The Biblical case for Christians affirming same sex marriage, Part 1: The arguments against

One of the key themes of this blog is to outline the Biblical case for Christians to affirm our LGBTQI friends, and to affirm same sex marriages that align to the Biblical standard of faithfulness, monogamy and covenant relationship. I have not always believed this, having grown up in the home of a conservative Baptist pastor. I have no personal reason to take this stand: I am not gay (I have been happily married for nearly 30 years), none of my immediate family are LGBTQI (as far as I know and can ascertain), and all of my LGBTQI friends are perfectly capable of defending themselves (if they even feel they need to). If you want to know more about who I am, see the About tab on this blog.

I have spent over fifteen years studying this topic, and reading almost everything written about it from a Biblical and Christian perspective. I have done in-depth Biblical studies, and Greek and Hebrew analysis, have engaged in numerous discussions and forums, and participated in public events and debates to try and hone my thinking. My position has developed over that time, and for much of it, I was very tentative about making a change to 2,000 years of church teachings on the topic (although I will show later that this is not quite as clear or unanimous as you might think). But now, I am prepared to be clear and unequivocal: I believe that God has created human beings with a range of sexual expressions, and these are to be celebrated (not just “accepted” or “affirmed”). I believe that the Bible, as God’s Word, does not speak against LGBTQI people who are seeking monogamous, faithful, lifelong marriage with a same-sex partner – in fact, it invites them to covenant to each other in the eyes of God and the community, and encourages them to enjoy all aspects of their married relationships including sexual activity.

I do believe we’ve been wrong on this issue. And I believe it’s time to change. Not because we’re acquiescing to a changing culture, or because we should ignore outdated Bible verses, but very specifically because we can see God’s blessing on LGBTQI people and their marriages as we do on “straight” people and their marriages. There is no distinction to be made. And we can say this while confidently claiming that God’s Word is as relevant today as it ever was. God wasn’t mistaken, we were. The Bible is not wrong, our interpretation of it was.

What I Believe About the Bible

There are many ways to approach this issue, and my atheist friends will roll their eyes and wonder why I have not yet abandoned both an ancient book and an outdated God. But I have not. I consider myself to be an evangelical: I believe that God wrote the Bible, that the Bible is what God intended us to have and that it is His Word, and I believe that we must use it to guide and inform our lives. I don’t believe it is a constitution or a legal document to be parsed, and I think we need to work hard and carefully to interpret the Bible and apply it correctly today. But I don’t want to argue that it is not applicable today, nor that we can ignore it because it was so culturally conditioned that it is irrelevant or even tainted. I want to take it seriously as God’s Word. But I need to acknowledge that we may have been misinterpreting it for a few centuries.

What’s at Stake

The reason this topic is important, and the reason we cannot just “agree to disagree” on it is that eternal destinies and souls are at stake. I fully understand why those who oppose homosexuality are so determined about it. If their reading of the Bible is correct, then people who have homosexual sex are going to spend eternity apart from God (please note, that I am going to use “gay” and “homosexual” to refer to all and any LGBTQI orientations – this is simply for ease of reading and writing). This is indeed a dire consequence and should be taken seriously. We’re literally dealing with people’s lives here, and cannot afford to get this wrong.

On the other hand, if traditional Christians are wrong about this, they are contributing to the epidemic of depression, suicide and stress that many LGBTQI people experience. This is one of the key defining issues of our age.

What Did We Get Wrong

It’s not easy to know where to start with this topic, so let’s start by identifying the key arguments against homosexuality. I’ll deal with each of these in turn, and in varying levels of detail, over the next few months and years on this blog, and in the ALLin podcast. But right now, I’d be very interested to know if I have covered all the arguments. I don’t want to deal with the arguments themselves at this stage, and I am not providing comprehensive refutations right now – I just want to make sure I have all the arguments listed. Please let me know if you think I am missing any, and I’ll add them to my list.

The arguments against homosexuality typically fall into the following categories:

1. Yuck, that’s icky

    Maybe more charitably, some Christians argue that their consciences tell them that homosexuality is wrong, because they have such a visceral negative reaction to it. This argument is easy to counter, because our consciences are clearly not as finely tuned as we think they are. Many people, for example, would not eat dogs, although there’s nothing morally wrong with doing so. What we think of as our consciences are often cultural conditioning, and we need to be careful of this argument as a basis for moral judgements of this magnitude.

2. The very nature of things – It violates natural law

    Whether referencing Paul or not, this argument talks about the physiology of the human body, with an appeal to the obvious sexual fit of a male and female body, and sometimes a further appeal to the inability of gay couples to conceive children. I believe this argument is also easily countered. For instance, why are there no Biblical restrictions placed on what a male and female married couple can do sexually – if God has a problem with what appendage goes in which hole, you’d have expected this? Hopefully without being crude, we would need to explain why anal sex is not prohibited for everyone if this is the real problem with homosexuality. Or why we never talk about lesbians in this particular argument. It’s also fairly obvious to show that marriages are not obligated to produce children.

    This is answered in detail here

3. Homosexuality, specifically male homosexuality activity, is not healthy.

    This includes anal sex health issues, mental health issues such as co-morbidity with depression and suicide rates, emotional health indicators and the rates of breakdown of gay relationships compared to heterosexual ones. These arguments can go even further: Gays are evidently broken people. Girls become gay after they are raped by physically abusive fathers. Boys become gay after being dominated by emotionally abusive mothers. Lesbians cut their hair short and try to look and act like men. Gay boys try to act like women; soft and weak; lacking strength. The world has no good gay role models. They are all evidently broken people who either do not accept their masculinity / femininity, or are too weak and damaged to fulfil it, so they hide as emotional cripples under the skirts of being “victims”. Or they go completely overboard and dance in the street waving their junk around screaming gay pride. This is what some people believe. I believe that there is some truth to the brokenness of homosexuals, but mainly because of how society has treated them. There’s lots of research to look at on these issues, and I’ll do my best to make sense of all of it.

4. Research shows that sexuality is a binary issue: male and female only.

    LGBT is not just about homosexual and lesbian relationships, but also about transgender, transexual, bisexual, intersexual, asexual and other sexual expressions. Supporters often see gender and sexuality as different issues, and see sexuality expressed on a spectrum, rather than simply male and female. Arguments against this position see sexuality as a binary issue.

5. Nobody is born gay.

    It is a choice, and a moral choice with moral consequences. Many gays have been “cured” from their illness which proves it is a lifestyle choice.

6. The plain reading of the Bible is against homosexual practice

    God did not write the Bible for convoluted academics. He wrote it to be understood. And a cursory reading of the Bible makes it clear that God calls gay behaviour sinful. So let’s take the Bible at face value and call a spade what God calls a spade; gays are sinning because God clearly says so, whether we feel sorry for them or not. I will argue that on the first reading of the Bible it might seem so. But then, with a little bit of study (not deep academic study, just slightly more reading), holes begin to emerge in the seven verses that refer to homosexuality. The Bible itself interprets the OT stories of Sodom and Gomorrah for us, with no reference to homosexuality. New Testament Christians can find no consistent way to interpret OT Law, so we rightly have to abandon everything that is not explicitly renewed in the New Covenant. In the NT, Paul makes up new words to refer to homosexuals and some English translations are honest enough to translate the words as “homosexual offenders” – a specific class of homosexuals (it’s clear that accepting LGBT people is not the same as giving an “anything goes” carte blanche to homosexual practices). And Romans 1, even on a plain reading is clearly talking about sexual excess, rather than lifelong, committed same sex marriage. I’ll go into a lot more detail in future blog posts, but there are significant question marks over our traditional interpretation of these verses. I’ll also go further to show that when you do go into detailed academic study of the Bible, it’s almost impossible to continue holding the traditional view against homosexuality.

    The Old Testament case is answered here

    The New Testament case is best answered here

    7. This isn’t what 2,000 years of Church history and 4,000 years of Jewish history has taught.

    Are we really so arrogant to believe that everyone who came before us was wrong? Surely we cannot just change our beliefs because the world around us is changing?

    This is answered here

    The Old Testament case is answered here

    A superb video deals with this too

8. Even if you can show that the Bible does not explicitly condemn homosexuality, my conscience tells me it’s wrong.

    Does scripture need to be clear regarding what exactly constitutes as sin? If the law is written on our hearts does the Holy Spirit not ultimately then guide us via our conscience regarding whether or not this is sin?

9. It takes a man and a woman to make a child, and a father and mother to raise one properly

    This is the argument that talks of the family as the bedrock of society, and often appeals to either Genesis 2 or the Fifth Commandment to prove that God planned the family to be a man and woman and children only. I will argue that social science has disproved the social aspects of this argument. It also often relies on defining the purpose of marriage (and sex) as procreation. This is just not true. And I’ll show that it is bad logic and bad exegesis to use the Bible’s references to male-female marriage as normative and restrictive.

10. Marriage is a covenant designed by God to reflect His image and model His relationship with us, and it can only be between one male and one female (even Jesus said so)

    Most conservative Christians acknowledge enough question marks over the interpretation of the seven Biblical verses that specifically reference homosexuality that they’ve shifted the debate to this issue of the design of marriage, and are focusing their efforts on protecting the traditional definition of a marriage being between one man and one woman. Some are arguing that same sex marriage might not be spoken about as a sin in the Bible, but it is not God’s plan for society. This argument is based on Genesis 2:23,24. So it’s not saying that homosexuality is a sin, but that it is not ideal, and not what God intended. I will argue that the pattern of marriage that God wants preserved is the covenant bond, rather than the gender of the partners involved in the covenant. Same sex marriages are as wonderful a covenant model as heterosexual marriages, and we have idolised marriage and misunderstood the “creation order”. We also misuse Jesus’ answer to a question about divorce when we turn it into a normative statement for all marriages. It’s worth noting that we’ve redefined marriage many times over the past centuries – the male-female version is not as sacred as is made out.

11. God designed marriage partnerships to be complementary – with a man and his “help meet”.

    This is related to the previous argument, but specifically references the different roles, functions (and sometimes status) believed to be relevant to men and women. I don’t know of any person who affirms homosexuality and does not at the same time also believe in the complete equality of the sexes too, so these two issues are probably interlinked.

12. The slippery slope – it will lead to polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality and all manner of other marriage arrangements.

    When women were campaigning to get the vote a century ago, a counter argument was genuinely put forward that if women got the vote, then very soon animals would too. This didn’t happen. Two things are important here: consent, and orientation. And both of these mean that there’s no slippery slope.

    This is partially answered here – see conclusion

13. Gays are anti society; anti establishment; anti rules.

    It’s like a “soft” gateway drug that makes you more open to breaking other rules and taking harder drugs. Society is against gays. Those who come out are effectively rejecting the rules of society – and so we don’t want them living in our society.

14. There are no positive or affirming examples of gay relationships in the Bible

    This is a significant argument against homosexuality, and certainly having a gay couple in one of the Bible stories would change the conversation. But I will show that this is a weak argument, and given that we can easily answer the other four arguments against homosexuality, this one holds no weight at all. I’ll also show you some gay people in the Bible and how God interacted with them.

As I said above, I don’t want to debate these arguments at this stage. All I want to know is have I missed any arguments against homosexuality. Over the next few months, I’ll go into these arguments in detail and show how the Bible affirms LGBTQI relationships. It’s time to change our views.

If you missed my previous post, you might be interested in a reading list of books on same sex marriage – it’s here.




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The full series of posts

28 thoughts on “The Biblical case for Christians affirming same sex marriage, Part 1: The arguments against”

  1. Graeme, another argument against homosexuality is that whilst it may not be a sin specifically spoken against in the Bible, it is not part of God’s perfect plan for mankind. This argument is based on Genesis 2:23,24. So its not saying that homosexuality is a sin, but that it is not ideal, and not what God intended. I don’t know if this argument would fall under the scope of your blog. Besides that, it may actually fall under argument 5.

    In argument 5 you say, “This pattern of marriage may be the norm, but it is far from the only model of marriage presented in the Bible.” The counter argument to that is that whilst other models of marriage are presented in the Bible, this particular model is the only one God specifically affirms (in Gen 2:24).

    Cheers.

  2. Hi Graeme, haven’t read all the comments, just the blog…the “physical fit” issue needs to address way broader issues than mentioned, perhaps even a different category called health. This includes anal sex health issues, mental health issues such as comorbidity with depression and suicide rates etc (which the “society did it to me” argument inadequately addresses in my opinion) and emotional health indicators (statistics that look at the rates of breakdown of gay relationships compared to heterosexual-I refer to stats presented in a talk by Brett Kunkle- Stand to Reason). A related issue you might need to address is the binary nature of sexuality-this report was helpful http://bobmccoskrie.com/…/Boys-Girls-Other-FULL-REPORT.pdf
    Thanks Graeme.

  3. You have omitted / ignored / forgotten the most fundamental biblical teaching on the matter of God’s intent for the family and hence marriage etc; and that is the 5th commandment. LGBT “families” as you suggest would violate this completely and any further contemplation thereof becomes mute.

  4. Thanks, Nick, Yvette and Alfred – your comments are now included in the original list, which has grown from 7 to 12 arguments.

  5. Hi Graeme

    Can you include these two items on your list if you feel they might be issues worth addressing (hope I explain them properly – if not maybe you can try and refine what I mean). I think you need to address them if you are wanting to do an all encompassing investigation leaving no stones unturned.

    1) The symbolism of the actual anal sex act – does it shove the proverbial finger up to God? I’m talking symbolism here and not the physical act which you address in point 4. I believe symbolism is important to God. (and this potential reason why God might not approve applies to heterosexual anal sex as well).
    Physically God designed one physical spot on the human body for us to exercise arguably the greatest gift he gave us – our ability to be part of creating new life. The combination of the male and female sexual organs and the new life that can flow from this combination are in many peoples view the highest level of human design & purpose, the greatest achievement we can reach and the most awesome thing possible. Creating children, new generations, new Life and keeping the species alive. Many parents will agree that having children was simply the best thing they ever did or achieved or experienced. Irrespective of the physical pros and cons or arguments, anal sex is at very least symbolically the exact opposite of this male / female pinnacle of Life creating ability. Out of the anus comes decay, bacteria and waste not fit or good for anything. Instead of potential life we have potential death. Anal sex symbolically potentially moves the highest act we can perform to the lowest. From a physical space where Life is created to a physical space where life can be destroyed by the bacteria and excrement. How can God be pleased with this and what it represents? Are we not saying, “God you gave us the ability to have sex in a physical place on our bodies where new life springs forth from….thanks but no thanks…….we’ll rather do this in a place where decay and waste comes from”. Many Christians will see this as showing God the proverbial finger.

    2) Another reason not addressed on your list is the argument that while it is theoretically possible for Gay people to go to the alter of marriage as virgins (i.e. never having yet had or experienced physical homosexual sex); in the real world this is nigh impossible. It is the physical sexual act that makes one a homosexual. Therefore anyone entering into a homosexual marriage must have already had homosexual sex before marriage. As Christians we don’t historically accept this for heterosexual couples, but seem to bend the rules here for gay couples. So basically the question to be addressed is “can or does a homosexual relationship arise in anything BUT a sexual liaison before marriage. Is it not by the very definition that ultimately defines it (physical sex between same gender couples) born in sin. To address this I believe the sin or not of sex before marriage needs to be discussed and then applied to gay couples – i.e. stay virgins before marriage just like it is expected of all of Gods children.

    I hope this adds to the conversation. Good luck in putting this all together

    Pete

  6. Thanks, Pete. I think your first point is covered in item 2 above. You state it more clearly & forcefully than I do, so I’ll make sure I deal with that when I get to the issues of human physiology.

    Your second point is an interesting one, and I’ll make sure I deal with it when I look at arguments 3 and 5. I disagree with you entirely and completely on this issue, as I believe that LGBT people are born that way, “coded” by genes and by God to have a particular sexual orientation. It is this orientation that makes them “gay” (or one of the LGBTQIA variants), not their actual activity. Of course, if you’ve decided that same gender-sexual activity is sinful, then there’s a mental and theological framework that will allow you to tell them that being celibate is God’s will for them and anything other than celibacy is sinful. Note that this would be true whether they got married or not, so this position is still problematic for conservative Christians who are trying to to “nice to gays”.

    This is one of the reasons I don’t believe the traditional position can stand up. It is not only theologically incorrect, it is also logically inconsistent. But now I am getting ahead of myself. I’ll deal with these issues in the blog posts to come. Stay with me for more info.

  7. I find your blog very insightful my only concern is the neglect in many arguments to acknowledge lesbian sex etc. Too often I find that women are marginalised in society and in the LGBT argument almost negated ie the whole point of anal sex etc being such an abomination to some becomes redundant when lesbian sex is addressed. One cannot forget that half of the LGBT community is female and very seldom if ever acknowledged in these arguments.

  8. Thanks for this comment, Colette. So far in the series, I have been focusing on the Biblical texts, and they are exclusively about male homosexual activity. I will ensure I deal with lesbian issues too as the series continues. Are there any good resources you could point me to in this regard?

  9. We are born with sin – the gospel provides a way for us to be born again. To put to death the old self and be a new creation – born of heaven. Homosexuality is a brokenness and in many cases a perversion and rebellion. The saddest aspect of it to me is that the homosexsual culture has taken away the position of deeply loving people of the same sex without having sexual relationships. The bible refers to “The Apostle whom Jesus loved..” Loving someone of the same sex deeply is natural – we see even Jesus did it. Entering into a sexual relationship with that person is the perversion of sin, it is not natural. Love is not defined by sex.

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