Same Sex Marriage and Sin
For the purpose of this discussion, I will stick to the question of public policy. Given the fact that we live in a pluralistic democracy with a spectrum of experiences and deeply held convictions at play, how then shall we live together?
I agree with Tony Campolo, the prolific evangelical preacher and evangelist who, in 2003, stood in the shadow of the Federal Marriage Amendment and stated in a public debate with his wife, Peggy—a staunch advocate of gay rights: “At this particular point we have to agree on one thing: [gay and lesbian people] are entitled to an end to all forms of discrimination. There should be no legal system that gives rights to heterosexual couples that it does not make available to homosexual couples.”[i]
Brian Murphy, a filmmaker and web-designer who self-identifies as queer, shared a story with me in a recent interview. A friend of Murphy’s attended an evangelical college and grew up with no gay friends or family. During a classroom discussion of homosexuality and gay rights on solely a conceptual and theoretical level, Murphy’s friend had an epiphany: these are people. We’re not just talking about a concept or a theory. These are people.[ii]
That is my starting point: are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gender people human? If they are human, then they, too, are made in the image of God. If they are made in the image of God, then they, too, were given free will – the right to exercise liberty over their bodies and their lives – in Genesis 1. This right applies even when I disagree with the liberties they take. What’s more, the fact that gays and lesbians are made in the image of God endows them with intrinsic value and the same basic rights and protections afforded to any other human being. To legislate anything less, is to set up a society that formally declares a certain class of people as less than human.
And that was a central point made by attorneys David Boies (a liberal) and Theodore Olson (a conservative) who succeeded in overturning California’s Proposition 8 in 2010. The controversial 2008 Proposition aimed to ban gay marriage throughout the state. In 2010 they joined forces to fight Proposition 8 because they agreed that to ban a certain set of citizens from the fundamental civil right to love and be united with the person of their choice is to create a formal two-class system of citizenship in the United States. This violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection of the law for all U.S. citizens.[iii]
Legally, marriage is a fundamental right of citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In the 1987 case of Turner v. Safley the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Missouri Department of Corrections regulation that effectively blocked convicted rapists and murderers from being able to marry while in prison. The Court ruled unanimously that the right to marry is such a fundamental right of citizenship that even convicted rapists and murderers cannot have that that right impaired or revoked.[iv]
Yet, with the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, federal legislation formally defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, effectively banning same-sex marriage and creating a two class system for the purpose of federal law in the U.S. The Act does not prohibit states from defining marriage on their own terms, but more than 1,138 rights and protections are conferred to U.S. citizens by the federal government upon marriage.[v] LGBT citizens of the United States have no hope of ever receiving even one of these rights or protections in their lifetime—not under current federal law. They are literally and legally second-class citizens. Thus, on February 23, 2011, President Obama declared the Act unconstitutional and instructed the Department of Justice to stop defending the law in court.[vi]
The truth is institutions of marriage and family have been on an ever-changing journey since the founding of our nation. The institution of marriage is not static. It is dynamic—and as a woman, an African-American woman, I say thankfully so.
Miscegenation laws, introduced in 1691 in the state of Virginia and 1692 in Maryland, prohibited several ethnic minorities from marrying white Americans until 1967. In an interview with Bill Moyers, David Boies, the liberal side of the legal team who succeded in overturning California’s Proposition 8, remembered, “When the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to prevent interracial marriages, 64 percent or more of the population of the United States, about two thirds of the population of the United States, believed interracial marriages were wrong. That’s a much higher percentage than opposes gay and lesbian marriage in this country today.” Ted Olson, the conservative member of the team added, “When the Supreme Court had made the decision in Loving versus Virginia in 1967, striking down the laws of 17 states that prohibited interracial marriage, now it’s only what? 40 years later? 40 years later we think that’s inconceivable that Virginia or some other state could prohibit interracial marriage. It’s inconceivable.”
Likewise, the truth about the historic institution of marriage and family—even Christian marriage and family—is dynamic. Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation declared in 1522:
If a woman who is fit for marriage has a husband who is not, and she is unable openly to take unto herself another and unwilling, too, to do anything dishonourable since the pope in such a case demands without cause abundant testimony and evidence, she should say to her husband, “Look, my dear husband, you are unable to fulfill your conjugal duty toward me; you have cheated me out of my maidenhood and even imperiled my honour and my soul’s salvation; in the sight of God there is no real marriage between us. Grant me the privilege of contracting a secret marriage with your brother or closest relative, and you retain the title of husband so that your property will not fall to strangers. Consent to being betrayed voluntarily by me, as you have betrayed me without my consent.”
I stated further that the husband is obligated to consent to such an arrangement and thus to provide for her the conjugal duty and children, and that if he refuses to do so she should secretly flee from him to some other country and there contract a marriage.[vii]
This teaching would be unthinkable in most Protestant Christian churches today, yet Luther is the original architect of our protestant faith. Similarly, women were seen as property to be bought and sold with dowries until the late 19th century. Not so today. Rape was legal within marriage in the U.S. until the first state, South Dakota, outlawed it in 1975 and the last state, North Carolina, outlawed it in 1993. In the antebellum south, the Christian vow of marriage did nothing to stop the cultural norm of white masters who serial-raped African-American women enslaved by them and many times even the children born of those rapes and using them both as “bed warmers.”[viii] As a result, the marriage and family structure in the antebellum south was distorted from the start.
The veneer of the historic American marriage and family and the reality of it are two very different things. Marriage in the church and in the United States, its norms and its practices are dynamic—not static. In the harsh light of day, to suggest that Jesus-following Americans should want to “preserve” the “traditional” status and legal norms of marriage in the U.S. reveals either a deep, and sometimes, willful ignorance about the progressive course of marriage in our nation or, worse, a desire to reclaim the “traditional” place of white males in America.
Tony Campolo tells the story of a boy named Roger. Roger was gay. He and Campolo went to the same high school in West Philadelphia, in the 1950s. Roger would wait when the other boys took their shower after gym class because he was afraid. And when he came out the other boys, including Campolo, were ready with their wet towels. They would whip their towels at his naked body. They thought it was funny. One day, when Campolo wasn’t there, five guys cornered Roger in the shower and urinated on him. That night Roger got up around 2 o’clock in the morning and went down into his basement and hung himself.[ix]
Campolo reflects: “And I knew I wasn’t a Christian. Oh, I believed all the right things; I was orthodox. I was evangelical to the core, but I wasn’t a Christian, because if I were a Christian, I would have been his friend. I would have stood up for him. I would have defended him. And when they came to pick on him I would have said, “Lay off! This is Roger, my friend.”
Personally, President Obama’s former position has reflected my own for the past few years. I have whole-heartedly supported civil unions, but had been hesitant to support same-sex marriage. But the process of writing this chapter has been a convicting experience. I know a lot of Rogers. I have called them “friend.” But truth-be-told I have been happy to close my eyes while society dehumanizes my friends. That is not love. That is not justice. That is not the way of Jesus.
Campolo says, “I hear from my evangelical friends often: ‘We love homosexuals, but…’ Well the truth is, there can be no ‘but’. We love homosexuals, therefore we must stand up for justice for gay and lesbian people, because justice is nothing more than love translated into social policy.
The church and society are still splitting over the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts. But we can know this. We’re talking about people—people made in the image of God. And as long as we maintain a dehumanizing legal system that gives fundamental rights and protections to some and not to a class of others, our society is in sin.
This article is an excerpt from my book, Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics, reprinted with permission from the publisher, Russell Media.
[i] Tony Campolo, audio recording of Tony and Peggy Campolo Dialogue at the Gay Christian Network Gathering (2003): http://www.gaychristian.net/campolos.php.
[ii] Brian Murphy, Transcript of audio taped interview with author, January 4, 2011, pg 7.
[iii] David Boies, Transcript of Theodore Olson and David Boies interview on “Bill Moyer’s Journal,” February 26, 2010: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02262010/transcript1.html.
[iv] See The U.S. Supreme Court, Turner v. Tafley 482 U.S. 78 (1987): http://laws.findlaw.com/us/482/78.html.
[v] Dayna K. Shah, “Defense of Marriage Act: Update to Prior Report” (2004), United States General Accounting Office, pg. 1. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf.
[vi] Charlie Savage and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “In Shift, U.S. Says Marriage Act Blocks Gay Rights,” The New York Times, February 24, p. A1: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24marriage.html.
[vii] Martin Luther, “The Estate of Marriage” (1522) Translated by Walther I. Brandt:
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/protref/women/WR0913.htm
[viii] Jean Fagan Yellin, Ed, Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1987), pgs 13-14, 18, 27-30, 73-75.
[ix] Campolo, audio recording (2003).
Lisa,
I meant to respond to your essay two weeks ago but got involved in a separate exchange on this issue in the leading questions section and ran out of time. While I know we should move on to the next discussion of health care reform, especially with the Supreme Court announcement tomorrow, I wanted to respond to what you wrote.
You started by saying, “For the purpose of this discussion, I will stick to the question of public policy.” I observed as I read your post that you certainly did not stick only to the public policy question. Or, maybe your case for the full application of marriage law to same-sex couples assumes that those who would be against such an application must have an underlying bigotry against gays and lesbians to take the position we take. When you recounted Tony Campolo’s terribly tragic story about his gay classmate, Roger, who endured extreme humiliation in Campolo’s high school locker room and then later committed suicide, you wandered well outside of the public policy debate. To be fair, you did tie this theme of dehumanizing treatment of gays and lesbians with public policy in the last sentence of your essay when you wrote, “And as long as we maintain a dehumanizing legal system that gives fundamental rights and protections to some and not to a class of others, our society is in sin.”
The reason I want to challenge you on what I would characterize as your substantial straying from your commitment to “stick to the question of public policy” is that you seem to suggest that Christians (or anyone else) who believe marriage law should continue to be applied only to the union of husband and wife are complicit in unjust discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, on the basis of an underlying bigotry. As I argued in another exchange with John Hubers and Paul Brink in the leading questions section, the union of husband and wife and same sex union are not the same “things” and so it is not necessarily unjust to treat different things differently. The union of husband and wife involves full bodily union, the potential for life generation, and the bringing together of the two halves of humanity. I know you’ve read the literature and have seen some version of this before, but these attributes of conjugal marriage make it a distinct interpersonal arrangement, one that warrants legal recognition, rights, and protections in a way that other interpersonal arrangements do not.
Heterosexual sexual activity is simply of greater “public” consequence than other sexual activity because it can result in the next generation of citizens, volunteers, soldiers, leaders, entrepreneurs, workers, and so on. Furthermore, it is an utter public good that to the extent possible, children are raised in the committed family of the two people who came together to create them. For these reasons, government has an interest in legally supporting the union of husband and wife in ways that is absent in other kinds of relationships.
Not all discrimination is unjust discrimination. Just discrimination of persons and institutions is part of just governance. I, as a 30 year old, should not receive Social Security benefits like someone who is 70. In this instance, I am being justly discriminated against. My family should not receive Medicaid benefits due to my current income; again, in this I am being justly discriminated against. Likewise, one should not receive the legal support of marriage law when one is not in a marriage. You may, like many understandably do, charge me with a circular argument around my definition of marriage. But, this is why I argue that I don’t think marriage and same sex union are the same things; they’re not the same institution. What I contend should happen is that a separate political-legal-moral argument should unfold with respect to government recognition of the institution of same sex union based solely on its distinct attributes and the pertinence of those attributes to the pursuit of public justice, the distinct task of the state. I, therefore, challenge your assertion that denying same sex couples the right to marriage is a civil rights issue; everyone who wants to enter into the institution of marriage and has a willing partner has the right to the full rights, benefits, and recognition of marriage law, but some people don’t want to enter into marriage, they want to enter into something else.
The second aspect of your essay that I think needs addressing involves homosexuality itself.
You write, “Campolo says, ‘I hear from my evangelical friends often: ‘We love homosexuals, but…’’ Well the truth is, there can be no ‘but’.” “The church and society are still splitting over the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts. But we can know this. We’re talking about people—people made in the image of God.”
If your evangelical friends are saying that they “love homosexuals, but….” and by that “but” they mean that they have serious concerns about unrepentant sin, which would be a Christian way to characterize recurring involvement in homosexual acts, then that “but” is quite understandable. Now, there are countless other forms of unrepentant sin in our midst, from gossip to neglect of the poor, but evangelicals are not generally labeled as bigots for calling people to repent of those sins like they are for calling gays and lesbians to repent of their homosexual acts. My point here is that evangelicals are in a tough spot immediately upon expressing their tradition’s view on homosexual acts, and this should be acknowledged.
As you can tell, I don’t believe the Episcopalians or ELCA Lutherans or PCUSA Presbyterians have gotten right the Christian response to homosexuality but neither do I think that many real congregations and individuals among evangelicals and Catholics who continue to advocate that sex is for the union of husband and wife alone have their response right either. All I’m trying to say here is that those of us who advocate Christian sexual morality are immediately put on the defensive just by standing within historic Christian orthodoxy on this question. I genuinely want to be the kind of person who recognizes and responds to the intrinsic value, i.e., the “image-bearing” quality, of every human being. But I do not believe that being this kind of person requires me to always and everywhere refuse to acknowledge the existence of unrepentant sin. I also don’t believe a conversation on such a fundamental matter as one’s sexuality should even take place outside the context of a deeply trust-based friendship; the problem is that any disclosure of a person’s or congregation’s position that homosexual acts are immoral makes such friendships between evangelicals or Catholics and gays and lesbians extremely difficult to develop. I truly long for a better approach to this dilemma. How do you approach it? Or have you concluded that historic Christian teaching that sex is only for male-female marriage was in error and that the Church should condone homosexuality as a valid, moral alternative, thus avoiding the dilemma I just described?
Thank you for this challenging post.
Nathan
Lisa,
I meant to respond to your essay two weeks ago but got involved in a separate exchange on this issue in the leading questions section and ran out of time. While I know we should move on to the next discussion of health care reform, especially with the Supreme Court announcement tomorrow, I wanted to respond to what you wrote.
You started by saying, “For the purpose of this discussion, I will stick to the question of public policy.” I observed as I read your post that you certainly did not stick only to the public policy question. Or, maybe your case for the full application of marriage law to same-sex couples assumes that those who would be against such an application must have an underlying bigotry against gays and lesbians to take the position we take. When you recounted Tony Campolo’s terribly tragic story about his gay classmate, Roger, who endured extreme humiliation in Campolo’s high school locker room and then later committed suicide, you wandered well outside of the public policy debate. To be fair, you did tie this theme of dehumanizing treatment of gays and lesbians with public policy in the last sentence of your essay when you wrote, “And as long as we maintain a dehumanizing legal system that gives fundamental rights and protections to some and not to a class of others, our society is in sin.”
The reason I want to challenge you on what I would characterize as your substantial straying from your commitment to “stick to the question of public policy” is that you seem to suggest that Christians (or anyone else) who believe marriage law should continue to be applied only to the union of husband and wife are complicit in unjust discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, on the basis of an underlying bigotry. As I argued in another exchange with John Hubers and Paul Brink in the leading questions section, the union of husband and wife and same sex union are not the same “things” and so it is not necessarily unjust to treat different things differently. The union of husband and wife involves full bodily union, the potential for life generation, and the bringing together of the two halves of humanity. I know you’ve read the literature and have seen some version of this before, but these attributes of conjugal marriage make it a distinct interpersonal arrangement, one that warrants legal recognition, rights, and protections in a way that other interpersonal arrangements do not.
Heterosexual sexual activity is simply of greater “public” consequence than other sexual activity because it can result in the next generation of citizens, volunteers, soldiers, leaders, entrepreneurs, workers, and so on. Furthermore, it is an utter public good that to the extent possible, children are raised in the committed family of the two people who came together to create them. For these reasons, government has an interest in legally supporting the union of husband and wife in ways that is absent in other kinds of relationships.
Not all discrimination is unjust discrimination. Just discrimination of persons and institutions is part of just governance. I, as a 30 year old, should not receive Social Security benefits like someone who is 70. In this instance, I am being justly discriminated against. My family should not receive Medicaid benefits due to my current income; again, in this I am being justly discriminated against. Likewise, one should not receive the legal support of marriage law when one is not in a marriage. You may, like many understandably do, charge me with a circular argument around my definition of marriage. But, this is why I argue that I don’t think marriage and same sex union are the same things; they’re not the same institution. What I contend should happen is that a separate political-legal-moral argument should unfold with respect to government recognition of the institution of same sex union based solely on its distinct attributes and the pertinence of those attributes to the pursuit of public justice, the distinct task of the state. I, therefore, challenge your assertion that denying same sex couples the right to marriage is a civil rights issue; everyone who wants to enter into the institution of marriage and has a willing partner has the right to the full rights, benefits, and recognition of marriage law, but some people don’t want to enter into marriage, they want to enter into something else.
The second aspect of your essay that I think needs addressing involves homosexuality itself.
You write, “Campolo says, ‘I hear from my evangelical friends often: ‘We love homosexuals, but…’’ Well the truth is, there can be no ‘but’.” “The church and society are still splitting over the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts. But we can know this. We’re talking about people—people made in the image of God.”
If your evangelical friends are saying that they “love homosexuals, but….” and by that “but” they mean that they have serious concerns about unrepentant sin, which would be a Christian way to characterize recurring involvement in homosexual acts, then that “but” is quite understandable. Now, there are countless other forms of unrepentant sin in our midst, from gossip to neglect of the poor, but evangelicals are not generally labeled as bigots for calling people to repent of those sins like they are for calling gays and lesbians to repent of their homosexual acts. My point here is that evangelicals are in a tough spot immediately upon expressing their tradition’s view on homosexual acts, and this should be acknowledged.
As you can tell, I don’t believe the Episcopalians or ELCA Lutherans or PCUSA Presbyterians have gotten right the Christian response to homosexuality but neither do I think that many real congregations and individuals among evangelicals and Catholics who continue to advocate that sex is for the union of husband and wife alone have their response right either. All I’m trying to say here is that those of us who advocate Christian sexual morality are immediately put on the defensive just by standing within historic Christian orthodoxy on this question. I genuinely want to be the kind of person who recognizes and responds to the intrinsic value, i.e., the “image-bearing” quality, of every human being. But I do not believe that being this kind of person requires me to always and everywhere refuse to acknowledge the existence of unrepentant sin. I also don’t believe a conversation on such a fundamental matter as one’s sexuality should even take place outside the context of a deeply trust-based friendship; the problem is that any disclosure of a person’s or congregation’s position that homosexual acts are immoral makes such friendships between evangelicals or Catholics and gays and lesbians extremely difficult to develop. I truly long for a better approach to this dilemma. How do you approach it? Or have you concluded that historic Christian teaching that sex is only for male-female marriage was in error and that the Church should condone homosexuality as a valid, moral alternative, thus avoiding the dilemma I just described?
Thank you for this challenging post.
Nathan
Lisa,
I meant to respond to your essay two weeks ago but got involved in a separate exchange on this issue in the leading questions section and ran out of time. While I know we should move on to the next discussion of health care reform, especially with the Supreme Court announcement tomorrow, I wanted to respond to what you wrote.
You started by saying, “For the purpose of this discussion, I will stick to the question of public policy.” I observed as I read your post that you certainly did not stick only to the public policy question. Or, maybe your case for the full application of marriage law to same-sex couples assumes that those who would be against such an application must have an underlying bigotry against gays and lesbians to take the position we take. When you recounted Tony Campolo’s terribly tragic story about his gay classmate, Roger, who endured extreme humiliation in Campolo’s high school locker room and then later committed suicide, you wandered well outside of the public policy debate. To be fair, you did tie this theme of dehumanizing treatment of gays and lesbians with public policy in the last sentence of your essay when you wrote, “And as long as we maintain a dehumanizing legal system that gives fundamental rights and protections to some and not to a class of others, our society is in sin.”
The reason I want to challenge you on what I would characterize as your substantial straying from your commitment to “stick to the question of public policy” is that you seem to suggest that Christians (or anyone else) who believe marriage law should continue to be applied only to the union of husband and wife are complicit in unjust discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, on the basis of an underlying bigotry. As I argued in another exchange with John Hubers and Paul Brink in the leading questions section, the union of husband and wife and same sex union are not the same “things” and so it is not necessarily unjust to treat different things differently. The union of husband and wife involves full bodily union, the potential for life generation, and the bringing together of the two halves of humanity. I know you’ve read the literature and have seen some version of this before, but these attributes of conjugal marriage make it a distinct interpersonal arrangement, one that warrants legal recognition, rights, and protections in a way that other interpersonal arrangements do not.
Heterosexual sexual activity is simply of greater “public” consequence than other sexual activity because it can result in the next generation of citizens, volunteers, soldiers, leaders, entrepreneurs, workers, and so on. Furthermore, it is an utter public good that to the extent possible, children are raised in the committed family of the two people who came together to create them. For these reasons, government has an interest in legally supporting the union of husband and wife in ways that is absent in other kinds of relationships.
Not all discrimination is unjust discrimination. Just discrimination of persons and institutions is part of just governance. I, as a 30 year old, should not receive Social Security benefits like someone who is 70. In this instance, I am being justly discriminated against. My family should not receive Medicaid benefits due to my current income; again, in this I am being justly discriminated against. Likewise, one should not receive the legal support of marriage law when one is not in a marriage. You may, like many understandably do, charge me with a circular argument around my definition of marriage. But, this is why I argue that I don’t think marriage and same sex union are the same things; they’re not the same institution. What I contend should happen is that a separate political-legal-moral argument should unfold with respect to government recognition of the institution of same sex union based solely on its distinct attributes and the pertinence of those attributes to the pursuit of public justice, the distinct task of the state. I, therefore, challenge your assertion that denying same sex couples the right to marriage is a civil rights issue; everyone who wants to enter into the institution of marriage and has a willing partner has the right to the full rights, benefits, and recognition of marriage law, but some people don’t want to enter into marriage, they want to enter into something else.
The second aspect of your essay that I think needs addressing involves homosexuality itself.
You write, “Campolo says, ‘I hear from my evangelical friends often: ‘We love homosexuals, but…’’ Well the truth is, there can be no ‘but’.” “The church and society are still splitting over the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts. But we can know this. We’re talking about people—people made in the image of God.”
If your evangelical friends are saying that they “love homosexuals, but….” and by that “but” they mean that they have serious concerns about unrepentant sin, which would be a Christian way to characterize recurring involvement in homosexual acts, then that “but” is quite understandable. Now, there are countless other forms of unrepentant sin in our midst, from gossip to neglect of the poor, but evangelicals are not generally labeled as bigots for calling people to repent of those sins like they are for calling gays and lesbians to repent of their homosexual acts. My point here is that evangelicals are in a tough spot immediately upon expressing their tradition’s view on homosexual acts, and this should be acknowledged.
As you can tell, I don’t believe the Episcopalians or ELCA Lutherans or PCUSA Presbyterians have gotten right the Christian response to homosexuality but neither do I think that many real congregations and individuals among evangelicals and Catholics who continue to advocate that sex is for the union of husband and wife alone have their response right either. All I’m trying to say here is that those of us who advocate Christian sexual morality are immediately put on the defensive just by standing within historic Christian orthodoxy on this question. I genuinely want to be the kind of person who recognizes and responds to the intrinsic value, i.e., the “image-bearing” quality, of every human being. But I do not believe that being this kind of person requires me to always and everywhere refuse to acknowledge the existence of unrepentant sin. I also don’t believe a conversation on such a fundamental matter as one’s sexuality should even take place outside the context of a deeply trust-based friendship; the problem is that any disclosure of a person’s or congregation’s position that homosexual acts are immoral makes such friendships between evangelicals or Catholics and gays and lesbians extremely difficult to develop. I truly long for a better approach to this dilemma. How do you approach it? Or have you concluded that historic Christian teaching that sex is only for male-female marriage was in error and that the Church should condone homosexuality as a valid, moral alternative, thus avoiding the dilemma I just described?
Thank you for this challenging post.
Nathan