)
Dave Strite, for helpful JavaScript programming and photo digitizing
Dr. Phil Lawlis, for helpful feedback on April 10 and otherwise
Additional information relevant to this paper can be found at my Christianity
and Homosexuality web site,If you use Netscape 3.0 or after, you may view a collapsable outline to the left. Click on the buttons to open and close the outline.
Jesus will judge rightly in the end. Meanwhile, we are to judge within the Church as thoroughly as possible, even though we see only partially. [I Corinthians 5:9-6:6; 13:12] The same Jesus who said, "Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven" also said to allow the wheat and tares to grow up together until the end when He will judge. [Matthew 7:21; 13:29-30; 7:1] Thus it is my goal to balance the humility of incomplete evidence with the conviction that God has spoken a sure word about sexual morality which proscribes homosexual thoughts and actions.
I believe that the cross is central to Christianity. I differ with homosexuals who change their beliefs because their beliefs conflict with their homosexuality. I believe that they miss the central idea of holiness, substituting mere psychological wholeness for alignment with God. They avoid self-denial on Jesus' terms; they accuse celibate homosexuals of being in denial in the psychological sense of dishonesty toward self.
God's entering into our suffering does have one application to the present book, however. I aim not only to provide information that honors Christ, but also to have an attitude that honors Christ. Secure in Him, I don't need to be snide, cynical, judgmental, or flippant. I can attempt to understand the pain of the gay Christian.
It is impossible to be gay and Evangelical because being evangelical is more than just being a Christian. Evangelicals have repented of their sin and put their faith in Christ, but they also have an identity as Evangelical, and they affirm the authority of the Bible and certain behaviors and attitudes.
I think that gay Christians are wrong, but I understand how they come to identify themselves in that way. I think that homosexual Evangelicals can grow beyond identifying themselves as gay. "Gay Evangelical" is a contradiction.
My gay friends point out that Jesus who delighted in the oxymoron "good Samaritan" would have no problems with the term "gay Evangelical." They view this book as straining at the gnats of legalism while neglecting justice and mercy. [Matthew 23:23-24] To my charge that they are inconsistent they offer Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." (R. W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance")
The Evangelical Network [offsite link] was founded by former Baptist pastor Fred L. Pattison in 1988. He pastors Casa del Cristo Evangelical Church in Phoenix. It includes the first pro-gay Evangelical Bible school, Phoenix Bible School.
A gay alumni association of Wheaton College was organized in conjunction with the 1993 Gay March on Washington by Paul Phillips [offsite link]. [02 address] Open to the alumni of all Christian colleges, it claimed about 70 members in 1993. It has no official tie to Wheaton College. As of October 1997, it appears to be defunct.
These gay Evangelical groups regard Scripture as authoritative. They differ with other Evangelicals only as to interpretation of the passages that affect their homosexuality. They seek to obey God and to love as He does. Don't these organizations prove that being gay and Evangelical is not only possible, but that such a community exists?
Yet I claim that being gay and being Evangelical clash on all three of levels of definition: identity, behavior, and affirmations. I focus in this book on the clash between affirming homosexual behavior and affirming what the Bible says.
The present book differs from Schmidt's in several ways. It includes fallacies on both sides of the pro-gay argument. It includes a response to Schmidt's critics (Hanks; Evans). It includes a personal testimony. It includes my observations as director of a Christian ministry providing group support and individual counsel for those facing homosexual temptations. It includes discussions of Jesus words against homosexuality. It offers a reading of the term "neurosis" that explains the shift in the psychological literature from treating homosexuality as a neurosis to treating it as non-neurotic.
This book differs from Dallas' book in aiming for an academic rather than a popular audience. Therefore it draws more detailed theological conclusions. It focuses on historical and theological roots of the debate. It provides more precise citations, clearly differentiated as to primary and secondary sources.
For definitions of Evangelical, I rely on George Marsden, Donald Thorsen, and others.
I avoid the term "preference" because it implies choice. Only rarely is homosexuality freely chosen. I avoid the term "orientation" because it has been preempted by gay advocates to connote an unchanging state. As much as possible, I avoid using the word "homosexual" as a noun, remembering Greenberg's wise advice: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will hurt me more." (487)
It is one of the ironies of the current debate about homosexuality that Evangelicals, typically distrustful of psychotherapy, cite Sigmund Freud to be their side in the debate. Freud saw homosexuality as a natural phase through which all pre-adolescents pass. Hence he saw adult homosexuality as a sort of arrested development. Evangelicals, however, are not embracing Freud's view that cures are difficult if not impossible. Along with Freud, I will use the term "homosexual" without associating it with a value judgment.
In contrast, gays value their homosexuality. Gay Christians in particular affirm their homosexuality as a moral good on par with heterosexuality. Gays think of their homosexuality as their identity. A gay person hears a word against homosexuality as an attack against his or her person. No dose of "loving the sinner, but hating the sin" is enough medicine to fix that hurt.
Gays form communities based on this common identity, much as Christians form communities based on our identity as Christian. They have shared stories, shared values, and a shared network of communication and support.
The landscape is actually more complicated than this, both as to Christian sensibilities and as to gay sensibilities.
Even using Kinsey's scale, bisexuality has been a difficult category to deal with for gay Christians who maintain an ethic of monogamy. "Bisexual" is an epithet hurled at gays by conservatives to "help" them to see that change is possible. It is hurled at conservatives by gays as well: "[T]he entire U.S. population is bisexual" according to Janet E. Halley in the UCLA Law Review. (Socarides [1995] 305) "You are bisexual" is usually a way of closing someone out of community rather than a scientific deduction. Universals can be a sophisticated form of name-calling.
By "gay" I mean homosexual identity in the psychological sense of "that is who I am at the core of my being" and in the social sense of an identifiable class of people. Gays as a group, for example, deserve fair treatment in housing, or as a group demand equal access to jobs including jobs where they may influence the next generation.
Yet it would be wiser to think of homosexuality on a scale from 0 to 6 and heterosexuality on different scale from 0 to 6, crossed to form a plane. And even that is simpler than taking into account preferences for multiple partners, for different ages, for different degrees of risk, or for different Homosexualities (to refer to the book title by Bell and Weinberg that first pointed out the complexity of the phenomenon of homosexuality).
Likewise, Christianity is multidimensional.
Homosexual Christian
Gay Evangelical
Essentialist Anabaptist
Constructivist Calvinist
Queer Fundamentalist
[...] Reconstructionist
If Christians are to be placed along a liberal-fundamentalist axis, we Evangelicals would like to think of ourselves as maintaining a tension between the two extremes. Look at the right hand side of Figure 1.
Two axes of disagreement among Christians are important in the homosexual debate: (1) From flat view of Scripture to progressive revelation. And, (2) from the Christ of culture to Christ standing over culture. (Niebuhr) The further to the right a Christian is, the flatter will be her view of Scripture. An Evangelical rejects the reconstructionist view that the OT and NT are of equal weight in guiding doctrine and practice. An Evangelical equally rejects the liberal view that both OT and NT have less weight than current culture.
Both liberal and reconstructionist extremes are more likely to engage culture than the Evangelical center. Evangelicals either disengage from secular culture (as historically Anabaptists did) or stand against it. An Evangelical rejects the liberal tendency to identify Christ and culture; an evangelical rejects also the reconstructionist program to place Christ over culture in this dispensation. [03 aside]
Both of these axes are evident in the homosexual debate. Gay Christians see themselves as a new breed of Christian not evident in the pages of the Bible. Gay Christians see themselves as representing the Christ of culture. Evangelicals see this combination as a loss of faith rather than as a renewal of faith.
Reconstructionists, taking an extreme literalist view of Scripture, claim that the OT and NT are both binding on Christian and non-Christian alike. They claim that we are responsible to make the nations Christian. The gay charge against Reconstructionism is "Why aren't you Christians consistent with Leviticus in asking for the death penalty for those who act out homosexually?"
Thus gays want to move the discussion as quickly as possible out of the bedroom and into the courts. Gay Christians in particular insist that homosexuality is a justice issue alone. That is not to say that the moral issue has been settled, only declared irrelevant. Gay Christians argue that Jesus' justicelove (to use the neologism) is a controlling principle in sexual matters.
Fundamentalists conflict with Evangelicals on the issue of separation from the world. They hold to what Ferm calls "double separation." (Ferm) For example, they object to Billy Graham, Mr. Evangelicalism, on the grounds that he allows liberal pastors to sit on the platform in his crusades. As to homosexuality, Fundamentalists distance themselves not only from gays, but from those Christians who approve of gays. Fundamentalists seem not to notice that having sex with your wife during her monthly period is also an abomination, but one that is not taken seriously today. [Leviticus 18:19]
EXPERIENCE REASON
---------------------------
\ \
\ \
\ \
\ \
\ \
---------------------------
TRADITION SCRIPTURE
LIBERAL ANABAPTIST CALVINIST FUNDAMENTALIST
E V A N G E L I C A L
For Evangelicals, Scripture is authoritative. But so in tension are reason, tradition, and experience as ways of knowing. Revelation and experience are in tension. The Spirit through the Word alone leads to dead orthodoxy. The Spirit through experience alone leads to ecstatic error. Thorsen argues that the Wesleyan quadrilateral brings balance to these competing strands of Evangelical theology. (See Figure 2.) [04 aside critique of quadrilateral]
In the simple meaning of the word itself, "evangelical" is about good news. The good news is that God offers salvation by grace to those who believe in Jesus as the payment for their sin. An Evangelical is orthodox in theology, and desires to be obedient to Jesus' command to spread the good news of His salvation.
Such a positive definition does not easily exclude. However, certain Christian groups are traditionally not labeled Evangelical by this definition. Roman Catholics and Orthodox are not because they mix works with faith. Universalists are not because they do not see belief in Jesus as necessary, at least in this life. [05 aside] Although mainline denominations have strongly evangelical churches, typically Evangelicals do not have a strong denominational loyalty or liturgy.[06 aside]
That is why the most recent Christian Scholar's Review (Winter 1996) points out the healthy distrust of foundationalism that Evangelicals have. Even Herman Dooyeweerd, Calvinist philosopher often cited favorably by foundationalists, reminds us that
Philosophical thought itself offers us no Archimedean point, for it can function only in the cosmic coherence of the different modal aspects of meaning which it nowhere transcends.Finally, from a Christian point of view, reasoning alone has another devastating effect. We use universals as academicians as a way of maintaining emotional distance. Although that might be an asset in an academic setting, in the Church it leads to death. Homosexuals are men and women for whom Christ died.
Knowing in relationship with other persons is a more Hebrew, and hence a more Biblical, way of knowing than Greek rationalism, but one person's mere experience cannot be normative for another. Hence Evangelicals rightly distrust experience alone as well. Feminist scholarship reminds us not to universalize patriarchal, provincial readings of the Bible. Gay scholar David Greenberg reminds us not to universalize the gay Western experience either.[07 aside Greenberg] Feminist scholarship is often cited as supportive of gay theology. Yet, one lesbian author writes that gay male phallocentrism stands against true feminism. [08 aside]
Process theology takes extreme opposition to a flat view of Scripture. It argues that just as NT ethics are an improvement on the OT, so are present day ethics an improvement on the NT, because God Himself is changing, perfecting. Whitehead, a mathematician, was struck by the 19th C. view of mathematics as not describing a static, Euclidean absolute world. If there are many different geometries describing space over time, then perhaps there are many views of God differing over time. Aquinas' Summa Theologica has often been called the "Spiritual Euclid," because of its reliance for the form of its argument on Euclid's Elements. Whitehead offered that the new geometries should give rise to new ways of thinking about theology as well, most especially less deductively and less statically.
Among Catholics, Teilhard de Chardin proposed a similar view. Because God changes, His perfection will be found at the Omega Point in history. Despite the popularization of Teilhard's view as a scientific religion by American physicist Frank Tipler (Tipler), the current cultural scene cannot bear the weight of optimism that such process theologies have about the perfectibility of humanity. Process theology does not have much purchase in modern theological debates.
In 1967 Pittenger wrote Time for Consent, in which he argued that homosexuality ought to be reconsidered in the light of these new theological findings. In 197x he wrote autobiographically about his own coming to terms with being gay and Christian.
One could say in hindsight then that Pittenger found a theology that fit his experience. You might not agree with Catholic writer E. Michael Jones that modernity is rationalized lust, especially when you consider that Jones includes Martin Luther among his "degenerate moderns." (Jones 1993) But you cannot escape the horns of the dilemma: when your behavior does not fit your theology, you must either change your behavior, change your theology, or live with the tension.
The liberal has a strong point: experience is not negotiable -- theologies, words, and creeds are. As one acquaintance of mine said, "A person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument." Experience tends to shape theology rather than the other way around, even for Evangelicals. I don't believe in the Virgin Mary's visiting Portuguese children, but had I seen her, I might be a Roman Catholic today. A college student told me that she no longer believed in Jesus as divine because her mother proclaims it from the pulpit but doesn't live it.
At the bottom line, both Evangelicals and liberals claim that experience rightly viewed and the Bible rightly viewed will point in the same direction.
Two authors apply liberation theology explicitly to the issue of homosexuality. Pim Pronk has a temperate, muted, nuanced argument in his 1993 Dutch dissertation Against Nature? In typical academic fashion, however, he does a much better job of dismantling alternatives to liberation theology than of proposing a workable alternative, as he admits in his concluding remarks.
Robert Goss by contrast screams in pain in his 1993 book Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto. (Recently reissued in paperback.) I review both Pronk and Goss the upcoming Christian Scholar's Review (Chase [1997b], [1997c]). And I respond at length to a liberation theologian in Section 5.
Because Goss moves out of the range of gay theology into queer theology, a word about queer theory is in order.
A good example of this debate is the struggle that Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PLGC) had in 1993 about their name. Because the name left out the bisexual and the transgendered, there was some concern in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) community that the name was not inclusive enough. Although PLGC continued to reject "LesBiGay" and "GLBT" as names, they officially went on record as saying that the name PLGC was more convenient, meaning that it would find more sympathy among Christians. Thus PLGC was more concerned with finding a space that is both gay and Christian than in being politically correct within gay culture. The argument that prevailed was this: don't include bisexuals in the name because their existence implies that homosexuality might be something about which someone can make a choice. Moreover, realize that the climate in churches may change. Then bisexuals can be added to the PLGC name some later year. ("Bisexuality")
Queer theory raises the question of essentialism v. constructivism: "Is gay who we are, or is gay a space that we construct." This is more like destiny v. choice than nature v. nurture, because one might imagine a social destiny that determined homosexuality in an essential way. ("Nature v. nurture" is equivalent to genetic essentialism v. social constructivism.) This debate within queer theory prompted Van Leeuwen in her December 1996 lecture at Messiah College to request that gays think this fundamental divide through:
I want to hear strenuous public debate among gays themselves -- particularly those who identify themselves as Christians -- about their own internal differences. (Van Leeuwen 20)The choice of the word "queer" in "queer theory" itself is an example of embracing the enemy, much as African-Americans have sometimes called each other "nigger" in the privacy of their own communities as a way of draining the epithet of its venom ("New Generation Gap" 54).
"Queer" is also a way of rejecting the whole view that our sexuality should be the subject of discourse at all. In that respect, "queer theory" is an oxymoron. Queer theory proposes what Dollimore calls a "transgressive aesthetic" (Dollimore). As an example that is as far to the left within queer theory as reconstructionism is to the right within Christianity, consider June Reich's erasing all boundaries of gender distinction and sexual morality, a strong anti-essentialist position. Her book, published by a respected university press, Indiana University Press, in 1992, has the intentionally shocking title Genderfuck: The Law of the Dildo. She argues, according to Frederick Suppe, that rejecting social gender roles is an essential part of the queer experience.
Thus gays are deeply divided between those who think that normalizing homosexuality is the solution to their problems, and those who think that it is their problem.
To be specific, the gospel allows no rule against the following in and of themselves: masturbation, nonvaginal heteroseuxal intercourse, bestiality, polygamy, homosexual acts, or erotic art and literature. The Christian is free to practice her or his own purity code in relation to them. What we are not free to do is impose our codes on others. Lake all sexual acts, these may be genuinely wrong where they also involve an offense against the property of another, denial of the equality of women and men, or an idolatrous substitution of sex for the reign of God as the goal of human existence. (243-244)Countryman is right that the good news of the Gospel is not about behaviors at all, but about accepting God's gracious gift. He is wrong that the Gospel does not allow rules against purity. In fact the same book Galatians whose major theme is freedom within grace lists "impurity" /akatharsis/ among the things that prevent us from inheriting the kingdom of God. [Galatians 5:21]
Countryman leaves us with only a situational definition of purity. Such a view is consistent with liberal Christianity but not with Evangelical Christianity, and not, to my thinking, with Galatians.
Although one does not expect an autobiography to be a theology, White's quest has clearly led him away from an Evangelical understanding of Christian faith.
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott [pic 51k] is another gay Christian who writes about her move away from fundamentalism and then away from Evangelicalism in several places. (Mollenkott 1991; 1992) As with Mel White, she finds new experiences as the basis for a new theological outlook.
George Marsden's first categorization of Evangelicals is theological. The essence of Evangelicalism is that we are saved by faith in God's gift of Jesus Christ alone. Scripture is our absolute authority, an infallible rule of faith and practice. Marsden's second categorization refers to specific historic communities. To use a centered definition rather than a bounded definition, we might say that Evangelicals are all of those who identify with Billy Graham.[10 aside] (Marsden; Thorne)
Will we define Christian community so as to exclude gays out of hand? Jesus cautions us about picking out the tares before the wheat harvest, not because we are sure who the tares are and we give them another chance, but because the tares look like wheat, so we would be guilty of plucking good wheat out before it ripens. That's the story that Jesus told about dealing with those in the Church who differ with you.
Stories are extended metaphors. Are there privileged metaphors? Since to speak Biblically is to speak metaphorically, this is an important question. Even if we restrict our attention to Biblical analogies, the issue is not decisive. Is being homosexual like being a eunuch? Like being a resident of Sodom? Like Jonathan's love for David? Like Jesus' love for His disciple John?
The Exodus metaphor has been applied by gay Christians like Pim Pronk to argue that gays are victims in the current cultural Egypt. (Pronk) Frank Worthen on the other hand began the organization Exodus International to proclaim freedom from the Egyptian bondage of homosexuality. (Worthen)
Is homosexuality like alcoholism, with genetic predisposition triggered by early childhood experiences? Is homosexuality like kleptomania? That is, clearly objectively sinful, but with diminished responsibility because it is not freely chosen, as Roman Catholic doctrine would have it ("Responsibility"). Gay Christians think not.
Have Christians changed their minds before? The Roman Catholic Church defended an earth-centered solar system in the 17th C. (Drake) They only recently apologized. Southern Baptists defended slavery during the Civil War.[11 aside] They only recently apologized. Are either of these analogous to Christian treatment of gays today? Gay Christians beg us to think so.
Two book-length studies argue that the Church has precedence for accepting gay relationships. Tom Horner argues from the story of David and Jonathan that homosexual relationships can be blessed by God (Horner). John Boswell argues that homosexual relationships have been blessed by the Church. (Boswell [1994])
Let us then listen to the stories of gay Christians, and as well listen to the stories of ex-gay Christians. What kinds of questions do gay Christians want answers to?
Contrast the Presbyterian Church USA. After the May 1978 debate on homosexuality, "principal leaders from both sides of the issue were summoned to the podium to join in prayer." (Mickey 90) We have not gotten that far in Evangelical churches. Typically, there is no admission that any churchgoers are dealing with homosexuality. Few Evangelical churches welcome same-sex affection and acceptance, or welcome healthy intimacy and vulnerability. (Mickey 110, 115) In that respect, the critique of gay Christians is valid: the church is homophobic. That is, is irrationally afraid of those who deal with homosexuality in their lives.
One man facing homosexual temptations was discouraged by his participation in the singles ministry of his evangelical church. He told me that the goal of the group was patently to pair singles up. Thus the heritage of a Jewish and Catholic view of the creation mandate persists in Evangelicalism today.
We are being invaded by activists with a radical agenda. We're not just dealing with people that are different and want to live their lives privately. We are dealing with people ... who want to change our community. (Harrington)
A Baptist church picketed an Episcopal church because the Episcopal church was gay-affirming. The Baptist sign [pic 88k] is in stark contrast with the Episcopal reminder that Jesus loves the Baptists.[12 copright permission]
An Evangelical journal, The Other Side, was at the forefront in 1978 in promoting justice for gays. (See Blair, 1978) But it did so by accepting the gay Christian view, not by disagreeing while insisting on just treatment.
Recently gay Christians have been borrowing from the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. on non-violent confrontation, with the blessing of Coretta King. Mel White's video open letter to Pat Robertson, for example, The Rhetoric of Intolerance, presents pro-gay arguments from a justice perspective (White, 1996). Debbie Ingram defends non-violent confrontation on behalf of Christian Gays and Lesbians for Justice, a spin-off of Evangelicals Concerned. She says, quoting King, that if gays will not be given justice, if they will be taught by the Church that homosexuality is sinful, then they must seek
to defeat the unjust system, rather than individuals who are caught in that system. . . somehow this is the more important thing, to get rid of the evil system and not the individual who happens to be misguided, who happens to be misled, who was taught wrong. (King 47)Not all Evangelicals working for social justice see homosexuality per se as a justice issue. Evangelicals for Social Action, for example, specifically speaks against homosexuality as not part of God's design for humanity. Their most developed argument is found in the 1995 Social Policy and Homosexuality (Hall).
Fundamentally, gay Christians are not asking us to consider justice issues at all, but to consider persons beyond stereotypes. Not all gays come from bad homes; Mel White didn't (White [1994]). Not all gays were promiscuous; Blair never was (Blair [1981]).
)
Gnosticism, by its artificial separation of body and spirit, has two errors of the extreme. At the fundamentalist extreme, the human body is sinful. No distinction is made between the body and the flesh, to use St. Paul's language. So the fundamentalist cannot celbrate his embodiment. At the liberal extreme, the body is nothing -- the body can't sin. So all is permitted.
The Evangelical is caught between these two views. He knows that the body is not sinful, yet until the resurrection, it seems to be more a source of guilt than freedom. Evangelicals can't boogie!
Neither charismatic nor African-American churches fit neatly along the spectrum of Figure 2 as relates to gnosticism. Both avoid the trap I have described. Thus we have the example of James S. Tinney, a gay Black pentecostal. (Record, Winter 1981)
[T]he indiscriminate and compulsive seeking after transient sex, homosexual or heterosexual, can be evidence of diffuse personal anxiety and disintegration. ... Therapists who can help in getting underneath the frantic promiscuity to underlying insecurity and despair, owe something better to lonely clients who wonder if there is not `something more.' (Blair [1975] 176)In personal correspondence Blair adds:
One of my clients ... heard somebody say that given all the gay men in New York that Dr. Blair has counseled, it's a wonder any gay sex takes place in NYC. (Blair [1993])Gay Christians in general do not maintain an ethic of monogamy. For example, last summer I attended the New York City chapter of the gay Episcopal group, Integrity. The literature table in the fellowship hall surprised me. There in the sanctuary, just behind the altar area, one could pick up newspapers with invitations to sado-masochistic sex, to group sex, or to intergenerational sex (the academic euphemism for pedophilia). When I asked someone why the literature was there, he answered that gays, Christian or not, are all part of the same community, so they do not judge each other on the issue of monogamy.
Gays and conservatives alike agree that the homosexuality of the Bible was not honoring God. It violated God's command to be fruitful and multiply. It degraded persons by sodomizing them (since humans are made to have sex face-to-face). It contrasted with the sexual promiscuity of the surrounding nations.
Gay Christians point out that the Bible is silent about their experience. Blair says, "The Bible Is an Empty Closet." (Blair [n.d.]) Boswell says, "I doubt that Paul had any concept of homosexuality as a separate category of human beings." (Greenlee 102)
Gay Christians ask us to see the potential sacramental aspects of a monogamous or monandrous commitment between gays. This goes quite beyond the pastoral concern of Thielicke expressed below, that gay unions are the best that can be under a difficult circumstance. Gay Christians ask us to celebrate with them.
God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are. (Acts 15:8-11)
Science methodologically is not equipped to answer "why" questions [14 aside Tipler] or moral questions. But ironically conservative Evangelicals traditionally hostile toward Freudianism now quote Sigmund Freud's view of homosexuality as a developmental disorder, and Anna Freud's view that it is treatable. Evangelicals should take seriously the claims of science honestly practiced. [15 aside science/faith warfare] We should not refuse to look through Galileo's telescope, as Cremonini did in 1610, blaming Galileo's findings on aberrations in his instruments (Drake).
[... amplify this later. ... Niebuhr]
One aspect of the relationship between Christ and culture is how pervasive we believe sin to be. To return to my axis of views from liberal to reconstructionist, we see the following progression. How does each position regard the Fall?
Liberal: The Fall was not an historic event.
Anabaptist: The Fall affected our intellect and our feelings.
Calvinist: The Fall affected intellect, feeling, and will.
Reconstructionist: The Fall affected intellect, feeling, will, and the social order.
This spectrum is relevant to the Romans 1 discussion. Paul argues that our "hearts" are "darkened," which is to say that we may not be able to trust our reason, unaided by God's revelation. This sounds on the face of it like a restatement of the traditional argument against homosexuality until we realize that Romans 2:1 says that it is "our" reason rather than "their" reason that is crippled by sin. On this measure, we all stand to be corrected.
The anabaptist reply is that the Holy Spirit is given to believers in community. So then we avoid our individual blind spots by living in community. The liberal reply is similar except that community is broadened to include voices outside the church, whereas anabaptists emphasize the visible believers' church as the place where we can hear correction.
Maury Johnston argues in Gays Under Grace that God's grace, not sin, is Jesus' focus. The Fall did not affect our sexuality in radical ways, or if it did, then God's grace brings a better thing to pass in redeeming humanity than was possible before the Fall. On my view, this appeal to grace distorts the doctrine of felix peccatum `happy sin' in exactly the way that St. Paul speaks against. [Romans 6:1] On the pro-gay view, I offer no grace at all to gays.
Thus gays pit a conservative St. Paul against a radical Jesus. Jesus offers wine and milk without cost, inviting all humanity to join in the dance of redemption. [Isaiah 55] Gays who come are not excluded; they are asked to be responsible sexually, not to change who they are. Yet, if the Fall includes our will, then we cannot judge what responsible sex will be without a word of revelation.
The conservative view holds that such a word has already unambiguously been given.
The "homosexual situation" . . . is capable of realizing relative ethical values within the . . . framework of this disposition and it is possible for it to be a relative ethical order. (Thielicke [1964] 288)
Not translated into English until 1964, as The Ethics of Sex, Thielicke's view on homosexuality had little impact on American Evangelicalism.[16 aside] Thielicke admitted that he had no scriptural basis for his conclusion, only that his years of pastoral experience demanded some kind of compassionate response to hurting people. As one gay apologist points out, even if homosexuality is a result of the Fall, so is war. Christians who make allowances for just wars should make allowances for a just homosexuality. (Mark Lee, a pastor active in Evangelicals Concerned, but I don't have the reference at hand..)
In 1955, Anglican pastor Derrick Sherwin Bailey was the first to argue for a distinction between "invert" and "pervert" -- between those who are constitutionally homosexual and those who turn to homosexuality as an expression of rebellion against God. Bailey argued that all scripture about homosexuality referred only to perversion, never to inversion. Bailey was also on the Church of England's 1957 Wolfenden panel which recommended in its report the decriminalization of homosexuality in England. Bailey's book was submitted as evidence that private homosexual acts between consenting adults are not sinful per se.
In 1972, William Johnson [pic 116k] was ordained by the United Church of Christ (UCC) San Francisco Bay Association, the first openly gay person ordained. This was not the whole UCC. The UCC today at the national level recommends that congregations become "Open aNd Affirming" toward gays but does not require it.
Troy Perry began the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC) in 1968. Initially UFMCC was rather liberal. Perry for example argued that sex can be a sacramental good even in one-night stands.[17 quotation] UFMCC has become more conservative, more mainstream. Nonetheless, UFMCC has been twice rejected by the World Council of Churches, even for observer status, a status granted to completely non-Christian groups. The issue was at first UFMCC's unwillingness to censor pedophilia. Now that UFMCC has done so, observer status has still been denied. Dr. Mel White, former Fuller Seminary professor, was for a time Dean of the world's largest gay Christian church, the UFMCC church in Dallas.[18 addresses]
In less than 20 years, Christians, although not yet Evangelicals, moved from rejection of gays as gay to grudging acceptance of gays to welcoming gays. I say "not yet" because the Ontario Center for Religious Tolerance [offsite link] predicts that all Christians will eventually find being gay no more of a problem than being left-handed. [19 aside]
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a neurosis from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), first replacing it with "ego-dystonic" homosexuality, which made it the first psychological disorder that was only a disorder if it bothered you. Then, noting the inconsistency of that view, they abandoned any mention of homosexuality in the DSM. In 1994 they removed pedophilia from the DSM too, so it's clear that the APA was not talking about the rightness or wrongness of affections in 1973.[20 aside]
Excellent historical documentation exists to argue that the move was strictly a political one. (Socarides [1992]) Pro-gays emphasized that morality has no place in medical diagnosis. Now there are pressures among psychologists to prevent therapists from "treating" homosexuals at all. The American Psychoanalytic Association is moving toward making it a violation of professional ethics to help people who want to come out of homosexuality. (See the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Socarides, Kauffman, et al. as well as articles in the Bulletin of the National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, which you can request from NARTH. [offsite link])
Until 1973 the term "neurosis" [pic 90k] was used in describing homosexuality to mean "not consonant with reality." Naturalism on that definition regards all Christians as neurotic since Christians subscribe to the supernatural. It is logical, then, from a naturalistic world view to regard homosexuality as psychologically neutral.
As for genuine dialogue on the issues, liberal Christians have been much more willing to listen and learn. Several book-length works have attempted sincerely to present both sides of the debate. None are edited by Evangelicals; all are edited by those who decided that homosexuality was acceptable for Christians. In 1978 Oberholser enlisted two of thirteen chapters from conservatives; Twiss enlisted three of nine chapters. By 1994 the balance was more even. Siker included seven of fourteen articles by conservatives; Geis and Messer address six questions from both conservative and liberal perspectives. (The editors provide beginning and ending chapters with a liberal outlook.) A textbook not specifically meant for Christian dialogue appears in the Opposing Viewpoints Series, Homosexuality; Opposing Viewpoints (Opposing Viewpoints). It is periodically reprinted, with more current articles replacing older ones. Twelve of its twenty-four contributions are conservative, as a matter of principle.
Because these books have in common a liberal editorial stance, one might conclude that conservatives participate in dialogue, but they don't initiate dialogue. A notable exception is a collection of articles in 1977 in The Other Side: A Magazine of Christian Discipleship. [21 address] The magazine's June 1978 issue contained further editorials and discussion with pro-gay Evangelicals (see Blair [1978]). The next issue (Fall 1997) of Christian Scholar's Review will be a theme issue on homosexuality.
The reluctance of Evangelicals to discuss these issues is evidenced in part by the fact that my lecture based on this book was postponed for a year and, unlike other lectures in the Presidential Scholar's Lecture Series, was cleared with the President of Messiah College because it was -- based only on a two-page overview of my main thesis -- considered too controversial. That thesis is simply to listen and dialogue. (anonymous personal communication)
Among Anabaptists, the Brethren/ Mennonite Council for Lesbian and Gay Concerns has since October 1976 been a pro-gay caucus of folks in the Anabaptist tradition. [22 address]
In his current paper, Hanks is speaking from experience at two levels. First, Hanks like Virginia Mollenkott, and Mel White, left spouse and a more Evangelical view because they claimed that the received opinion is oppressive and hateful to gays like them. Second, Hanks like me is involved in a practical day-to-day ministry to help folks deal with their sexuality. Hanks founded Otras Ovejas, [pic 4k] an outreach to gays based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This term "other sheep" comes from Jesus' reference to including Gentiles in God's plan. Gay Christians believe that Christians object to gays today for the same reason that Jews objected to including the Gentiles in God's plan in Jesus' day.
Hanks claims that Schmidt is wrong in both general and specific ways. I'll follow the order of Hanks' objections in his paper. Bracketed numbers here refer to page numbers in Hanks's full ms, not the condensed version available on the internet [offsite link] at the newsletters of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. After I respond to Hanks point by point, I have some overall rejoinders.
Reply: This is an argument from silence. The subject of Schmidt's book is not celebration of sex. Moreover, imputing fears to authors is dangerous. It is in this section that Hanks points out that without vowel points you can't even get a heterosexual reading out of the Song of Songs. Although Hanks is being lighthearted at that point, and possibly showing off his mastery of Hebrew, he is treating Jewish culture insensitively. Such insensitivity is inconsistent with his later demand that we take the cultural context seriously, even if his purpose is to parody those who read the Bible literalistically. Thus I do not find either the substance or the tone of this objection grounded.
Reply: Roman Catholics indeed argue that homosexuality is wrong because it is not "potentially pro-creational." But Schmidt does not. He argues instead from the complementarity of male and female in the creation story.Augustine is following St. Paul not Plato in referring to the "flesh" /sarx/ as being a sin-principle in us. Neither Augustine nor Paul claims that our bodies /soma/ are evil. [... hypertext to 3.5]
Athenagoras spoke against homosexuality 200 years before Augustine, so it is not Augstine's invention. [... hypertext to 4.1]
I'm not sure why "homosexuality is morally neutral" is any less a philosophical universal than "homosexuality is disordered." Hanks seems to be arguing that one cannot argue about these matters. At worst Hanks is self-contradictory; at best, committing a category error by assuming that his unsystematized argument is somehow to be more convincing than some more systematized one. As the old saying goes, "There are no absolutes. Of that I'm absolutely sure."
Hanks published his paper in a pro-gay newsletter, not a refereed journal, so one should not expect the same care here as Pronk exercises in recognizing when he is doing philosophy and when he is not.
Reply: Hanks is right that the path to homosexuality is so varied that no single-factor analysis will do. More basically he is right that from the "is" of biology one cannot conclude the "ought" of behavior. Looking for psychological reasons why people experience same-sex attraction does not per se use science to marginalize gays. I agree that gender differences, racial differences, and sexual orientation issues have been used to marginalize people. That is an argument for studying them more, not less.I'd prefer to say that natural theology is not fashionable, rather than saying that it is not defensible. Theology, like all sciences, has its paradigms and research programs, as I point out about process theology. [... hypertext to 2.7.1] Natural theology has made a strong comeback since Karl Barth repudiated it. See Barr's 1991 Gifford Lectures. Hanks is simply wrong that natural theology is indefensible.
To apply this to homosexuality, how can Schmidt possibly make the OT apply to lesbians? Only by doing philosophy, not by doing Biblical theology. Then when it suits his prior commitments, he does recognize the diversity of the texts: He does not require the death penalty for homosexual acts. At least Schmidt doesn't defend Romans 1 with reference to the Sodom story! But then he replaces it with an equally indefensible interpretation of the creation narrative that enforces heterosexuality.
Ezekiel's use of "abomination" in reference to the Sodom story is strictly a reference to idolatry, not to homosexuality.
Reply: Evangelicals are not committed to a flat view of Scripture. The idea that sex is sacred within heterosexual marriage comes not from Evangelical interpretations of the creation story, but from Jesus' interpretation of that story in Matthew 19.The OT omission of lesbian activity was due to a disregard in a male-centered culture for a woman's point of view. There is no OT support for lesbian activity. The Biblical texts certainly do not support any view that implies that lesbian activity is permitted everywhere except by Paul in Romans 1.
As for the OT death penalty for homosexual acts, the traditional answer has been that the sin is a moral offense, but the penalty is a civil penalty. (McDoniel) The Levitical laws are a mixture of moral, civil, and ceremonial elements. Evangelicals recognize that we haven't always gotten the balance of them right. We even recognize that the minimum irreducible application of Leviticus to the gentiles by the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 includes things that we would no longer defend, such as avoiding red meat. This is hardly a flat view of Scripture.
Grant the higher critical dating of Ezekiel and Leviticus as "roughly contemporaneous," so that both Ezekiel and Leviticus use "abomination" /to'ebah/ in a similar way, Ezekiel 22:11 says that Israelites committed abomination against their wives. This is hardly consistent with the revisionist view of abomination as strictly idolatry.
Schmidt finds these interpretations consistent with Jesus' interpretation of Genesis. Later Hanks objects to Schmidt on the grounds that Schmidt doesn't read Paul situationally. The issue is not whether we read the Bible situationally: everyone must. The issue is whether we will be changed by what we read or will look for loopholes. Gays come up with different readings of Genesis, too. Is the sin of Sodom -- clearly homosexual gang rape -- an expression of inhospitality or of idolatry? Is Paul's objection to male homosexuality about pedophilia or about prostitution?One could equally counter that gays will accept any interpretation of Scripture as long as it blesses their status quo. This, it seems to me, gives too much weight to personal experience, given that our consciences can be "seared" and "defiled." [I Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:15] It gives too little weight to Scripture's function as a hammer to break those who offer a false peace. [Jeremiah 23:17,29]
If we follow Schmidt's methodology, we end up not with historically grounded and contextually appropriate Biblical theology, but rather with Greek philosophical "Ethics" giving universal absolutes, binding on all regardless of circumstances.Reply: It is always clearer to recognize contextualizing when discussing a less flammable topic than homosexuality, like welfare. Hanks' rhetorical point is that Paul was wrong about homosexuality just as he was wrong about his work ethic, that contrary to Paul, the creation story says nothing about homosexuality, hence we should not apply Paul's words about homosexuality uncritically.
Hanks' liberal reading of Paul is not the reading that an Evangelical would give. Evangelicals recognize that Paul sometimes speaks on the basis of his own opinion. [I Corithians 7:10,12,25,37] But we recognize also that Paul's words are Scripture [II Peter 3:16] and therefore inspired. [II Timothy 3:16]
So as to dismiss Paul's views about homosexuality, Hanks attempts to unravel the whole fabric of Evangelicalism. There is a big gap that Hanks does not cross between "Paul misuses Genesis" and "Evangelicals absolutize Paul's misuse of Genesis."
Reply: The OT does say that eunuchs were ceremonially unclean, unfit for temple service. But Isaiah 56:4 promises that a day would come when both eunuchs and gentiles would be welcome in God's house. So Jesus' welcoming of eunuchs is in fact a fulfillment of OT prophecy, not a contradiction of the OT as Hanks infers.Hanks misunderstands Schmidt. To say that something can lead to a good is not to say that it is good. God hates divorce because it is a painful disaster. God hates divorce because it doesn't allow marriage to model God's faithfulness to humanity. That God can bring good out of it is a credit to God's grace, not an endorsement of divorce. (An Evangelical view of divorce and remarriage is well-represented by Vander Lugt [1994].)
At this point, there is something about Hanks' tone to which I object. He cannot pass up the opportunity to mention Schmidt's own divorce in conspiratorial tones. Hanks hints that only personal circumstance keeps Schmidt from being as hard on divorce as he is on homosexuality. Granting that, Hanks should weep, not smirk, at broken vows.
Reply: I do not understand how Hanks learned that "causing one of these who believe in Me to sin" was incest rape. I don't think that Mark 9:42 teaches that. [... but check Schmidt again]As for the Talmud, R. Hillel did not ground heterosexual marriage in the creation story; R. Shammai did. On the face of it, Jesus seems to side with the more conservative rabbi.
As for the most general question, is Jesus silent on homosexuality? I think not for two reasons. In the first place, Jesus' reference to /porneia/ refers to what the culture of his day considered sexual sin. The term is not a narrow one, applying only to heterosexual sin. First-century Judaism certainly thought all homosexual activity to be wrong. Thus in condemning /porneia/, Jesus is condemning homosexual activity.
In the second place, Jesus may be referring to homosexual behavior in Revelation 22:15, with the term "dogs." (So suggests Princeton theologian Bruce Metzger in a talk at Camp Hill Presbyterian Church, as reported by Jonathan Lauer.)
In any case, arguments from silence are not convincing. Neither did Jesus say anything about smoking or pedophilia.
Reply: I concede that liberation is a broader theme than sex in the Bible. I'm suspicious about using verse counting as a way of finding the relative importance of texts. Some important things, like Jesus preparing a place for us, appear only once.Gays are oppressed. And I say to the shame of Evangelicals that Evangelicals are often the oppressors. [pic 88k] Yet, one is not right because one is oppressed.
Schmidt is not imposing his world view on anyone. To claim that homosexual behavior is wrong is not hate speech. In fact, Schmidt does the very thing that Hanks establishes as a criterion for liberation. Schmidt attempts to show that homosexual behavior is not liberating. The details of Schmidt's argument may indeed need adjustment, but his intent is clearly to offer liberation.
Reply: Paul's real point is sin, as Richard Hays clarifies in his critiques of Boswell (Hays [1986, 1991]) Hanks is right. The modern world does yawn at sin.The very diversity and recency of these interpretations of Romans 1 speak against them on the grounds of special pleading. Just as I became suspicious of premillenialism when I discovered that it was unknown prior to the 19th century, so I find gay-friendly readings of Romans 1 too conveniently baptizing Western American culture.[27 aside]
rule out a lot of stupid wrong answers and cruel uses of the Bible to promote oppression and violence. Whether [we do this] by means of improved exegesis or a [hermeneutic] that recognizes the prescientific character of ... the Bible really doesn't [matter]. [10]
Reply: Oh God! Hanks is so right! Evangelical fathers in the name of Jesus have disowned their children. Evangelical leaders in the name of purity have offered despair. Evangelical churches have been less loving and less a community than a gay bar.[28 aside][audio 1516k]This one doesn't have an academic reply, nor should it. My wife Emily and I have nurtured folks struggling with homosexuality in our home, in group meetings, and in individual counsel. As Mel White says in his open-letter video to Pat Robertson, gay-bashers sometimes think that they are doing God a favor.
If you knew how many innocent gay men we've buried in the last year who were murdered by bashers who thought they were doing God and the world a favor, you would understand why I take your false and inflammatory rhetoric so seriously. (White 1996) [printed text from accompanying study guide differs slightly from audio]
For example, there are same-gender households of Christians in Romans 16. Third, oppression (=/adikma/, injustice) is the very head theme of I Corinthians 6:8-12, not homosexuality.each major category in Romans 1:24-27 (unclean, against nature, causing shame) is carefully deconstructed as we move through the book.
Reply: I Corinthians 5 and 6 are about injustice. But they are also about sexual propriety in a culture which said that sex was as natural as eating, and so should not be proscribed (6:13; use the NIV to see how Paul quotes the Corinthians). Paul coins a word from Leviticus to describe the homosexuality that is against kingdom principles.[29 aside] It is never used positively in Scripture.Hays ([1986, 1991]) addresses the argument that God Himself acted "against nature" later in Romans, and the argument that Paul trivializes "against nature" by using it to refer to long hair on men. As for the entire list, I only find seven terms, and I only know of "lustful" as having a positive connotation in one other place in Scripture. Jesus "passionately desired" to eat the Passover with His disciples (Luke 22:15).
The seven terms that I find are: unclean /akathar'sian/; unnatural /para 'physin/; lustful /epithu'mia/; indecent /aschemo'sunen/; degrading or shameful /ati'mas/; perverted /apolam'banontes/; and depraved /a'dokimon/.
Even if each were elsewhere established as having a positive connotation, the complete list taken together cannot by any stretch be seen as positive.
As for Romans 16, Hanks is presumptive in saying that those mentioned together share a household, and in two cases he is guessing about the gender of those mentioned: Andronicus & Junias, Tryphaena & Tryhosa.
Ecclesiastes 10:2 says that a fool's heart is at his left hand. Why are we so comfortable with making "right" and "left" out to be metaphors but so unwilling to see heterosexuality and homosexuality as metaphors for diversity (opposite-sex sex) in unity (the majority of people) and unity (same-sex sex) in diversity (the minority of people)? [11]
Reply: As Jerry Exel points out, heterosexuality is indeed a metaphor for diversity. The metaphrand is God, the Holy Other, not human persons. That is to say, homosexuality embodies a failure to be able to relate intimately to those who are different. (Exel) [30 aside]Hanks' argument seems to require that sexuality be both very important -- central to one's identity --, and not very important at all -- a mere lefthandedness. The Corinthian church dismissed sexual activity as not very important at all. St. Paul did not reply on the basis of justicelove. He replied on the basis of how close sexuality is to who we really are. Yet, Paul subordinated sexuality to spirituality (to prayer and to service in particular, I Corinthians 6-7). He did not identify sexuality and spirituality. He did not divorce sexuality from spirituality.
British Quakers likened homosexuality to lefthandedness, by 1979 or earlier. (Barnett [1979]; I can't trace it to 1963 as Hanks apparently can.) Their point has been that Western culture used to regard lefthandedness as sinister, or at least as gauche. Enlightened, we now regard lefthandedness as merely a normal variation. We should do the same, the argument goes, for homosexuality. Such a view seems dangerously close to the Corinthian error: to separate sexuality from spirituality.
On the other hand, sexuality must be very important for Hanks if the thought of living celibately as gay is so very hard to imagine.
Reply: Mary Stewart van Leeuwen calls this "victim stance epistemology." I claim that if the experience of gays is privileged, then so also should the experience of ex-gays be. Blair answers this objection simply: "There are no ex-gays." ([1982]) Yet over a dozen book-length autobiographies provide primary data to the contrary from Christians. (Chase [1997]) Satinover (185-186) lists as well fifteen clinical studies where gays have been helped to change by psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, purely secular approaches.Suppose however that change is exceedingly difficult. That does not determine the rightness or wrongness of homosexual behaviors.
Reply: Hanks' logic is this: walking away from homosexuality is impossible because it is who the homosexual is.[31 ex-ex-gay testimony] He fails to explain how same-sex sexual attraction is different from sexual attraction only to those who are already married, or only to two people at a time with no facial hair regardless of their gender.The uniform teaching of the Church in all ages has been that Christians are not immune from sin. If homosexual practice is sin, then falling into sin again is exactly what the Bible teaches is possible. Reputable ex-gay ministries teach that freedom from homosexual behavior and homosexual psychic response is conditional on ongoing faith. Change is possible, as long as one does not require a counsel of perfection. That is exactly what a traditional theological view would suggest.
Alfred Kinsey's now-famous scale of heterosexuality (0) to homosexuality (6) includes both behaviors and psychic response in equal weight. Even the most ardent gay apologist agrees that some change in both is possible. Even the most ardent fundamentalist Christian agrees that complete change in both is unlikely this side of heaven. Thus the data are consistent with both the conservative reading and Hanks' reading.
Even in Kinsey's data, biased to overestimate the incidence of homosexuality in the general population (Reisman and Eichel), changes in sexual orientation are frequent and -- on average across the life cycle [pic 316k] -- are in the direction of homosexual to heterosexual. (Whitehead)
Gay Christians fall into Alfred Kinsey's mistake: classifying everyone who ever had a homosexual thought as homosexual. Since those whose primary sexual predisposition is heterosexual sometimes entertain fleeting homosexual thoughts, Kinsey arrives at 10% homosexual population. Actually only 4% in his study were homosexual in an ongoing way. Even that number is biased by his selection from prison populations and ads in gay publications. A recent study by Batelle Research puts the number closer to 1.3% to 2% of males and less for females. Yet the flawed estimate that 10% of the population is homosexual is still used as grounds that gays are a voice to be heard in the Church.[32 example]
Ex-gays "will have gay fantasies the rest of their lives," argues Michael Bussee. Bussee laughed that he and his male lover Gary Cooper were two of the eleven (then) ex-gay subjects in the Pattison and Pattison study that reported religiously mediated change in homosexuals, claiming that the eleven subjects of that study were the best cases that he could give the Pattisons out of hundreds of clients of Exit, an early ex-gay ministry founded by Bussee and Kasper at Melodyland, California. (Blair, 1991, 1)
Bussee does not address whether those fantasies will change from being 95% of the person's waking hours to an occasional few.
But the real fallacy is assuming that numbers matter at all. Even if 99% of the population were liars, lies are not thereby warranted. If a compulsive liar were to continue to tell little white lies with high probability after she claimed to change from no longer being a compulsive liar, we would not doubt the change.
Reply: The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is an "objective disorder," which means that the condition is not sinful but is a result of the Fall. All creation has become disordered, awaiting redemption (Romans 8). The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual activities are always sinful.[33 aside]Moral issues and scientific issues are both world-view issues. They both reflect our view of God and of humanity. In 1611 as now, the Catholic Church did not wish to see humanity devalued. Hanks argues that proscribing homosexual behavior devalues gays by denying them the full expression of intimate love; the Catholic Church teaches that the homosexual behavior devalues them by redefining love to be sex-focused.
Reply: My favorite review of this second Boswell book is Catholic church historian Robin Darling Young, because the book hinges on /adelphopoiesis/ as practiced today in Orthodox churches: a ceremony celebrating friendship. Young has not only studied the rite, but participated in it. (Young) What surprises me most about Boswell is that he engages neither contemporary Orthodox practice nor contemporary Orthodox interpretation. Neither support a homosexual interpretation.Elizabeth Moberly, herself Russian Orthodox, writes, "By declaring the persons to be siblings, the ritual [of adelphopoiesis] actually succeeds in prohibiting sexual contact as incest." (Moberly [1997] 31)
Reply: I would say that we played together as children. That You stayed in my home as long as You needed to. That we hugged with tears when you left the Harrisburg area.
I do not think that Hanks is letting the Bible speak. I do not advocate a return to levirate marriages and a kosher table, but neither do I find a pro-gay view in any Biblical texts. I agree with the United Methodist Church Committee to Study Homosexuality. It concluded that "in every [Bible passage where homosexual acts are in view] a negative judgment about homosexual practice is either stated or implied." (United Methodist Church Committee to Study Homosexuality)
Hanks relies too much on his own experience as gay, as indeed do those whom he cites favorably whether Christian (Countryman) or not (Focault).[35 aside] I offered my critique of such maneuvers that use process theology or liberation theology in Section 2.7.
For liberal Christians, the Christ of culture points the way. For fundamentalist Christians, Christ stands against this current cultural trend. For Evangelical Christians, one cannot compromise either respect for persons or respect for truth. (Moberly [1997]) Sadly, Evangelicals have often used truth as a club rather than a light. I recommend speaking the truth in love. [Ephesians 4:15]
Homosexuality is somewhat like kleptomania. It is not a condition freely chosen. It is not always able to be traced to an emotional wounding, but often can be. Scriptural approaches to dealing with it do not end with a simple "stop it," but continue with pursuing the opposite. In the case of kleptomania, the opposite is working specifically to be able to give. [Ephesians 4:28] In the case of homosexuality, the opposite is developing health same-sex relationships that do not depend on sexuality for their fulfillment. In both cases, change in behavior, change in attitude, and change in identity work together to create a new person.
In early November, 1995, I put up about a megabyte of articles, testimonies, and offers of help from a conservative Christian point of view, a web site entitled "Christian Resources on Homosexuality and AIDS." It has been visited 15,000 times in 15 months. Many appreciations have been e-mailed. A few negative reports have accusing me of promoting hate. I asked those who supplied a return address how the site promotes hate. The uniform reply has been that there is nothing hateful there, but simply the very idea of homosexuality being wrong is hateful. Thus I have a two-pronged message. To the secular world, you don't have to be gay. To the church, learn how to love into wholeness.
This book is posted in draft at that site from time to time for critiques. Its final desination will be under Articles, and there under Chase.
Contrast these studies with material such as that reported in Footnote 31, or in booklets by Ralph Blair ([1977, 1982]). A good way to summarize these materials is to cite the title that Blair mentions that he would like to give to a book that he will someday write: Ex-gay: Cult of Celibacy. Gay Christians who take the Bible seriously finally believe that celibacy for those with strong sexual desires is not a Christian option.
I do not find it unusual that I am again finding that there are Christians who do things that I believe the Bible teaches to be wrong. When I was in college at MIT I heard a superb talk on prayer. Obviously, Georges Florofsky of Princeton spoke from the depth of personal experience in prayer. Two facts about Florofsky, however, caught me off-guard. First, as a Russian Orthodox believer, Fr. Florofsky disarmed my stereotype of non-Protestant Christians. I thought that Protestant believers prayed; Catholic and Orthodox believers said their prayers. Not so! Second, while talking he chain-smoked. Those were the days before rules about smoking in public lecture halls. It distracted me, not just because of the unpleasant heavy odor of cigarette, but because it seemed incongruous with his deep devotional life. It didn't help that my favorite author at that time was C. S. Lewis. The only photograph I had seen of Lewis was in a comfortable chair smoking his pipe.
Thus it was that Christians whose walk with God I admired did things that I thought dirtied their bodies.
I still think that gay Christians are polluting their bodies. I still think that the Bible teaches that men who have sex with other men do not inherit God's kingdom unless they are forgiven and washed by Jesus. [I Corinthians 6:9-11] I do not think that becoming a Christian automatically eliminates sexual desires, even those desires proscribed by God.
Homosexual temptation is not sin. Homosexual mental or physical activity is. For a Christian acting out homosexually, the church has a responsibility to confront, following Jesus' outline in Matthew 18. (See my August 6, 1978, sermon at Bethel Grove Bible Church, Ithaca, NY, reprinted in Chase [1978].)
What about Jesus words to let the wheat and tares grow up together? Is it not better to allow a tare to stay than to rip out a stalk of wheat by mistake? Here I believe that Jesus is not talking about dealing with overt sin. He is arguing against witch-hunts that invade people's privacy.
The pastoral and the prophetic remain in tension. Any genital expression of homosexuality is wrong. There are not two kinds -- good and bad homosexuality. Nevertheless, if a child of mine were to come out to me as gay, I would love him or her just as much as I do now. I would welcome him or her at my table, and insofar as my child is following Christ with a clear conscience, I would welcome my child at the eucharist table. Since other believers in Christ are like family to me, I cannot treat them any differently than I would my own family.
This creates a tension which I have not resolved, a tension that requires treating each situation with tenderness and tears.
To conclude that the Spirit contradicts in our experience what the Spirit clearly said in Scripture is to set Spirit against Spirit and to cut ourselves loose from any objective test to confirm that we are following God and not the spirits in our culture or our own fallible reason. The church that destroys the balance between Word and Spirit, so carefully constructed by the Reformers to insure that we follow none other than Jesus Christ who is the Word, will soon lose its Christian substance and become indistinguishable from the world. We have been charged to seek `new light from God's word,' not `new light' contrary to God's word." (Shafer; quoted also in "Breaking the Silence" 21).
Prophets are often in the minority, but not all minority voices are prophetic.
The issue of homosexuality goes beyond feeling good about a decision made once and for all; it goes beyond changing the rules to accommodate experience. If Romans 1 applies, then gays must ask, "What happens if my conscience is no longer working?"
The issue is not even whether change is possible, but obedience. Gay Christians claim not only to have received the Holy Spirit but to be living in obedient dependence on the Spirit from day to day. Yet their experience of holiness can be at variance with Christian holiness. Catholic philosopher of science Frederick Suppe [pic 48k] for example reports that he relates to Jesus by imagining having sex with Him. Evangelicalism, although too short-lived to have a tradition of its own about incorporating the erotic in devotional literature, typically does not mix the erotic and the devotional.[38 aside]
Both sides of the debate use the word "denial" but they use it differently. Pro-gays claim that conservative homosexuals who do not act out are in denial of their true nature, in the Freudian sense of the word "denial." Pro-gay theologians claim that ex-gay claim that the changing sexuality is part of being "new creations" (II Corinthians 5:17) is a name-it-and-claim-it theology that runs roughshod over truth.
Yet one might equally claim that gay Christians deny, in the Freudian sense, the deep effects of their woundedness. Virginia Mollenkott was molested as a child (Mollenkott 147); Frederick Suppe was abused by his father (Suppe [1993]); Robert Williams generalizes his negative family situation to "many of us [gays]." (Williams)
Evangelicals claim further that gay Christians are not denying themselves in the important sense of Jesus' call to self-denial.
Thus I find unconvincing those arguments that claim that Paul was naive, as I have argued at greater length elsewhere. (Chase [1983]) Bernadette Brooten, fully supportive of pro-gay theology, agrees that Paul is not naive, that same-sex marriage and female homoeroticism were well-known in Paul's day. She claims instead that Paul is irrelevant.
I hope that churches today, being apprised of the history that I have presented, will no longer teach Rom. 1:26f as authoritative. (302) [39 aside]
Gay Christians focus on homophobia because God speaks against hate. God, the claim goes, does not speak against love such as two homosexuals can experience together. (Johnston) "Homophobia" is an irrational fear of homosexuality. By redefining "homophobic" to include all who speak against them, gays imply that only an irrational fear of homosexuality could explain a view contrary to theirs. That view itself does not seem rational to me. Could there be no other motives for speaking against homosexuality?
...... [have edited to here by version 1.0b] Draft history