The
Bible and the "Gay Marriage" Question
A
response to Prof. Lee Jefferson's op-ed in the Huffington Post "What
Does the Bible Actually Say about Gay Marriage?"
by
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary;
gagnon@pts.edu
July 8, 2011
For printing use the pdf version
here
I
give my permission for this article to be circulated widely in print,
email, and on the web.—RG
What does the Bible actually say about “gay marriage”?
That question is the title of a a recent op-ed piece in the
Huffington Post (June 29, 2011) written by
Lee Jefferson, a visiting assistant professor of religion at Centre
College. According to Jefferson the answer is: “Nothing,” or at least
“Nothing negative.” Jefferson used the recent passage of “gay marriage”
by the New York legislature as a springboard from which to denigrate
appeals to the Bible against homosexual practice. I will use Jefferson’s
article as a springboard from which to answer the question that he and
many others have raised.
It is
of relevance that, though Jefferson gives the appearance of speaking
with authority on the question, he has not (to my knowledge) published
any academic work on the issue of the Bible and homosexual practice. His
expertise is not in the Bible but in Christian art of Late Antiquity.
Jefferson also shows little or no awareness in his article of the array
of strong arguments against his claims.
In
addition, Jefferson exhibits an unfortunate tendentiousness in his
characterizations. He speaks glowingly of the “enlightening progress in
our culture concerning the LGBT community.” Those who disagree represent
a “cacophonous opposition” that uses religion as “a bruising hammer” and
lobs “textual grenades”—as if the homosexualist advocacy groups have not
been even louder and more belligerent and strident. The fact that the
media is overwhelmingly on the side of promoting homosexual unions is
not enough for Jefferson. He bemoans the fact that the media reports
any dissent to this party line.
It
should go without saying that upholding a male-female requirement for
marriage can and should be a product of a loving desire to avoid the
degradation of the gendered self that comes from engaging in homosexual
practice. That it does not go without saying is due in large part to
today’s charged political atmosphere where hateful characterizations of
persons who disapprove of homosexual unions are commonplace among
proponents of such unions.
This
hateful reaction stems largely from a comparison of such persons to
racists and sexists. Yet such a comparison begs the question of whether
the comparison is accurate. If opposition to gay marriage is more like
opposition to marriage between close kin and to marriage between three
or more persons, than one arrives at very different conclusions about
what constitutes love.
And
now on to Jefferson’s arguments.
The
ancient world and homosexual orientation
A
linchpin of Jefferson’s case is his claim that no one in the Greco-Roman
world had any knowledge of something akin to “same-sex orientation.”
Jefferson ironically makes this claim while insisting on the importance
of understanding the ancient context behind the biblical text.
The
fact is that in the Greco-Roman world theories existed that posited at
least some congenital basis for some forms of homosexual attraction,
particularly on the part of males desiring to be penetrated. These
theories derived from Platonic, Aristotelian, Hippocratic, and even
astrological sources. They included: a creation splitting of male-male
or female-female binary humans; a particular mix of male and female
sperm elements at conception; a chronic disease of the mind or soul
influenced indirectly by biological factors and made hard to resist by
socialization; an inherited disease analogous to a mutated gene; sperm
ducts leading to the anus; and the particular alignment of heavenly
constellations at the time of one’s birth.
Some
of the ancient theories are obviously closer to modern theories than
others. What matters, though, is that many in the ancient world
attributed one or more forms of homosexual practice to an interplay of
nature and nurture. Many viewed same-sex attractions for some persons as
exclusive and very resistant to change.
Jefferson gives no indication that he is aware of the literature that
contravenes his claim. Contrast Jefferson’s remarks with the observation
of Thomas K. Hubbard, a classicist at the University of Texas (Austin),
in his magisterial book, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A
Sourcebook of Basic Documents (University of California Press,
2003): “Homosexuality in this era [i.e., of the early imperial age of
Rome] may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure
and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of personal
identity, exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual orientation” (p.
386). Hubbard also points to a series of later texts from the second to
fourth centuries that “reflect the perception that sexual orientation is
something fixed and incurable” (p. 446).
Contrast it too with this assessment by Bernadette J. Brooten, professor
of Christian Studies at Brandeis University and a self-avowed lesbian,
in her important work, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses
to Female Homoeroticism (University of Chicago Press, 1996):
Paul could have believed that tribades
[the active female partners in a female homosexual bond], the
ancient kinaidoi [the passive male partners in a male
homosexual bond], and other sexually unorthodox persons were born
that way and yet still condemn them as unnatural and shameful. . . .
I see Paul as condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural
acts of people who had turned away from God. (p. 446)
Other
scholars who have written major works on the Bible and homosexuality
make similar points, such as William Schoedel, professor emeritus of
classics and early Christianity from the University of Illinois, and
Martti Nissinen, professor of Old Testament at the University of
Helsinki. Note too that all these scholars have written from a stance
supportive of homosexual unions.
Although it is usually assumed that Paul in Rom 1:24-27 treats
homosexual attraction solely as a chosen condition of constitutional
heterosexuals, nothing in the wording of the text substantiates such an
assumption. The expressions “exchanged” and “leaving behind” in 1.26-27
do not refer to a willful exchange of heterosexual desire for homosexual
desire. Rather, they refer to a choice of gratifying innate homoerotic
desires instead of complying with the evidence of male-female
complementarity transparent in material creation or nature.
Furthermore, as with Philo of Alexandria (a first-century Jewish
philosopher), Paul was probably aware of the existence of a lifelong
homoerotic proclivity at least among the “soft men” (malakoi)
who, even as adults, feminized their appearance to attract male sex
partners (1 Cor 6:9). Paul viewed sin as an innate impulse, passed on by
a foundational ancestor, running through the members of the human body,
and never entirely within human control (see his discussion in Romans
7:7-23). So any theory positing congenital influences on homosexual
development would obviously have made little difference to Paul’s
opposition to all same-sex intercourse.
The
evidence indicates that some Greco-Roman moralists and physicians,
operating within a culture that tolerated and at times endorsed at least
some homosexual practice, could reject even committed homosexual unions
entered into by those with a biological predisposition toward such
unions. What, then, is the likelihood that the apostle Paul, operating
out of a Jewish subculture that was more strongly opposed to homosexual
practice than any other known culture in the Mediterranean Basin or
ancient Near East, would have embraced such unions?
It is
important to bear in mind also that semi-official marriages between men
and between women were well known in the Greco-Roman world (even the
rabbis were aware of such things, as also Church Fathers). The notion
that adult-committed homosexual relationships first originated in the
modern era is historically indefensible. Consequently, it cannot be used
as a “new knowledge” argument for dismissing the biblical witness. Even
Louis Crompton, an historian and self-avowed “gay” man, has drawn the
proper conclusion from this historical data in his highly acclaimed
book, Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University Press,
2003):
According to [one] interpretation, Paul’s words
were not directed at ‘bona fide’ homosexuals in committed
relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, 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. (p. 114)
Genesis 2 and its implications for “gay marriage”
Another flawed argument that Jefferson makes is that “the Bible does not
clearly endorse one form of marriage over another.” This would have been
news to every first-century Jew, including the historian Josephus.
Josephus explained to Gentile readers that “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).
Jefferson tries to substantiate his claim by asserting that the story
about Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 “is a gender creation story, not a
creation of marriage story.” Yet Genesis 2:24 clearly extrapolates from
the story about the creation of woman in 2:18-23 the marriage principle
that “for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and be
joined to his woman (wife) and become one flesh.”
The
narrative begins with an originally sexually-undifferentiated human
(Heb. adam, “earthling”), from whom some indeterminate portion of
bone and flesh is taken from one of the human’s “sides” (a better
translation than “ribs” since it is the meaning given to this word,
tsela, everywhere else in the Old Testament). This extraction is
made in order to form a woman, thereafter turning the adam into a
gender-specific man (Heb. ish). The woman is depicted as the
man’s “counterpart” or “complement” (2:18, 20)—a translation of Heb.
neged that means both “corresponding to” (denoting likeness as
regards humanity) and “opposite” (denoting difference as regards sex or
gender).
The
subtext of the story is that man and woman may unite in marriage to
become “one flesh” because out of one flesh the two came. This is a
beautiful image of a transcendent reality: that man and woman are each
other’s sexual “other half,” the missing element in the spectrum of
sexuality. Clearly the story indicates a foundational male-female
prerequisite for valid sexual unions, irrespective of (as Jefferson puts
it) the absence of “a jazz band reception in Paradise.”
Jesus and “gay marriage”
Jesus
apparently understood Genesis 1:27 (God “made them male and female”) and
Genesis 2:24 (cited above) as implying a male-female requirement for
marriage. Jesus cited these two texts back-to-back (Mark 10:2-12;
Matthew 19:3-12) in order to make the point that the complementary
twoness of the sexes, male and female, is the foundation for limiting
the number of partners in a sexual union to two.
When
man and woman unite in marriage, the sexual spectrum is completed such
that a third partner is neither necessary nor desirable. Jesus applied
this principle not only explicitly to a rejection of a revolving door of
divorce-and-remarriage (a form of serial polygamy) but also implicitly
to polygamy, which both in Jesus’ day and in ours is the easier
prohibition.
We
know that this was Jesus’ point because the sectarian Jewish group known
as the Essenes (who regarded even the Pharisees as too lax in their
observance of the Law of Moses) similarly rejected polygamy on the
grounds that God made us “male and female” (zakar uneqevah). They
connected this phrase in Genesis 1:27 to its occurrence in the Noah’s
ark narrative where the twoness of the bond is stressed (“two by two”;
Damascus Covenant 4.20-5.1). They then deduced that God’s will at
creation was for marriage to be a partnership of two and only two
persons.
Jefferson stresses Jesus’ silence on the issue of homosexual practice as
“exhibit A” for his claim that “same-sex practice is a topic of little
interest to the Biblical authors.” Yet Jesus also says nothing about
incest or bestiality. Surely this “silence” does not suggest Jesus’
indifference. Why should Jesus spend time talking explicitly about
offenses that no Jew in first-century Palestine is advocating, let alone
engaging in, and that his Hebrew Scriptures already proscribe in no
uncertain terms?
Clearly Jesus regarded a male-female requirement in marriage as an
“irreducible minimum” in sexual ethics, the foundation on which other
sexual standards are predicated, including monogamy. By definition the
foundation is more important than anything built on the foundation.
A
half dozen other historical arguments establish Jesus’ opposition to
homosexual practice, including his adherence to the Law of Moses
generally and his intensification of sexual ethics in particular (not
only as regards polygamy and divorce-and-remarriage but also as regards
“adultery of the heart”); the fact that the man who baptized him (John
the Baptist) got beheaded for defending Levitical sex laws; and both
early Judaism’s and the early church’s univocal opposition to homosexual
practice as an egregious offense. Jesus wasn’t shy about expressing
disagreement with prevailing norms. Silence speaks for his acceptance of
the prevailing view.
Some
texts that speak directly to homosexual practice
Jefferson characterizes the texts that speak directly to the issue of
homosexual practice as “scant indeed.” Yet the number of biblical texts
doing so is comparable to the number of texts addressing incest and
greater than those prohibiting bestiality. If one looks at Scripture
contextually (as Jefferson urges others to do) it will be evident that
Scripture’s opposition to homosexual practice is deeply embedded in the
fabric of its sexual ethics.
In
fact, every text in Scripture treating sexual matters, whether
narrative, law, proverb, poetry, moral exhortation, or metaphor,
presupposes a male-female prerequisite for all sexual activity. For
example, in Old Testament law there are constant distinctions between
appropriate and inappropriate forms of other-sex intercourse but nothing
of the sort for same-sex intercourse. The reason for this is apparent:
Since same-sex intercourse was always unacceptable, there was no need to
make such distinctions. Another example involves metaphor: Even though
ancient Israel was a male-dominated society, it imaged itself in
relation to Yahweh as a female to a husband, so as to avoid the imagery
of a man-male sexual bond.
Jefferson’s interpretation of texts that more or less directly address
homosexual practice is deeply flawed. He writes off the Sodom episode in
Genesis 19 as a text concerned with hospitality, not homosexual
practice. This makes an either-or out of a both-and. The episode at
Sodom is viewed in early Judaism as a paradigmatic example of gross
inhospitality to visitors precisely because the men of Sodom seek to
dishonor the sexuality of the male visitors. By asking to have sex with
them as though they were females they treat the maleness of the visitors
as of no account. The fact that this is done in the context of attempted
rape is no more an indication of the irrelevance of the homosexual
aspect than is a story about incestuous rape (so, I would argue, Ham’s
act against his father Noah in Genesis 9) irrelevant for indicting
adult-consensual incest.
Jefferson dismisses the prohibitions of man-male intercourse in
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 as limited to a particular time and place in
Israel’s history, like dietary restrictions and the prohibition of cloth
mixtures. But the prohibition of man-male intercourse is more closely
related in its context to the prohibitions of other sexual offenses that
we continue to prohibit today: incest, adultery, and bestiality. The
Holiness Code in Leviticus (chaps. 17-26) specifically refers to these
forbidden sex acts as “iniquity” or “sin,” not just ritual uncleanness
(18:25). It does not allow absolution merely through ritual acts (such
as bathing and waiting for the sun to go down). It does not treat these
sexual offenses as making the participants contagious to touch (unlike
some ritual impurity offenses). The penalty applies only to those who
engage in these acts with willful intent (whereas ritual purity
infractions encompass both advertent and inadvertent acts). Leviticus
applies the prohibitions not just to Jews but to Gentiles inhabiting the
land. For all these reasons the prohibitions of incest, adultery,
man-male intercourse, and bestiality do not look like merely ritual
offenses.
The
prohibition of cloth mixtures is largely symbolic, since the penalty is
only the destruction of the cloth (not the wearer) and since too some
cloth mixtures are enjoined for the Tabernacle, parts of the priestly
wardrobe, and the tassel worn by the laity (apparently on the assumption
that cloth mixtures symbolized ‘penetration’ into the divine realm,
which was inappropriate in non-sacral contexts). The prohibition of
incest is a much closer analogy to the prohibition of man-male
intercourse than dietary rules or rules against cloth mixtures, since
both incest and same-sex intercourse involve sexual offenses between
persons too much alike in terms of embodied structures—one as regards
kinship, the other as regards gender.
As regards Paul, Jefferson provides an odd reason
for discounting the offender list in 1 Corinthians 6:9, which includes
an indictment of “soft men” (malakoi, see above) and “men who lie
with a male” (arsenokoitai). His reason is that “these terms are
injected along with” other sexual offenders, namely, “the sexually
immoral” (pornoi, not limited to fornicators, contra Jefferson),
adulterers, and (in context) persons who engage in incest (chap. 5) and
sex with a prostitute (6:15-17). “In other words, Paul is addressing ALL
deviant sexual and immoral behavior, not just that of a same-sex
variety.” To this argument I can only say: So what? Who ever claimed
that Christian sexual ethics were opposed only to homosexual
practice?
Jefferson then claims that “it is unclear whether
[Romans 1:26-27] truly is a condemnation of a specific practice.” This
is a bizarre claim. Paul specifically refers to females exchanging “the
natural use [i.e. of the male] for that which is contrary to nature”;
and, “likewise” to males “leaving behind the natural use of the woman”
and becoming “inflamed in their yearning for one another, males with
males.” That doesn’t sound ambiguous to me.
Moreover, there are eight points of correspondence,
in the same tripartite order, between the creation text in Genesis
1:26-27 and Paul’s argument in Romans 1:23-27. This indicates that Paul
is thinking of homosexual practice as a violation of the creation of
“male and female” in Genesis 1:27. The nature argument is a common one
for Greco-Roman moralists seeking to indict homosexual practice on
absolute grounds. It seems to me that we should make a distinction
between Jefferson wanting Romans 1:26-27 to be unclear and the actual
clarity of the text itself.
Biblical arguments and our civil law
The final argument that Jefferson makes (which is
listed first in his article but which I am treating last) is that “the
institution of marriage is a secular and social institution.” As such,
Jefferson argues, referring to what the Bible says about homosexual
practice is irrelevant for civil law. There are two problems with this
view. One is that people of faith are shaped morally by their religious
beliefs and have a right to vote such beliefs, just as atheists or those
philosophically inclined have a right to vote according to their
respective ideologies. This is especially so in cases where these
beliefs are not restricted to a single sectarian religious community and
where what is “imposed” is not incarceration and fines but a withholding
of public approval. On both counts opposition to “gay marriage” passes
muster. The roots of moral reasoning in Western civilization derive
largely from religious foundations. Indeed, discussion of “morality”
seems out of place in a context where there is no higher power. Without
God, ethics are reduced to utilitarian considerations.
An even more important point is that one can make a
reasonable case against “gay marriage” on secular philosophical grounds;
that is, by an argument from nature and by appeal to analogies already
in place in our civil law. The Bible itself points in this direction
with the argument from nature in Romans 1:24-27, an argument based on
the compatible structures of male and female that should be obvious even
to those without Scripture; structures that requires a deliberate
suppression of truth to override.
Put simply, if the logic of a heterosexual
union is that the two halves of the sexual spectrum, male and female,
unite to form a single sexual whole, the “logic” of a homosexual union
is that two half-males unite to form a single whole male or two
half-females unite to form a single whole female. By implication
homosexual unions dishonor the integrity of the stamp of maleness on
males and of femaleness on females by effectively treating their sex or
gender as only half intact, needing to be supplemented structurally by
union with someone of the same sex.
The
closest analogies in civil law to a prohibition of “gay marriage” are
laws prohibiting the marriage of close kin and the marriage of three or
more persons.
As
regards the incest analogue, homosexual unions are unions between
persons who are too much structurally alike, in terms of sex or gender,
much as an incestuous union is wrong because it involves two persons too
much alike on the level of kinship identity. The analogy is often
rejected by proponents of homosexual unions. They claim that incest is
always harmful because it involves children and leads to birth
defects. However, incest can (and has) been conducted by consenting
adults. Moreover, many kinds of incestuous unions would not entail
procreation: incestuous bonds where at least one party is infertile,
active birth-control measures are taken, or the participants are of the
same sex. In short, incest does not produce intrinsic measurable harm
(not even when procreation occurs); disproportionately high rates, yes,
but intrinsic, no.
Homosexual unions likewise experience disproportionately high rates of
measurable harm, not intrinsic measurable harm. Moreover, this harm
corresponds to gender type. Male homosexual activity, even relative to
lesbian unions, is characterized by extraordinarily high numbers of sex
partners lifetime and by extraordinarily high rates of sexually
transmitted infections. Female homosexual activity, even relative to
male homosexuality, is characterized by relationships of lower longevity
and higher rates of some mental health problems (not surprising,
perhaps, in view of the greater expectations that women generally place
on relationships for self-worth and fulfillment). The existence of
disparities of harm between male and female homosexual relationships,
corresponding to gender differences, is a sign that some harm stems
simply from the same-sexness of homosexuality. In homosexual
relationships the extremes of a given sex are not moderated and the gaps
in the sexual self are not filled, at least not as well, on the whole,
as heterosexual relationships.
To
withhold marriage from all near-kin unions (certainly between a parent
and an adult child or between full siblings) one has to develop a
philosophical argument about intrinsic harm. The only such argument of
which I am aware involves the recognition that procreative difficulties
are not the root harm of incestuous unions but only the symptom of the
root harm. The root harm is the attempt to unite sexually with someone
who is too much of an embodied same, not enough of a complementary
other. If the procreative difficulties associated with incestuous bonds
are the clue as to their root harm, so too the structural incapacity for
procreation on the part of homosexual bonds should indicate to observers
a similar root harm.
As
regards the polyamory (multiple-partner) analogue, we have noted above
in our discussion of Jesus’ rationale that a prohibition of polygamy is
grounded ultimately in the natural law argument that the existence of
two and only two primary sexes—complementary to each other in terms of
anatomy, physiology, and psychology—implies a limitation of two persons
to a sexual union at any one time. If we don’t grant marriage licenses
to three or more persons in a concurrent sexual relationship, why should
we grant marriage licenses to homosexual unions that disregard the
foundational twoness of the sexes on which the limitation of two persons
is based? There are examples of polyamorous unions going on in the
United States that are adult-consensual, loving, and without measurable
harm.
Of
course, my point here is not that the state should issue marriage
licenses to close kin or to three or more persons concurrently. My point
is rather that, since adult-committed incestuous unions and polyamorous
unions are analogically related to adult-committed homosexual unions,
one shouldn’t approve of granting marriage licenses to the latter case
unless one is also willing to grant marriage licenses to the former two
cases. People can choose to be inconsistent—perhaps, let’s hope so in
this case. However, that doesn’t change their inconsistency into
consistency.
And
make no mistake about it: Homosexual unions are a more foundational
violation of sexual ethics than incestuous or polyamorous unions since
the latter two are logically extrapolated from the former rather than
the other way around. The recognition of the need for embodied
complementarity and acceptance of the essential duality of a male-female
bond is prior to any conclusions that may or may not be reached about
incest and polyamory.
This
is certainly true about the development of sexual ethics in ancient
Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. Loopholes for incest and
polyamory were revoked over time. But in the biblical record there never
were any loopholes allowable for homosexual practice. The most basic
division for human sexual behavior is the differentiation of the sexes,
not differentiation along the lines of kinship or limitation of number.
In
conclusion, Lee Jefferson doesn’t want the Bible to have anything
to “say” about “gay marriage.” His want then infuses his interpretation
of the biblical text, skewing the results. He attempts to make his case
by arguing that “the Bible is not specific, literate, or
even concerned with what we call same-sex orientation or gay marriage,”
when in fact we have seen the exact opposite to be the case. He blames
proponents of a male-female requirement for not investigating the
“ancient cultural context.” Yet he himself appears not to know it.
Jefferson thinks that people should “quit focusing
on what the Bible didactically ‘says’”—a contention that ignores the
helpful contribution of the Bible throughout Western civilization to a
whole host of social justice issues. I suspect that what Jefferson is
really upset about is seeing the Bible applied to the specific issue of
homosexual practice. So applied it simply doesn’t cut in the direction
that he would like to see it cut. Nor, I might add, do secular
considerations suggest a need to divert from that witness.
For further reading:
See my book The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts
and Hermeneutics (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 2001); my shorter
co-authored volume (with Dan O. Via), Homosexuality and the Bible:
Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); and copious other materials
at
www.robgagnon.net.