A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Sex, marriage, and false dichotomies

Marvin has a terrific post on same-sex marriage in the church, pointing out the silliness of some of the slippery slope arguments (Next it’ll be group marriages! Marriage to animals!) made against churches blessing these relationships. Far from being part of some hedonistic collapse in moral standards, the movement for recognition of gay relationships is in many ways a conservative one, with same sex couples seeking to reap the benefits of stable, committed, monogomous relationships.

I don’t post on this much, because it’s amply covered elsewhere, but one of the reasons I support same-sex marriage (as well as civil marriage or unions or whatever they end up being called) is because I’m conservative about sex. Eros is a powerful and dangerous force, one that is best channeled into a stable, faithful relationship that is enabled to contribute to the well-being of the surrounding community. Both Paul and Luther seem admirably pragmatic about marriage, seeing it as a way of taming our sinful impulses. And Jesus says that it is a penultimate institution, intended for this world, but not the world to come. To me this suggests a certain flexibility in approaching marriage: it’s intended to contribute to human flourishing here and now, not necessarily to mirror some eternal archetype. I’d add, of course, that it can be a kind of school of virtue where we learn to love by committing ourselves to loving one particular other person (a bit more on that here).

Maybe I’m unusual, but I had no objections same-sex relationships before I became a practicing, adult Christian, so I didn’t really go through some process of “overcoming” ingrained objections to them. I was raised in a conservative small town, but pretty much as soon as I came into contact with gay people I couldn’t discern any reason to object to two people of the same sex being in a romantic relationship. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that I was routinely accused of being a “fag” by other kids in school (it seemed to be a generalized term of abuse for bookish, awkward, or otherwise anomolous kids, which is not to trivialize the torment that actual gay kids often undergo, mind you), but I found myself rather instinctively sympathizing with gay classmates.

As someone who leans to the traditional side in matters theological I’ve tried to understand and sympathize with the traditionalist position here, but, in my judgment, the biblical evidence is too ambiguous (a useful overview here) and the arguments from natural law, etc. too unconvincing to sustain that position in the face of my experience of gay folks (and I would now add gay Christians). And I’d add that the fact that this has become a “debate” over an “issue” that often takes place at a very abstract level far removed from people’s actual lives and relationships seems to me to be quite wrongheaded.

So, in the church I find myself in the awkward position of agreeing with the “liberals” about this but not about certain theological matters, while being out of sync with a the “conservatives” on what for many has become the sin qua non of faithfulness. However, I do think that a lot of people “on the ground,” especially younger ones, are less likely to line up in quite the way that the most vocal people on both sides would have it. So I’m hopeful that there’s a possibility of a “third way” that isn’t just in the mushy middle but rejects what I think are the false choices being presented to us.

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16 responses to “Sex, marriage, and false dichotomies”

  1. *Christopher

    Now try being gay and agreeing with the “liberals” about this but not about certain theological matters. It’s sometimes maddening.

    This simply is not an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, and that is my beef with many conservatives–indeed, in trying to fend off the gays, they sometimes fall into speculation about the Trinity and Jesus that border on heterodoxy. But some of the liberal matters are an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. A certain Pelagianism and Arianism is a problem among some.

    I hope there’s a third way, because the way this whole thing has borne out is destructive. You’re right that much of the argumentation is so abstract that it no longer looks like the real life I live and the real lives I know. Indeed, it looks like ideology, and ideology, I would add that gets in the way of gay people hearing the Pure Gospel proclaimed.

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  2. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Did you watch any part of the LOGO interviews of the Democrats concerning LGBT issues the other night?

    A common view among gays is that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is discriminatory and that, so to speak, allowing them civil unions more or less identical to marriage in legal consequences while refusing them the word, “marriage,” is a sort of unacceptable “separate but equal” approach.

    So the questioners were challenging the candidates (BO, anyway) on allowing the churches to refuse to marry gay couples.

    (BO, who supports civil unions but not gay marriage, defended that right rather evasively.)

    They did this much as they have challenged politicians on legal policies that allow anybody to refuse to hire gays, including the churches. And including the Boy Scouts.

    And if the churches can be compelled to marry gays by the state because to refuse to do so is discriminatory, and if they are already being in some measure compelled to hire gays, can they be compelled to ordain gays and make them bishops?

    Slopes get slippery because line-drawing so often appears arbitrary. Of course, sometimes it is!

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  3. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Christopher,

    Isn’t it odd that denominations that have tolerated unorthodoxy in matters of faith for many decades are breaking up over unorthodoxy in this question of morals, and related behavior?

    Denominations that had no apparent difficulty tolerating clergy and even famous bishops who reject the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the dual nature of Jesus Christ, anything approaching Creationism, traditional trinitarianism, the fall of the whole creation in the fall of man in Eden, and the eventual second coming of Jesus and the End of the World are abolutely choking on homosexuality?

    Theological heresy? Not a problem. Theological liberalism or skepticism, even to the point of atheism? No sweat.

    But buggery? Wow. That’s too much.

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  4. Jack Perry

    Interestingly, Spong’s notions of the virgin birth and the resurrection do not appear to be in retreat. Perhaps this is why Spong’s notions of homosexual couples are likewise not in retreat.

    Denominations that could tolerate heresy on the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or abortion, are indeed very strange when they decide to fall apart over homosexuality. Especially denominations that for decades or centuries have disregarded and/or thumbed their noses at God’s view of divorce.

    This doesn’t mean that the solution is to deem certain forms of homosexuality suddenly okay, and all those Christians over the centuries who struggled and suffered to live chaste lives were poor, repressed souls. It means that Christians need to take a stand against the other heresies, starting from the principles.

    Once the principles are restored, then maybe (maybe) people will start to see why the things that follow are true as well. I don’t mean homosexuality only, but our culture’s general attitude about sex today as recreation. If you think that “Desperate Housewives” is used only for mockery, then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in the universities, where “hooking up” has led to an explosion of STDs. What’s the current statistic again: 1 out of 5 Americans has genital Herpes?

    I was also labeled a “fag” in my elementary school, but in my mind a selective stripping of the Gospel is not an option. All that business about a narrow gate and a hard, difficult road were serious to the saints. Why do we ignore them today?

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  5. *Christopher

    gsg,

    The problem is that the left and right has bought into a rather specious claim that “marriage” is a religious matter without any reference to the tortured history of marriage even in Western Christendom. I wonder how the atheist feels about this, or Unitarians or now United Church of Christ folks who disagree religiously on such matters with regard to other faiths.

    I don’t object to civil unions except in so far as folks left and right continue to push forward this specious religious argument…this does damage to marriage both inside and outside of faith, and threatens to unthread the reality that marriage is a vocational discipline among Christians lived out precisely and ordinarly in the world.

    As it is, marriage was here long before Christianity, and was a worldly matter in the Church for centuries. The first blessing of a marriage we have is late 5th or early sixth century, and it was in a home.

    As for discrimination by organizations religious and otherwise, it gets tricky. If they’re not public, such as the Boy Scouts, I don’t see a way to honestly say. Now, of course, I might say we need to consider your non-profit status in light of the fact that those whom you disciminate pick up part of your tab at tax time. And churches that support their gay and lesbian members should wrestle with the nastiness of the Boy Scouts.

    I don’t think we can force churches to marry anyone, gay or straight, but I do think we need to untangle the civil matters from matters of the ministry as has long been the case in most of Europe. We went to the local registry in C’s village region, registered, had a small ceremony with family, and then went out to eat…no church involvment whatsoever except in so far as all present were baptized and practicing Christians.

    Churches are not compelled to hire gays. I work at a seminary. If they chose to fire me because of my relationship, I would have no recourse legally–except to go to the press, which I would.

    Properly speaking we cannot speak of unorthodoxy in terms of morals. At least not in my tradition. I think it odd however that heterosexuals who have had all sorts of special pleadinsgs (a term Oliver O’Donovan, an Evangelical CofE professor, uses for describing the insistence of gays to be included) from contraception to divorce to remarriage, but we cannot seem to extend that kind of thinking to the gays. I say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, no relationships for gays, no contraception, divorce, or remarriage for the straights. Period. It looks to me like heterosexual power and privilege used to justify one’s own actions and lay all the shadow of one’s own sexuality onto gays.

    But it is odd that we can tolerate unorthodoxy in core doctrine and episcopal persecution of gays, but not gays themselves. It speaks to something of our heart as a tradition.

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  6. *Christopher

    Jack,

    What is your definition of the gospel?

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  7. Jack Perry

    The one I used in my discussion about narrow gates, divorce, the virgin birth, and so forth. They’re all found in the gospel that Christians used for two millennia.

    What’s yours?

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  8. *Christopher

    For God so highly favored the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that all who trust in him may not come to destruction but have eternal life. (my translation)

    Luther named this the Gospel in miniature, and his sermons on the matter are rich:

    http://www.covenanter.org/Luther/luther_john03v16to21.html

    For me, this is the crux of Christianity.

    I fear that from here heterosexuals have made of marriage a work every bit as rejected by Luther as monasticism. The Augsburg Confessions on monasticism could apply to the way heterosexual Christians treat marriage today from the perspective of homosexuals.

    Your linking of Spong’s views on the Virgin Birth and homosexuality are hard, indeed, impossible to prove as there are many who believe in the Virgin Birth who nevertheless also accept homosexuality lived out in faithful, committed, monogamy as a response to the Good News of Christ. Nor is it an easy slide from such faithful relationships to linking them to all manner of infidelity and promiscuity. To link the two is to suggest the two are one and the same, and they are not. It’s slander and libel, presenting false witness against homosexuals in toto.

    Christians in the past have gotten much right–something liberals often don’t acknowledge, but they’ve also gotten many things partially or wrong. To recognize this is not unfaithful, but faithful to the Cross always standing critically before us.

    It is indeed impossible of our own to live up and into the God praised in John 3:16, a God of infinite love and mercy, and the narrow way is Christ, and Christ alone. But many heterosexuals set before us their heterosexuality–not the form or values of marriage by which response to God are lived out by them, but their sexuality as precondition and in so doing put themselves and their ideology between us and the Good News of Christ.

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  9. Jack Perry

    It’s slander and libel, presenting false witness against homosexuals in toto.

    I have not singled out homosexuals, but have described the entire world as dwelling in the shadows cast by the light of the Gospel. I recognize the current gusts as the spirit of the age rather than the Spirit of God, and I will not accept a charge of slander or libel when I have spoken the truth in good faith.

    I do not exempt myself from the roll of sinners in need of salvation. It would be unwise of me to continue the conversation (Prv. 10·19) although I very much would like to.

    God bless.

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  10. Lee

    Jack,

    I’m sympathetic to your comments about not abandoning the narrow road and the examples of the saints. And I also worry about tailoring a gospel conformable to our wishes.

    At the same time, Jesus said his yoke is light and warned against those who would lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders.

    So, I’m not prepared to say that gay Christians should be held to a different standard than straight Christians unless it can be shown that there is good reason for it. Obviously differing theological commitments are going to play a big role in how we evaluate what counts as a “good reason” here, which is why I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s mind with this post. I was only recording the fact that I don’t find the biblical and traditional prohibitions compelling as applicable to the kinds of monogomous, faithful relationships I’m familiar with. And this seems to me to be quite distinct from cultural attitudes toward sex more generally; indeed, it seems like a positive witness against many of the destructive trends you mention.

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  11. *Christopher

    Jack,

    You linked homosexuality only to the problems regarding cultural sexual attitudes. That is a common thing on the Net it seems. Link gays and our relationships with all that is wrong with the culture with regard to sex.

    The Gospel is not simply a light out there but is appropriated in persons and contexts, and just as you think you have spoken the truth on this matter, from here, your truth reads as culture interpretting the Gospel.

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  12. *Christopher

    And I might add the tradition has been no sex except for procreation and do not enjoy it (in that sense JPII is an innovator), no contraception, no divorce, no remarriage. It seems heterosexuals can make all sorts of special pleadings, but are quite willing to lay heavy burdens on homosexuals. Reading Luther on monasticism and the suffering many reformers felt from celibacy, I can’t help but see the hypocrisy of a tradition that cannot see it now does the same thing to homosexuals, willing to leave us quite tormented by a religious culture no longer underwritten by celibacy, but with heterosexual marriage. At least under the celibacy culture, marriage was thought of as lesser and the heterosexual righteousness so rampant today was appropriately kept at bay.

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  13. Rob

    Lee, what would you say are “the false choices being presented to us”?

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  14. Dave

    Hi, Lee,

    Thanks for a thoughtful and irenic post. Current discussion in the church obviously needs a lot more of both qualities.

    The thing that keeps me thinking about this whole issue is precisely the connection between ‘liberal’ stances on GLBT issues and ‘liberal’ stances on Christology and salvation. When I lived in NYC, I sought out churches that were open & affirming of gays and lesbians, but was disappointed because so many of them seemed watered down, wimpy, and sentimental. If I lived in NY still, I’d probably go to Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) or All Angels’ Episcopal (an evangelical congy), because I’d rather have differences with my pastor over whether gay folks can get married than over whether Jesus was the son of God. Obviously I’m generalizing; I’m sure there are lots of churches out there that are LGBT-affirming and manage to be robustly orthodox, but I haven’t run into any of them.

    The real question is: on what basis might we affirm, say, gay marriage? Do we do it because there’s a biblical imperative for it, and because we think the Bible’s been misinterpreted on this point? (I’d say ‘yes’ to both points.) Or do we do it because, like good 21st-century Americans, we think everyone’s got a right to live their lives the way they want without interference from their pastor? After all, only fundies take the Bible seriously, anyway…. Many, many thoughtful folks take the first route, but I don’t think we should fool ourselves about how many people (especially people in the pews) take the second.

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  15. gaius sempronius gracchus

    Christopher,

    Yours beginning, “And I might add … ”

    Dead on.

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  16. Lee

    Rob, to answer your question, I think Dave’s comment hits it on the head: we shouldn’t have to choose between affirming same-sex relationships and creedal orthodoxy, biblical fidelity, etc. I think it’s a false choice because I don’t believe there’s any contradiction between the two. And I think Dave’s also correct that there’s a danger of sliding into a kind of live-and-let-live relativism if we don’t ground a “revisionist” stance on solid theological ground.

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