The political and social furor over gay marriage is an emotional time-bomb pressed into the service of religious and political competition. Like many key issues in the public eye, however, the debate suffers from both the inconsistent application of logic and from spiritual duplicity. Both flaws do God and humankind a disservice. When religious people passionately and sincerely claim their faith teaches love, and they treat those who disagree with them with fear, hatred and condemnation, one has to ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

The followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam share the Genesis creation story as fundamental to how human beings are defined, but tend to overlook what is implied by its assertion that humans are “created in the image and likeness of God”. At one end of the American religious spectrum, the Christian fundamentalists, who are the most vocal of the anti-gay proponents, simultaneously join in this condemnation and claim fierce allegiance to faith in Jesus’ teachings of love. At the other end of the spectrum is the Episcopal Church’s recent consecration of an openly gay and sexually active bishop in a long-term committed relationship. The fact that Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was also formerly married and divorced adds additional fuel to the rhetoric of judgment. There are sincere and God-loving people on both sides of the debate, but their respective positions often appear to be irreconcilable. Yet if the God both sides claim to believe in is truly universal and omnipresent, then that God must somehow be present in both sides of the argument. The reconciliation of polarities is, in fact, at the very center of the experience of union, so where the polarities remain unreconciled, experience of union with God must necessarily elude us.

There are elements of this dynamic that frustrate reconciliation, for they are seldom examined dispassionately or included in the public debate. One set of elements has to do with one’s understanding of the nature of scriptural authority and authorship. The other has to do with the distinction between the teaching of God or Jesus, and those of any particular sect or Church. Moreover, for the sake of moral consistency, both must be considered in relation to the fundamental premise that God is not only loving, but, as St. John puts it, “God is love”.

Biblical scholarship in the past hundred years has vastly increased our understanding of the evolution of the document called The Bible, and of the world that produced it. Until recently the purported sanctity of scripture has been alleged to be based upon divine authorship rather than upon the holiness of the story or of the people in it. If God didn’t “personally dictate” the Biblical text to some infallibly receptive scribe in a kind of “channeling” experience (as current scholarship clearly agrees from the numerous variants in even the ancient Biblical manuscripts), then the armor of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy begins to crack, or at least require clarification and perhaps redefinition.

The distinction between Biblical inerrancy and biblical authority is an important one. It is interesting to note, for example, when a priest is ordained in the Episcopal Church, he or she must first sign a document stating “I do believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain all things necessary for salvation”. It does not say, however, that those things are only found in the Old and New Testaments and nowhere else. Nor does it say that everything or every word in the Old and New Testaments is equally essential to salvation. It is an ongoing challenge to discern, then, what the essence of the scriptural message is, and resorting solely to traditional “official” interpretations, often worded in archaic language, has created a gulf between belief and experience for many, making the traditional doctrine feel opaque and unintelligible or even irrelevant.

The social context for the sexual mores espoused by the Old Testament was radically different from the prevailing environment in many parts of the world today. And when we look at the New Testament, most of the specific teachings about sex are not Jesus’ words at all, but those of Paul, who never even met the man he came to call Lord, but who definitely had some negative views about sex. Since Jesus was clearly not shy about speaking out against things he found objectionable, it is significant that he never even mentions homosexuality. It is also odd that so many Christians have ascribed to him their own negative and repressive views on sexual matters. The fact that disciples may articulate things the master did not doesn’t automatically invalidate their articulation, but it does not follow that they are synonymous or concordant with what the master himself believed, taught or would have said.

The issues surrounding homosexuality are a case in point. For a tribal people living in a geographic region contested and invaded by every major empire in West Asia in the past five thousand years, survival clearly depended on strength in numbers. With physical survival relying on reproductive success, there was, perhaps, good reason to limit or even prohibit any sexual activity inherently incapable of resulting in procreation. Homosexuality clearly falls in that category.

By Jesus’ day, however, Israel had ceased to function as a tribal society and had been ruled by both Greeks and Romans- both of whom had considerably more flexible attitudes regarding sexual activity. In an occupied territory some respond to occupation by emulating, others by repudiating the customs of the occupier. The New Testament text is ambiguous as to where Jesus stood on such issues, for in truth he hardly even refers to sexual issues obliquely. What explicit negativity toward sex may be found in the Apostolic letters may reflect a measure of repudiation of Greco-Roman values on the part of Paul and some of the Apostles. Fear may have contributed to such an environment and may have shaped the thinking of many seeking to reconcile Jesus’ teachings with both Jewish and Gentile world views. The fearful sometimes resort to the demonization of what or whomever is feared.

Fundamentalist groups in every religion today tend to feel besieged by fearsome outside forces and many encourage prolific procreation among their followers as a sacred obligation, for the same reasons that the ancient tribal Hebrews did. Yet the world has changed enormously since biblical times with a population explosion that threatens our annihilation rather than promoting our preservation as a species. Does that change how we should view forms of sexual activity that do not or cannot result in conception? If morality is predicated on the fundamental principle of equal regard for all parties, what does morality demand here and now?

An argument used by fundamentalists is that homosexuality is an "abomination” (the Old Testament term) because it is “unnatural”. Supposedly what that means is that sexual attraction between members of the same sex does not occur in the animal kingdom, therefore is not part of God’s created order, but only an aberration resulting from the inappropriate use of human free will. No wonder Charles Darwin and the proponents of evolutionary theory have suffered from recurring bouts of being demonized! For among many things observed by naturalists and animal behaviorists in the past century and a half is the existence of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom. Not even a fundamentalist could argue such a phenomenon is the result of some perverse or sinful human choice, so the easiest way to maintain their position is to simply ignore or invalidate the data. Yet if homosexuality is found in nature, for at least some segment of the animal population, (which observers insist is a stable percentage not subject to vast increases in either the human or animal species), and is not a mere matter of choice, it cannot be inherently evil or an abomination. According to Genesis, when God finished creating, he looked at his creation and “saw that it was good”. And though fundamentalists point to the infamous destruction by God of Sodom and Gomorrah as proof of God’s disapproval of homosexuality, a careful reading of that story suggests the condemnation is not about the orientation of sexual activity but because of the sexual violence and cruelty of the depraved residents of Sodom who sought to rape both women and men of Abraham’s family and entourage.

Sin is generally considered by the religious as the alienation from God resulting from the misexercise of free will and the negation or rejection of what God and nature have ordained for us. But if homosexuality is simply a naturally occurring phenomenon within a certain stable percentage of the human population, not a matter of choice, what validity could there be in demonizing homosexual activity as unnatural, an unforgivable sin and an irredeemable evil? On what can we reliably base the presumption that what God has ordained in nature must be the same for every human being? Is that not tantamount to limiting God’s infinite power to do as God alone sees fit?

According to current data, contrary to homophobic opinion, homosexual activity is neither inherently promiscuous nor violent, nor emotionally unfulfilling. The stereotypes used to vilify homosexuality are closely related to notions of promiscuity. Where relationships are not socially and publicly accepted but discouraged or prohibited, stable and lasting commitments become more difficult or impossible. Such pressures can result in promiscuity, since both the sexual urge of hormonal activity and the emotional urge to intimacy is not easily thwarted, no matter what its orientation. Promiscuity is seen as socially destabilizing with some justification, but it becomes a spiritual challenge to discern which is the greater threat. Arguably what causes the promiscuity and lack of commitment is the more serious problem. Religious people are generally in agreement, no matter where they are on the spectrum, that loving and long-term commitment is the essence of the marital relationship and morally preferable to what is seen as the inconstancy, shallowness and even depravity of a promiscuous life-stye.

Enter the issue of gay marriage. If homosexuals seek the bond of legally binding commitments- both for the legal benefits concurrent with marital status, and the sense of social approval and religious blessing that generally accrue to that state, is that not morally redressing one of the chief complaints of the religious critics of homosexuality? If homosexuals are part of God’s good creation, their orientation not a matter of choice, and spiritually devout homosexuals are seeking God’s blessings, what is the moral basis for turning them away from religious observance, support and consecration, condemning them as unnatural aberrations and willful negators of God’s commandment to love one another? Such vilification while claiming to practice the commandment to love one another is both irrational and hypocritical, not to mention self-contradictory.

The furor regarding legal sanctioning of same-sex couples raises a wider issue than the heterosexual majority’s comfort level with the sexual preferences of a minority of the population. Since many of the “traditional” interpretations of marriage, and the social environment that produced them, have changed in the past century, it is legitimate to ask whether the institution of marriage itself needs to be reexamined and redefined.

Some states acknowledge “common law” heterosexual marriages, devoid of legal formalization ceremonies, in recognition of the reality and validity of commitment and a long term bond between partners. To allege that such a commitment or bond is a heterosexual monopoly is patently and documentably untrue. If this is so in the secular realm, why should we presume it does not apply equally to the spiritual? In the Middle Ages Aelraed of Rielvaux wrote movingly of “spiritual friendship” as a sacred bond between two members within the monastic community in much the same terms we might expect of marriage. There was nothing either deviant or prurient in his writing, nor was he hinting at monastic improprieties in the vein of recent scandals among Catholic priests. He was, however, articulating that love is a reality between members of the same sex- and it need not imply any particular sexual activity.

Homophobia is largely predicated on subconscious fears that not only is such love possible, but might ambush unsuspecting heterosexuals and thereby alter their orientation against their will. There is absolutely no credible evidence to substantiate such a fear. There is, however, an innately bisexual dimension to all of humanity that recognizes we all have a “masculine side” and a “feminine side”, or characteristics and sensibilities that are stereotypically categorized by gender. Most psychiatrists and therapists consider balance of these seeming polarities, in fact, to be virtually the definition of psychological health. Fear of either dimension, therefore implicitly constitutes some degree of emotional or psychological imbalance or unhealthiness. The hysteria generated over gay rights issues in general, and the possibility of state and religiously sanctioned same-sex unions in particular, tends to respond to homosexuals as if they were or suffered from a disease. The implicit fear, moreover, that that disease is contagious may be indicative that the opponents are uncomfortable dealing with feelings they may themselves harbor but fail to understand, and are deeply programmed to resist or deny. Much of that programming comes directly from religious indoctrination- yet few people challenge that programming or even look candidly at the reality that doctrine itself is not static,but in a state of continual flux.

To pretend that religious belief and interpretation is an unchanging and unchangeable phenomenon is, of course, demonstrably untenable. It at times even appears that one period’s heresy is another’s faith. The fundamentalists’ appeal to tradition as integral to their justification of certain attitudes is highly selective. Mistaking tradition for eternal truth is as dangerous as mistaking religion for God. They are related, but hardly synonymous. Since God, (or the supreme consciousness that term connotes) is the eternal truth of all religion and an infinite, omnipresent deity, by definition is both greater than and the source of all possibilities in this ever-changing universe, a religion that cannot adapt to change ends up limiting and even rejecting both God’s omnipotence and omnipresence. That is generally defined as blasphemy- the ultimate and most grievous sin. The religious impulse to seek that which is enduring, to model one’s life choices on the exemplary behavior of the saints, to be governed by the divine mandate to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves, is a noble and vital one. Yet our ability to discern what is, in fact, enduring, and to actually perceive the unity between ourselves, our neighbor and the God in whom “we live and move and have our being”, is something that we acquire and grow into gradually through experience. It is not given to us full blown. Our problem may be precisely that we do love our neighbor and God as we love ourselves- which is to say, not very much at all. We fail to grasp that each is integral to the other- to hate any one is to hate all, to truly love any one is necessarily to embrace all three. With all the suffering, violence and cruelty in the world today, anyone seeking to strengthen their bonds of love and commitment should be applauded, not vilified, especially by people who claim to be governed by the spiritual mandate to love one another in emulation of God’s purported love for humanity. To do otherwise is to undermine the credibility of any profession of faith.

Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2004 by Faith In Diversity Institute