More
than “Mutual Joy”: Lisa Miller of Newsweek against Scripture and
Jesus
Religious proponents of gay marriage routinely ignore or twist the major
arguments in Scripture and philosophy against homosexual practice. The
cover story by Religion Editor Lisa Miller in the Dec. 15, 2008 issue of
Newsweek, wholeheartedly endorsed by Managing Editor Jon Meacham, is a
perfect case in point.
Prof.
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary
Dec. 10, 2008
(expanded slightly Dec. 16)
gagnon@pts.edu,
www.robgagnon.net
©
2008 Robert A. J. Gagnon
For
a PDF file click here
As
its cover story for the Dec. 15, 2008 issue, the editors of Newsweek
offer readers a hopelessly distorted and one-sided propaganda piece on
“gay marriage” entitled “Our
Mutual Joy.” The 2800-word article is by Lisa Miller, religion editor
and author of the “Belief Watch” column for the magazine (her academic
credential is a B.A. in English at Oberlin College). She claims that
Scripture actually provides strong support for validating homosexual
unions and no valid opposition to “committed” homosexual practice. She
quotes from scholars such as Neil Elliott and “the great Bible scholar”
Walter Brueggemann, who are strongly supportive of “gay marriage.”
There
is not the slightest effort on Miller’s part to think critically about her
own line or reasoning. The lone voice that she cites against homosexual
practice is not from a scholar but from a certain
Rev. Richard Hunter, a United Methodist minister who offered a short
comment for a “roundtable” discussion sponsored by the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. From the thousand pages or so that I have written on
the subject over the past decade Miller cites not a word, including
my critique of Elliott’s untenable claim that Paul in Romans 1:24-27
was thinking only of the exploitative homosexual intercourse practiced by
depraved emperors like Nero and Caligula; and
my critique (pp. 11-12) of “Brueggemann’s” use of Gal 3:28 (“there is
[in Christ] no ‘male and female’”) as support for homosexual unions (my
critique is directed at Prof. Stacy Johnson of Princeton Seminary but it
applies equally to Brueggemann’s claim).
Miller’s article reminds me of the equally distorted (but thankfully much
shorter) op-ed article put out in The New York Times four years ago
by Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof (“God
and Sex,” Oct. 23, 2004). My response to Kristof, “‘God
and Sex’ or ‘Pants on Fire’?”, showed how bad that piece was. My
response to Miller will do the same. This essay has three primary
components: a discussion of Scripture apart from the witness of Jesus; a
discussion of Jesus’ witness; and concluding thoughts, which takes in also
Meacham’s “Editor’s Desk” column.
The Witness
of Scripture apart from Jesus
Miller’s strategy is to argue three things: first, that the image of
marriage in Scripture is so alien to anything that would be acceptable to
us today that we should run as fast as we can from any appeal to Scripture
against “gay marriage”; second, that Scripture has little if anything to
say against caring homosexual relationships; and, third, that Scripture
contains “universal truths” (concerning “what the Bible teaches about
love” and family) that are serviceable for promoting “gay marriage.” In a
statement that can only be regarded as delusional in the extreme, Miller
arrogantly declares as if she were some sort of expert on the subject:
“Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be
(civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why
they should.”
To
arrive at her ideological objective Miller makes a number of bad moves.
She exaggerates discontinuity and downplays continuity between marriage
values in Scripture and our own values
(on differences as
regards romantic love and egalitarian marriage go
here, p. 97).
She engages in a distorted form of analogical reasoning that elevates
distant analogies like slavery and haircuts over close analogies, with far
more points of correspondence, like adult-committed incest. She shows
little or no understanding of the historical and literary contexts of the
texts that she treats. She ignores just about every major argument against
the positions that she espouses. And she extrapolates, from certain
“universal truths” in Scripture, illogical conclusions that would have
appalled the scriptural authors, like assuming that generic love is a
sufficient prerequisite for sexual relationships.
A Strong Male-Female
Prerequisite throughout Scripture
A
male-female prerequisite is powerfully evident throughout the pages of
Scripture. Every biblical narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, metaphor,
and poetry that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes such
a prerequisite. Even the male-dominated society of ancient Israel imaged
itself as Yahweh’s wife so as to avoid any connotation of a marriage
between members of the same sex (an image replicated in the New Testament
as regards Christ and his bride, the church). There are plenty of laws in
the Old Testament delimiting acceptable and unacceptable sexual
relationships between a man and a woman. Never is there any attempt to
make such a distinction for same-sex sexual relationships, for the obvious
reason that no homosexual relationships are deemed acceptable.
Miller makes much of the fact that the Bible condemns homosexual practice
only in “a
handful of passages,” while neglecting a number of relevant texts: the
narratives of Sodom and of the Levite at Gibeah; the texts from
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History dealing with cultic figures
known to play the female role in sex with men (the qedeshim); the
interpretation of the Sodom story in Ezekiel, Jude, and 2 Peter; Jesus’
discussion of marriage in Mark 10 (parallel in Matthew 19); and Paul’s
mention of “men who lie with a male” in 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10 (for a
discussion of why these texts indict homosexual practice per se go
here, pp. 46-50, 56-57, 72-73).
What of Miller’s argument based on frequency of explicit
mention? Bestiality is mentioned even less in the Bible than homosexual
practice and incest gets only comparable treatment, yet who would be so
foolish as to argue that Jews and Christians in antiquity would have
regarded sex with an animal or sex with one’s mother as inconsequential
offenses? Infrequency of mention is often an indicator that the matter in
question is foundational rather than insignificant. You don’t have to talk
a lot about something that most everyone agrees with and that few persons,
if any, violate.
Scripture’s male-female prerequisite for marriage and its
attendant rejection of homosexual behavior is pervasive throughout
both Testaments of Scripture (i.e. it is everywhere presumed in sexual
discussions even when not explicitly mentioned); it is absolute
(i.e. no exceptions are ever given, unlike even incest and polyamory); it
is strongly proscribed (i.e. every mention of it in Scripture
indicates that it is regarded as a foundational violation of sexual
ethics); and it is countercultural (i.e. we know of no other
culture in the ancient Near East or Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin more
consistently and strongly opposed to homosexual practice). If this doesn’t
qualify as a core value in Scripture's sexual ethics, there is no such
thing as a core value in any religious or philosophical tradition.
The Implication of the
Creation Texts for a Male-Female Prerequisite
The
creation text in Genesis 2:21-24 pictures woman as coming from the
undifferentiated human’s “side” (probably a better translation than
“rib”), emphasizing that man and woman may (re)unite as “one flesh”
because out of one flesh they emerged. The text states four times that the
woman was “taken from” the “human” (adam, thereafter referred to as
an ish or man), underscoring that woman, not another man, is the
missing sexual “complement” or “counterpart” to man (so the Hebrew term
negdo, which stresses both human similarity, “corresponding to him,”
and sexual difference, “opposite him”). Within the story line man and
woman may (re-)unite into “one flesh” precisely because together they
reconstitute the sexual whole. This is a different kind of story from the
traditional Mesopotamian story of the creation of woman in Atra-hasis
where seven human males and seven human females are formed
separately from a mixture of clay and the flesh and blood of a
slaughtered god.
To be
sure, the story in Genesis 2:21-24 involves images of transcendent
realities that do not have to be taken literally in all details.
Nevertheless, the story beautifully conveys the point that man and woman
are each other’s sexual complement, ordained by God for sexual pairing if
sexual relations are to be had (see my discussion
here, pp. 8-11). Referring to Alan Segal, professor of early Judaism
at Barnard University, Miller claims that Genesis 2:21-24 could not
contain any negative implications for polygamy because the text “was
written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world” and is part
of a Bible “written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by
God.” Most people in the synagogues and churches recognize that the latter
description is a false antithesis; that Scripture, while having a human
element is not merely the compilation of human ideas. Moreover, in
writing about an ideal beginning, it would not at all be unusual for an
author to reflect on the fact that “the way of the world” is not
necessarily God’s perfect will.
As we
shall see, this was certainly Jesus’ understanding of Genesis 1:27 and
2:24. He understood the deep logic of these texts—the fact that God
created two sexes out of one flesh and conceived of them as a sexual pair
“male and female”—as indicating the self-contained sexual wholeness of the
two-in-one union. He predicated his view of marital twoness, along with
its incompatibility with both concurrent and serial polygamy, on the very
twoness of the sexes ordained by God at creation. Paul, in his two main
indictments of homosexual practice (Romans 1:24-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9),
clearly echoed the same two creation texts stressed by Jesus as normative
for sexual ethics. (For the echo to Gen 1:26-27 in Rom 1:23-27 see below;
for the connection to Gen 2:24 in 1 Cor 6:9 note the partial citation of
Gen 2:24 in 1 Cor 6:16; compare 1 Cor 11:7-9.)
Miller also dismisses any negative implications for “gay marriage” in
Genesis 1:27-28, where “male and female” are spoken of as a sexual pair
(compare Genesis
5:2; 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16) and commanded to “be fruitful and
multiply.”
“The Bible authors could never have imagined the brave new world of
international adoption and assisted reproductive technology—and besides,
heterosexuals who are infertile or past the age of reproducing get married
all the time.” Her argument misses the point. The author
of Genesis 1:27-28 would not have viewed an infertile male-female union
with the abhorrence associated in ancient Israel toward a man-male union.
Male-female complementarity exists independently of whether any
procreation actually takes place.
Miller’s argument is comparable to reducing the argument
against adult-committed incest to the increased likelihood of birth
defects. The inherent biological incapacity for two men or two women to
reproduce, like the higher incidence of birth defects in the offspring of
an incestuous union, is the symptom of a root problem: too much
structural sameness or likeness among the participants in the sexual
union.
While not reducing “the image of God” to being “male and
female,” the author of Genesis 1:27 indicates that God’s image and human
sexual differentiation-and-pairing are uniquely integrated: “And God
created the human in his image, in the image of God he created it [or:
him], male and female he created them.” As Nahum Sarna notes in the Jewish
Publication Society commentary on Genesis, “No such sexual differentiation
is [explicitly] noted in regard to animals. Human sexuality is of a wholly
different order from that of the beast…. Its proper regulation is subsumed
under the category of the holy, whereas sexual perversion is viewed with
abhorrence as an affront to human dignity and as a desecration of the
divine image in man.” An attempt at uniting sexually two males or two
females would threaten to desecrate the image of God stamped on humans as
complementary sexual beings.
Paul’s indictment of
homosexual practice and view of marriage
In
Romans 1:24-27 Paul portrayed homosexual practice as “sexually impure,”
“unnatural,” and “indecent” or “shameful” behavior that “dishonors” the
participants. How does it dishonor the participants?
The logic of a
male-female sexual bond is that the two primary sexual halves are united
into a single sexual whole. But the
logic of homosexual unions is that two half-males or two half-females
unite sexually to form a whole person of the same sex, whereas the true
missing sexual element of a man is a woman and vice versa. It is, at one
and the same time, sexual narcissism and sexual self-deception:
a
desire for what one already is as a sexual being (male for maleness,
female for femaleness), conducted under the false premise that one’s own
maleness or femaleness is not fully intact.
One may be in need of structural affirmation as a male or female, but not
structural supplementation.
1.
Was Paul’s indictment of homosexual practice limited to violent forms?
Miller tries out the argument that Paul’s remarks against homosexual
practice in Romans 1:24-27 were directed only at certain exploitative
(“violent”) forms of homosexual practice (citing Neil Elliott). This
argument won’t work, for many reasons (online readers can see a more
extended discussion not only in my critique of Elliott posted several
years ago
here, but also in my more recent discussions
here [pp. 5-10],
here [pp. 12-18],
here [pp. 3-15],
here [pp. 62-85], and
here [pp. 206-65]).
First, in Romans 1:23-27 Paul intentionally echoed Genesis 1:26-27, making
eight points of correspondence, in the same tripartite structure, between
the two sets of texts (humans/image/likeness, birds/cattle/reptiles,
male/female). In establishing this link to Genesis 1:26-27, Paul was
rejecting homosexual practice not in the first instance because of how
well or badly it was done in the Greco-Roman milieu but rather because it
was a violation of the male-female prerequisite for sexual relations
ordained by the Creator at creation. Moreover, Paul contended, it was a
violation that should be obvious even to Gentiles without the Jewish
Scriptures since God had given obvious clues to male-female
complementarity in the anatomical, physiological, and psychological makeup
of “male and female.”
This
brings us to the second point: the kind of nature argument that Paul
employs in Romans 1:18-27 isn’t conducive to a distinction between
exploitative and nonexploitative forms of homosexual practice. According
to Paul in Romans 1:19-20, “the knowable aspect of God is visible [or:
apparent] to them [i.e. Gentiles] because…. ever since the creation of the
world his invisible qualities are clearly seen, being mentally apprehended
by means of the things made” (1:19-20). Such a nature argument in
the first-century milieu is hardly surprising. As Thomas K. Hubbard notes
in his magisterial sourcebook of texts pertaining to Homosexuality in
Greece and Rome: “Basic to the heterosexual position [in the first few
centuries A.D.] is the characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of
Nature, which has matched and fitted the sexes to each other” (p. 444).
Third, the way Paul words the indictment in Rom 1:27—“males, having left
behind the natural use of the female, were inflamed with their yearning
for one another”—precludes a limitation to coercive relationships.
Fourth, there is plenty of evidence from the Greco-Roman milieu, both for
the conception and for the existence, of loving homosexual relationships,
including semi-official “marriages” between men and between women.
Moreover, we know of some Greco-Roman moralists who acknowledged the
existence of loving homosexual relationships while rejecting even these as
unnatural (indeed, we can trace this idea back to Plato’s Laws).
And it should go without saying that Jewish writers in Paul’s day and
beyond rejected all forms of homosexual activity. For example, the
first-century Jewish historian Josephus stated the obvious to his Roman
readers: “The
law [of Moses] recognizes only sexual intercourse that is according to
nature, that which is with a woman…. But it abhors the intercourse of
males with males” (Against Apion 2.199). It is hardly surprising,
then, that even Louis Crompton, a homosexual scholar, acknowledges this
point in his massive work, Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard
University Press). “However well-intentioned,” the interpretation that
Paul’s words were not directed at “bona
fide” homosexuals in committed relationships…. seems strained and
unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period
imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance.
The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have
been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian.
Fifth, Paul’s indictment of lesbianism in Romans 1:26 further confirms
that his indictment of homosexual practice is absolute, since female
homosexuality in antiquity was not primarily known, or criticized, for the
exploitative practices of sex with slaves, prostitutes, or children. And
there can be little doubt that Paul was indicting female homosexuality, as
evidenced by: (1) the parallelism of the language of 1:26 (“females
exchanged the natural use”) and 1:27 (“likewise also the males
leaving behind the natural use of the female”); (2) the fact that
in antiquity lesbian intercourse was the form of female intercourse most
commonly labeled “contrary to nature” and paired with male homosexual
practice; (3) the fact of nearly universal male opposition to lesbianism
in antiquity, even by men engaged in homosexual practice; and (4) the fact
that lesbian intercourse was the dominant interpretation of Romans 1:26 in
the patristic period.
Miller is full of mistakes on the issue of lesbianism. She claims: “Sex between
women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire” as male
homosexual practice. In the Greco-Roman milieu it generally raised more
ire; it was thus a less debatable point and could be taken for granted
that it was wrong (as lesbian New Testament scholar Bernadette Brooten
notes in her book Love between Women). Miller adds: “In its entry
on ‘Homosexual Practices,’ the Anchor Bible Dictionary [sic—ABD
has no such entry; Miller must be referring to the entry “Sex”] notes
that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between
women” (my emphasis). The last time I checked, Romans 1:26 was part of the
Bible. The author of the entry, T. Frymer-Kensky, was speaking only about
the Old Testament, not about the New Testament, much less about Jews in
the Second Temple Period and beyond. Miller cites Frymer-Kensky’s reason
for the lack of an explicit prohibition of lesbianism in Israelite law:
"possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male
entry)." Yet it is just as likely that it went unmentioned simply because
in the tightly-controlled, male-dominated societies of the ancient Near
East lesbian activity by women was virtually impossible or at least, to
judge from the dearth of texts on the subject in the ancient Near East,
virtually unknown by males.
In short, there is no realistic possibility that Paul’s
indictment of homosexual practice—or, for that matter, the indictment by
any Jew in antiquity of such behavior—was limited to certain exploitative,
“violent” homosexual acts.
2. Paul on the single life and the purpose of marriage
Both
Jesus and Paul took up the single life “for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven,” that is, in order to focus on proclaiming the gospel without
being constrained by, or putting at risk, one’s spouse and children. At
the same time they did not view marriage, or the sex that constitutes it,
as sinful. Indeed, Paul insisted that married couples maintain a regular
sexual relationship (1 Corinthians 7:2-5). It is not true, as Miller
claims, that Paul viewed marriage only “as an act of last resort
for those unable to contain their animal lust” (Miller cites 1 Cor 7:9:
“better to marry than to burn [with passion]”). Paul was not an ascetic.
He knew how to live in both abundance and want (Philippians 4:12). His
specific remarks about marriage as an outlet for sexual passions do not
say everything that Paul believed about the purposes of marriage. They
were conditioned first and foremost by the particular circumstances of his
audience (the “strong” at Corinth who believed that they were impervious
to sexual temptation), as well as by other factors (particularly the
routine persecution of Christians in the middle of the first century and
the common first-century view of Christians that the return of Christ
could well be soon).
It is
true that, with Jesus, Paul regarded marriage as a penultimate institution
symbolizing at its best the greater, transcendent reality of the marriage
of the church to Christ (compare 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:22-33).
However, unlike Miller, this view of marriage did not cause Paul (or
Jesus) to view marriage as an institution that could be fundamentally
reshaped. His extremely hostile reaction to an adult-consensual sexual
relationship between a man and his stepmother is an obvious case in point
(1 Corinthians 5). It rather meant for Paul, as for Jesus, that all sexual
activity outside of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman
could be denied because it was not a moral imperative that people be in a
sexual relationship.
Yes,
Paul (with Jesus) believed that the celibate life was a gift. Yet he (with
Jesus) also rejected the view that foundational prerequisites to marriage
should be reshaped in order to ensure that everyone had a right to sexual
relationship of their liking. And, no, it is not true to say, as Miller
does, that “Paul
argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the
Christians in America disregard that teaching.” Paul did not regard
remarriage after divorce as worse than homosexual practice, any
more than he regarded it as worse than adult-consensual incest. Paul
presented homosexual practice in Rom 1:24-27 as the supreme example, on
the sexual plane, of humans suppressing the truth about their sexual
selves self-evident in material creation. It is obviously worse to enter
enthusiastically into an inherently unnatural union than to succumb to the
dissolution of a union constituted by natural intercourse.
Citing Walter Brueggemann, Miller cites Galatians 3:28—“there
is [in Christ] no ‘male and female’”—as a text that could be used to
justify “gay marriage.” The text does nothing of the sort. Early
Christians understood the theology here—note that a similar saying was
attributed to Jesus in proto-Gnostic circles—as implying the equality of
men and women before God. When applied to sexual relations, however, they
understood “no ‘male and female’” as indicating the end of all
sexual relations. Orthodox Christian circles differed from proto-Gnostic
circles not in so interpreting “no ‘male and female’” but rather in making
its application to sexual relations optional until the return of Christ.
Everyone agreed that the elimination of a male-female prerequisite to
sexual relations would, far from leading to homosexual practice, lead to
no sex (i.e. to people being like the angels in heaven).
Leviticus and Miller’s Bad
Analogical Reasoning
Miller simplistically dismisses the prohibitions of man-male intercourse
in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 as “throwaway lines” that belong to a
“peculiar” law code containing numerous prescriptions that “our modern
understanding of the world has surpassed.” Yet the Holiness Code in
Leviticus 17-24 also contains what Jesus called the second greatest
commandment: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). Should
this too be thrown away simply because it belongs to this “peculiar” body
of laws? Doubtlessly Miller would say, “No.” What about the prohibitions
of incest, adultery, and bestiality, which, along with man-male sex, are
located in Leviticus 18 and 20? Should these too be thrown away? Again,
she would probably say, “No.”
But
then her argument as to why we should ignore the prohibition of male
homosexual practice falls flat: She asks: “Why
would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness
than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to
pay for a slave?” Here the only litmus that she develops for determining
importance is length of discussion. Well, the “love your neighbor as
yourself” text and the prohibitions of adultery and bestiality in the
Levitical Holiness Code are also, like the prohibition of homosexual
practice, only one verse each. So that can’t be a good test of what is
still relevant.
Here is my explanation as to why we should regard the
prohibition of homosexual practice in Leviticus with great seriousness
(notice that I use a combination of criteria). First, the Levitical
Holiness Code treats it as a matter of great seriousness. It is the only
offense in the sex laws in Leviticus 18 specifically tagged with the word
to’evah, meaning “abomination, something abhorrent (to God).” A
concordance search shows that when this expression is used in the Old
Testament it almost always applies to offenses that we still regard as
offensive today (idolatry, child sacrifice, cheating the poor, etc.). The
prohibition of man-male sex is also put in the first-tier of sexual
offenses (i.e. a capital offense) in Leviticus 20:10-16, along with
adultery, man-(step)mother and man-(step)daughter incest, and bestiality,
all of which we still regard as heinous today.
This leads to the second point: Leviticus groups the
prohibition of homosexual practice with other proscriptions that remain
valid. In general the sexual offenses proscribed in Leviticus 18 and 20
don’t classify well as acts of merely ritual impurity. Unlike ritual
impurity offenses, they aren’t contagious by touch, aren’t rectified
merely by ritual bathing, and involve only intentional acts. These are
moral impurity offenses, as Jewish scholar Jonathan Klawans of Boston
University has noted in his book Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism
(Oxford University Press).
Third, these prohibitions are clearly appropriated in the
New Testament. The term arsenokoitai (“men lying with a male”) in 1
Corinthians 6:9 was formulated from the Greek version (Septuagint) of
Leviticus 18:22 (“with a male [arsen] you shall not lie as though
lying [koite] with a woman”) and 20:13. In Romans 1.24-27 Paul uses
two terms, “uncleanness” (akatharsia) and “indecency” (aschemosune),
that appear frequently in the discussion of sex laws in Leviticus 18 and
20. As already noted, the notion of a male-female prerequisite to sexual
relations is not isolated to Leviticus but is weaved into the fabric of
every discussion of sexual relations in Scripture.
Fourth, the reason for the proscription is implied in the
proscription itself, underscores the absolute character of the
prohibition, and, like the creation texts, makes sense: another male
shall not be made into a man’s sexual counterpart, a woman (“you shall
not lie with a male as though lying with a woman”).
The only sexual offense in the lists in Leviticus 18 and 20
that would seem odd to us is sex with a menstruating woman—and Miller
latches on to it as a good analogy to the prohibition of homosexual
relations. But there is good reason for bracketing this particular sex law
off from others in chs.18 and 20. (a) It is not listed as a first-tier
sexual offense in Lev 20:10-16. (b) It is the only sexual offense among
the laws in Leviticus 18 and 20 that elsewhere overlaps with permitted
ritual impurities in Leviticus (Lev 15:24). (c) It is the only sexual
offense in Leviticus 18 and 20 where the main issue is the interaction of
fluids (blood and semen) rather than the legitimacy of the sexual union
per se and (d) the only one that could occur inadvertently in the course
of acceptable sexual activity. Moreover, (e) it is the sexual offense in
Leviticus 18 and 20 with the least support in the rest of the canon (i.e.
constricted Old Testament support and no clear New Testament support).
Miller repeatedly refers in her article to the Bible’s laws
regulating slavery as an appropriate analogue to its consistent
prohibition of homosexual practice. The analogy is terrible. Scripture
does not show the kind of vested interest in maintaining slavery that it
shows in maintaining a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations. It
tolerates slavery in a society where there was no social welfare net and
where selling oneself into slavery was sometimes the only alternative to
starvation. The Bible doesn’t present slavery as a pre-Fall structure that
God called “good.” A number of texts in Scripture show a critical edge
toward slavery: mandatory release dates, right of immediate redemption by
kin, setting aside sanctuaries for runaway slaves, warnings against
treating fellow Israelites as slaves, and injunctions to remember that God
had released Israel from slavery in Egypt. Relative to the slave economies
that operated in other cultures of the day, the perspective of Israel and
the church looks quite liberating. However, as regards the issue of
homosexual practice, the countercultural dynamic of Scripture moves in the
direction of significantly greater rejection of homosexual practice than
what existed in the broader cultural milieu. Unlike slavery, a male-female
prerequisite is clearly ensconced in the creation texts and strongly
affirmed throughout Scripture, early Judaism, and early Christianity.
Indeed, it is treated as a key distinguishing mark in sexual ethics
between pagans and believers.
If Miller were really interested in analogical reasoning
done with integrity she would opt for close analogies over far analogies.
She would pick something like the Levitical laws against incest, which
bear many points of resemblance to the prohibition of homosexual practice.
Like homosexual relations, sexual relationships between close blood
relations (1) involve acts of sexual intercourse; (2) can be conducted in
the context of monogamy and adult commitment;
(3) are nevertheless
proscribed in Scripture with a similar degree of absoluteness,
pervasiveness, and severity; and (4) are rejected for similar reasons;
namely, too much structural or embodied sameness among the participants
and not enough complementary difference.
Good analogical reasoning adheres to a basic point; namely,
that the best analogies are those that bear the greatest number of
substantive correspondences to the thing being compared. When Miller
ignores the closest analogues to the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual
practice in favor of more remote analogues, it is clear that her argument
is being driven more by a preconceived ideological objective than by a
sincere desire to go where the evidence leaves.
David and Jonathan
Miller cites the relationship of David and Jonathan as an example of the
“enduring love between men,” adding: “What Jonathan and David did or did
not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own
imaginations.” That is tantamount to saying, “What Ruth and her
mother-in-law Naomi did in the bedroom is best left to our own
imaginations,” as if the Bible could possibly be condoning a case of
incest; or even tantamount to saying that whether Jesus’ saying about “let
the little children come to me” had any positive implications for sex with
children is “best left to our imaginations.” When the text of Scripture
understood in its literary and historical contexts gives little or no
basis for “our own imaginations” to conjure up sexual activity, it is
irresponsible to grant or take imaginative license. Such is the case with
the relationship of David and Jonathan.
Homosexualist interpretations of David and Jonathan mistake non-erotic
covenant/kinship language for erotic intimacy. For example:
(1)
The statement that “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David,
and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1 Samuel 18:1) can be compared to
the non-erotic kinship language in Genesis 44:31 (“[Jacob’s]
soul is bound up with [his son Benjamin’s] soul”) and Leviticus 19:18
(“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”). It can also be compared to
formulaic treaty language in the ancient Near East, such as the address of
the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal to his vassals (“You must love [me] as
yourselves”) and the reference in 1 Kings 5:1 to King Hiram of Tyre as
David’s “lover.”
(2) Similarly, the remark in 1 Samuel 19:1 that Jonathan
“delighted very much” in David can be compared to the non-erotic
references in 1 Samuel 18:22 (“The king [Saul] is delighted with you
[David], and all his servants love you; now then, become the king’s
son-in-law”) and 2 Samuel 20:11 (“Whoever delights in Joab, and whoever is
for David, [let him follow] after Joab”).
(3) When David had to flee from Saul, David and Jonathan
had a farewell meeting, in which David “bowed three times [to Jonathan],
and they kissed each other, and wept with each other” (1 Sam 20:41-42).
The bowing suggests political, rather than sexual, overtones. As for the
kissing, only three out of twenty-seven occurrences of the Hebrew verb “to
kiss” have an erotic dimension; most refer to kissing between father and
son or between brothers.
(4) In 1 Samuel 20:30-34, Saul screams at Jonathan: “You
son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen
the son of Jesse [David] to your own shame and to the shame of your
mother’s nakedness?” Here Saul is not accusing his son of playing the
passive-receptive role in man-male intercourse with David (cf. 2 Sam
19:5-6). Rather, he charges Jonathan with bringing shame on the mother who
bore him by acquiescing to David’s claim on Saul’s throne.
(5) When David learns of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan he
states of Jonathan “you were very dear to me; your love to me was more
wonderful to me than the love of women” (2 Sam 1:26). The Hebrew verb for
“were very dear to” is used in a sexual sense in the Old Testament only
two out of twenty-six occurrences and a related form is used just three
verses earlier when David refers to Saul as “lovely,” obviously in a
non-erotic sense. Jonathan’s giving up his place as royal heir and risking
his life for David surpassed anything David had known from a committed
erotic relationship with a woman; but there was nothing sexual in the act.
As Proverbs 18:24 notes (in a non-sexual context): “There is a
lover/friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
The narrator’s (narrators’) willingness to speak of David’s
vigorous heterosexual life (compare the relationship with Bathsheba) puts
in stark relief his (their) complete silence about any sexual activity
between David and Jonathan. Put simply, homosexualist interpretations of
the relationship between David and Jonathan misunderstand the political
overtones of the Succession Narrative in 1 Samuel 16:14 – 2 Samuel 5:10.
Jonathan’s handing over his robe, armor, sword, bow, and belt were acts of
political investiture, transferring the office of heir apparent to David
(1 Samuel 18:4). The point of emphasizing the close relationship between
David and Jonathan was to stress the view that David was not a rogue
usurper to Saul’s throne. Rather, he was adopted by Jonathan into his
father’s “house” (family, dynasty) as though he were Jonathan’s older
brother. Neither the narrator(s) of the Succession Narrative nor the
author(s) of the Deuteronomistic History show any concern about homosexual
scandal, because, in the context of ancient Near Eastern conventions,
nothing in the narrative raised suspicions about a homosexual
relationship. (For further discussion, see Gagnon, The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 146-54;
Markus Zehnder,
“Observations on the Relationship between David and Jonathan and the
Debate on Homosexuality,” Westminster Theological Journal 69.1
[2007]: 127-74).
The Witness
of Jesus
Miller contends that Jesus provides no support for a “traditional” view of
marriage because “Jesus was single and preached indifference to earthly
attachments—especially family.” “Jesus preached a radical kind of family …
whose bond in God superseded all blood ties.” “There will be no marriage
in heaven.” “Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns
divorce.”
“Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the
margins.” Jesus revealed himself to the woman at the well— no matter that
she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend.” “We want, as Jesus
taught, to love one another…. What happens in the bedroom, really, has
nothing to do with any of this.” “If Jesus were alive today, he would
reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for ‘Jesus does
not want people to be lonely and sad’” (citing her “friend the priest
James Martin”). Here’s the kicker:
“While
the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family,
neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.”
Jesus and the Creation
Texts in Genesis 1-2
Miller conveniently
ignores the fact that Jesus felt so strongly about a male-female
prerequisite for valid sexual relations in the context of marriage that he
even predicated his insistence on marital “twoness”—i.e. no polygamy or
serial polygamy (divorce-and-remarriage)—on the twoness of the sexes,
citing back-to-back Genesis 1:27 (“male and female he [God] made
them”) and Gen 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall … be joined to his
woman [or: wife] and the two shall become one flesh”; Mark 10:5-9;
Matthew 19:4-9). If the male-female dimension were not essential to Jesus’
point, there would be no reason to cite from Genesis 1:27 just the line
“male and female he made them.”
The Essenes at Qumran (ca.
150 B.C. – A.D. 70) provide confirmation for the fact that Jesus was using
the twoness of the sexes in marriage, ordained by the Creator in Genesis
1-2, as the foundation for limiting the number of sex partners to two. For
the Qumran community also
rejected
“taking two wives in their lives” because “the foundation of creation is
‘male and female he created them’ [Gen 1:27]” and because “those who
entered (Noah’s) ark went in two by two into the ark [Gen 7:9]” (The
Damascus Covenant 4.20-5.1). Jesus differed from the Qumran community
only in extending the principle to negate not just polygamy—specifically,
polygyny (husbands having multiple wives) since Israel never tolerated
polyandry (wives having multiple husbands)—but also remarriage after
divorce. The logic appears to be: Bringing together the two, and only two,
primary sexes ordained by God at creation establishes a self-contained
union on the sexual spectrum that admits of no third party.
So whereas
Miller thinks that a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations is
immoral and prejudicial, Jesus thought it foundational for sexual
relations.
One could choose to opt out of a
male-female marital bond, as Jesus himself did. But then the only other
option would be to become like “eunuchs who were born thus from their
mother’s womb” or “eunuchs who were made eunuchs by humans”; that is, as
people who were not having any sexual relations (Matthew 19:11-12).
Similarly, those who opt out of male-female marriage would be like the
angels who “neither marry nor are given in marriage”
(Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34-36).
If there is no sexual intercourse in heaven it is not necessary to
accommodate innate sexual urges in this age when these urges violate
formal or structural requirements set in place by God at creation.
Miller uses such texts to argue that Jesus was open to
greater “inclusiveness” as regards non-traditional forms of sexual bonds.
As it happens, Jesus meant the exact opposite. According to Jesus, it is
precisely because a committed sexual partnership is only a penultimate
good that God doesn’t have to allow a sexual arrangement other than a
lifelong union between one man and one woman. Service of God and sexual
purity are higher goods. Sexual relations do not continue in heaven
because we get something better: direct access to God. There is thus no
such thing as “sexual starvation” in Jesus’ understanding. The new
community or family of God now exists to fill the need for companionship
in the unmarried. Consequently for Jesus the alternative to marriage
between a man and a woman is abstinence from sexual relations, not (as
Miller wrongly thinks) a radical reconfiguration of the definition of
marriage.
In short, I can’t think of a figure in history for whom the
argument made by Miller’s priest friend would have had less of an impact;
namely, the spurious claim that we must disregard Scripture’s sacred
male-female prerequisite for marriage or else homosexual persons will be
“lonely and sad.” This is simply holding hostage God’s clear and strong
will for sexuality in Scripture to whatever innate sexual desires and
orientations humans might claim. No commandment of God was ever predicated
on humans first losing all desires to violate the commandment in question
(although Miller seems to think otherwise). On the contrary: It is
precisely because there are humans who want to do what God deems wrong
that God issues prohibitions—prohibitions intended for our own greater
good.
A side point has to do with Miller’s statement: “Jesus
never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce.” The first
response should be obvious to Miller. Jesus doesn’t have to mention
homosexual practice explicitly because (1) there in no Jew in
first-century Palestine known to be engaging in it (we have no attestation
of such conduct within centuries of the life of Jesus among Jews, either
in Palestine or even in the Diaspora); and (2) there is no Jew advocating
for the acceptance of homosexual relations, committed or otherwise (every
mention of homosexual practice by Jews within centuries of the life of
Jesus regards the act as a supreme sexual offense, superseded only by
bestiality and not even by incest). Telling his audience in first-century
Palestine that men should stop having sex with other males would have been
met with perplexity since the point was too well known, too foundational,
and too strongly accepted to merit mention. I myself have never been in a
church where the pastor explained why believers shouldn’t be in a sexual
relationship with their parent, child, or sibling or shouldn’t enter a
polyamorous relationship. I have never thought that the reason for this is
that the minister was open to incest or polyamory of an adult-committed
sort.
The second response has to
do with Jesus’ reasons for mentioning divorce/remarriage. Jesus takes time
to condemn divorce/remarriage not because it is a more serious violation
of God’s sexual norms than homosexual practice—or than incest or
bestiality, two other sexual offenses that Jesus also never explicitly
mentions—but because it, along with lust of the heart, was a remaining
loophole in the law of Moses that needed to be closed. The law already
clearly closed off any option for engaging in homosexual practice, incest,
bestiality, and adultery, whatever the excuse. Every Jew knew that such
offenses were extremely serious. Indeed, they warranted capital sentencing
(on Jesus’ reworking of this see the discussion below). Jesus dealt
decisively with divorce/remarriage because, in his view, it was one of the
few remaining problems in the area of sexual purity for first-century
Jews. If Jesus based his view of marital monogamy and indissolubility on
the twoness of the sexes ordained by God at creation for sexual pairing,
he could hardly have regarded the violation of the foundation through
homosexual practice as less grievous than divorce/remarriage. Indeed, it
was surely the reverse, as texts in the Old Testament, early Judaism, and
early Christianity all confirm.
Jews in the ancient world
frequently distinguished their sexual behavior from the sexual immorality
common among Gentiles, including as regards homosexual practice. From what
we know of the Greco-Roman milieu they were correct in their assessment:
Gentiles were more likely to engage in sexually immoral acts. This is why
Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, had to give more attention to
sexual purity concerns than Jesus did, including explicit prohibition of
homosexual practice. Paul had a primarily Gentile audience; Jesus a Jewish
audience. Consequently when Paul addressed to his converts issues of how
to behave (ethics), he frequently led off with the issue of sexual
morality and warned converts that persistent sexual immorality could get
them excluded from the kingdom of God and eternal life (for example, 1
Thessalonians 4:1-8; 1 Corinthians 5-7; always first or second, after
idolatry, in Pauline vice lists, as in Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Corinthians
6:9-11; Romans 1:19-31; Ephesians 5:3-5).
Later, in the rabbinic period, when the question came up as
to whether two unmarried men could sleep in the same cloak, most rabbis
permitted it on the grounds that “Israel is not suspected” (t. Qid.
5:10); that is, the likelihood of any Jew engaging in homosexual practice
of any sort was so miniscule that it could be discounted. It was simply
not necessary for Jesus to give any explicit attention to homosexual
practice.
For a discussion of why changes in divorce/remarriage are
not a good analogy for embracing homosexual unions, see my discussion
here (pp. 110-22).
Miller’s Argument about the ‘Sexually Inclusive’ Jesus
Miller cites approvingly Brueggemann’s false claim that
as regards marriage matters and sexual activity the Bible is
consistently “bent toward inclusiveness.” Miller adds without thought for
the logical absurdity of her claim: “The practice of inclusion, even in
defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis
on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity,
indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage.”
Why should Miller stint herself and insist on monogamy?
Traditional and nontraditional forms of adult-committed polyamory
(polygamy) can be part of this inclusiveness. Polyamory by definition is
inclusive (it allows more than one other partner to join the union). Those
who engage in polygamy today are certainly social outcasts in Western
society. Didn’t Jesus’ outreach include polygamists too? And
adult-committed polyamory arguably results in more “togetherness
and community.” Doubtlessly Miller would protest that polyamory involves
coercion and oppressive dominance. Yet such negative characteristics are
no more intrinsic to adult-committed polyamory than are (1) high numbers
of sex partners over the course of life, (2) sexually transmitted
infections (STIs), (3) very short-term unions, and (4) mental health
issues such as depression and substance abuse intrinsic to all homosexual
activity (they exist at disproportionately high rates owing significantly
to the absence of a true sexual complement but they are not intrinsic). If
Miller disregards the foundation on which Jesus bases his opposition to
polygamy, namely, a two-sexes prerequisite, then she has no reasonable
basis in her argument about inclusivity, defiance of social convention,
love, and the building of community for rejecting loving, adult-committed,
polyamorous bonds. Certainly polygamy cannot be proscribed on the
supposition that a person can only truly love one other person at any one
time. When parents have a second and third child they don’t love the first
child any less and people often have more than one intimate friend. Why
should erotic love be any different from non-erotic love on this score,
especially since Miller argues that wanting “to love one another for our
own good” is sufficient justification for a sexual relationship?
By the same token, Miller’s inclusivity-nonconformity-love-community
argument, consistently maintained, would be great for promoting
adult-committed incest. Indeed, Miller stresses that Jesus “preached
indifference to earthly attachments—especially family” and “preached a
radical kind of family … whose bond in God superseded all blood ties.” If
blood ties are now a matter of indifference as regards forming sexual
relationships (for this is how Miller applies her own argument) then
it is obvious that an adult-committed sexual relationship between close
kin (two siblings or an adult child and parent) should be acceptable to
Miller. She would protest: But this would make children in a family unit
unsafe or would result in birth defects. Once more such a counterargument
is not an absolute argument that rejects incest categorically; it rather
rejects only incest with an underage kin or incest where procreation would
likely arise. One can certainly conceive of forms of close-kin sexual
relationships that such a counterargument would not indict (including
incestuous relationships between same-sex consenting adults).
The
only absolute or categorical argument that one could make
against incest would be a philosophical argument from nature; namely, that
persons who are too much structurally alike, here as regards kinship, are
not good matches for a sexual union. The birth defects that are typical
but not intrinsic for such relationships are the symptoms of the root
problem of too much embodied sameness. Yet such an argument would also
invalidate homosexual unions—here the structural sameness is more keenly
felt on the level of sex or gender—which is precisely why Miller is
unwilling to use it. But that would be an ideological complaint, not a
logical objection.
It is
hypocritical of Miller to emphasize as a basis for affirming homoerotic
unions such things as inclusion of those on the margins, defying social
convention, the presence of “mutual joy” and love as a sufficient
prerequisite, and building community and togetherness while rejecting out
of hand all adult-committed forms of incest and polyamory. She cannot
produce any scientific study showing intrinsic measurable harm to all
persons who have ever engaged in incest or polyamory. Therefore, given her
beliefs, she should be willing to affirm at least some forms of incest and
polyamory. Or drop her argument for homosexual practice as absurd.
Why,
even Oprah, the guru of millions of women in this country, exclaimed after
meeting some bright, well-adjusted, attractive, upper-class women in a
polygamous relationship: “The
best part of doing this job … [is that] I come in with one idea and then I
leave a little more open about the whole idea. And what I realize … is
that in every situation there are people who give things a bad name. There
are difficulties and then there are people who handle those difficulties
differently” (2007: “Polygamy in America: Lisa Ling Reports”). Moreover,
the “gay” Metropolitan Community Churches, the Unitarian Universalist
Church, and homosexual professors of religion in this country have all
promoted reexaminations of negative views toward polyamory or
“polyfidelity” (go
here and
here, pp. 35-45).
Now I am not arguing merely that the kinds of arguments
used by Miller and others to promote homosexual practice lead to a
“slippery slope,” though Miller and others are clearly supplying both the
slope and the grease. I am arguing that if Miller rejects absolutely
adult-committed forms of polyamory and incest then she has even greater
reasons for rejecting adult-committed homosexual practice, since
prohibitions of incest and polyamory are related analogically or
foundationally, respectively, to the prohibition of homosexual practice.
It is particularly ironic that Miller uses polygamy as an
example of why we should disregard a male-female prerequisite in
Scripture. We have changed on polygamy so, she says, we should also be
able to change on a male-female requirement. Yet she gets Jesus’ logic
backwards. Jesus pointed to a male-female prerequisite given in creation,
the natural twoness of the sexes, as the basis for eliminating
sexual unions involving more than two persons, whether concurrent or
serial polygamy. In short for Miller polygamy is the basis for getting
rid of a two-sexes prerequisite whereas for Jesus a two-sexes prerequisite
is the basis for getting rid of polygamy. By arguing that we should do
away with any significance to the duality of the sexes in marriage Miller
is leaving the door open for a logical return to polygamy.
Jesus accepted the view that the law of Moses was not
perfect. But whereas Miller argues for new models of marriage to gratify
specific “sexual orientations” Jesus did the reverse, arguing for a new
model of marriage that would no longer make concessions to “sexual
orientations” that desired what was contrary to “male and female he made
them.” Moses had permitted men to have more than one wife, whether
concurrent or serial, as a concession to human “hardness of heart,”
including the male sexual drive. Jesus said: No longer. His warning about
adultery of the heart also moves in this direction. As with the rest of
the six antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21-48), Jesus’
operating principle was: You used to be able to get away with
this-or-that; I tell you: No longer. So the issue isn’t merely the fact
of some change. The issue is as much a question of “In what direction?”
And Miller is moving in a direction opposite to that of Jesus.
Jesus, Love, and
Homosexual Practice
Jesus was not “inclusive” about sexual matters. He took an
already carefully circumscribed sexual ethic given to him in the Hebrew
Bible and narrowed it even further, revoking the license given especially
to men to have more than one sex partner (the sayings on
divorce/remarriage) and extending God’s demand for sexual purity even to
the interior life (forbidding adultery of the heart; Matthew 5:27-32).
New Testament scholar Walter Wink once argued against my
first book, The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon Press,
2001; 500 pgs.), that the Bible has no distinctive sexual ethic but only
sexual customs or mores that must be critiqued by Jesus’ love commandment.
As I indicated in my rebuttal of Wink (here,
pp. 77-80) Jesus obviously had a distinctive sex ethic that sometimes
arrived at diametrically opposite results from his application of the love
commandment. Jesus taught that we should love all with whom we come into
contact, including enemies. He universalized the “love your neighbor as
yourself” command in Lev 19:18. At the same time, he restricted the number
of sex partners lifetime to one other person of the other sex. Obviously,
then, one cannot argue for a sexual union on the basis merely of generic
concepts of love; for otherwise Jesus would have had to command sex with
everyone we meet or at least with everyone with whom we develop a
committed relationship. So it is absurd for Miller to argue, as she does,
that since “Jesus taught [us] to love one another,” “what happens in the
bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this.” The only way to
avoid such absurdities is to acknowledge that the love commandment is an
insufficient (even if necessary) basis for legitimizing sexual
bonds. Sexual relationships must also entail special requirements
concerning the formal (structural, embodied) complementarity of the
participants. For sexual intimacy is not merely more intimacy or deeper
love.
To
move, as Miller does, from the fact that Jesus reached out to sexual
sinners to the conclusion that Jesus was not really concerned about “what
happens in the bedroom" is to misread completely Jesus’ message and
mission. Jesus came to call sinners to repentance—and here by sinners
Jesus meant those who had egregiously violated the law, including
adulterers and economically exploitative tax collectors—lest they be
excluded from the kingdom of God that he was proclaiming. Thus he
prevented the woman caught in adultery from being stoned—dead people can’t
repent—while calling on her to “go and no longer be sinning” (John 8:11).
The same line appears in John 5:14, followed up with the warning: “lest
something worse happen to you,” in context, loss of eternal life.
One of Miller’s arguments as to why the Bible’s views on
homosexual practice should be disregarded—an odd line of argumentation
given that she often seems to deny that the Bible indicts homosexual
practice absolutely—is: “It recommends the death penalty for adulterers
(and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter).” And
yet we don’t find Miller rejecting prohibitions of adultery, man-mother or
man-daughter incest, or bestiality—other first-tier sexual offenses in Lev
20:10-16 for which a capital sentence is prescribed. The capital
sentencing underscores the severity of the offense. The story of the woman
caught in adultery suggests that Jesus would have waived the capital
sentencing but on grounds of extending the options for repentance and not
because he regarded the offenses in question as light matters. In fact,
for Jesus something greater was at stake than a capital sentence in this
life; namely, eternal exclusion from God’s presence. Therefore every
opportunity must be given for the person to repent in this life.
Miller says: “Jesus
revealed himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five
former husbands and a current boyfriend.”
What Miller fails to understand is that Jesus is evangelizing the
Samaritan woman, first convincing her of the need to believe in him. The
obedience to commands will invariably follow, as John 14:15 makes clear:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Without such moral
transformation it is impossible to continue to remain in Jesus; one is
thrown like an unfruitful branch into the fire (John 15:10).
There
can be no doubt about the fact that Jesus took sexual sin with the utmost
seriousness. In the Sermon on the Mount, sandwiched in between the two
antitheses having to do with sex (adultery of the heart and
divorce/remarriage), is Jesus’ warning that, if one’s eye or hand
threatens one’s spiritual downfall, one should cut off the offending
member for it is better to enter heaven maimed than to be thrown into hell
full-bodied (Matthew 5:29-30). Miller doesn’t love homosexual persons more
because she extends to them a “right” to be married. She loves them less
because she has granted an absolution from a form of behavior that God has
not permitted and, in so doing, encourages them to do things that
Scripture (including Jesus) teaches will put them at high risk of not
inheriting God’s kingdom. Miller is like a parent telling a child who is
about to touch a hot stove: “Go ahead and experiment: It won’t hurt you.”
Such “tolerance” and “love” turns out to be functional hate.
Other Evidence for Jesus’
Negative Stance on Homosexual Practice
In addition to arguments already brought forward, the
following ten factors confirm the case that Jesus was absolutely opposed
to homosexual practice:
The
idea that the historical Jesus provides any basis for affirming homosexual
unions represents revisionist history at its worst.
Concluding
Thoughts
In
view of the fact that Scripture’s male-female prerequisite for sexual
relations is more deeply embedded in its sexual ethics than its opposition
even to incest, it is foolhardy for Miller to claim that “religious
objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all” but in
personal prejudice. In view of the fact that her appeals to generic love,
“mutual joy,” inclusion, defiance of social convention, and “community” no
more lead to an affirmation of adult-committed homosexual practice than
they lead to its corollaries, affirmation of adult-committed incest and
polyamory, it is ridiculous for Miller to claim that the Bible supplies
her with the “universal truths” that mandate “gay marriage.” In view of
the fact that Scripture’s male-female prerequisite for sexual relations is
treated as foundational by Jesus, it is absurd for Miller to justify
endorsement of homosexual relations with the statement, “the Bible is a
living document.” Miller’s position on “gay marriage” doesn’t merely
continue a trajectory already begun in Scripture; it contradicts a core
value in sexual ethics to a degree that the writers of Scripture would
have found abhorrent.
Miller says: “We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual.” Obviously
the Bible has to be read in its historical and literary contexts
(incidentally, something that Miller does not do well). Obviously it has
to be read with the realizations that it consists of multiple genres (i.e.
different types of literature), that individual elements may require
modification in different cultural settings, and that not all elements
carry the same transcultural weight. Yet Miller goes too far. I’ll let her
in on a little secret: the Bible does contain commandments, not just
suggestions. A number of these have all the earmarks of enduring relevance
for our times. Clear examples in the sexual realm include the prohibitions
of same-sex intercourse, incest, adultery, bestiality, fornication, and
(according to the New Testament) polyamory (multiple-partner bonds)—the
last mentioned one a development premised on a male-female prerequisite
for sexual relations.
Lisa
Miller’s article is so poorly researched and so badly (and arrogantly)
argued that the editors of Newsweek should be ashamed of themselves
for publishing it. But they are not ashamed. In fact, managing editor Jon
Meacham sets up Miller’s cover story in his “Editor’s
Desk” column by writing:
No matter what one thinks about
gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort
to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the
history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical
attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions
that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to
argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than
intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great
Judeo-Christian tradition.
Let’s
see if I understand this: Basing one’s views on the overwhelming witness
of Scripture regarding an important issue of sexual ethics, including the
witness of Jesus—a witness understood, of course, in its historical and
literary contexts—is “unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition”?
Does Meacham not realize that obedience to scriptural authority and the
teaching of Jesus is precisely how "the great Judeo-Christian tradition"
formulated its theology since its inception? And how is a negation of
appeals to scriptural authority consistent with the subheading for
Miller’s article: “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But
what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side”? So as an
alternative to submitting to the overwhelming witness of Scripture on
moral issues, which includes the voice of Jesus, believers should prefer
the sloppy moral reasoning of people like Meacham and Miller?
Here
is Meacham’s whole case in a nutshell: “Briefly
put, the Judeo-Christian religious case for supporting gay marriage begins
with the recognition that sexual orientation is not a choice—a matter of
behavior—but is as intrinsic to a person's makeup as skin color.” Miller
makes a similar simplistic observation: “If we are all God’s children,
made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based
on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin
color.”
The alleged
analogy is wrongheaded for two main reasons. First, race is very different
from “sexual orientation.” Race or ethnicity is a primarily non-emotive
condition that is 100% heritable, absolutely immutable, primarily
nonbehavioral, and thus inherently benign. Homosexual “orientation”—which
is no more than the directedness of sexual urges at a given period in a
person’s life—is an impulse that is not 100% heritable (i.e. no purely
deterministic mechanism for homosexual development has been discovered but
at most only congenital or early childhood risk factors), is open to some
change (i.e. certainly at least as regards the raising or lowering of the
intensity of impulses; if the Kinsey Institute is to be believed, some
limited movement along the Kinsey spectrum from 0 to 6 is normal over
time), is primarily behavioral (i.e. it is a desire to do
something), and therefore cannot be regarded as inherently benign.
Second, as even
two prominent, homosexualist researchers of congenital causation factors
for homosexuality have acknowledged:
Despite common assertions to the
contrary, evidence for biological causation does not have clear moral,
legal, or policy consequences. To assume that it does logically requires
the belief that some behavior is non-biologically caused. We believe that
this assumption is irrational because … all behavioral differences will on
some level be attributable to differences in brain structure or process.
Thus, no clear conclusions about the morality of a behavior can be made
from the mere fact of biological causation, because all behavior is
biologically caused…. Any genes found to be involved in determining
sexual orientation will likely only confer a predisposition rather than
definitively cause homosexuality or heterosexuality. (my emphasis; Brian
S. Mustanski and J. Michael Bailey, “A therapist’s guide to the genetics
of human sexual orientation,” Sexual and Relationship Therapy 18:4
[2003]: 432)
This is a fairly
elementary moral point but Meacham and Miller miss it completely. Studies
have shown that it is a cross-cultural (and cross-species) phenomenon that
males find monogamy considerably more difficult than females (certainly
due in part to high testosterone levels in males). Since men don’t ask to
think about sex so often throughout the week and don’t ask to be sexually
aroused by the sight of beautiful women whom they know nothing about,
shouldn’t society dispense with the monogamy principle for men? Isn’t a
“polysexual” orientation “as intrinsic to [most men’s] makeup as skin
color”? It is certainly not a “choice.” So in light of this “new
knowledge,” why not provide marriage benefits to persons in a committed
polysexual relationship? Isn’t it better for a polysexual person to be in
a committed relationship with each sexual partner than to engage in a
series of one-night stands?
Or should we not
rather reflect on the words of Dr.
Fred Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins, on
another sexual orientation? “The biggest misconception about pedophilia is
that someone chooses to have it…. It’s not anyone’s fault that they have
it, but it’s their responsibility to do something about it…. We’ve learned
that you can successfully treat people with pedophilia, but you cannot
cure them.” Few immoral impulses, sexual or otherwise, are matters of
“choice” in the strict sense. So it makes no sense to formulate a moral
argument based on an absence of choice as regards the mere experience of
an impulse. “No clear conclusions about the morality of a behavior can be
made from the mere fact of biological causation, because all behavior is
biologically caused.”
Meacham,
consistent with Miller’s article, then adds: “The analogy with race is
apt, for Christians in particular long cited scriptural authority to
justify and perpetuate slavery with the same certitude that some now use
to point to certain passages in the Bible to condemn homosexuality and to
deny the sacrament of marriage to homosexuals.” In this faulty line of
reasoning Meacham
is asserting that it doesn’t matter
whether an alleged analogy is in fact an accurate exegesis and application
of Scripture.
The only thing that matters is that an analogy was
attempted, which makes all “similar” analogies wrong, even those that do
accurately interpret Scripture. In short, Meacham’s (and Miller’s)
reasoning treats as functional equivalents both inaccurate interpretations
of Scripture and accurate interpretations of Scripture—an absurd view.
Meacham stumbles
on: “This argument from Scripture is difficult to take seriously—though
many, many people do—since the passages in question are part and parcel of
texts that, with equal ferocity, forbid particular haircuts.” No, the
forbidding of certain hairstyles is not approached in Scripture with
“equal ferocity”—nor with equal pervasiveness across Scripture, nor with
the same backing from Jesus, nor with the same absoluteness, nor with the
same countercultural force. Any attempt to compare Scripture’s
stance on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations with its stance
on “haircuts” shows the complete “intellectual bankruptcy” of the
formulator of the argument.
Meacham and
Miller also make a comparison with the use of Scripture to promote
anti-Semitism, which is absurd given that Jesus, Paul, and virtually the
whole of the early church leadership consisted of Jews. Even the
comparison with attempts to use Scripture to devalue women runs up against
the numerous positive references to women and women’s roles in Scripture.
Relative to the ancient Near East or Greco-Roman world the views expressed
in Scripture toward women and women’s roles appear positive. But, again,
as regards homosexual practice, Scripture’s views are more negative than
the surrounding cultures. Scripture’s liberating message there involves
freedom from enslavement to homosexual desires and behaviors. To claim
that Scripture is opposed to Jews and women in a manner comparable to its
opposition to homosexual practice is to be either ignorant or disingenuous in
one’s reasoning.
The
question must be asked: What is it with the “elite” newspapers and
newsmagazines over the past decade? Are they so obsessed with promoting
the homosexualist agenda that they have now given up even a pretense to
objectivity, balanced research, and good sense? Do they care nothing for
destroying their reputation, built up over many years, as credible sources
for news and commentary? These news sources are more and more resembling a
homosexualist Pravda—a different agenda but the same style of
propaganda “news” reporting that would make the old Kremlin leadership
proud.
We
should, of course, continue to dialogue with homosexualist advocates like
Miller and Meacham. However, their support for a homosexualist ideology is
so brazen and offensive in its blatant misinformation—obviously they are
very angry about the passage of Proposition 8 in California—that
subscribers to Newsweek should give serious consideration to
canceling their subscription. For such homosexualist zealots as Miller and
Meacham, reasoned argumentation is unlikely to have any major impact.
Having lost their ethical compass, they may yet understand the language of
money, though. It is clear that, ultimately, Miller and Meacham have
little desire to make responsible arguments about the merits of moral
appeals to Scripture (their refusal to consider any major argument against
their position is evidence enough of this). They have only one objective;
namely, to intimidate Jews and Christians who appeal to Scripture for
their opposition to homosexual practice. Such persons must either shut up
or else be treated as the ignorant religious bigots that Miller and
Meacham claim them to be.
A final note: Should believers work to prevent government
from foisting the homosexualist agenda on the population? Yes, very
definitely so. The withholding of governmental incentives for homosexual
practice is as much a civil issue as society's prohibition of incest and
polygamy (even of an adult, consensual sort). As Jesus argued, it is the
twoness of the sexes that is the foundation for the limitation of the
number of partners in a sexual union to two (bringing together the two
primary sexes makes a third party both unnecessary and undesirable). Incest,
even of an adult-committed sort, is prohibited in Scripture on the basis of the principle that too
much structural (embodied, formal) sameness (here, as regards kinship) is
problematic for sexual relationships—a principle established by the prior
prohibition of sexual relations between persons too much alike on the
level of gender or sex. Paul made use of a nature argument in Romans
1:24-27, for those who don’t know (or don’t care) what Scripture says,
alongside of an echo to Genesis 1:26-27. Both Jews and Christians in
antiquity viewed the prohibitions of same-sex intercourse, incest,
adultery, and bestiality as applicable beyond the sphere of God's people
(already in Leviticus they apply also to resident aliens).
We know today that disproportionately high rates of harm
attend those who engage in homosexual practice (on average, high numbers
of sex partners lifetime and sexually transmitted infections, even for
those in “committed relationships”; mental health difficulties and
short-term relationships, even when society gives its approval of
homosexual unions; go
here). Moreover, there is some evidence that cultural approval can
affect the incidence of homosexuality in a population (for which go
here; and
here, pp. 30-34, 120-25). Today’s people of God should actively oppose
governmental imposition of "gay marriage" and homosexual civil unions
(marriage without the name). The alternative is to have government
penalize you for speaking out against homosexual practice, hold hostage
your children in the school systems to homosexualist propaganda, and
coerce businesses to subsidize immorality through mandatory health
benefits for same-sex couples and “affirmative action” programs for
“sexual orientation minorities” (go
here); in short, to have society treat you as the moral equivalent of
a virulent racist and attenuate your civil liberties accordingly.
Postscript (Dec. 31): I have twice
sent an email to Editor Meacham informing him of this assessment of
Miller's article and requesting an opportunity in Newsweek to write
an op-ed piece on the subject of Scripture and homosexuality. Three weeks
have elapsed and Meacham has yet to respond.—RG