Love is Love

One argument for gay marriage responds to conservative voices who cite evidence that gay men often engage in unhealthy behaviors. Marriage, the same conservative voices point out, is associated with healthy behaviors and emotions. It’s true—married people do live with greater happiness, emotional stability, health, and longevity. Assume that the conservative voices are right—that much of today’s homosexual behavior tends to be risky and less healthy than marriage-related behaviors. What conclusion might a social conservative then draw? That we should work to keep gays unmarried—that we should support less commitment, covenant, monogamy, and fidelity? Or that we should support more? With some nine hundred thousand HIV-positive Americans and with more than half a million Americans already killed by AIDS, might it be healthier to suggest that confiding, sexual expression to a committed monogamous relationship (marriage is the ideal for gays as well as straights? Jonathan Rauch in Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, “I think it’s a safe bet that marriage and the prospect of marriage would improve gay people’s health and happiness and general welfare much as it has improved straight people’s. I believe it will ennoble and dignify gay love and sex as it has done with straight love and sex; I believe it will close the book on the culture of libertinism and liberation and replace it with a social compact forged of responsibility. In all these respects—physical, spiritual, cultural—gay lives will be improved, at least somewhat but probably immensely.” It’s also about the achievement of legal rights. The legalization of gay marriage would allow for a homosexual couple to have the many benefits that married heterosexual couples have.

1) file joint tax returns

2) leave an inheritance to one another tax free

3) make life-and-death decisions if the other is incapacitated

4) be included on one or the other’s health-insurance plan

5) be granted family leave or bereavement leave in the case of the other’s illness or death

6) have co-parental rights so that both partners are considered parents of their children in all situations

7) have hospital visitation rights

8) receive spousal discounts from auto clubs and other organizations offering family rates

9) have a legal system for equitably dissolving their relationship should it end

They would also have the same responsibilities that are associated with marriage.

1) support one another and any children they may have

2) share financial responsibilities

3) not be able to simply walk away from the relationship

Because marriage is inherently healthy, same-sex marriage will be healthier than its less permanent alternatives. It will likely not accelerate us down a slippery slope to promiscuity and polygamy. To the contrary, it has the potential to “let the air out of the tires of the alternatives-to-marriage movement.” It can prompt heterosexual men and women to appreciate marriage in a new way. Indeed, if implemented as part of a pro-marriage initiative, inviting gay couples to say “I do” may help reverse the growing tendency for straight couples to say “We don’t.”

The one important reason many Christians insist that gays and lesbians change their orientation is the belief that the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexuality. Some people of faith see no need for further discussion. First, the word homosexuality is never used in Scripture. In fact, the word didn’t even exist until late in the nineteenth century. In the few places where same-sex sexual acts are mentioned in Scripture the context suggests idolatry, violent rape, lust, exploitation, or promiscuity. Some important points to remember:

1) The Bible has very little to say about same-sex sexual expression

2) The few verses that speak of same-sex acts must be seen in their context and in relation to the condemnation of idolatry, lust, promiscuity, and exploitation

3) Translators have muddied the waters in many cases, because the specific behaviors that were addressed in their cultural context don’t easily lend themselves to a succinct and descriptive rendering in modern English

4) Scripture does not speak to naturally disposed same-sex orientation, nor does it speak to loving, committed homosexual relationships

5) Jesus is not recorded as having said anything at all about homosexuality, but he said a great deal about loving our neighbor, being humble, avoiding judgmentalism, and caring about people who were hurting and regarded as outcasts. “The least of those” in any category of humankind were very important to Jesus (Matthew 25:31-46). Shouldn’t we, then, as followers of Jesus, be asking what Jesus would do about the questions raised by our homosexual brothers and sisters as they seek out their role in the family of God? How would Jesus regard a loving, committed same-sex couple? What did He, as the Word made flesh, have on His radar screen, and what should we therefore have on ours? 

To the extend that “healing” ministries aim not, as they publically declare, to reverse sexual orientation but to support people in escaping unrewarding and unhealthy sexual behaviors, and in living free of drugs and alcohol, most people of faith could applaud their efforts. Regardless of one’s sexual orientation, there are moral and health-related issues worth contemplating. Transformational-ministry advocates and skeptics agree that sexual behavior can change; some people can be convinced to choose celibacy, and others to marry someone of the other sex (even if that often involves fantasizing about a same-sex person during sex). Advocates and skeptics also agree that sexual identity can change, as ex-gay support groups encourage members to think of and proclaim themselves as no longer gay (unlike AA members, who view themselves as forever alcoholic and vulnerable to relapse). Virtually everyone further agrees that sexual orientation is more resistant to change. Reparative therapists and ex-gay ministries nevertheless declare that in many cases it can change; the mental health associations are skeptical. Thus the issue narrows to whether, aided by therapy and ministry, the likelihood of sexual reorientation is sufficient to encourage the effort, rather than encouraging people to “accept the thing that cannot be change”. What is the failure rate of reparative therapy and ex-gay transformation ministries? And if the failures bear a cost of increased guilt, depression, and risk of suicide, what success level would warrant encouraging those desiring change to enter such therapy? As Christianlesbian.com says, “I believe it’s vitally important that none of us, whether lesbian or “ex-lesbian” discredit the work of God in someone else’s life simply because it seems to conflict with our own experience…To me, the miracle in each of these stories isn’t that a woman no longer has same-sex affections and relationships but that each was healed from unforgiveness, bitterness, painful memories, anger, and self-hatred. They have grown in their understanding that God loves them, in the knowledge of their total dependence on God in all things, and in their desire to submit all of their life to God’s control. These are the same things I celebrate in the lives of many Christian lesbians. We might possibly have more in common than we dare to imagine.”

The necessary if impractical experiment would: identify male volunteers wishing to undergo sexual reorientation and measure their genital sexual responses to same-and other-sex erotic stimuli; randomly assign some to a proposed treatment; after the treatment, reassess sexual orientation by the same physciological measure.

“Can leopards change their spots?” Jeremiah 12:23

Personally, I do not think that sexual orientation is something that can be changed, though people can change their sexual behaviors. Someone who has promiscuous sex can decide to “wait until marriage” however it would understandably be harder for them to abstain from sex than someone who had never experienced sex. I think the biggest reason that gay men and women come forward for “reorientation” is because they have been taught by their families, friends, and the church to be ashamed of their orientation. I read an article several months back where a pastor claimed that “hundreds” of gay men came to him and said they were unhappy because of their sexual orientation. My argument was that these men were most likely raised in that church or in church (why else would they talk to a pastor?) and felt that guilt because they had been told by that same church that their feelings of sexual attraction and emotional attachment to the same-sex was shameful. I think if we lived in a culture that embraced different sexual orientations other than heterosexual that these “reorientation” ministries wouldn’t exist. 

Despite well-publicized and sometimes passionate disagreements about sexual orientation within the family of faith, there is also much agreement. Although differences always command attention, our conversation will be more civil if we remember that what unites us is deeper than what divides us. Today’s followers of Jesus share a faith that God exists, loves us, and made this love manifest with a supreme redeeming act, which also serves as the supreme model for our own love for others. Whatever our differences, we agree that everyone is an image bearer of God, with immeasurable worth, and deserves respect. Most of us not only agree on the basics of our faith but also have found some common ground in our emerging understanding of sexual orientation. We are likely to agree on the numbers, on compassion, on the incompleteness of silence, that science (when rightly interpreted) has much to offer, and that science cannot resolve value questions. In surveys, 3 or 4 percent of men and 1 to 2 percent of women report being exclusively homosexual. As Christians, we understand that acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence toward anyone violate Christ’s teachings. The causes of sexual orientation are just beginning to be understood. As people of faith in times have allowed science to inform their understanding of the physical universe, so scientific findings may today inform our understanding of human sexual orientation. Even if science someday explains why people differ in sexual orientation, we will still have to decide to regard a homosexual orientation as a normal variation (like left-handedness) or an abnormality (like dyslexia). And regardless of sexual orientation, we all face moral choices over options that include hook ups, long-term relationships, and abstinence. Rather than specifying sexual orientation, perhaps biological factors predispose a temperament that influences sexuality in the context of experience. Perhaps genes carry a code for prenatal hormones and brain anatomy, which would predispose temperaments that lead children to prefer gender-typical or gender-atypical activities and friends, which preference then direct their sexual orientation, as theorized by Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem. Regardless of the process, the consistency of the genetic, neural, and biochemical findings has swung the pendulum toward a greater appreciation for biological influences. If biology indeed proves critical such would explain why we do not experience our own sexual orientation as a choice.

This chapter dealt with different theories about why we develop our own sexual orientation. Some were about finger length and brain size, while others were about prenatal or environmental influences. Honestly, I think the biggest thing is to recognize that sexual orientation is not a choice. I saw a survey online today that asked “When did you decide to be heterosexual?”. What’s so remarkable about it is that if you asked that question to people who theorize that homosexuality is a choice, I bet they’d say that they did not decide and were born heterosexual. I really hope in the next few years that animosity towards homosexual, transsexual, asexual, and bisexual reduces. There were so many suicides of young homosexual teens last year all because of bullying—that ultimately stems from that bully being taught that homosexuality makes someone a lesser person. In my own family I have seen such heterosexist comments from my cousins. What’s even more astounding is that they have a gay uncle. However, when I asked them why they continue to ridicule gay men, but love their uncle, their reply was that they loved him because he “didn’t act gay”. 

America’s marriages and the nurturing of flourishing, self-disciplined children are challenged by three toxic forces: the social consequences of unemployment and inequality, media models of impulsive sexuality, and the increase in self-focused individualism. Poverty is demoralizing, stressful, and usually limiting. Inequality also undermines marriage. A situation in which more young men have jobs with no future, or futures with no job, is likely to mean more young women with no husbands, more children without fathers in their lives, and more young men without the civilizing responsibilities of marriage and committed fatherhood. Show sociologist William Julius Wilson a place where joblessness runs high, and he will show you a place with an abundance of father-absent households. A retired mechanic, Ken Parnell, from Benton Harbor, Michigan was asked why there are so many single parents in the town. He replied, “Because black men can’t get no jobs…How can you take care of your family if you can’t get a job?” If we wanted to produce a socially responsible capitalism (one that rewards initiative but also values healthy children and families) would most likely include the following. Full employment at livable wages as a higher priority; Travel, restaurant, and store discounts not only to senior citizens but also to card-carrying custodial parents; inflations adjustments not only to a senior citizens’ Social Security payments but also to dependent exemptions and family assistance; tax policies that reward rather than penalize marriage; priority to married couples with children when allocating subsidizing housing; corporate policies that minimize family uprootings; offer flex time, compressed time, and part-time work; welcome the home-based outsourcing of work; and equitably compensate workers and executives. The media also needs to change some of its depictions of certain material. The consensus conclusions, affirmed in statements by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Institutes of Mental Health can be summarized like this: Violence viewing desensitizes people to cruelty, alters perceptions of reality, and increases aggressive behavior. The viewing of sexual material: distorts perceptions of sexual reality, decreases attraction for comparatively less exciting partners, primes men to perceive women in sexual terms, makes sexual aggression seem less serious, writes sexual “scripts”, and increases sexual violence. Morality aside, Americans have the right to expect media to offer social scripts of kindness, civility, attachment, and fidelity. Media researchers Edward Donnerstein, Daniel Linz, and Steven Penrod say, “Our utopian and perhaps naïve hope is that in the end the truth revealed through good science will prevail and the public will be convinced that these images not only demean those portrayed, but also those who view them.” Myers and Scanzoni believe that certain steps have helped us come closer to this new society: a slew of recent studies and books have made convincing cases for marriage and co-parenting, a bipartisan “marriage movement” has sprung up and has spun off marriage-promotion and mentoring initiatives in 150 communities, the National Marriage Project’s State of Our Unions report (published annually since 1999) now provides the national media with research and analysis on trends in marriage, character education has reentered the American educations agenda, sex-education programs are teaching both what liberals want (the benefits of safe sex) and what conservatives want (the benefits of saved sex).