Bible Texts “do not necessarily mean what they say,” Via contended, and interpreters must consider the ancient context, modern social science, gay experience, and biblical principles like justice, equity, and love of neighbor. Thus instead of moral decision-making based on “acts and rules,” Christians should consider “consequences, intentions, and inner dispositions.”
The Old Testament’s Leviticus 18:22 commands, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Exegetes like Via see this as part of a Jewish “holiness code” whose ritual purity tenets no longer apply for Christians. Conservatives like Gagnon respond this may be true for other biblical passages but this one addresses sexual practices, including adultery, incest and bestiality, which all branches of Christianity reject to this day.
In the New Testament, I Corinthians 6:9 says “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God,” including “the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex,” with a New RSV footnote that the meaning of Paul’s last two Greek words is “uncertain.” But evangelicals’ New International Version reads “men who have sex with men,” with a footnote citing scholars who say the two words “refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.”
However experts understand that verse (or 1 Timothy 1:10, or Jude 7), both sides agree the key is Paul’s Letter to the Romans 1:26-27. In discussing rejection of God’s truth, he denounces those overtaken by “dishonorable passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse with females, were consumed with their passionate desires for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males. …”
Some argue that Paul was assailing only the era’s widespread practice of men exploiting or prostituting boys, often slaves, and argue this does not apply to modern-day adults’ consensual partnerships. Via said though pederasty was indeed widespread, Greco-Roman culture also had consensual adult couples.
Via’s emphasis instead was that Paul, like other ancients, had no concept of “sexual orientation” that may not be a person’s choice, may not be open to reversal, and is fixed early in life whether from biological or psychological causes. He thought gay marriage prevents harmful promiscuity, an argument Paul made for heterosexual marriage (1 Corinthians 7:2,9).
For Via, such “contextual factors” can invalidate sexual rules if a relationship is “loving, consensual, non-manipulative and faithful.” Conservatives like Gagnon say behavioral science has no firm conclusion on causes, and in any event such factors cannot erase what Scripture clearly teaches.
CONTINUE READING: “Why do 21st Century Christians favor, or oppose, same-sex marriage?”, by Richard Ostling.
