Karoli, a blogger at Crooks and Liars, has an article about Andrew Sullivans reaction to Obamas support of same-sex marriage. In the post he references his personal blog and an email question he received…
Can you reconcile, using scripture, Christianity with same sex marriage? This is not an issue on which a Christian can ride the fence because God calls unnatural affections an abomination. What do you say?
My answer is that I absolutely can reconcile it with Scripture.
But it occurs to me that this is wrong. In fact, very wrong. You, actually, cannot reconcile some scripture and same-sex marriage. You can, however, reconcile Christianity and same sex marriage… because Christianity is what has led us to this place. (There is a separate issue wrt Christianity and scripture that I have equally strong views on, but which I will not treat, in depth, here.)
Same sex marriage is not easily reconciled with much of scripture because almost all marriage in America today is not easily reconciled with much of scripture: Women are no longer the property they were when the law was considered and the law was considered wholly without respect to equality between the sexes. Old Testament injunctions against homosexuality had almost nothing to do with the sexual act but rather with the notion that one man would treat another man like one would treat a women: subservient and objectified and degraded. In fact, they had no such notion as ‘homosexual’, rather separating the actual behavior into ‘sodomite’ and ‘catamite’. The sodomite was the male who was ‘degrading’ another man by treating him as one would a woman and the catamite was the womanly, or subservient, partner: the one being ‘degraded’: both the ‘degrading’ of another man and the willingness to let oneself be treated so, were considered abominations. Homosexuality is only wrong if women are the subservient property of men therefore making a relationship between a man and another man a relationship of subservience.
This is why Rick Santorum and others are constantly saying thinks like “man and dog” and “man and turtle”.
Same sex marriage wasn’t countenanced in scripture because marriage was never defined as between equal partners nor as a means for both participants to be enriched and pleased, only the man…. In fact, it would have been considered ‘unnatural’ for the affections of the women to be considered at all . They had about as much say in the issue as a dog, or a turtle, would in similar circumstances.
However, our America is an America (thankfully) that allows women a far greater degree of freedom and, in fact, defines marriage more or less as a contract between two consenting adults each of whom is free and equal and informed enough to enter into such a contract willingly and even enthusiastically. This, I believe, began with Jesus (that is to say, Christ and therefore Christianity) who, it will be noted, had a distinctly freer view of women than did any of his contemporaries. If we look at Jesus birth his mother Mary was the one chosen, according to the Gospels, not Joseph… who was almost an afterthought and shortly thereafter disappears from the narrative. One also only has to note the resurrection where, on the third day, Mary and others were sent before Jesus to tell the male disciples to meet him in Galilee. The disciples, it is written in the Gospels, dismissed the women out of hand. One account describes the men saying the women were telling ‘idle tales.’ Indeed, at that time, women would not even have been allowed to testify in a court and were considered unreliable witnesses… Of course, once the disciples decided to go to the tomb to see for themselves they listened to the women and went to Galillee. Between the birth and the resurrection there are countless examples of Jesus treating women with exactly the same attitude as he does the men.
Seen in this light, the ‘war on women’ and the ‘war on the gay’ are really one and the same: homosexuality is a marker of total freedom and equality between the sexes. With equality between men and women the notion that it is wrong to treat a man like you would a women evaporates…
It remains to be seen if the anti-gay haters are closeted homosexuals long contextualized to a self-hatred or if they are uber-hetoros who are pining for the days of casual degredation of women. Somebody should ask Mitt Romney what he thinks. I would do it, but I have long hair and therefore fear the wrath of Mitts scissors.
