Yesterday, the Obama Administration filed a court brief stating unequivocally that the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples was a clear case of discrimination not permitted by the Constitution.
A Constitutional scholar and leader of the Free World will no doubt be thrilled that a middle-aged homemaker in north Idaho agrees with him. But I do, and Andrew Sullivan began his debate with Doug Wilson with a point I’ve been struggling to make, and one that explains why I believe in granting marriage rights to same-sex couples.
For most of human history — sociologically speaking, up until the last couple of hundred years or so — there was thought to be no such thing as “a homosexual.” Men who engaged in sexual relations with men were simply thought of as straight people on a debauchery binge, not as people who were acting out of their deepest inborn sense of identity and desire. Lesbians were thought of even less, and often not thought of at all. Everyone knew of a maiden aunt who shared her life with another spinster, but no one had any idea what they did, or if, in fact, they “did” anything at all.
Now we understand, or most of us do, that about four percent of the population is born with an affectional, sexual, emotional attraction to those of their biological sex — that there are, actually, people who are as homosexual as I am heterosexual, as homosexual as you are Scottish, as homosexual as you are left-handed. They were created by a God who loves them, and in pursuing a lifelong, monogamous, companionable sexual relationship with someone, they will choose others of the same sex, just as the majority chooses someone of the opposite sex, because that is, in the language of the King James Version, “meet” for them — right, appropriate, and suitable.
They won’t seek to find love with other men or other women because they hate God, or hate straight people, or hate you. Those homosexual people who seek a life-partner — a spouse — from members of the same sex do so to fulfill the same longing for intimacy and security, companionship and love, that you and I did in marrying our own spouses. We act in a manner congruent with our nature. So do gay people. And while there are cads and players and sluts to be found in both populations, their behavior generally isn’t considered laudable — or even prevalent. We speak of a “sin nature” when describing acts of promiscuity and debauchery; we speak of an inbred, non-theological “nature” when describing the inborn inclination a minority of people have that makes opposite-sex partners “not meet” — not right, not appropriate, and not suitable — for them.
So if marriage, decades removed from its procreative purpose and centuries removed from its kingship-alliance and transfer-of-property roots, is expected to be the one socially and Biblically-sanctioned area where two people express themselves sexually, why are we loath to grasp that the only “redefinition” of marriage in play here is a wider, greater understanding that there are gay people, and for gay people — who desire the spiritual, emotional, sexual and legal benefits of marriage just as heterosexuals do — the means to achieving that is not to be found with someone of the opposite sex. That would be a lie.
That would be against nature. That would be . . . unnatural.
And that, I think, ought to make us dig deeper into the only real authority we have as Christians — the Word of God.
Because we now know that some people are born with a marked, unchangeable desire for intimacy of all types with members of their own sex, we must wrestle, then, with the Old and New Testament prohibitions against homosexual relations. The Levitical passages appear among lists of pagan ceremonial, temple abominations. Were homosexual men (there appears to be no thought of lesbianism in the Old Testament) the focus, or other men — what we now would call “straight” men — who were engaging in ritualistic frenzies or rape that had as its focus not intimacy, but debauchery or violence? That would be abominable. Can we be absolutely certain, so certain that we would deny civil justice to homosexuals?
The most relevant New Testament against homosexual behavior is Romans, which casts same-sex relations for both men and women as the consequence of God “giving them over” to the consequences of their sins — idolatry, primarily expressed as the refusal to think rightly about the God clearly revealed in creation. Romans 1:24-25 says,
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”
The question here is once again whether or not the “giving over” of people to sinful sexual behavior necessarily means that all similar sexual expression — in this case, among those people today who don’t worship the creation but are devout worshipers of the Creator God — is inherently sinful. Verse 26 tells us that men and women exchanged “the natural” for degraded passions with members of their own sex. Does that tell us that those women and men who have sexual relations in loving, consensual, and monogamous relationships, especially those who are in the Body of Christ, are the focus as well?
In other words, could the Apostle Paul have been writing about the behavior of a group of people, a demographic, he never knew even existed — that is, homosexuals, for whom the “unnatural” would involve being given over to “degrading passions” with those of the opposite sex? Verses 28-32 offer a list of sinful behaviors against the Holy One, seen to be, according to the text, the result of this “giving over” by God for their spiritual adultery against him. The text says that those who engage in these “degrading passions” inevitably fall into a further “giving over” that leads to further debasement and outrage against God. It’s a list of sins that most of us have committed at some point in our lives; their horror isn’t diluted by their commonality.
But think of the committed gay couples you know. Are their characters marked with insolence, murder, slander, rebellion, ruthlessness and heartlessness? Is the full compliment of the sins listed a result of God’s “giving them over” because of their inborn homosexual nature, or because idolatry and creature-worship and willful ignorance of God inevitably leads to all manner of sins? Can we say for certain that all homosexual people engage in homosexual activity, regardless of context, because they are haters of God and suppressors of the truth about Him?
Does that fit with the character of the gay Christians you know? Or is hatred of God and the suppression of truth about Him tragically the provenance of everyone alienated from Him by their sin? At best, the understanding we have now of innate homosexual desire leads us to conclude, in much the same way we conclude that people who have seizures are more likely to suffer from epilepsy than from Satanic possession, that a context-free, literal reading of the Scriptures in this case might not be the most accurate reading, two millennia hence, of the passages that condemn this sort of homosexual activity. In other words, is Paul condemning idolatry and making the point that it leads to all manner of sin, or is he writing about the intimacy between two committed partners?
And, because there is no legislation before us that would compel those who hold to a conservative view of the Scriptures regarding homosexuality to in any way participate in gay marriages, can we take one — granted, the most common — interpretation of a handful of Biblical passages about same-sex relations to deny civil rights to LGBT citizens? If, because of our religious views, they are not permitted to marry, would be then be honest and clamor for the denial of marriage benefits to a Christian and a non-Christian couple? The “unequal yoking” of a believer to a non-believer is un-Biblical; should we have that standard reflected in civil marriage law? How about the Bible’s condemnation of divorce? Should we agitate for the taking away of marriage rights for those whose divorces don’t meet the Biblical standard? Indeed, if we insist that Biblical standards be reflected in all civil laws, why are we not?
Is it because “normal” people get divorces, and “typical” people, even in our churches, marry outside of the faith? Do we see ourselves in them, but refuse to acknowledge our commonality as heterosexual sinners with those sinners who are, incidentally, homosexual?
Even those who cling to the Scriptures to justify their opposition of same-sex marriage must wrestle with the conundrum of just how far Biblical testimony on marriage should inform civil law in a pluralistic society.
I prefer to cling to the notion that I don’t know everything; in this case, that I don’t know, and even doubt, that Paul was writing about what he couldn’t possibly have recognized. Because I understand the justice aspect of denying equal protection under the law to gay citizens, then, I choose not to permit my lack of full understanding — and yours, by the way — to be an impediment to their civil rights. Indeed, most of the gay people I know are Christians; their love for and trust in Jesus puts me to shame at times. I owe them that. And as I acknowledge that there’s a gap in my understanding that only the Holy Spirit can resolve, I owe them and the Lord Jesus a level of profound humility when approaching the issue. These are people for whom Christ died — not because they’re more sinful than “the rest of us,” but because they live and move and draw their breath in a world soaked in sin, sin directed against them even as they, like us, participate willingly in it.
There are homosexuals and heterosexuals, epileptics and a few demon-possessed; left-handed and right-handed, Scottish and Nigerian, men and women, welders and physicians, murderers and pastors, children and veterans and homemakers and dancers and boxers and lettuce pickers, all at the foot of the Cross, all tainted by sin, all guilty of it not because they’re Nigerian, dancers, or homosexuals, but because they’re human beings — and human beings, precious souls, for whom Christ died, if you’re not a Calvinist. (If you are a Calvinist, you can’t actually say that, and no amount of prevarication on your part will change that). The God who desires the salvation of all is the God who superintended the birth of every one of us, and in God’s providence, some of us were born straight, Irish, and female, and others gay, Peruvian, and male. All of us have a sinful nature. Most of us have a heterosexual nature. And a small percentage have a homosexual nature.
Because recently-understood scientific truths about human sexuality offer a glimpse into a different understanding of Scripture’s testimony regarding it, the Body of Christ, those who profess to love the truth and who because of it worship Jesus Christ, cannot in good conscience continue to equate heterosexual nature as a grace the majority shares and homosexuality part of the sinful nature all of us do. May the Spirit grant us greater understanding, and may our understanding be widened for the Glory of our Almighty God.