Camel and Gnat

Lawfully Joined

Same-Sex Marriage in Light of the Church’s Traditional and Liturgical Practice

Tobias S. Haller, BSG

Submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Divinity

The General Theological Seminary

New York

April 1997

REVISED 2005

Lawfully Joined: Same Sex Marriage in Light of the Church’s Traditional and Liturgical Practice

Tobias S. Haller, BSG

Abstract

This paper explores same-sex marriage from a pastoral and liturgical perspective. The first portion examines issues of nature and natural law, and Jewish and Christian legal and canonical regulations of sex and marriage, with particular attention to discontinuities with the idealized myth of “lifelong, heterosexual and monogamous marriage.” The second section looks at the marriage rites for different- and same-sex couples, and explores some of the questions remaining to be addressed as the church restructures its concept of marriage and marriage rites.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Liturgy before (and with) theology

Life before liturgy

A question of definitions: “Marriage”

The Idealized Myth and the Pastoral Reality

The nature of myth

The substance of the myth at hand

The nature of law and the law of nature

A survey of the discontinuities in the tradition

Discontinuities in Anglican/Episcopal teaching and policy

Concluding observations: Pastoral perspectives and approaches

The Liturgical Background

Changing structures and meanings in Episcopal marriage rites

Same-sex rites: Purported and adopted

“Blessing” as a pointer towards a theology of marriage

Concluding reflection

Appendices

Appendix: The minority that dare not speak its name

Appendix: Why not the Orthodox?

Appendix: Episcopal (and Other) Marriage Rites

Works Consulted or Cited

Lawfully Joined

Same-Sex Marriage in Light of the Church’s Traditional and Liturgical Practice

Tobias S. Haller, BSG

Introduction

It often happens, with regard to new inventions, that one part of the general public finds them useless and another considers them to be impossible. When it becomes clear that the possibility and the usefulness can no longer be denied, most agree that the whole thing was fairly easy to discover and that they knew about it all along.
— Abraham Edelcrantz, Treatise on the Telegraph

This paper explores same-sex marriage from a pastoral and liturgical perspective. After a brief introduction, the first portion examines issues of nature and natural law, and Jewish and Christian legal and canonical regulations of sex and marriage, paying particular attention to discontinuities with the idealized myth of “lifelong, heterosexual and monogamous marriage.” This is not an exhaustive survey, but highlights significant changes in each major period. The second section of this study looks at the marriage rites for different- and same-sex couples, and begins to explore some of the questions remaining to be addressed.

The first section shows that the acceptance of same-sex marriage requires of the church little greater pastoral flexibility than it has already demonstrated with regard to different-sex marriage. The second suggests that a critical examination of different-sex marriage, in light of the challenges and questions same-sex marriage raises, provides an avenue for a clearer and more consistent liturgical theology of marriage.

This paper is not an apologia for homosexuality in general, rebutting arguments adduced against it, though it will address such arguments in passing as they relate to the larger concern. As to Scripture, many such apologetic studies exist, and I concur with the conclusion of New Testament scholar Robin Scroggs —

Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today’s debate. They should no longer be used in denominational discussions about homosexuality, should in no way be used as a weapon to justify refusal of ordination, not because the Bible is not authoritative, but simply because it does not address the issues involved. (Scroggs 127)

Some apologists seek to interpret the Biblical evidence so as to remove all reference to homosexuality. This strains the credulity of open-minded critics, and provides those of more polemical bent with ready ammunition to undermine even the sound arguments of such apologists. However, in the judgment typified by Scroggs, these passages relate to homosexual rape, homosexuality as punishment for or as a component of idol-worship, cultic practice, prostitution, or pederasty. The early church’s broader application of these texts to all homosexual acts arose in large part from its interaction with Stoic philosophy and Roman legal structures.

This application on the part of the early church is irrelevant to the question of same-sex marriage, and committed, loving, same-sex relationships. It may appear shocking thus to dismiss the teaching of the early church regarding homosexuality; but as will be shown below, the church has dismissed most of what that early church taught about heterosexuality with similar ease. Unless some independent criterion for judgment is supplied, the mere fact that the early church had such-and-such a teaching is no longer a justifiable rationale for retaining it.

Therefore, it is taken as axiomatic that heterosexuality and homosexuality are, as “An Affirmation in Koinonía” states, “morally neutral... and can be lived out with beauty, honor, holiness, and integrity...” (J 1994:155). How the church might better foster the realization of intimate, self-giving, human relationships regardless of the sex of the partners is one aim of this paper. A critical examination of different-sex marriage can provide a rationale for same-sex marriage; and an examination of same-sex marriage may provide avenues for the revitalization, reform and enrichment of different-sex marriage — for which a consistent theology has yet to be developed.

Liturgy before (and with) theology

For many, the phrase “same-sex marriage” makes as much sense as “vegetarian steak tartare.” The two concepts simply do not jibe; the phenomena of which they speak are from fundamentally different orders of experience. Those who take this view do not see the question facing the church and the state so much as “should we” but as “can we.” These critics come from every point on the political spectrum, from the militant activist who sees “gay marriage” as a surrender to an alien folkway, to the conservative ethicist who wears down the circular path of deontological reasoning (“homosexuals can’t marry because marriage is for heterosexuals”). Even in the middle, the holy ground for Anglicans (especially Anglican bishops), one finds such statements as this concerning theologians and liturgists currently working on the rationale for developing a same-sex marriage rite: “They have not made their theological case, nor do I think they can.” (Marshall 1)

This comment indicates doubt concerning even the possibility of a theology for same-sex marriage, but indicates as well the presupposition that one needs to have a theology before one can develop a liturgy. It may also be, as was suggested to me privately, that Bishop Marhsall intended his comment as a spur to urge the theologians (and liturgists) to do their work! However, the idea that theology precedes (or should precede) liturgy, might be answered by observing that liturgy and theology are concurrent manifestations of the same “faith seeking understanding,” and as Aidan Kavanagh notes, liturgy has its own theology. He argues persuasively “that worship ... is what gives rise to theological reflection, rather than the other way around.” (Kavanagh 3) Jesus broke bread and gave the cup long before the church got down to the business of trying to construct a theology of the eucharistic presence; the rite of baptism in the name of the Trinity preceded by several generations the theological developments that would crystalize in the creed of Nicea (Kavanagh 92); and, more relevant to the study at hand, people married and were given in marriage long before the church developed or promulgated a theology of marriage. Or perhaps it would be better to say theologies of marriage — for there has been as little agreement in the church as a whole on a “theology” of marriage as on the mode of Christ’s presence in the eucharist, or the economy of the Trinity — if as much.

Life before liturgy

Theology is usually done backwards... Convictions in theology and moral theology are usually arrived at by deep and complex processes nurtured by experience and intuition... These convictions are articulated and tested by means of theological reflection on scripture and tradition. (Thomas 177)

It should not be surprising that sex, of all human capacities and activities, makes the church’s head spin; it is, as Paul Ricoeur says, “after all a matter of eros and not logos,” (Sedgwick 29) and since the church is not entirely of one mind even on the Logos (witness the theories of the Atonement and Incarnation) unity should not be expected on questions of sexual morality. The breadth of opinion about sex over the last several millennia is far wider than currently suggested, and I will review the church’s teaching and acting on sexuality, prefacing my examination of the liturgical expressions of marriage with an examination of the underlying human phenomena expressed in nature, custom, and law.

There is every good reason to do this. Even liturgy doesn’t come first. Before the urge to ritualize finds expression in formal liturgy there must be some human experience which the ritual marks and notes with its own special character: one does not build the temple until well after the experience of the Holy and the desire to worship that mysterium tremendum et fascinans: the burning bush and the mountain top precede the tent of meeting, which itself precedes the more durable Temple. Though some express discomfort at adding Experience as a fourth leg to the traditional Anglican stool, a moment’s reflection makes it clear that Wesley no more invented “Experience” than Anglicans did “Scripture, Tradition, and Reason” — and a careful reading of Hooker will demonstrate that he was not only aware that Experience and Reason were abroad in the world before a word of Scripture was uttered, and before Tradition began its sometimes erring process of ordering and interpreting this wealth of conflicting data, but that natural reason (which involves experience) is a necessity as much as Scripture is — neither stands alone. As Charles Hefling reminds us, citing poet Charles Williams, “‘The glory of God... is in facts. The almost incredible nature of things is that there is no fact which is not in his glory.’” (Hefling 157) The facts before us do not originate in the theological dicta of the hierarchy, but the experiential data of the faithful: human experience, therefore, must be at least our beginning text for exegesis — and this is all the more true when the Scripture gives us so very little to go on.

The Biblical silence and the human response

One of the facts before us is that the Bible, while telling us bit about sex and sexuality in descriptions of human acts and legal codes, contains neither a marriage liturgy nor a theology of sexuality. Much of the church’s difficulty in finding resolution to the issues before it results from attempting to work backwards from dogmatic or systematic theology to pastoral practice — to formulate rules based on abstract principles — rather than looking at the lives of faithful people and discerning the signs of grace in them. There is little new in the tendency of ecclesiastical hierarchies to work in this way, that is, to seek theological rationales before action. The priest and Levite passed the wounded one by on theological grounds; the compassionate Samaritan exercised the merciful but irregular option.

My approach here is to examine what Israel and the church and its members have done about marriage — regulations and laws (beginning with the biblical witness, sparse as it is) imposed and obeyed or ignored, then the rites celebrated or forbidden. The goal is to show that the teaching on sex and marriage is often in tension with the facts of sex and marriage, and that practices the church has come to allow through the pressure of what people actually do offer a context in which to place the current “discontinuity between th[e church’s] teaching and experience of many members of this body.”

Discontinuity has long been with us, in part because theologians (especially “official” theologians) are often in tension with the world — but rarely in a prophetic Christ-against-culture mode. More often than not the church resists present change by blessing the cultural institutions of the past — not the ancient past of an undying and constant tradition, but the past of a few generations ago. Because of this lag the church’s official pronouncements are rarely prophetic, often barely relevant to the lives of those to whom they are addressed, and sometimes ludicrously out-of-date — the belated Roman Catholic apology to Galileo, and tardy acknowledgment of Darwin are recent instances.

As late as the 1950 encyclical letter Humani Generis the Vatican affirmed the literal reality of Adam and Eve as necessary to a particular understanding of original sin and its transmission. Only by developing new models for the doctrine of original sin have Roman Catholic theologians been able to accommodate the church’s teaching to the findings of evolutionary science. Naturally, little fanfare is given to such massive revisions; matters Humani Generis referred to as “data which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Church propose concerning original sin” were simply allowed to fall away quietly — or as quietly as the press allowed. (Neuner 125)

This epistemological lag undermines the church’s credibility. If the church is shown to be mistaken in matters of fact which can be tested by empirical standards (the structure of the solar system, the process of evolution through natural selection), and reluctant to alter its teaching even long after the error is demonstrated, then why should it be trusted in those matters which are incapable of demonstration or proof? Put more bluntly, “If the church cannot teach accurately concerning what is plain and demonstrable about the things of this world, why should it be trusted on what is vague and difficult concerning the life of the world to come?”

It is no solution to excuse the church by allowing it to have been beyond its competence when making pronouncements about the solar system or evolution. It was beyond its competence — but didn’t know it. In fact, it remained adamant in its claims to competency precisely when it was most deeply and demonstrably in error. Suffering from double ignorance is not a recommendation for being heeded especially in those doctrinal matters which hinge upon specific world-views. Much of the church’s teaching on sexuality is informed by “natural” principles long since shown to be false (Hellenistic and medieval biological theories of human generation). If reevaluation of such a foundational teaching as original sin can be made in the light of evidence that sheds new light on the Scripture and tradition, surely new findings in sexuality should influence an area which even some conservative thinkers admit is not a core doctrine of the Christian faith.

Pre-scientific theories of sexuality and human biology have had significant and lasting impact on the church and the world. I use the term pre-scientific advisedly, as every age has its own science. In the ancient world most people “knew” that babies were the result of the man planting his “seed” (zarah, sperma, semen) in the fertile “earth” of the woman; this view is reflected without need for further comment in Psalm 139:14-15. The “seed” contained all that was necessary for the next generation, needing only a place to grow and nourishment, which would be provided by the earth. This view is reflected in Hebrews 7:10 where Levi is described as still being “in” his ancestor Abraham’s loins. By the time of Hippocrates and Aristotle, observant scientists had noted that the menstrual flow ceased with conception, and came to believe that the embryo was “congealed” or “compacted” by the action of the seed upon the blood which was now no longer being lost month by month. Aristotle argued further (Generation of Animals 728a10) that the pleasurable feeling experienced by men upon the “planting of the seed” represented the emission of pneuma which instilled the soul into the embryo. This view is reflected rather precisely in Wisdom 7:1-2, where “the author is characteristically unable to resist the urge to supply some of the physiological details of the formation of the embryo in accord with the latest findings of the science of his day.” (Winston 165) “Of his day” is the operative in this instance: some beliefs concerning sexuality have demonstrated remarkable resistance to correction, even among scientists. The notion that a woman is merely a passive vessel in procreation, providing fertile soil for the “seed” deposited by the man probably derives from folk perceptions, and was taken as a truism in the patristic era. However, the idea persisted well up into our own “scientific” age; discovery of the microscope confirmed the error instead of correcting it. Leeuwenhoeck (in 1678) “found” that sperm contained miniature precursors of animals and humans that would take root and grow in appropriate wombs; this finding was published by the Royal Society and confirmed by university scientists throughout Europe; it was incorporated in scientific and religious teaching for over a century thereafter. (Schmidt 116-117) Secular science is sometimes as resistant to change as the church. The double inertia in the area of sexuality has been costly in terms both of civil liberty and the realization of full human potential in the image of God in Christ, in whom there is “no more male and female.” (Gal 3.28) The extent to which the foregoing mistaken view of human generation, with its emphasis on the importance of the “seed” and the seriousness of the “loss” or “planting in unfertile soil” shaped and informed a grave judgment upon male homosexual acts, and a relatively lighter judgment upon female homosexuality, cannot be overemphasized.

Part of the ongoing reformation of the church entails a willingness to challenge the dogmas of the past with the experience of the faithful in the present; and it is particularly vital for the church’s leaders to attend to and respond to the voices of those most directly affected by their teaching.

The evidence these voices present ranges from the moving stories collected by Louie Crew in A Book of Revelations to the rapidly proliferating liturgies for blessing same-sex relationships in the context of supportive parish families; but it also includes the poignant message scrawled on the flyleaf of a prayer book, “Jim and Tom exchanged their vows here today in the sight of God,” as well as in numberless suicide notes; it stands in the wounded flesh of anonymous lost youth who disappear into the tunnel of despair and self-loathing in the sex-trade of the urban deserts; and in the fabric testimony of a quilt the size of a small town. This is the reality which confronts the church. Countering Wolfhart Pannenberg’s assertion that a church that recognizes same-sex relationships is forsaking the “unanimous witness” of Scripture, we may find that the church that fails to recognize same-sex relationships is far less true to the spirit of Christ and the example to which that Scripture bears witness.

A question of definitions: “Marriage”

Some explanation is needed for the use of the word marriage. Firstly, of late there has been a shift from euphemisms such as “union” to use of “marriage,” noted at the 1996 Consultation of Episcopalians on the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions in several presentations. Secondly, as already noted, this paper is not an apologia for gay and lesbian sex; following the Koinonía Statement, the approach here is towards affirmation of homosexual relationships to no greater nor lesser extent than heterosexual relationships, in pairings that are, in Jeffrey John’s phrase, “permanent, faithful, stable,” which is to say, marriages: an equal, not a special, rite.

While current teaching presents an ostensibly equal limitation to all persons regardless of sexuality — sex only within a single life-long marriage — since gay and lesbian persons cannot now marry (with the church’s blessing), this stricture amounts to a demand for perfectly continent celibacy for gay or lesbian persons unwilling to seek sexual release in different-sex marriage. Moreover, the stricture is applied so selectively and unevenly that a double standard is established, and even defended.

“No sex outside of marriage” therefore means a very different thing to a gay or lesbian person than to a heterosexual. In this sense the uneven application of the norm becomes a justice issue. As Louis Weil points out, “even Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, no advocate of the homosexual lifestyle, acknowledges that celibacy can be imposed only at a terrible price” and describes such a demand as “unreasonable and cruel.” (Weil 174) Moreover, since celibacy is seen primarily as a charismatic gift (in the marriage liturgies based on the Pauline teaching in 1 Cor 7) it is unreasonable to expect that all homosexual persons should possess a gift only given to some heterosexuals.

For this reason, my focus is upon marriage which I define (for the purpose of this paper) as a union between two persons recognized by each of them as such, with or without the further recognition of the church or civil authority. William Eskridge, in his Case for Same-Sex Marriage, employs a narrower definition that includes social, civil, or religious recognition. (Eskridge 17) However, I begin by adopting the older understanding of marriage as subsisting fundamentally in the consent of the couple. In this sense, marriage existed long before either the civil or church law. The teaching that the ministers of marriage (whether in a sacramental sense or not) are the couple themselves is of venerable date, going back at least to the Roman civic concept that consent of the parties made marriage. Long after formal civil or ecclesiastical recognition was provided, many chose not to avail themselves of it; and even when church and civil authorities made their participation a norm or a formal requirement for valid marriage, “common law” arrangements continued to exist; many couples still enjoy civic and even religious benefits in spite of foregoing all formal, external validation of their unions.

I am choosing, then, not to focus on the question of whether same-sex marriage exists or not — or should exist or not — it does and has under this broader definition in many cultures and places and times under different forms, as Eskridge has demonstrated — even under his more stringent definition (Eskridge 15-50). “For those who have eyes to see, it is evident that such relationships do exist.” (Weil 173) The question is whether the church should add its blessing to these already existing unions or covenants — in short, Should the church solemnize, celebrate or bless same-sex marriage?

Difficulties with marriage as a term

Not all approve of using the term (or the concept) marriage in this context. Objections fall into several categories.

1) Some simply reject same-sex marriage as a category error, and argue that marriage is an intrinsically heterosexual institution. This is what Eskridge calls the “definitional objection.” (Eskridge 89) Some who take this position are simply heterosexist, and see “gay marriage” as blessing or condoning sin.

2) At the same time, even some who are tolerant or affirmative of gay and lesbian relationships are reluctant to use the term marriage and suggest such euphemisms as union or covenant. Others suggest terms reflective of the institutions surrounding marriage, as “householding” (Countryman), reflecting the Spanish verb for undertaking marriage, casar. (Weil 172) In some cases this may be an effort to calm the fears of those who see same-sex marriage as an attack on different-sex marriage. The Metropolitan Community Church uses the term “Holy Union” because it “wishes to distinguish the church ceremony from the legal entity of marriage” in part to alert its members to the fact that the rite does not institute a civil marriage. (Williams 135)

3) Some gay liberationists, at the other extreme, see marriage as an “insidious and basic sustainer” of an unjust and destructive social construct. (Eskridge 53) As Paula Ettlebrick puts it:

Marriage runs contrary to two of the primary goals of the lesbian and gay movement: the affirmation of gay identity and culture and the validation of many forms of relationships. (Eskridge 78)

4) Finally, a religious sister has observed that marriage as a metaphor for religious dedication (particularly for women) led to distortion in the vocation as well as in the personal relationships of women religious. She concludes that “overlaying the assumptions and expectations of heterosexual marriage has not been helpful to religious and I’m not sure they are adequate in other avenues of human sexual expression.” (Knoor† 2)

A response to these arguments can be summarized here.

1) Marriage is a far more elastic term than the current discussions suggest; it includes (with the church’s blessing) relationships that are neither (in the long run) monogamous nor lifelong; this study suggests it might also include (with the church’s blessing) relationships that are not heterosexual.

2) The terms “union” and “covenant” represent aspects of marriage and can be subsumed within it. “Blessing a union” is precisely how marriage has long been described. As euphemisms they are unlikely to mollify those opposed to same-sex marriage on the grounds of opposition to homosexual sex; in the long run if it looks like marriage, people will think it is, regardless of what it is called, or what the church intends.
The distinction between civil and church understandings of marriage, while important, have been intertwined for so long (for different-sex couples) that there is little reason for the church to try to build a wall of separation only for same-sex couples. Indeed, recent movement toward the church relinquishing authority to formalize civil marriage has emerged in light of civil restrictions other than those involving sex (pension and social security benefit penalties, for example). To that extent, as all marriages come to be seen in terms of “householding” they highlight non-sexual aspects of marriage. It is helpful to remember that the bedroom is only one room in the house — and has more than one use. At the same time “householding” is a better term than “cohabitation” if only because free of negative connotations.
While it is important that same-sex couples realize that their “union” is not recognized by civil authority, and will not engender the myriad benefits (and responsibilities) currently afforded to (and required of) different-sex couples, such instruction is best imparted as a part of counseling; using union or covenant is not adequate warning — as both terms are used in many current different-sex rites.

3) Shared patterns of behavior borne of oppression exist, but the desirability of such a “gay culture” provokes debates such as those surrounding Ebonics. The critique that marriage is a bad institution bears weight — the statistics on spouse abuse alone give pause — but as Eskridge argues, same-sex marriage may “civilize” its heterosexual counterpart by modeling relationships not built on domination or rigid roles — an inherent weakness in traditional marriage that affords an easy path for abusive relationships. As such, heterosexual marriage of one sort is an inadequate model for same-sex relationships; indeed, same-sex marriages that merely imitate structures of dominance and submission provide for the same sort of abuse. This is not, however, a question of culture, but of behavior.

4) While it is probably true that marriage is a poor metaphor for religious dedication and profession, and may well have detrimental effects on the lives of women religious and their personal relationships, same-sex relationships are more like different-sex relationships than religious dedication is like marriage. If anything, that the church could deform the construct of marriage to accommodate something as unlike it as religious profession shows just how flexible the church can be when it chooses: virtually all of the canonical requirements for marriage are absent from religious profession. The surmised “consent” of God (as spouse), and the substitution of “mystical union” for procreation-ordered sexual intercourse [see the “Josephite” marriage issue] constitute no more radical a category shift than same-sex marriage. The fact that men, particularly in the Franciscan tradition, could be understood to be “Spouses of Christ” and “Mothers” to each other also witnesses to the capacity for symbolic adaptation among the flexible friars.

This study is descriptive rather than pro- or prescriptive. The question is “should the church bless or celebrate the marriages of same-sex couples” not “should same-sex couples marry.” Given the statistics on divorce it is clear that not all different-sex couples should marry, at least with the frequency they do. Marriage is a vocation to which not all are called, and no one should be constrained from or obliged to marriage by either church or state. This study’s goal is to see how closely the traditional understanding of marriage — which theoretically limits all sexual activity to a single, life-long, monogamous, church-recognized, heterosexual marriage — is matched by the lived reality.

The Idealized Myth and the Pastoral Reality

The nature of myth

Myth is story that gives structure to a world. That structure defines what is and is not permitted in that world. Some radical theologians claim that we must be free of our myths; I do not think we can be. As quickly as we demythologize one aspect of the story a new myth will replace it. Perhaps the greatest myth is to believe onself free from myth.

The true danger arises when the myth no longer adequately corresponds to the reality to which gives structure, or when the myth adequate for one culture is imposed upon another for which it is inappropriate. A wholesome myth requires constant de- and reconstruction if it is to meet changing needs. A young couple convert a room they use for a home office into a nursery, then a child’s bedroom, and when the child has grown and moved away, perhaps once again a work space; in the passage of time it may come to be furnished with a hospital bed, as a beloved spouse of over fifty years approaches his final departure towards an eternal dwelling.

What happens when the myth resists adaptation? The couple do not have a child because the office is more important; a child killed in an accident is memorialized in a room left untouched, as painful as an undressed wound, and unavailable for other use; the elderly spouse dies in a clinic because the spare room is a store for discarded things he or she will never use again.

The church’s mythological house has many rooms that are not available for the living because they are filled with the luggage of the ghosts of the dead. For this reason the underlying mythology that informs the church and gives it structure must always be examined and rebuilt, dividing walls torn out, ramps and access installed for those less well-abled to make their way, new wings and dormers added. The church should be like the restored Jerusalem, startled to find herself with many children when she thought she was barren (Isa 49.21). Otherwise the church will find itself a forsaken and unvisited museum instead of a vibrant center of hospitality and community. The church’s goal and commission is not to tear down except in order to build up. (2 Cor 10.8)

The substance of the myth at hand

The “marriage myth” is summed up in the statement that only lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage may receive the church’s blessing, and only within such marriage is sexual activity free from sin. John Stott sums up the myth in this way:

...Scripture defines marriage in terms of heterosexual monogamy. It is the union of one man with one woman, which must be publicly acknowledged (the leaving of parents), permanently sealed (he will “cleave to his wife”) and physically consummated (“one flesh”). And Scripture envisages no other kind of marriage or sexual intercourse, for God provided no alternative... Every sexual relationship or act which deviates from God’s revealed intention is ipso facto displeasing to him and under his judgment. This includes polygamy and polyandry (which infringe the “one man-one woman” principle), clandestine unions (since these involve no public leaving of parents), casual encounters and temporary liaisons, adultery and many divorces (which are incompatible with “cleaving” and with Jesus’ prohibition “let man not separate”), and homosexual partnerships (which violate the statement that “a man” shall be joined to “his wife.” (Stott 16-17)

Stott’s description deserves the title “myth” because he bases it entirely (except for his reference to Christ’s prohibition of divorce) on his reading of two verses from the second creation myth in Genesis 2.23-24. The myth as Stott presents it is, however, far from consistent with Jewish and Christian practice both in permissiveness and restrictiveness. There is almost no article of this creed that has not, at one time or another, been given a different — or even contrary — reading. The marriage myth is no more a constant representation of the church’s teaching than the sole remaining law of Orwell’s Animal Farm — “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” — is of its initial charter.

Nor has the behavior of real people often been “continuous” with an idealized portrayal of marriage. The pastoral reality presents us with an expressionist canvas full of contrasts and edges, and the statistical norm stands in stark contrast with the surmised ethical norm. I do not propose that the ethical norm should be changed simply because few follow it; rather, I note that a norm applied as a double standard is not a norm. If “all have fallen short” yet only certain groups are punished, excluded, blamed, or chastised, or penalized, then the church has missed the message of Romans 1-2.

Statistics collected in Continuing the Dialogue indicate the gap between the ethical norm and actual behavior for heterosexuals: Over half of all teenagers have had sex before leaving high school (56); the vast majority of people, even those who consider themselves “very religious,” do not come to marriage as virgins (59); nearly a third of all married Americans have had an extramarital affair (60) ; and finally, turning to a truly tragic statistic, nearly a third of all youth suicides are gay (57). Moreover, “police reports show that approximately half of those arrested for homosexual activity in public places are married men.” (John 21) The marriage “myth” is hardly statistically normal, even while there is a desire to make it ethically normative. It is a house in which very few people appear actually to find a place to dwell.

The nature of law and the law of nature

Since nature exists before culture, before examining the legal and customary discontinuities with the marriage myth, a few words are in order concerning nature, the nature of law, and natural law more specifically. This is necessary because much of the theological and ethical debate on homosexuality takes a natural law approach.

Arguments from nature: For and against

At least since the twelfth century, “nature as a cosmological principle” (Brundage 324) has been invoked by philosophers, and long prior to that arguments from nature were used either for or against many activities. Arguments from nature are notoriously difficult to maintain, though that has not stopped the church from employing them. One of the primary arguments against homosexuality for many years was that it was “unnatural” or “contrary to nature,” though as science has built up the evidence not only for its natural basis, but also for its existence among other species (including the bonobo chimpanzee and the dolphin, among whom homosexual behavior is a positive factor in the welfare and balance of the animal society) there has been a tendency to reverse the rhetoric. The Minority Report to the 1997 Standing Liturgical Commission study, for example, now chooses to praise virtue as “unnatural.” (§4.3-7)

It is, however, faulty to build on the shifting ground of such concepts, given our limited understanding of nature. An example relevant to this study is the faulty understanding of procreation in the Hellenistic world and early church.

Clement and the school of nature

Clement of Alexandria, for example, betrays an inconsistent attitude toward the natural order. In his search for a basis to formulate decisions concerning human behavior, nature is by turns commended or condemned depending upon the goal of his argument. Moreover, the descriptions of natural phenomena in his argumentation, both for and against certain actions or behaviors, are often inaccurate. These observations are based on the medical and biological knowledge of his day, which was significantly mistaken in much of its understanding of human sexuality, reproduction, and animal behavior.

Clement’s use of the animal kingdom is highly inconsistent. He holds up the “natural” monogamy of pigeons and turtledoves as a paradigm to shame unfaithful human spouses, while he portrays the equally “natural” lewdness of hares and hyenas as a warning against pederasty — hares and hyenas being “lewd” in part because of the Mosaic dietary prohibitions. (Strom. II.23.139; Paedog. II.10.) Clement is not arguing from nature but imposing a predetermined moral view upon it, in what might be described as a poor proof-texting from nature’s book. Serious wrestling with his examples leads to the conclusion that the presence or absence of a given behavior in animals is irrelevant to moral discourse concerning human beings. “We do not regulate our behavior or derive our moral precepts simply from observation of what nature does or does not do.” (John 11)

How much more absurd when the observations are erroneous, as with the views on sex and reproduction current in Clement’s day (and, as the long life of the homunculus myth attests, for a considerable time thereafter). Few scientific theories have had more lasting or damaging effect upon moral teaching than the mistaken notion that the male “seed” is the creative element in procreation, the woman being merely the passive “field” in which it grows. Clement and others use this understanding of reproduction to prohibit “fruitless sowings” or “planting in a field not one’s own” — including homosexual relations, intercourse during infertile periods (menses and pregnancy), and adultery. The deposition of the fruitful seed in a place where, or at a time when, it cannot fulfill its “nature” is not permitted. (Paedog. II.10.90; Strom. II.23.143.) Seed exists to grow, and sex exists solely to provide a way to sow the seed. Any sexual activity that does not lead to procreation is ruled out — on mistaken grounds.

The two themes (animal examples and sex for procreation alone) are linked in Clement’s arguments against sex during pregnancy. He notes that animals “naturally” cease copulation after conception, and argues that if irrational beasts can do what is right, how much more ought rational humans. (Strom. II.23.143.) On the contrary, current research into sexual behavior suggests that the human capacity to have sex during infertile periods (including pregnancy) is significant in the development and maintenance of monogamous bonding.

Tradition: Contrary to natural law

Natural law of a more sophisticated sort says that actions have appropriate ends, or goals. The natural law argument, articulated by Aquinas, is that the primary end of marriage — procreation — derives from humankind’s animal nature; the secondary end — the shared life of the couple — from the human nature; and the third end — sacrament — from the nature of the couple as believers. The problem with this argument lies in its “claim that the primary end of specifically human marriage is dictated by a man’s generically animal nature.” (Lawler 61) It is hard to see why a rich human relationship or a life of faith should be subordinated to a biological function. Another problem with the ends-oriented approach of natural law lies in the serious ethical difficulties which arise when this approach is applied to people — this ethical flaw has been recognized at least since Kant: it is inappropriate to treat a person as a means to an end, however lofty that end might be. This will be addressed in more detail (see page 41) in an analysis of marriage as covenant which finds its end only in the beloved.

Another common (and less problematic) sort of natural law falls into the area of “right reason” — this is the Nature to which Hooker turns. Neither of these forms of natural law, however, are native to Jewish tradition, nor are they the primary basis of English law.

Scripture bears little witness to natural law in either sense. In the New Testament the sole instance of a natural law approach is in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In this (but in little else) I follow Richard Hays’ critique of John Boswell’s broad attempt to defuse the Pauline references about “that which is against nature.” Paul is in all likelihood at this point using what would come to be called a “natural law” approach; but he is using a language foreign to Jewish idiom to make a point concerning the universality of God’s judgment on all of humanity. He begins (Rom 1) by using a Stoic argument to critique Gentiles from a Gentile perspective, just as he will quickly (Rom 2) turn to the Law of Moses to critique Jews from a Jewish perspective. Paul’s message is that everyone has sinned, within or without the Law (of Moses), Greek and Jew alike have fallen short.

Nature appears in a similar quasi-Stoic context in Wisdom of Solomon 13-14, which Paul echoes in his tirade against idolatry. Wisdom begins by claiming that Gentiles are “foolish by nature and ... unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists...” (Wis 13.1 cp. Rom 1.19-23) Wisdom then makes an effort to excuse but then finally blames the idolaters for their ignorance (Wis 13.6-9). Paul follows a similar rhetorical structure by first bashing the Gentiles and then unexpectedly turning his rhetoric against his Jewish audience (Rom 1.19-23, 2.1-2). One can well imagine the cheers Paul has whipped up — through his stock tirade against idolatry — sticking in the throats of his audience as the rhetorical two-edged sword comes crashing down.

It is significant that the only uses of “nature” (fusis) in LXX appear in late, apocryphal, or even non-canonical books. It is never used to translate a Hebrew word; indeed, there is no Hebrew word for the concept, either as a universal (Platonic) or a particular quality (Aristotelian). (TDNT 266) In Jewish theology, things exist by divine ordinance, not by participation in universal forms, nor by virtue of detachable or innate qualities. It would take the influence of Hellenism to bring these ways of thinking into Judaism.

The usage of “nature” in 4 Maccabees 5 reveals the Jewish recognition of the equivocal quality of natural law, and demonstrates distrust of natural law arguments. Antiochus presents the aged Eleazar with swine’s flesh and argues:

When nature has granted it to us, why should you abhor eating the very excellent meat of this animal? It is senseless not to enjoy delicious things that are not shameful, and wrong to spurn the gifts of nature. (vv 8-9)

The old Eleazar responds

We... who have been persuaded to govern our lives by the divine law, think that there is no more powerful compulsion than our obedience to the law... [The divine law] instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we act impartially, and it teaches us piety, so that with proper reverence we worship the only living God. Therefore we do not eat defiling food; for since we believe that the law was established by God, we know that in the nature of things the Creator of the world in giving us the law has shown sympathy toward us. He has permitted us to eat what will be most suitable for our lives, but he has forbidden us to ea