Homosexuality: A Christian Problem ?
Desmond Wilson
Recent requests for public recognition of life-long relationships between men and between women is meeting with expected opposition. Some of this comes from those who plead Christian moral standards. But Christians who have respect for the rights and dignity of other people must reassess Christian attitudes to homosexual people. We must use our knowledge of the Bible and science and human rights to make amends for the way homosexual people were treated in the past. We have an absolute duty to do all we can to ensure that no debasing of them or their lifestyle will be approved by Christians again.
Human beings are created and live in a spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual with many variations in between, a spectrum in which one human condition shades into another. Nobody should be condemned or derided or discriminated against because he or she lives in any part of that divinely-created spectrum.
We can admit and be glad about love of men for men, and women for women, as weIl as love between men and women. How this affection is expressed is a matter for their private lives, just as heterosexual acts between husband and wife are private. That is, we respect the affection of people for each other and we leave it to them to express their affection in whatever way they believe is appropriate. Whether it is appropriate or not is not for others to judge or react against unless it interferes with other people's rights or comfort. In other words, we recognise homosexual people as normal and leave them in peace and dignity, while recognising their merits just like everyone else's.
The honourable relationship of man-to-man and woman-to-woman and the public recognition and appreciation of it must have its name. To use the word 'marriage' we have to extend the meaning of this term beyond its traditional meaning. But those most intimately concerned should be the first to say what the relationship should be called. On the other hand, it may be possible to define the relationship in a way that preserves the dignity and peace of all of us. Perhaps a fresh term would help to avoid needless argument over traditions and would recognise the dignity of people's lifelong unions, whatever form they take.
Christian Attitudes
Christians have condemned homosexuality and often punished homosexual people. But even the official Christian view has changed in recent years - from outright condemnation of both homosexuality and homosexual people to the less severe belief that homosexuality is a deviation, sometimes preventable, always controllable; a still mistaken belief that while homosexual people should be treated fairly, their way of life and way of loving is abnormal.
Sometimes that lifestyle has been described as a sickness, sometimes as a natural condition, sometimes an induced condition. In any case sexual gestures between people of the same sex have been considered wrong. Questions have been raised about whether homosexual people who are actively in love should be allowed as teachers or clergy or whether they can be recognised as capable - and deserving - of lifelong personal relationships. These attitudes have led to hardship for many and fear for even more.
Jesus Christ and His Followers
Although Christians have been severe in their assessment of homosexuality, Jesus Christ is not reported to have said anything about it. If it is a serious deviation or moral problem one would expect he would have said so. He spoke of things which Christians consider less serious than homosexual activity. It may be argued that Jesus Christ possibly did say something about it and his words have not survived; after all, we do not have a record of everything he said. But even so, one would think that his followers, Peter and John for example, would have told us if Jesus Christ had said anything significant about it. They do not say so, or rather, we have no record of it. If they had said anything about it we can suppose their followers in turn would have left some record of that. It is curious that a matter which Christians considered of such enormity is not spoken of by Jesus Christ, or if it was people did not think it worthwhile to keep an adequate record of anything he said about it.
The one New Testament writer who writes about it is Paul, who did not meet Jesus in his earthly life. Paul records a vision he had of Jesus Christ but does not mention any teaching Jesus Christ may have given him at that time. When he recovered from the immediate effects of the vision, Paul went for instruction to Peter and the other followers of Jesus Christ but here again we have no record of anything being said to him about this matter. And when Paul speaks out against homosexual acts he does not quote the followers of Jesus Christ any more than he quotes Jesus himself as his authority for what he says.
Some Christians have looked to the Old Testament - the pre-Christian, Jewish writing - for proof that the only moral attitude to homosexuality is one of condemnation or rejection. The relevant laws in the Old Testament are those given to the Israelites in the Book of Leviticus, compiled about 800BC. These laws included the following:
“You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination [prohibitions about intercourse with non-human creatures etc. follow]... you shall not make yourselves unclean in any of these ways, for in these ways the heathen, whom I am driving out before you, made themselves unclean. This is how the land became unclean and I punished it for its iniquity so that it spewed out its inhabitants... anyone who does any of these abominable things shall be cut off from his people.”
Christians have abandoned most of the laws in Leviticus along with the severe punishments which were said to be commanded by God, like death and 'cutting off from the people'. They decided to abandon them either on the basis of church authority, or custom, or irrelevance to their life, etc. So if Christians today find adequate reasons for abandoning any other of these laws they have a precedent for it. According to the Old Testament, homosexual practices and some ritual infringements were punishable by death. Christians have abandoned this, which means in effect that they have come to believe the offences mentioned, including homosexual activities, are to be treated with more leniency. This itself represents a development of belief, and so Christians do not any longer believe that the laws and instructions in the Bible are absolute guides which must be followed now. If they did, they would keep the death penalty and even use it for a number of religious offences. Further changes will depend on considerations such as public order and our modern ideas of 'human dignity and people's free choice rather than commandments in the Bible. It is for us to decide, in whatever way we believe we can authoritatively do it.
Changes in Christian attitudes to homosexual people have been going on for a long time - from official condemnation to official tolerance. That development has involved argument and struggle - and rejection of some Bible commands - and evolved into a demand not just for tolerance, which is the minimum that can be given, but for acceptance and recognition of the dignity of homosexual people and their rightful place in God's creation. In other words, for tolerance to be replaced by appreciation.
The absence of any known decision by Jesus Christ about homosexuality or any known mention of it by him should make Christians wary of the severe stand we have taken on the matter. If we do take a severe stand we have to have completely sure why we are doing so - for lives and human dignity are at stake.
There is no evidence that Paul took his ideas about homosexuality from Jesus Christ or any of the people who were Jesus' companions. The basis for the severe Christian attitude must have come from other than Christian sources. It is because of this lack of evidence of Jesus Christ's attitude that Christians have had to look to the Old Testament for a basis for their condemnation of homosexuality or homosexual people. They gave the example of the ruined cities of Sodom and Gomorrah where it was said God rained down fire and sulphur on them because of their homosexual practices, hence the name Sodomy to describe one set of acts between people of the same sex. This argument has been generally abandoned by Christian scholars as irrelevant.
Another incident has been quoted, also from the Book of Genesis. In this, visitors to Lot's house demanded that young men be brought out for their pleasure and Lot offered his daughters instead. This used to be taken to prove that homosexuality is so bad that the loss of female virginity is less immoral. But neither of these incidents in Genesis is now accepted as having to do particularly with moral attitudes to homosexuality or homosexual behaviour.
Paul
Paul says in his 'Letter to the Romans' (Chapter 1):
“God abandoned their lustful hearts [those who refused to obey his law] to filthy practices of dishonouring their own bodies among themselves. ...in return God abandoned them to passions which brought dishonour to themselves. Their women exchanged natural for unnatural intercourse; and the men, on their side, giving up natural intercourse with women, were burnt up with desire for each other; men practising vileness with their fellow men. Thus they have received a fitting reward for their false belief... they are versed in every kind of injustice. Yet with the just decree of God before their minds they never grasped the truth that those who so live are deserving of death; not only those who commit such acts, but those who countenance such a manner of living.”
Christians have abandoned Paul's declaration here that certain behaviours deserve death. Not everything Paul says is considered as binding on us, unless we have clear proof that it is. He says, for example, that women must be silent in the religious assembly. There is no basis for this in what we know about Jesus Christ's teaching and we have effectively abandoned it.
He says also that women are to be instructed by their husbands and women are to be obedient to their husbands. Again, there is no basis for this in Jesus Christ's teaching as we know it and we have changed old ideas about relationships between men and women in this, respect as in others which Paul insists on. Paul also condones slavery, saying that the attitude of good masters to slavery is that they should be just and the attitude of slaves to be obedient, there is no indication of his saying slavery should be abolished. We have made important and substantial changes to Paul's teaching in this and other matters. And Christians believe they have a right to do so. In other words we have admitted in practice that his teaching is open to correction.
We have already corrected it in relation to slavery, subservience of women, the death penalty, the idea that there is something disgraceful in second marriages, the idea that non-marriage is better of itself than marriage, etc. In these matters Christians have shown they are free to make changes - either on their own or through changing customs or through the authority of a church - and to be selective about the demands Paul makes.
So they can decide at least that the time for Paul's severe attitude to homosexual people or homosexual acts is past or passing, or at best that it should not have been accepted in the first place, as in the case of slavery. This means Christians are no longer in a position to condemn either the persons or the acts as something demanded even by severe Pauline-Christian belief. If Christians feel compelled to condemn either homosexual people or homosexual acts, it will have to be for reasons which are not found in the teaching of Jesus Christ or his earliest followers.
Catholic Principle
There is a Catholic legal principle that when there is difference of opinion among experts we are all free to choose whichever interpretation of law seems right to us. Scholars are deeply divided about the nature of homosexuality and about its moral meaning. Without choosing which ideas are right and which are wrong, Catholic principle says that while such differences exist among experts we are free to choose our own interpretation on the merits of the case as we see them. This means we are not justified by Catholic belief in rejecting anybody's views in this matter or in deriding those who hold them. While we may choose the severe view or the liberal one ourselves we are bound to have respect for the one accepted by others - this is the Catholic principle. And if we accept the more severe view we have to find reasons for it other than Catholic moral teaching.
Another Side to a Story?
In the Bible we find striking examples of a deep love of one man for another. For instance, the love of David and Jonathan. David's lament for the death of Jonathan is part of a moving Bible story. David says: 'Shall I not mourn for thee, Jonathan my brother, so beautiful, so well-beloved, beyond all love of women? Never woman loved her only son, as I thee. How fell such warriors, what could blunt such swords as these?' (2 Kings 1:26-27 or 2 Samuel 1:26-27, Ronald Knox translation).
Although there is doubt about the inclusion of the phrase 'Never woman loved her only son, as I thee', the intensity of what David is reported to have said is clear from the rest of the quotation. And the whole quotation is accepted by vast numbers of Christians, including those who have condemned such love in others.
Jesus Christ, in an extraordinary incident in the Gospel, asked his friend Peter not once but three times: 'Peter, do you love me more than these other people here?' And three times Peter said, 'Yes' he did. The Gospel story also says there was one of Jesus' close followers whom he specially loved, and one at the last supper 'leaned on his breast'. These incidents show a remarkable affection shared between men. The meaning of them becomes clearer when we think of them in our own context. What would we say if a religious or political leader put the Peter question to another man with such intensity? Clearly there is a loving relationship there.
Similarly with John and the friend described as leaning on his breast. This means that in the view and experience of Jesus Christ and his people, a special regard or affection or love which is above the ordinary is possible between men, that it can be expressed in vivid terms and must therefore be respected by Christians.
In the Old Testament the story of Ruth, one of the most sensitive of all Bible stories, describes the love of two women for each other in very clear terms. There is such a deep affection and love between them that they are prepared to leave their own people to live close to each other.
Christian Education For or Against?
Much of the education in Christian schools was based on classical Greek and Latin literature. Virgil was one of the most acclaimed writers they studied. Of his eclogues (rural poems) the second is about the love of one man, a shepherd, for another. Poems by the woman poet Sappho are about emotional love between women. So even at times when anti-homosexual feeling and teaching were strongest, Christian schools were encouraging the study of authors who either were homosexual or wrote approving of homosexual love or at least condoned it. Virgil was admired as probably the greatest of Roman poets, and was constantly on school study programmes; so was Ovid.
Modern writers like Walt Whitman also appeared on school programmes, so did Byron and others. When studying these writers a teacher could have ignored the homosexual writing or the homosexuality of the writer, or could have explained the difference between our attitude to such famous writers and that towards some obscure resident in our local streets or the butt of jokes by our comedians. But it seems the authors' homosexual references were just quietly ignored much of the time. This seems like the same ambivalence as in our study of the Bible. Either the loving friendship between David and Jonathan, the deep love between Jesus and John and between Jesus and Peter, the affection between Ruth and her mother-in-law existed or it did not. We can either ignore it or explain it. If we ignore it we take away some of the richness of these people's, and our own, lives. If we explain it our attitude to love between men and between women will have to be changed. Those who believe in the Bible as a source of divine wisdom can argue then that the inclusion in it of such incidents as those of Jesus, Peter, John, David, Jonathan, Ruth must mean that God intended them to be a lesson in acceptance for us. In a world where male and female prostitution was widespread and condoned by both religious and irreligious people this is a powerful lesson, to say there can be a loving relationship between people of the same sex which is strong, holy, not gross. Strangely, this argument was seldom made by Christians, even at times when preachers encouraged a relationship between us and Jesus which is more emotional than intellectual.
Vested Interest?
We treat some people with great respect and others with little, and often those we treat well are of special interest or value to us. In Stages of Desire, an account of the relationship of theatre and homosexuality through the centuries, Carl Miller lists some famous homosexuals who were treated with public respect, for example the military Haig, Kitchener, Montgomery, Mountbatten, the poetic Sappho. He quotes Jeremy Bentham's argument in 1774: 'What would have become of Aristides, Solon, Themistocles, Harmodius, and Aristigiton, Xenophon, Cato, Socrates, Titus - the delight of mankind - Cicero, Pliny, Trajan, Adrian etc., - these idols of their country and ornaments of human nature? They would have perished on your gibbets.' We may add MacLiammoir, Edwards, Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement and many others to the list. Carl Miller also quotes, as part of what he calls 'the laundry list approach' to the history of famous and respected homosexual people, a play by Larry Kramer called The Normal Heart in which a character Ned Weeks says angrily: 'I belong to a culture that included Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M.Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, DagHammarskjold... these were not invisible men.' (Stages of Desire, Carl Miller, 1996).
This does not prove or disprove the goodness or badness of homosexual people or homosexual activities but it emphasises that we are selective in our treatment of homosexual people. The man or woman round the corner may be insulted, and homosexual people in general derided, but important people are still important people and are treated as such. A recent example of what happens to 'unimportant' people is that of two women living together in Clonsilla in Dublin who were harassed by teenage girls because they were said to be lesbians. The court found against the girls, and the police confirmed that serious harassment and physical assaults against them did happen. (Irish Times, January 30th 2004).
Could We Have Done It Differently?
Christians could have used the David and Jonathan, Ruth, Jesus and Peter, Jesus and John incidents to create a fresh teaching: namely that there is such a thing as love between men, and between women, which is fully acceptable and can be expressed in emotional and affectionate terms. How this love should or could be expressed between them will lead to further questions for them, but Christians seem never to have used the opportunity these biblical incidents gave them. So there was condemnation but no relief for people who loved, and wished to acknowledge their love for, each other.
Not only was the expression of such love outlawed but even the very existence of it was denied. We also disregarded some of the traditions of the Greek and Roman literature on which we based our education programmes. Philosophers greatly appreciated by Christians, Plato, Socrates and others, believed that love between men was not only good but the most dignified form of love. In their time distinctions were made between spiritual love of men for each other and 'carnal' intercourse. Love between women seems not to have been thought about very much. They also made distinctions between men who were active or passive in sexual relations with each other. One might think that here was a useful field for Christians to make their own distinctions. They could have said, for instance, that deeply affectionate love between men and between women was dignified, as shown by the Biblical examples, but that it should not come to the point of actual sexual intercourse. This would have been problematic but at least it would have been an advance in thinking. This seems to be what Plato believed and it would probably have been accepted by many people in those times. But Christians did not go even to that minimal point.
Often Christians seemed to outlaw affectionate relationships altogether, whether between the same or different sexes, rather than face the subtleties of human love. After Jesus' time tens of thousands of people even interpreted his philosophy as meaning they should go to the desert and speak to nobody - an extraordinary interpretation of what he said and did. It was an extreme form of escape from the realities and gradations of loving human behaviour. It seemed as if while teaching that Christians had the power of God in them to resist temptation they still could not be trusted to enjoy love between men and women without having it lead into sexual intercourse which they believed should be avoided outside of marriage.
What Is Normal?
One possible reason for Christian disarray about homosexuality - and sexuality in general - may be confusion about what is 'normal'. The word 'normal' seems easy to understand but has caused a lot of suffering. What is normal? Part of the human condition is that some people grow up with exceptionally acute reasoning abilities and some grow up with much less. The existence of people with less intellectual ability or greater intellectual ability is accepted as a normal part of the human condition. Highly intellectual people are normal. People with less intellectual ability are normal. People with gravely acute disabilities are normal. These are all normal because theirs are usual conditions of the human race. Differences are normal. It is normal that a proportion of the human population are homosexual. Homosexual people are normal. So are heterosexual people and people at different points of the sexual spectrum.
However, we can and do create a second definition of normality. We have said in the past that people born with disabilities are abnormal - this is inaccurate and cruel and such descriptions are passing out of favour. In an extreme case it has been said that the normal human being is white, fair, Ayran, or whatever. This description of normality in human beings is both inaccurate and dangerous. Black-skinned people are normal, although they are a minority; fair-skinned people are normal not because they are a majority but because they are part of the human pattern; highly intelligent people and highly disabled people are normal because they are part of the usually experienced human pattern. We must not confuse majority and normality. We need new terms.
Disease among human beings is normal, although we refer to an individual person's disease as an abnormality. There is ambiguity, uncertainty and unclearness in our idea of normality. When we look at the human race as a whole or a segment of it, like the population of one country, we see a pattern of different characteristics and we recognise that this pattern is normal. It is a reality. But when we create a model of what we see as the perfect human being we create a new - and unreal - concept of normality and abnormality. We create a notion of the perfect man or woman, the perfect society, and those who do not fit this intellectually conceived pattern are 'abnormal'. But it is an artificial concept. It may help us to think but does not describe reality.
We create notions of the perfect church, the perfect model of female or male beauty, notions which help us to think but do not reflect reality either. Imperfection is normal. So is perfection because it is part of the description of human life as a whole.
Homosexuality is a part of the pattern of human life which we know is constant. Homosexuality is normal. It was just as illogical to describe homosexuality as abnormal as it is to describe exceptionally intellectual people as abnormal. Each of these groups is a minority of the human race and a minority is not an abnormality.
It is strange that Christians found it difficult to say this, even though it is a logical outcome of our beliefs about God and creation. God creates human beings in a certain way, according to an observable pattern. Normality can only be understood with reference to this observable pattern, it cannot be understood only as conformity to a humanly made-up pattern of what we might like human beings to be.
Christians have also found it difficult to admit that some people are homosexual by nature. But the constancy of this pattern makes it clear that very many people are. We could adapt the Jewish-Christian saying, 'What God has joined together let no-one put asunder' by adding: 'And what God has created let no-one object to'!
So?
The Old Testament is a record of some of the thinking about God through thousands of years. It is the word about God. It cannot be taken as an absolute guide to morality because we have already rejected much of its moral teachings and Jesus Christ gave a fresh basis to morality, not in existing law but in the concept of love and respect for God's creation. The Christian New Testament leaves a lot of problems unsolved but gives us a new concept of our divinely-inspired ability to solve them.
Homosexual people should not have to defend themselves. Nor should they have to plead for the same rights we all have. And they should be able to declare their love for each other with dignity and with all the safeguards and appreciations the state gives to others who are willing to declare their love before the whole community. Christians could be and should be in the forefront creating a fresh appreciation of all God's people.