Christians often argue that homosexuality is unnatural. That is, the purpose of man/woman sex is clear—it’s what propagates the species. Any other kind of sex simply isn’t using human anatomy for what it was meant for. There’s only one way to properly fit the jigsaw puzzle pieces together.

The Catholic Church is a vocal proponent of this idea that homosexuality is unnatural. Let’s pause to savor this for a moment—that’s a community of celibate men, if you can imagine such a thing, calling another lifestyle unnatural.

But the fact is that homosexuality is natural. It’s widespread in nature and has been observed in 500 animal species, including all the great apes, of which humans are a part.

The science that explains homosexuality is immature—homosexuality might be the consolation prize, for example, or maybe it’s nature’s way of reducing competition among males—but why isn’t the point. It’s clearly natural, and that’s been recognized within society. We’re decades past the time when homosexuality was categorized as a mental disorder.

But natural doesn’t mean good, the Christian will say. Rape, violence, and cyanide are natural, and they’re harmful.

That’s true. Then let’s move the conversation from natural vs. unnatural to where it should be: good vs. harmful. Rape, violence, and cyanide are inherently harmful, but homosexuality isn’t.

Saying “I have homosexual inclinations, so I should act on them” is like saying, “I have alcoholic inclinations, so I should act on them.”

Once again, the issue is harm. Alcoholic inclinations cause harm, and homosexual inclinations don’t. What’s the problem caused by consensual homosexual sex (besides offending the Old Testament god)?

Homosexuals can be treated. They can become un-gay.

In 2012, Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, then the largest ex-gay organization in the U.S., said:

The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say that they could  never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.

The organization disbanded less than two years later.

No, there’s little evidence that someone who is gay can become un-gay. And why would that be a goal, anyway? I love desserts and, frankly, it would do me some good to become an ex-lover of desserts. There are health benefits to doing so. But why become un-gay? (I mean, besides avoiding all the artificial obstacles homophobes erect against gays.)

But if everyone were homosexual, the population would die out!

Yes, and if everyone were female, the population would also die out. So what? No one’s saying that being female is bad or immoral or unnatural. It’s not the case that everyone is female, and it’s not the case that everyone is homosexual. No problem then! Anyway, animals have apparently been gay since forever, and evolution stumbles along just fine.

I’ll close with something that I wish I’d said:

Homosexuality exists in 500 species.
Homophobia exists in only one.
Which seems unnatural now?

I fear that we [Christians have] lost not only the culture wars,
but also our Christian identity,
when the “right to refuse” service has become
a more sincerely-held and widely-known Christian belief
than the impulse to give it.
— Rachel Held Evans

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/26/12.)

Photo credit: Gabludlow

The most popular argument against same-sex marriage from Christians that I see is that the purpose of marriage is procreation. (It makes me wonder if the only advice they would give a couple considering marriage would be about sex positions and lubricating oils.)

Where did this idea come from? My guess is that a couple of Christian strategists had a conversation something like this.

First Guy: We’ve got to find some way to differentiate same-sex marriage from straight marriage.

Other Guy: Yeah—some significant difference.

First Guy: So what would a gay marriage not be able to do that a straight marriage can?

Other Guy: Let’s see—they can love each other, they can support each other through difficult times …

First Guy: They can provide sexual satisfaction, they’ll have two incomes in many cases …

Other Guy: Hey, wait a minute—they can’t make babies!

First Guy: Sure, that’s it! Let’s just spin it to imagine that that’s the sole purpose of marriage!

Other Guy: The sole purpose? But what about all that other stuff?

First Guy: Whatever—the argument just has to be plausible at first glance. It doesn’t have to actually make sense.

Seriously? Is that all you get out of the marriage vows? “I promise to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow,” doesn’t sound like “Make babies!” to me.

The real sin: infertility in straight couples

And what would these Christian whiners do with marriages that don’t produce children? Some couples don’t want children and others can’t have them. More than 10% of couples have a fertility problem. In other words, if every single homosexual person paired up and got married tomorrow, they would still be far exceeded in number by the straight couples simply unable to make babies. As anti-gay-marriage advocates lie awake at night and worry about other people’s happiness, I wonder if this fact troubles them as well.

And what about couples beyond child-bearing age? My wife and I are too old for more babies, for example. Does that make our marriage invalid or inferior?

It’s easy to smoke out these Christians’ true opinions on the subject. Ask these opponents to same-sex marriage why a straight couple should get married instead of living together, and the procreation argument goes out the window, replaced with profound thoughts about love and commitment—precisely the reason same-sex couples want to get married.

The marriage-creates-babies idea is clung to like a life preserver, but the simple fact is that marriage doesn’t make babies, it’s sex. And, as I’ve said in a previous post, let’s remember that the apostle Paul was against sex and made clear that the best marriage was no marriage at all.

What if the options were same-sex couple vs. single parent?

A variant of this argument is that a straight couple provides a better environment for a child than a same-sex couple. I’ve heard evidence on each side of this question, but I’m in no position to evaluate it. What seems certain to me is that other factors in life—having enough money, no domestic violence, no drug use, a safe neighborhood, and so on—can overshadow the parents’ gender.

But this argument is irrelevant in those situations when two biological parents simply aren’t an option. For example, imagine a lesbian woman, divorced with a child. The mother could live alone, she could live with a woman partner, or the two women could get married. What’s the best situation for the child? Mom and Dad isn’t an option; they’re divorced. Mom and Stepdad aren’t an option; Mom’s a lesbian. Seems to me that there’s room in this situation to allow for Mom’s happiness, and that could provide another adult to help with the parenting. Where’s the problem? We probably agree that single-parent households aren’t best for raising children, and opposing same-sex marriage only stands in the way.

“But we don’t discriminate!”

A final element of the Christian position is a rearguard action. Concerned about the charge of bias, they argue that their position does not discriminate against homosexuals. After all, they say, the restriction that someone can only marry someone of the opposite sex applies to everyone equally.

I’m sure this absurd argument was as foul-smelling when it was applied to those in love with someone of a different race in 1967 when mixed-race marriages were still prohibited in 17 states. “There’s no discrimination here. You can marry anyone you want … as long as that person is of the same race as you.”

Christians, you’re being led around by Chicken Little politicians. Think for yourself. Same-sex marriage doesn’t affect your marriage or mine one bit.

Read this series from the beginning: “Does the Old Testament Condemn Homosexuality?”

Christians don’t need to be born again.
They need to grow up.
— John Shelby Spong

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/23/12.)

Same old story—same-sex marriage is a slippery slope. Once we allow this change, what will come next? Will people demand to marry their children or pets or sex toys?
Many traditionalists back in the sixties had their own version of this: “Once black folks can marry white folks, who knows what’ll come next?”
The sky didn’t fall after Loving v. Virginia eliminated anti-miscegeny laws in 1967, and it didn’t when the Netherlands became the first country to grant same-sex marriages in 2001 or when Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize them in 2004.
Don’t open that Pandora’s Box labeled “same-sex marriage”!
Here’s a new variation on the Chicken Little fear that the sky is falling. Fellow Patheos blogger Dwight Longenecker doesn’t wonder what’ll come after same-sex marriage. He knows: the U.S. will become a police state.
Hold your arms out for balance, and let’s step through the argument. First, he points to a recent article titled “Legalize Polygamy!” Written by a woman, it argues that a pro-woman attitude should allow women the freedom to enter into polygamous marriages. She argues that marriage is plastic—that it can be molded to take on new shapes.
America has dramatically rejected many of the marriage customs decreed in the Bible, so, yeah, marriage is plastic. But have you considered the consequences? Longenecker has.

Marriage is only plastic … because everything else is too. In other words, there is no such thing as Truth.

This big-T Truth presumably means objective or absolute truth. And here again I agree—I see no evidence for objective truth in issues that affect society such as morality or the definition of marriage. But Longenecker wails and rends his garments:

For the Catholic everything is connected. If marriage is plastic … then everything is plastic … Everything is up for grabs, there is no certainty and if no certainty, then no security.

Changing the definition of marriage pulls the thread that unravels the entire fabric of your reality? I guess it sucks to be you then, since we’ve already resoundingly rejected many of the Bible’s conceptions of the male/female relationship.
The Bible’s nutty interpretation of marriage

• “Do not intermarry with [those in the Canaanite tribes]” (Deut. 7:3).
• King Solomon famously had 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).
• A raped woman must marry her rapist (Deut. 22:28–9).
• “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Num. 31:17–18)
• God said to David, “I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” (2 Sam. 12:8). God has his complaints about David, but polygamy isn’t one of them.
• Paul said, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry” (1 Cor. 7:8–9). Marriage is clearly the second best option. Celibacy is what we should actually strive for.
• Paul also rejects divorce (1 Cor. 7:10–11).

The Bible isn’t much of a marriage manual.
The sky is falling!

In a society where anything goes everything goes…downhill fast. Where moral disintegration exists societal disintegration soon follows. Everything starts to come apart at the seams. Societal chaos threatens.

I missed how we get “anything goes” from expanding one institution of society to include a disenfranchised minority.

When there is no certainty in a society–no moral absolutes and no reason and no rules …

As for no moral absolutes … well, yeah. Why—do you have any evidence of moral absolutes besides some vague feeling? And here again, the only one who imagines no reason and no rules is Longenecker himself.
And now the punch line.

When there is no certainty in a society–no moral absolutes and no reason and no rules, then something must be done. People demand security. As disorder and chaos increase people demand order and control.

But, of course, this dystopia that’s around the corner won’t reach for Longenecker’s Yahweh, darn it. This obvious answer will be right in front of us, but our fallen race will appeal to government, and the government’s way to provide order and control is a police state.

Thus the ultimate irony that those who wanted a society “completely free” from absolutes where everything was plastic will end up with a police state where nothing is plastic and the total control is drastic.

This breathless argument distills down to this:
1. A same-sex marriage proponent is now advocating that polygamy be legalized. See? Didn’t I say this would happen?!
2. A flexible definition of marriage means that everything is flexible. Absolutes of any kind and even truth itself are no more. Anything goes.
3. Moral disintegration and social chaos follow.
4. The public clamors for order, and government responds with a police state.
(Point #2 is where the argument teleports to Crazy Town, IMO.)
The slippery slope argument is popular, but I reject it. The definition of marriage does change; that’s a simple fact of history. Instead of focusing on that, focus on the test that doesn’t change: does it cause harm?
Does polygamy cause harm? Does same-sex marriage cause harm? These are the questions to ask.

Happiness is the only good,
reason the only torch,
justice the only worship,
humanity the only religion,
and love the only priest.
— Robert Green Ingersoll

Photo credit: Wikimedia