C of E, same sex marriage and ethical mismove

I have been uncomfortable to be associated with this: I don't think I agree with the Church of England response to Government same sex marriage consultation -which is a shame because I'm supposed to represent the CofE.

At the heart of the submission is this paragraph:

Such a change would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history. Marriage benefits society in many ways, not only by promoting mutuality and fidelity, but also by acknowledging an underlying biological complementarity which includes, for many, the possibility of procreation. The law should not seek to define away the underlying, objective, distinctiveness of men and women.

And this, I think, also outlines the heart of the objection is from an Evangelical perspective. As such it captures my own erstwhile difficulty with affirming homophile relationships from what I used to understand as a biblical perspective. Let me offer a boiled-down version of the what is probably the mainstream Evangelical position as I have experienced it being passed on in England.

Many British Evangelicals are properly wary of using Levitical law and incidents like Sodom and Gomorrah in discussions about homosexuality. They rightly recognise the cultural differences and hermeneutical difficulties of making a straight transfer from such texts to contemporary life. Such considerations do actually impinge on the thinking (though you'll still find some unreflective 'strategies' of Bible reading which are inconsistent to uses in other areas). The main argument for Evangelicals of this more nuanced ilk is grounded in Jesus' teaching about divorce where he appeals to Genesis 1 and 2 saying that the reason that divorce is not good (and for the moment I don't want to get into divorce per se) is that "at the beginning "made them male and female,'" and that "For this reason ...  they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate"

Now, it may not at first sight seem relevant: what has divorce to do with homosexuality? Well, note that the passage links sexual dimorphism with marriage and also with sexual activity ('one flesh' is usually understood as mainly about that -though I am wondering whether that really holds water). That leads to the main argument -popularised by ethicist David Field in 'Homosexuality -a Christian Option?' (the question is answered negatively, but within an argument that discounts many traditional objections like the Sodom one). David Field's argument (from memory) was, effectively, that Jesus is saying that the purpose of sexual activity is to cement a lifelong partnership between one man and one woman. I'm not sure if I've stated that in a critique-proof way but I hope I've captured the main thrust of the argument well enough.

For a long time I was convinced by that argument. At the same time I found I was not homophobic, that is I had no personal difficulty with homosexual people (to the extent that some thought I might be gay myself) and advocated equality for homosexual persons in every other way. I thought of it as being similar to an attitude to adultery or heterosexual unmarried partnerships:  I may not condone the activity, but that is no reason to discriminate against people in other areas of life or to take away their rights.

However, I have come to believe that this suppodsedly Biblical approach is fundamentally flawed and cannot sustain the weight being placed upon it. And once it goes, there is no longer any good reason not to accept that homosexual relationship can be analogous to that between a man and a woman. In fact, once that reason has faded away, the arguments for acceptance of gay partnerships gain pre-eminent force. Those arguments were ones that troubled me (when I was persuaded by David Field's position) for a long time and I was aware that the only reason I didn't go with them was that Biblical argument rooted in the reading of Jesus' supposed understanding of Genesis 1 and 2.

The arguments that disturbed my certainty.
The arguments that disturbed my contentment with David Field's position were things like the following.

One important disturber of my peace was realising that homosexual people don't choose their orientation and consequently that it seems to be an injustice to deny them, point blank, expression of something fairly fundamental to their being in the world, and it certainly seems cruel too.

Then there were the many Christians I found who were good and wholesome growing Christians who were in same-sex partnerships; if God is so concerned, I thought, why would God bless their spiritual lives so without challenging them -yet that challenge really didn't seem to be coming; rather they were blessed and being a blessing. Was God calling us to be less merciful than God?

I also found unconvincing the concomitant idea that if something isn't God's 'norm' or best, we should 'outlaw' it. Contrariwise: there are things that are not the way that we would say that God wants them to be ultimately but which we 'make room for': divorce is perhaps the most germane and obvious, (and some people would add taking up arms in a just war). It seems to me that the logical corollary of this argument is to deny the deaf community the use of sign language because God's norm or best is for them to be hearing. (I say that without intent to be offensive, I trust it is not and apologise if it comes over badly; I think it is affirming of deaf people).

I also found the fact that 'gay cure' therapies seemed not to work on the whole and the times when they apparently did were probably to do with bisexuality, given their paucity. I felt that if the traditional view was right, such therapies ought to have more success.

There is also the intuition that the prohibition of homophile relations should make sense in relation to the law of Love: loving others as God loves and as we love ourselves. If we bracket out, for the moment, promiscuity and other 'unhealthy' ways of living out sexuality (which are on a par with heterosexual morality, btw) and we are dealing with a consensual, equal relationship in which mutual respect, comfort and aid are given and received, then how is that bad? If God is love and those who live in love live in God (1 John 4.16), then this kind of relationship shows forth God. it's hard to see how a sexual dimension to that can be so fundamentally wrong that it erases the goodness of the love. If homosexuality is so fundamentally wrong, then there ought to be intrinsic consequences that quite clearly run against the law of Love: I have not found any. And while that's not a determining argument, it is a consideration that considerably weakens the plausibility of the main position I had held.

Relatedly, it seemed to me that 1 John 4.16 would imply that a loving committed homophile relationship was good and right save only the sexual expression. It then seems quite hard to argue against the sexual expression of such a relationship if it is exclusive and lifelong in intent and unlikely to prove a danger to others.

I also found it intriguing that where an acceptance of the possibility of committed loving homophile relationships reigned, churches seemed to be able to reach out and see people coming to faith from the gay communities. This raised the kind of issue above about God's apparent blessing. More than that, it is hard to escape the parallel with the Church in Acts finding God pushing it to accept gentiles by converting them and giving them the Spirit.

I was also concerned to discover that suicide rates among homosexual people were comparatively high as were other stress-related health outcomes, it seemed to me that the attitudes of stigma that were a large part of the cause of those negative mental health outcomes were being propped up by church attitudes. At the very least, this means that the church has to work a lot harder to affirm gay people to the fullest degree it can in conscience. I fear that this is no way happening and cannot happen without a more fulsome acceptance on an emotional level, and I do suspect homophobia proper (ie people having a strong personal reaction against other people) lies somewhere at the root of that problem.


What's wrong with the creational argument?
So, having dealt with some of the outlying matters, what happened to my reading of that main 'Field' argument? Well, it seems to me now that reading the texts that Jesus refers to in his reply about divorce as a command, in effect, is to over-interpret by making an 'is' into an 'ought'. The 'is' part of it is men and women, being attractive to one another and the possibility of sex and children. That's the way things are: that's an 'is'. The 'ought' comes in at that point: a regulation of these possibilities and the desires that come with them so that they work for the particular and common good (and I won't here go into all of that, suffice to say it's about justice, well-being and love). The problem with the Evangelical view, as per David Field, is that the 'ought' gets moved back onto the male and female aspect so that being male and female becomes a moral imperative rather than simply being recognised as the way that things tend to be normally. This works oppressively when applied to situations where the 'normal' isn't possible: when the 'is' of gender difference becomes an 'ought' -similarly when the 'is' of general child-bearing becomes an 'ought' to the childless or would be if the 'is' of general sexual 'potency' becomes an 'ought' to the injured or ill.

I think that the fact that Jesus was talking about divorce in a context where same-sex relations of any kind are not in view is a big hint that we should be wary of applying it beyond that context in ways that would make unjust and oppressive situations if applied rigorously according to the widened understanding of Field and others. We know that in several parables of Jesus, reading more from it than the main point being addressed is dangerous and misleading. It seems to me that similar caution is warranted here.

Furthermore, I really don't think that anyone reading Jesus' teaching here would really think that gay sex was in any way implicated, anyway. In fact Jesus' teaching about neighbour love and love in relation to behaviour would tend to point towards allowing responsible, loving, committed homophile relationships as a just and loving way to proceed.

It seemed to me, too, that there is a fundamental problem with a reading of a moral argument in scripture that works oppressively, when the underlying deep structure of scripture is about love and justice. But that is not necessarily decisive if there is a possibility that there could be something about the practice that turned out to be ultimately injurious in terms of love and justice. But it seems to consistently emerge that the injurious things turn out time and time again to be the results of things that would be similarly injurious amongst heterosexual people, that is, they are nothing to do with homosexuality per se.

The other major text for me was -and for many evangelicals (but not fundamentalists -who tend to read so flatly that any text apparently about homosexuality is simply read across without much hermeneutical work) still is- the argument in Romans 1. But here I think the argument  is strong that the characteristics listed in verses 29ff don't fit faithful committed gay Christians and therefore their situation is not in view. Similarly it seems to me that gay Christians do not fit the profile of idolatry in verse 23 and so the 'giving them up to'  of verses 26 and 27 simply does not apply. Therefore it is reasonable to read this part as general condemnation of idolatry and its effects on general social morality -which may include people engaging in experimental sex outside of intentionally lifelong partnerships (and possibly, in the original context, kinky sex as part of 'religious' rites).

So, all in all, I don't think that the complementarity of the sexes is sufficient reason for  continuing to define marriage exclusively in heterosexual terms. I certainly don't think that it would be a reason to put at peril the church's position as a legal registrar of marriages. Even for those who don't think as I now do on the topic: I can't see it's much different from the issue of marrying divorcees in church -a matter of conscience can be accommodated in such a case -and given that it is now easier to be married in parishes one is not domiciled in, the possibilities of finding clergy who can in conscience preside over the ceremony.

I'd commend following this up by having a look at this web-site. Also read this sermon.

Note that some minor revisions of wording and addition of headings took place a few days after posting this article.