Posted by Jason on: 05.26.2008 /
This isn’t the first time I’ve told this story.
I’ve got a few gay friends. People I’ve worked with, people I went to school with, people I just bumped into a got talking. Anyway, friends who also happen to be gay. For some reason I know more lesbians that gay men. A statistical anomaly perhaps or maybe some of my friends are still in the closet. That’s their choice if they are and really none of my business. They are my friends first and gay second.
About eight years ago and went to the wedding of two of them, Sarah and Tracy. It was a lovely family ceremony conducted by a local vicar from their church. The ceremony wasn’t in the church. The diocese had decreed that they could not support the wedding of two women to each other. The vicar, himself a gay man, had offered to conduct the ceremony in the local pub. A gesture that made Sarah, who I worked with, very happy.
In 1999 or 2000 (I can’t remember the precise year) the law did not recognise lesbian marriages, it did not even call them civil unions as they do now in England. The ceremony was merely to announce to friends and family that they were committed to each other but in a ritualised way that would be accepted as a permanent joining. I’d talked to Sarah about it and shared my own views that marriage was a religious ceremony that I didn’t agree with. She didn’t care and just wanted to marry her sweetheart. Clearly she is more romantic than I am.
Sarah and Tracy didn’t want to change the law, they just wanted to make a positive statement about their mutual love. They wanted their friends and family to witness this and join in the celebration. Sarah has two children from her previous marriage and they were just entering their teens when the wedding took place. The ceremony itself was fun, Sarah was the typical nervous bride, almost in tears and visibly shaking with emotion at the beginning. This emotion came out in a great laugh of delight as we all cheered and through confetti over the happy couple after they were pronounced wife and wife.
There were the traditional wedding blunders to keep things interesting. Two of my kids, Beth and Cait thought it was funny to crawl behind the curtains where the sound equipment was hidden, threatening to bring the whole thing down and squash themselves and the buffet table. This got me a stern telling off by a formidable looking woman who I didn’t dare argue with. Sarah’s kids yelled “LESBIANS” instead of “Hurray” after the pronouncement. Someone from work drank too much and started telling ribald stories about our manager. Nothing too embarrassing, just fun for everyone.
The two brides left early, as is traditional, to start their honeymoon. This left friends and family to enjoy the largess of the happy couple. Other than the gender of one of the happy couple this wedding was a typical low budget affair. A fun declaration of love and commitment.
Can someone tell me where the sin is in this because I just don’t see anything wrong with it at all. I’m not talking about the legalities, Tracy and Sarah broke no laws and expected no support from the law, even though I believe that they should be entitled to the same support and protection as I enjoy. They weren’t challenging society or an established religion or making any sort of fuss. They were not harming, attempting to harm or corrupt anyone. In fact they are two of the kindest and sweetest people I know. They remain as much in love today as they were when they married nearly a decade ago. I expect them to be together for many years to come.
The fact is that they mean and cause no harm to anyone and they don’t pose a challenge to the established order of society. Given this fact could any just god judge them as sinful and evil because they love one another? What sort of god is that? What sort of society would support such a god?
I believe that gods are human inventions. They are the reflections and embodiment of our cultural ideals in anthropomorphic form. I see a change in how people view god in society and a shift towards a more loving construct who is both open and honest. This, I see, is the figure of Jesus who condemns dogmatic authority and preaches love, kindness and acceptance. I also see a reactionary shift towards the vengeful and absolutist Old Testament God who condemns without reason and preaches vengeance and indignation.
If people are going to keep their gods, and I see no sign that they will stop, then the beliefs should support compassionate action rather than intolerance. Even if you disagree with me about the nature of gods you might well agree that positive human traits should be supported and the negative, divisive traits rejected.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
1I don’t personally have a problem with it.
My own feeling is, I’m glad I’m free not to have a problem with it now I’ve dissociated myself from a belief system in which I was told it’s a problem. I appreciate not having to think it’s a problem just because my belief system says I must.
Two brides might feel weird to me at first because I haven’t known two women get married to each other. However I believe it feels weird because it’s unfamiliar. Not because that feeling is the Spirit of God confirming what they’re doing is wrong.
When I was a conservative Christian I believed if God said something was sinful, there was an understandable reason why. Like, it hurts someone else.
When I tried to think of a reason why it’s wrong for two consenting adults of the same sex to have a relationship with each other, I couldn’t think of a reason why. That bothered me because it was important for me to believe God’s morality made sense. That’s why it was a relief to set aside thinking same sex relationships between consenting adults are inherently wrong. Because I couldn’t think of any good reason why they were wrong.
Comment by: Eliza
2Jason, what a lovely ceremony & celebration!
All this discussion about marriage brings us back to some basic questions:
What is the purpose of marriage?
What are the goals of marriage?
Who can be married?
What should be the “rules” governing marriage?
And, the ever-important question: Who decides?
Comment by: Jason
3Helen, ick factor aside, and I can understand that although I believe that we should embrace our differences, I’m glad that you’re so accepting. As a Christian you
which makes me think of the philosophical question: Is an act good or bad because God makes it so or is it good or bad alone and God affirms it as so?
I don’t need to worry about that with my lack of belief in gods of any kind but for theists it must be a dilemma. I mean, if God makes an act good or bad then he could choose to make an act good that is horrible, like rape or child abuse. If he simply sees a good or bad act and agrees that it is good or bad then what is the point of having a moral deity? He’d be rubber stamping laws and would be as much use to the world as the European Union. :)
Eliza, I probably (OK certainly) deviate from most people’s opinion of marriage. I don’t see a purpose in it at all, especially not with women and men having equal rights to the law, property, freedom, etc. I don’t see it as having a goal, certainly not for procreation.
My acceptance of it for gay couples is purely on the basis of equality for all. You could argue that it’s a feminist ideal but I’m not so sure. Really I’d like equality to be reached by everyone abandoning the idea of marriage but that’s one of my crazy pipe dreams.
The rules of marriage should really be minimal. Enough to ensure that one person does not suffer if the marriage ends. To be honest the rules on shared income and dependents should cover that. I can’t see a need for much more.
Who decides? Society. We do. Our elected representatives (if they’re doing their job properly) get to decide.
I’m sure I’ll get plenty of disagreement on that. ;)
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
4Jason wrote:
Right - I trusted God not to say something bad was good. But as you say if all he did was agree with my moral beliefs he wouldn’t be contributing anything to morality.
Even Christians who say they take the Bible literally do some interpreting and at the interpretation phase I think their own sense of right and wrong comes into play to some degree.
Comment by: Chris Kirk
5I would suggest that God neither arbitarily creates moral laws, nor simply affirms human laws to be true. My image is God as the laws themselves, the very essence of all things, working this essence out through all things (whether they acknowledge it as from God or not–personally, I could care less).
This is why none of us take issue with the story of your two friends. In our spirits, we can’t sense anything wrong with it on a grand scale. I agree that we should support “positive human traits,” and would argue that this is not antithetical to a belief in God, but quite central to what God is all about in my estimation. From my perspective, it is the divine spirit which gives us this capacity to recognize and implement these traits for the good of the world. I’m happy to have found this blog today and will make it a frequent stop. Cheers.
Comment by: Jason
6Helen, what happened when that trust conflicted with your own opinions? From what you’ve said in the past I imagine that you tried hard to suppress any thoughts that went contrary to your faith.
Chris, welcome. Correct me if I’m wrong but your idea of God seems to be very much as a deist one. In effect we, all of us and everything that exists, is God. Although there is still something separate or intelligent about it. Does this seem fair?
Comment by: Chris Kirk
7Certainly, my view has some similarities to a Deist position. I’m also strongly influenced by Process Theology. I find non-personal metaphors for God a helpful evolution in the way we think about God. While the personal metaphor of God as Father or other conscious being has been helpful, it has its limitations. By exploring the possibility that God is not only being, but process; not only one who creates laws as a human court would, but one that embodies the laws themselves, I find that I can approach faith in a more intellectually honest way.
Comment by: Eliza
8I’d be interested to hear what people think the purpose(s) of marriage is/are.
To offer a starting place for discussion, Purposeofmarriage.org says
But then the site goes on to distinguish between marriage as covenant and marriage as a legal committment (contract):
(Interesting that this site uses the gender-neutral terms “people” and “spouse” in the discussion of marriage as a legal contract.)
Comment by: Eliza
9Hmm, I wrote a response which seems to have gone to moderation…or, to the great Blog in the Sky…
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
10Hi Eliza, I found your post in the spam catcher and rescued it.
I like the commitment in marriage -that the two partners are making a commitment to each other. But Jason pointed out to me one time we were discussing marriage on Friendly Christian that it was unreasonable of me to think people who don’t get married are reluctant to commit or afraid of commitment.
I think if one person wants to get married and the other doesn’t it would be wise to try to ascertain whether reluctance to commit is a factor. But I take Jason’s point that people who choose not to go through the marriage ceremony/ritual might be just as committed as people who do get married.
Comment by: Jason
11Aw, Helen, I was gonna say that. ;)
Eliza, as an atheist I don’t place any value on a covenant before a creator. I don’t place any value on a creator so how could I value the covenant. That leaves a promise between two people that is enforced and supported in law as you’ve described.
For me (and for Hil) the legalities aren’t that important. We’re joint signatories on all household contracts from the phone bill to the mortgage, we have joint custody of our children and neither of us is the sort of person to deny access to the other in the event of a break up. As citizens of England we enjoy no special status in terms of taxation or financial benefit for being married or unmarried so there is no monetary consideration to account for. There is a small chance that we might be denied the right to dictate one another’s medical wishes to doctors in the event of an emergency but a “living will” solves that. Neither of us wears much jewelery so rings are pretty superfluous.
What else is there?
Oh, the desire to go through a public ceremony. Not for me thanks and not for Hil either. We don’t want or require public affirmation of our love and a small, private ceremony seems pointless. Almost like getting married just for the sake of it. For us, marriage just isn’t important.
For Tracey and Sarah it was. If there is one marriage for every two people in the cosmic checklist then they can have mine. I won’t be needing it. That is unless Liz Taylor has used it already.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
12Jason wrote:
In my defense, I didn’t say anything about your own situation :). Only that you helped me not to make unwarranted assumptions about any unmarried people :)
Comment by: Karen
13Wow, that’s interesting. I never knew that!
In the U.S. there are over 1,000 special rights and privileges (from taxation regulations to medical benefit laws) that accrue to married people, which is why gay marriage is such a big deal here. I believe the idea is/was to encourage people to make legally binding romantic commitments because they are seen as beneficial to the stability of society.
I wonder why the UK and the US evolved such different laws regarding marriage? Is there a push for gay marriage in England as well, or is it not seen as being very important due to the legal situation there?
Comment by: Jason
14Karen, the government in England granted ‘civil partnerships’ a few years ago. It isn’t marriage but it is a step in that direction. Again I think it is not so much for practical reasons but for equality.
Insurance companies and businesses were ahead of government on equal status for homosexuals. Many companies offer insurance to “life partners” rather than spouses. You just need to notify them.
Do you really pay different taxes based on your marital status? Do male and female tax payers enjoy equal benefit for this? I know that the US and UK tax systems are very different but I thought they were more equal than you describe.
Comment by: Mike O
15Sorry so late to this party … the topic is probably dead, but I thought I’d throw in a thought from the conservative Christian perspective.
Jason said in the original post:
My initial thought is that you’re confusing “sin” with “good and bad behavior.” I’m always hesitant to talk about “sin” with non-C’s because it’s simply not helpful. But given that …
I don’t think being gay makes you a “good person” or a “bad person.” I, too, have lots of gay friends that are good people. And obviously there are lots of straight people who are bad people. But definitionally, homosexual sexual relationships are defined as sin by God. I don’t personally think it’s any worse of a sin than greed or gluttony or gossip (which is actually worse, IMO!). But if the God of the Bible is real, and the Bible got it right, homosexuality is sin by definition.
It’s kind of like how soccer has certain rules of how to play the game. you can’t use your hands. There’s nothing physically wrong with using your hands in society today, but within the parameters of the soccer game, it’s a penalty. That’s the rule. And maybe that’s how it is with homosexuality.
To answer your question of “could a just god judge them as sinful and evil because they love one another?” Sinful, I think so - we’re all sinners according to the Bible. But “evil?” No, I don’t think so.
I don’t expect to get a lot of agreement on this, but I suspect sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular, is at a level beyond the purely physical. it’s at a more emotional level. It’s very emotional and hetero- as well as homosexual activity creates a bond between people that other relationships don’t have. Think about it - why is rape more psychologically damaging to a girl than getting beat up? I think it’s because there’s something to sex beyond the physical act - there’s a bond or connection between people who have had sex. I happen to think it’s spiritual, but maybe it’s emotional or whatever.
Sex is on a different level, and that’s why I think maybe God defined sexuality with certain parameters - and homosexuality, for whatever reason, falls outside those parameters.
But that’s from the Christian perspective. Societally, gay people are every bit as capable of being “good people” as abyone else. If homosexuality is wrong, it’s at a spiritual level, not societal. As far as society is concerned, we need to be kind to all people. Jesus would.
Comment by: Jason
16Mike, unsurprisingly I disagree with you. However, as you’re basing your argument on the bible, I’ll use the bible to refute your argument. I’m taking my comment here almost word for word from one I made on the Justice and Compassion site and from comments gleaned from religioustolerance.org.
Putting aside the Old Testament as a fulfilled contract and particularly Leviticus for it’s shopping list of things that should be avoided we are left with the New Testament.
There are three mentions of homosexuality in the New Testament. All three refer to preformed traditions, either Greek or Jewish. There is no NT author who placed enough importance on homosexuality to write his own sentence about it
There is an argument that homosexuality is “against nature”. This is not the idea of nature that we have in the 21st century but of human nature or the proper conduct that is becoming for a member of society. The attack on homosexuality is actually against pederasty in the Greco-Roman texts. Pederasty involved forced male rape even by heterosexuals and slave boy prostitutes.
Pederasty says nothing about the modern idea of loving relationships between two people of the same gender. These sorts of gay relationships have been going on in secret and not-so-secret for centuries and have been broadly tolerated or ignored if not accepted. The laws against homosexuals are a relatively recent invention that signify an increase in biblical literalism.
I Corinthians 6:9 uses the phrase “nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind” that most take to mean homosexuals. Putting aside the fact that homosexuality has little to do with effeminate behaviour the idea is almost certainly inaccurate. If Paul wanted to refer to homosexual behavior, he would have used the word “paiderasste” as this was the standard Greek term at the time for sexual behavior between males. The word he did use was “arsenokoitai”. The exact meaning is lost but “arsen” means “man” so it is unlikely to refer to any behaviour that is between two women. The part “koitai” means “beds”. I could speculate that the word refers to male temple prostitutes, pimps, homosexual rapists or even masturbaters. I don’t think it refers to typical gay men though.
In Romans 1:26-27 the Greek phrase “para physin” is taken to mean “against nature” but elsewhere in the bible it is used as meaning to deviate from the ordinary or to be unconventional. Also the phrase “change their natural use” would seem to indicate that they were going against what they, and I mean the participants, found to be normal sexual behaviour. Perhaps the “vile affections” were drug induced or the result of a frenzied state of mind brought about by ritual. Again, not what we’d expect from an ordinary loving relationship between two people, no matter what their genders. The passage is really referring to idolatry and pagan vices and isn’t specifically condemning homosexuality.
1 Timothy 1:9-10 uses the word “arsenokoitai” again. This time the translators have picked this up to mean “for them that defile themselves with mankind” but, like the Corinthians passage, the meaning is unclear and probably does not refer to loving, homosexual relationships.
So, loving gay relationships are not explicitly prohibited in the New Testament. I don’t think that they are as clear as you make out. Going back to the earliest translations of the New Testament you don’t have a condemnation of gay relationships but a condemnation of gay rape, prostitution and pagan idolatry.
The religious tolerance site’s translation is as accurate as that in the King James bible so it’s a matter of interpreting the meaning. If I were the sort of person to rely on the bible then I’d go for an interpretation that provides me with the highest tolerance and greatest compassion for my fellow human rather than one that alienates and condemns 10% of the population.
You raise another issue that I don’t think is really related to this topic: that of rape. I’m no expert on the subject (thankfully) but rape is about violence and control. Forcing another person to submit to the violent sexualised attack of another is worse that violence precisely because it twists something that is emotionally felt to be good and precious into a mockery of itself.
Also Mike, talking about sin might not be helpful but, for me, that is because I simply can’t get to grips with what it means. It is something that is considered wrong but not what I’d consider wrong in all cases, it’s an absolute idea without a definition. Christians seem to just accept sin as a fact but are never really able to tell me what it is. Even the obvious “sin” of not killing has mitigation that could allow it in the right circumstances.
There’s also the problem of sin having been supposedly cleansed by the sacrifice of the crucifixion. If it’s cleansed then how can we be sinful? If it’s not then what value if the sacrifice? I feel as though I’m missing something that everyone else can see clearly.
Comment by: Mike O
17I’m not sure what you mean by “without a definition.” Seems to me it is clearly defined, but whether or not the definition is valid, whether it is biblical or Koranical or whatever-holy-writing-ical. Right?
I think that’s a great point. The way I see it, Jesus sacrifice doesn’t make us sinless, it takes away the guilt. If you owe money to a bank, and they forgive the debt, you are no longer guilty and no longer owe them any money. But you still didn’t pay them. You still “did it,” but it doesn’t matter any more because the debt’s been paid.
I’m listening to a sermon series by Andy Stanly called “It Came from Within” based on Proverbs 4:23
It’s about how people try to filter what they do and how they act, but nobody ever taught us how to deal with the things we carry in our heart or emotions, like guilt, regret, unforgiveness, etc. I think what you’re referring to is the external things people do that are sinful, and Jesus’ sacrifice covers that. But we still have icky things in our heart that make us act certain ways and keep repeating habits we swore we’d never do again for example. Jesus’ sacrifice covers that, too, but that’s how we can still be sinful even though we’ve been forgiven. People can be forgiven, but still have a bent towards whatever it is that they are dealing with.
That probably wasn’t too clear, was it?
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
18fyi