I have
many good friends, well read, intelligent and without a homophobic bone in
their bodies who passionately insist that the word “marriage” must be reserved in our
society for one man and one woman commitments.
They will often insist that they want same gender couples to have all
the same rights and responsibilities in civil unions or domestic partnership as
heterosexual couples do in legal marriage.
"Just don’t call it marriage”. A few will quote
the Bible to justify the point as well, which confuses me even more. Here are my concerns:
Equality
Same gender couples in states
which currently offer civil unions and/or domestic partnerships are not
entitled to over 1,100 Federally recognized rights and responsibilities as do
those in heterosexual marriages.1 By not offering same gender
couples a legal marriage license, we deny law abiding citizens....tax paying, socially
contributing, at times members or veterans of our military services....equal
protection under the law.
History
Concepts and institutions of
marriage have been “redefined” throughout history. In European cultures historians record the
practice of same gender unions, marriages and their celebrations in the ancient
Greco-Roman society up until the Middle Ages.2
Government
regulation of the marriage contract between adults is a relatively recent
occurrence in history.3 Up until the 1600's marriage
was a private contract between two families.
At times church bodies would recognize the vows of the marriage covenant
between consenting adults and record it in parish records but this held varying
legal authority based on location.
In North
America, there are examples of marriage licenses issued by local governments as
early as the colonial era in the 1700's, but government marriage registration and licensure was not a nation-wide
practice in the United States until after the Civil War. Along with insuring the rights and
responsibilities of each partner, the first marriage licenses also restricted
who could make such contracts; race, religion, nationality, age and social
class were qualifiers. The Chinese
Immigration Act of 1882 denied the right to marry between people of Asian
descent and Anglos. Mixed race
marriages were not nationally legalized until Supreme Court decisions in 1967
(Loving vs. Virginia).
Change
Concepts and institutions of
marriage are being “redefined” as we speak. The
changes in our culture’s expectations and norms for
marriage have been revolutionary in my lifetime. Social values regarding pre-marital sex and
child birth have been turned upside down.
Procreation
has always been assumed as one of the goals of marriage but in modern society
is not required. People get married without the expectation of having children
all of the time. Modern science has
extended the options of childbirth way beyond "traditional coupling"
with IV fertilization and other technologies.
Forty
years ago it was shocking to learn of a couple living together prior to the
wedding. Today, in pre-marital
counseling, I am surprised if the couple is not already living together and has
been doing so for some time. Mature
adults and seniors commonly "couple" without marriage for all sorts
of financial reasons. In 1960 5.3% of
American babies were born out of wedlock, by 1992 it was 30%; today for mothers
under 30 years old, 53% of their children are born without married partners.4 Our divorce rate in the United States has
stabilized in the last ten years but remains the highest in the world.5
There are
many factors redefining marriage today, for good or ill. Including same gender couples in the legal
institution of marriage would certainly change the expected definition but it
is not the only thing redefining marriage.
Fear
Government legislation and a host of
non-profit and/or religious agencies have the mission to “defend marriage”. This implies a threat to existing
heterosexual marriages and families by the mere existence of same gender
couples and/or families. "Defense
of marriage" agencies suggest that by legitimizing same gender families we
would further degrade the moral standards of our nation and risk the wrath of
God. Some would go so far as to blame
the growing acceptance of the LGBT community and same gender families as the
reason for the divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth statistics cited above.
Unless
one is seriously suggesting that hurricanes or global recessions or health
epidemics are God's acts upon a sinful nation...and there are those that
do...."defending marriage" is simply a code word for history's latest
scapegoating.
According
to the U.S. census there were 646,000 same-sex-couple households in the U.S. in
2010, 115,064 with children.6 How does their existence threaten any one?
It certainly hasn’t affected my heterosexual
marriage of 39 years.
The Bible?
The Bible as the defining
source for the institution of marriage?
Really?
Is it
"traditional marriage based on biblical principles" when Abraham
begets Ishmael with his slave Hagar because his wife Sarah is barren? (Genesis
16:1-f) Is it when Jacob and his two
wives Leah and Rachael, and the slaves Zilpah and Bilhah, bear him children,
including the twelve sons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel? (Genesis
30:1-f) Is the standard King Solomon and his 700 official wives and 300
concubines? (I Kings 11:1-3) Are we talking about the law
requiring the death by stoning of a bride who on her wedding night is found not
to be a virgin or the death of those who commit adultery (Deuteronomy
22:13-24). The Apostle Paul preferred
that we would not marry at all (I Corinthians 7).
So what
are we talking about when we refer to the Bible as the “standard for traditional marriage”?
My assumption
is that the phrase “Biblical institution of
marriage” most often refers to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:4-6:
He answered, ‘Have you not read that the one
who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become
one flesh”? So they are no longer two,
but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’
Jesus is
referring to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as he confronts the Pharisees' arbitrary use
of the divorce writ, leaving women literally in the street without social or
economic rights. Consider how Jesus
redefines marriage for his generation in this text. In a patriarchal society where women were
treated as property and marriage was the primary form of regulating an economic
exchange between families, Jesus is insisting that it be defined as a sacred
bond between two equal persons.7
For more
than 40 years United Methodists have understood the words of Matthew 19 in
their historical context. The Master is concerned about the spiritual
consequences of the male use of capricious divorce laws on both parties and the
gross injustice levied on women by divorce.
Unlike some other churches, United Methodists have not interpreted this
text as the basis for the restriction or exclusion from the life of the church of
those who have gone through divorce. Divorced individuals can join United
Methodist churches, receive our sacraments, be ordained our clergy and
consecrated our bishops.
Divorce is
something to be avoided. Marriages are
worth every effort to maintain and nurture.
Our clergy are trained to assist in all appropriate ways to promote the
sacredness of marriage. Yet we United
Methodists have for decades refused to condemn, shame or restrict the divorced
from the life of our congregations.
In
Matthew 19:9 Jesus equates divorce with adultery, an abomination punishable by
death (Leviticus 20:10). A pronouncement
certainly not found in the United Methodist Book of Discipline!
Consider
how Jesus redefines the essential commitment of sexual faithfulness in the
marriage contract with his teachings on adultery. In a patriarchal society where men freely
manipulated law, social and economic status to meet their sexual needs Jesus is
insisting that "even looking at a woman with lust in your eyes" is
adultery (Matthew 5:27-30). To the men
who bring a woman caught in the act of adultery to be stoned Jesus says,
"...he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8). When the mob goes away, the Lord says to the
woman, "...is there no one here to condemn you? Then neither can I...go and sin no
more." Jesus radically applies an
equality of both sin and grace never seen before in his time to one considered
"outcast" in scripture.
The Bible
is the living Word of God. Its truth is
not confined to the ink on its pages. We discover that truth again and again in
the dynamic journey of faith; in the relationship between the page and the
believer’s experience of God. Today we know that the earth is not flat, the
center of the known universe (Genesis 1:1-10).
In North America, Bible verses are no longer used to justify slavery or
a second class citizenship for women.
God did not stop speaking in the 4th century when the Biblical canon was
codified. The Bible remains the central
springboard for revelation in new and changing times. To insist on a static and
literal interpretation of certain verses while ignoring or adopting others is
all too convenient for “conservative” or “liberal” alike.
For
United Methodists who welcome and include the divorced, and openly minister to
and with today's "outcasts", to then use these same texts as the
basis to refuse to honor the committed relationships of same gender couples,
even in states where gay marriage is legal, is a capricious and arbitrary use
of the scriptures to justify a social prejudice. Something we have done all-too-many times in
history.
Conclusion
I once
had a parishioner who married late in life suggest "...if gays can marry
it will cheapen my marriage to "Bob", something that I waited my
whole life for...." The comment
took my breath away. I didn't know what
to say and still to this day don't comprehend all that means. This came from a good and faithful church woman,
convinced that homosexual people are something less than she. For them to share the same
word..."marriage"...would degrade her own. The Bible verses suggesting that "we are
all children of God" were restricted to people like herself alone.
If that
is the underlying concern of the "gay marriage will redefine
marriage" argument, then maybe it is time that we did.
1 General Accounting Office cited in
"A Primer on Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, Domestic Partnerships, and
Defense of Marriage Acts", infoplease.com
2 John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in
Premodern Europe, Vintage, 1994, note: Boswell was former S. Whitney Professor
of History at Yale University until his death in 1994.
3 "Taking Marriage Private",
New York Times, Stephanie Coontz, November 26, 2007 4 KJ Dell’Antonia, “For Younger Mothers, Out of Wedlock Births Are the New
Normal”, Motherlode/New York Times,
02/19/2012
5 NationMaster.com
6 CNN.com 05.12.12
7 “equal”: “male and female he created
them” Genesis 1:27 in the first
creation poem (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) suggests that both male and female are equal
creations of God. To the Pharisees Jesus
did not refer to the second creation poem’s (Genesis 2:4b-3:24)
hierarchy of gender with the man created first out of the dust of the earth and
the woman created second out of the bone of the man Genesis 2:21-23, a clear
bias towards patriarchy. Rather by tying these two texts together our Lord is
suggesting reciprocity between genders that is unheard of in his times.
Also note;
is a homosexual man not “male” or a lesbian woman not “female”? Those referring to this text to justify heterosexual
relationships to the exclusion of other sexual orientations suggest that God
did not create gay men or lesbian women.
Modern science suggests that sexual orientation can begin at birth, have
genetic origins and go through stages of ambiguity throughout a person’s life. Ambivalent
gender differentiation, physical and/or chromosomal, is common enough at birth
that medical specialists are called into consult every 1 to 1,500/2,000 births
(Intersex Society of North America).
The
entire verse from Genesis 1:27 reads “So God created humankind in
his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created
them.” The poet suggests that God encompasses both
genders in “his image”. Why then would those born with varying gender
identities and sexual orientations not be considered “children of God” if God is both male and
female?