at all. We must not focus exclusively on the former and ignore the giver for his gifts. But we must also be careful not to focus exclusively on the latter and become ascetics, for any pleasure that God created (like sex) he created to be enjoyed and received with thanksgiving. I am convinced that any other view – a view which denounces pleasure for its own sake – presents a twisted view of God, and is even demonic. Pleasure is inherently a good thing, as it is inherently a godly thing: we must forget these silly notions of an austere and harsh Father in heaven, and instead realize that at his side are ‘pleasure for evermore’. ‘He is a hedonist at heart.’ My ethical dilemma is not whether pleasure is to be enjoyed, but in this world where indulgence and worship of the gift so easily exceeds our worship of the giver, in what context is it that the pleasure can be enjoyed without making an idol of it?
As I’ve already noted, sex by its nature forms a bond between two beings: it creates a oneness from what once was two. But the two were not wholly compatible before their union, both from their individual propensities to sin, and from neutral personality traits and conflicting interests. This is where pain comes in: that pain of altering and denying the Self for the sake of the Other, and in the closeness of union it can be quite intense. But thank God that within union a most intense intimacy is also forged by and through its pleasures (such as sex). It is in this context – the fires of a union between two bodies and two souls, and not in mere pleasure – that sex finds its redemptive and sanctifying value. It spurs the two toward a self-forgetful and self-sacrificing lifestyle, and so makes us into a clearer image of Christ, for his selflessness and his humility were the greatest the world has or shall ever see. Many of my heterosexual friends have said, after being wed, that ‘marriage is the greatest sanctifier’, and I have no reason to doubt their words. Within the pains and struggles that being in a union with another corrupted (though by no means worthless) soul, and in the continual difficult surrender of Self, it is the love and intimacy in which sex plays a part that redeems the act from good to holy.
I will go further and say that such an intimacy cannot be enjoyed outside of the bonds of commitment. Although there is a damning sort of intimacy (like the intimacy one would have with an omniscient but unbenevolent God), there is a secure sort of intimacy (like the intimacy with a God both omniscient and benevolent). Without some degree of commitment that security does not exist, and the intimacy of sex only opens us up to harm. The individual cannot know that his or her vulnerability is safe without some assurance (however that may be communicated) that the other is committed to this new creature brought into being by their union. If one or the other pulls away, for whatever reason, the oneness is torn apart, and something that had a life and pulse of its own dies. And so therein lies the doctrine of marriage, and the reason for the tragedy, and not the mere inconvenience, of divorce. The first is profoundly creative; and the second equally destructive.
If we continue to condemn homosexuality, it must be on one of two grounds. The first is an arbitrary rule, based either on nothing at all or ‘because I say so’. This gives us an arbitrary view of morality and an arbitrary view of religion, both of which are wrong and unhelpful for learning the nature of God. The other option is to lift genital differentiation to an almost transcendental realm, a realm where we begin to worship the penetration of a woman by a man simply by virtue of what it physically is. This is not to say heterosexuality is not (or should not be) normal – it most certainly is, and appropriately so. But to esteem it is almost paganistic sex worship. So the claim of moral superiority of heterosexuality rests either on arbitrary values derived from some inscrutable source independent of love, or it is a sort of worship of the physical act itself.
But it is the calling to selfless love – to the pursuit of the benefit of the Other rather than the Self – that is what sex and union are, in their best and most purified states, calling us to. This, and not our particular flavor of sexuality, is part of the manifestation and sanctification of our redeemed natures before God.
I haven’t obtained all this, and living up to one’s morals can often be a difficult path. But I’m here because I’ve thought about it and I’ve sought God about it, and I fearlessly hope that he will bring me closer into harmony with himself.
Don’t be surprised if I’m silent for a bit. I’m relocating for a summer internship, and it will probably take me a little while to settle in to a new city and a new work environment and everything (pictured at left). I’m excited about it. Besides all this, I’m also doing a study on the early church along with a friend (and a few others, too) over the summer, and that’ll be enormous fun. There are also, as always, personal projects to work on, which I am becoming more serious about.
