The Bible and the "Gay Marriage" Question: A Response to Prof. Lee Jefferson's Op-ed in the Huffington Post

New Testament Professor Robert Gagnon writes over and over again, as in his latest article that gay marriage is not a new issue for the church and society and the church hasn't changed. See The Bible and the "Gay Marriage" Question: A Response to Prof. Lee Jefferson's Op-ed in the Huffington Post Here are a couple quotes among his many excellent points. An important insight into Romans 1.

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.

A point regarding the irrelavance to nature vs. nurture for Paul.

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.

Regarding the notion that we are in a new era of gay committed relationships;

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.

Whether Jesus's silence on gay unions means anything;

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.

Does quantity of verses on topic imply importance?

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.

He goes on to respond to Jefferson's biblical red herrings. And red herrings abound. Others like to claim that the church does not deny eros, the greek word for romantic love, to anyone else except gays. But that's a false claim. It's denied to incestuous unions as well. That's what John the Baptist got killed for, condemning Herod's incestuous (legal, not biological) marriage to his brother's wife (see Mark 6:17-18 or Matthew 14:3-4). Our society still condemns this legally, but Gagnon gets to the reason behind that,

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.

We are made for a marriage that involves a single, unique complement, one man and one woman. For all other inclinations, the church will not bless that kind of eros love. Agape love abides forever, the love that is about others and not ourselves, the kind of love Jesus showed us, the kind of love Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 13. An insistence by the Christian for an eros that is forbidden by God's word, is selfish and not agape. A life without eros can be difficult, but is not rare, and is better, spiritually, than a life of sin, with eros contrary to God's word.

God's grace is sufficient for all of us.