Apr. 22,
2006
Brentin
Mock
Pittsburgh
City Paper, Staff Writer
Hi Brentin,
Today I
looked at your article "Ray of Hope: For Gay African Americans Faith Can
Be a Struggle" which appeared on pp. 24-27 of Pittsburgh's City Paper
(Apr. 19-Apr. 26, 2006, also featured on the cover; online version
here). There are a number of good elements in the article, including
the poignant focus on Raymond Smith and the fact that you did address, to
some degree, different sides. I also appreciated that you quoted my
distinction between race and sexual orientation and my general comment
about the scriptural witness accurately. I enjoyed our talk over the
phone. You seem like a nice guy. I think that your article could have been
improved significantly at some points, with relatively few changes or
without significant increase in length. Please hear me out.
A caveat: I
understand that your article has to go through editors and it is possible
that something that was originally in your article was taken out by
someone other than you. I also don't attribute any bad intent on your
part. For all I know you might even be opposed personally to providing
cultural incentives for same-sex intercourse, even if that doesn't come
across in the article.
1) It
troubled me a bit that you gave a certain Deryck Tines, who is no biblical
scholar and has written nothing on the subject that would be accepted in
the academy of scholars, the opportunity to present a case against the
applicability of the Leviticus and Sodom texts but no opportunity for me,
who has published extensively on the subject, to explain why such
arguments are misguided--and indeed arguments not even accepted by many
scholars who support homosexual unions. The arguments against his
conclusions are overwhelming but the reader would have not the slightest
idea about this from your write-up, in which you give him the last word on
the subject and me no word explaining why the texts in question remain
relevant. It seems to me that, even in a sound-bite article of this sort,
you could have made room for at least a 1-sentence statement from me, for
each text, that would explain why Mr. Tines' reasoning about Scripture is
flawed. (For the Sodom narrative and the Levitical prohibitions, you might
start with my recent article, “Why the Disagreement over the Biblical
Witness on Homosexual Practice?” at
http://www.westernsem.edu/wtseminary/assets/Gagnon2%20Aut05.pdf,
specifically pp. 46-54.)
If someone
says, "I know Scripture is opposed to homosexual practice of any sort but
I'm going to do it anyway," that's one thing. It's wrong but at least it's
honest. For someone to claim, however, that Scripture does not convey
throughout its pages an other-sex or two-sex prerequisite for sexual
unions is intellectually and morally dishonest. I understand that Mr.
Tines, not you, is being quoted but the set-up of the article leaves
readers the false impression that there is a credible, perhaps even
superior, case for asserting that Scripture does not consistently and
strongly oppose homosexual unions.
2) I did not
cite just the Sodom and Levitical texts to you but many other texts;
indeed far more significant was my discussion of Jesus and Paul. You took
nothing from my remarks about Paul (Romans 1:24-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9
are, after all, the key texts, in addition to Mark 10 and Genesis 1:27;
2:24). The part of my remarks about Jesus that you took (the "deny
yourself" text) speaks to the issue of homosexual practice but is not the
part where Jesus clearly indicates the necessity of two-sex unions for the
'twoness' or monogamy principle.
3) You said
that I contend that homosexual persons "must deny their sexuality." That
is not quite accurate, though I can understand how you may have
misunderstood. Persons who experience homoerotic desires, like persons
experiencing any impulses (sexual or otherwise) that run contrary to the
will of God, must not live out of such impulses; or, whenever they are
carried out, to confess one's sins to God and renew one's commitment to
live for Christ rather than for oneself. One's "sexuality" is more than
the constellation of sexual urges at any given segment in a person's life.
It involves other elements of embodied existence ordained by God, like the
fact that men and women are each other's sexual counterparts (not two men
or two women). In the deepest sense, someone who does not live out of
homosexual impulses does not deny his or her true sexuality but actually
lives in accordance with it.
To give
examples that we would all agree on, persons who refrain from carrying out
intense and innate sexual desires to have intercourse with more than one
person concurrently, with close blood relations, or with children do not
"deny their sexuality" in the deepest sense, do they? They deny certain
sexual urges but their sexuality consists of more than just these urges.
4) This
above point leads me to my next observation. Your paper highlighted the
following quote from Mr. Tines: "Sexual desires don't come from some
body else. They come from God" (emphasis on "body"). Given the fact
that there are so many kinds of bodily sexual urges that are obviously
immoral (I mention three above and it's not hard to imagine others, to say
nothing of thousands of non-sexual desires), how is it possible to argue
that every innate sexual desire "comes from God"? The fact that many
(indeed, most) don't, renders the conclusion absurd, doesn't it?
5) Although
you quote well my observation about the differences between race and
sexual orientation, it is placed in a context that looks pejorative. After
quoting me, you say: “Conservatives have seized on logic like this” and
then refer to political initiatives. What does “logic like this” mean? And
why refer at all to “conservatives”? You go on to quote Donald Hammonds
who urges the African-African community to accept “people who are
different from themselves.” Rather than referring to this as “the kind of
logic used by liberals,” you say approvingly: “Some are trying already” to
do just that, i.e., accept people who are different from themselves.
“Standing in stark opposition to the positions espoused by Long and Gagnon
is minister Deryck Tines. . . .” There is no subsequent reflection on the
fact that the issue here is not about “accepting people different from
ourselves” but about whether we should accept all consensual behaviors
arising from deeply engrained impulses.
6) Finally,
although I talked to you about what true love is in connection with this
issue, none of that was presented in your references to me. True love, as
Jesus and the apostles taught us, means upholding God’s ethical demands
while reaching out in love to the biggest violators of that demand. Most
parents at some point will hear their children say in response to some
directive that they don’t like, “You don’t love me.” The argument that
love necessitates acceptance of homosexual unions has a similar ring to
it. It is possible, of course, to advocate obedience in an unloving and
ungracious fashion. But it is absolutely impossible to love someone truly
by enabling someone to persist in a form of behavior that, if unrepented
of, could put someone at risk of not inheriting eternal life. The context
for the command, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18b), makes this
point: You shall not hate, take revenge, or hold a grudge against your
neighbor. But if your neighbor does wrong, you shall reprove your
neighbor, lest you incur guilt for failing to warn them (Lev 19:17-18a).
Jesus alluded to this context when he stated: If your brother sins, rebuke
him; if he repents forgive him—even if, Jesus adds, he sins seven times a
day (Luke 17:3-4).
I thank you
for reading this. And I challenge you, gently: If you are interested in
finding out what Scripture (including Jesus) says about this issue, and
not merely in using Scripture to serve particular ends (I'm not
insinuating that you want to do the latter), read some of the material
that I (and others) have written on the subject. You could start with my
recent response to a book favoring "gay marriage" by Myers and Scanzoni.
Just go to my website at
www.robgagnon.net and click the most recent article (top right) and
check out the arguments.
Sincerely,
Rob
Prof. Robert
Gagnon, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor of New Testament
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary