A Running Commentary on Newsweek’s Pro-homosexual Cover Article:

Our Mutual Joy

By Lisa Miller

“Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture.

But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.”

Miller’s words appear in black, Dr. Cass’ commentary appears in red.

*****

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does.

Miller says she is seriously attempting to find a biblical definition of marriage, but then ignores the obvious definition.  Gen 2:24: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Miller immediately starts looking for exceptions to the norm.

Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.

The sinful act of Abraham with his servant Hagar was never condoned in the Bible. The polygamy of the Patriarchs is never positively advocated or promoted in the Bible. David, Solomon and all the kings who had multiple wives did so in clear violation of Deut 17:17: Neither shall he [the King] multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away.

The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better.

Miller is clearly mistaken. The New Testament holds forth monogamy as the gold standard for ethical Christian life. The officers in the church are to be the examples of Christian living. They are to be “the husbands of one wife.” (1 Tim.3:2; 3:12; Titus 1:6).

Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family.

Jesus was not indifferent about marriage. Rather Jesus taught that life must be lived by spiritual commitments that transcend family. But when we put Christ first, our family life prospers.  

The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered.

The Bible is very realistic about sex. Few Christians have the gift of celibacy, but marriage is the only honorable place for sexual expression. Heb 13:4: Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script? Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.

Certainly millions of believers rely on the Bible everyday to successfully guide their marriage.

The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months—since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it—the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country's pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny.

This is an attempt to link slavery and the black civil rights movement with the homosexual movement. Gay is not the “new black” because consensual sex is always a choice. Unlike race, homosexual acts are not an unchangeable characteristic.   

But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched.

Note that Miller tries to link slavery with traditionalists as if traditional marriage is evil. The reason for the spiritual mismatch is because liberal churches are dead or dying because they have abandoned the Bible.  

All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.

That’s because the Scriptures are clear about the prohibitions regarding homosexual acts.

The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."

To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

This is not true. Jesus quotes the Genesis passage as the standard definition of marriage. (Matt 19:4-6) The Apostle Paul also refers to the Genesis definition in his discussion of marriage. (Ephesians 5:31)

And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes.

So the “sensible modern person” is much smarter than Jesus, the Apostles and Prophets.

"Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two.

Up until the homosexual movement’s attempt to destroy traditional marriage, there has never been a conflict between the civil and religious definition of marriage.   

As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance.

Marriage is not simply for the benefit of the “partners,” it is for the purpose of creating a stable family environment for children.  

As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them.

Marriage is properly based on “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and is accountable to Him. The church and state should recognize the legitimacy of natural, biblical marriages.

Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history.

Miller is very diabolical in this line of reasoning. First she calls people who take the clear teaching of the Bible seriously “biblical literalists.” This is intended to discredit them. Miller fancies herself much more enlightened than those who take the Bible on its own terms.  

Miller tells us the Bible is a “living document.” The Bible is alive because it reveals the truth about man’s evil inclinations. (Heb 4:12) But what Miller means by a “living document” is that the Bible can be made to say whatever we want it to say. So Miller speaks as if she respects the Bible all the while she dismisses it as backward.  

In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

Here’s a few biblical reasons why homosexual marriage is forbidden.

First from the New Testament:

Jude 7: Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

This passage refers to the story in Genesis where God rains fire and brimstone on the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The reason for the judgment is “sexual immorality,” specifically going after “strange flesh.” This is a clearly a reference to the wicked attempt by the men of Sodom to sexually abuse (sodomize) Lot’s male guests (see Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18-19).

I Cor 6:9&10: Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

Unrepentant homosexual acts are grounds for exclusion from God’s Kingdom.

Rom 1:24, 26: Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves… For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due…  

Homosexual acts by men or women “dishonor their bodies” and are “vile,” “against nature,” and “shameful.”

And from the Old Testament

Leveticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.  

Lev 20:13: If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.  

Persons legally convicted of homosexual crimes in court were subject to the death penalty in Israel. Homosexual acts were considered to be an attack on the family.

In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world.

Christians live by the New Testament precepts regarding monogamy. Old Testament polygamy is not our standard, although we can learn from their mistake. Segal arrogantly dismisses the scripture because it was written by polygamists. Jesus upheld the Genesis account regarding monogamy as trustworthy.   

(The fact that homosexual couples cannot procreate has also been raised as a biblical objection, for didn't God say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? But the Bible authors could never have imagined the brave new world of international adoption and assisted reproductive technology—and besides, heterosexuals who are infertile or past the age of reproducing get married all the time.)

God did not change the make up of the family because of technology. Technology ought to be used to support of God’s institution of marriage. It is not as an excuse to destroy marriage. The fact that older infertile couples marry is not equivalent to homosexual acts.  Marriage is also a unique reflection of the image of God and of redemption.

Gen 1:27: So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. The image of God is uniquely revealed in the one-flesh / male-female bond. Homosexual acts desecrate the aspect of the image of God.

Eph 5:31-32"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Marriage is also a reflection of the relationship of Christ, the bride groom, and his redeemed people, the bride. Homosexual acts destroy the picture of Gospel of Christ that marriage provides.

Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either.

There are many examples of monogamous marriages in the New Testament. Jesus was raised in a home with a monogamous marriage. John the Baptist’s parents, Lazarus and the Apostle Peter, to name a few, all appear to have a normal “Ozzie and Harriet” home life.

The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew.

But of course, those who followed Christ and knew him most intimately were married, even the Apostle Peter. Paul asks the Corinthian church, “Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas [Peter]?” (1 Cor 9:5-6)

The New Testament is filled with admonitions for husbands to love their wives and for wives to respect their husbands (Eph 5:22 ff. Col 3:18 f., 1 Peter 3:1ff.). There is no mention of “same sex partners” or “significant others.” You are either single or married. There is nothing in between.

Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).

Arguments from silence prove nothing. Jesus does in fact affirm the whole of the Old Testament law, which includes prohibitions against sodomy. (Matt 5:17-20)   

The apostle Paul echoed the Christian Lord's lack of interest in matters of the flesh. For him, celibacy was the Christian ideal, but family stability was the best alternative. Marry if you must, he told his audiences, but do not get divorced. "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): a wife must not separate from her husband." It probably goes without saying that the phrase "gay marriage" does not appear in the Bible at all.

Homosexual marriage is so morally reprehensible and culturally inconceivable that it is never mentioned in the Bible.

If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)."

Miller is wrong, the Bible does condemn lesbianism. (Roman 1:26)  

The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

For Miller homosexuality is no big deal. It is like eating shrimp which is considered unclean and considered to be an abomination.  

There are no “throwaway lines” in the Bible according to Christ. The word rendered abomination in the Old Testament comes from six different closely related Hebrew words. When the Bible says that eating shellfish is an abomination it is rendered from the Hebrew word sheqets which means filthy or unclean. The Hebrew word which describes homosexual acts is toebah which means dangerous, sinister and repulsive. Miller fails to mention that incest and bestiality are mentioned in the immediate context of the condemnation of homosexuality. Are these also to be disregarded? According to Miller’s logic they should be.

No one is arguing that we ought to impose all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. The ceremonial laws about sacrifices were all fulfilled by Christ. According to the New Testament, the dietary laws are also not in effect as a required aspect of Christian piety. So the laws that were explicitly directed to Israel as a unique theocratic state disappeared with that state.

But the basic principles of the Moral Law is still binding on all people every where. The Moral Law, summed up in the 10 Commandments, restricts sexual activity to within marriage- “thou shall not commit adultery.” Jesus taught that entertaining illicit sexual thoughts is sinful. 

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

“Progressive scholar” means liberal, skeptical revisionists who twist the Bible’s clear teachings to support modern sins. Miller tries to make an argument from moral equivalency; divorce is the same as homosexual acts. The Bible does condemn divorce, but only in certain situations. It categorically condemns homosexual acts in every situation. This is line of argument is only intended to change the subject, not deal with the Bible says about the matter of homosexual sin.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument).

Wrong. Whether one “feels” comfortable with sodomy or not, the Biblical prohibition against it is clear.

Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Here again an attempt to invoke a black civil rights leader to endorse sexual wickedness. How do we know the changes of a society are all for the better? Are more divorce, pornography and abortion changes for the better? Righteousness and justice have to be defined by the Bible and they are not in conflict. What is righteous is just. Homosexual acts are not righteous.

The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric.

It was Christians who put an end to slavery based upon the Bible.  

It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter).

The basic principles of the moral law are binding and there ought to be legal sanctions for adulterers. They ought to be same as the penalty for sodomy because both destroy the foundation of society, the family. 

It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites.

So the truth of the New Testament is anti-Semitic? Either Miller is right or Christ and Apostles are right about God’s attitude towards the Jews. By the way, Jesus and the Apostles all were Jews.

A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism.

A mature view of the Bible is apparently is Miller’s skeptical view. But if we can not trust the Bible, then everyone gets to make up what is right in their own eyes.

The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.

The moral law and principles of the Bible apply to the specifics of this life in any context or time. Jesus taught us to pray, “thy Kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are not supposed to change the Bible to fit our world. God uses the Bible to change us so we can positively change our world.

Marriage, specifically, has evolved so as to be unrecognizable to the wives of Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century.

Marriage has always been heterosexual. The fact that it took until the sixth century to transform Greco-Roman pagan marriage practices into Christian practices is not surprising, but it is a positive change. Acceptance of homosexual acts is a step backwards towards pagan sexuality.  

husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th.

Prostitution has always been looked down. From the beginning harlotry is condemned in scripture.

(In the NEWSWEEK POLL, 55 percent of respondents said that married heterosexuals who have sex with someone other than their spouses are more morally objectionable than a gay couple in a committed sexual relationship.)

When voters in 30 out of 30 states have had the chance to vote, homosexual marriage is defeated by an average of 70% to 30%. Even if it is allowed by man’s law, it is still immoral according to biblical standards.

By the mid-19th century, U.S. courts were siding with wives who were the victims of domestic violence, and by the 1970s most states had gotten rid of their "head and master" laws, which gave husbands the right to decide where a family would live and whether a wife would be able to take a job. Today's vision of marriage as a union of equal partners, joined in a relationship both romantic and pragmatic, is, by very recent standards, radical, says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History."

The Bible does not sanction violence against wives (1 Peter 3:1ff). Today’s vision of marriage is not working because it is not biblical. Marriage requires mutual submission, kindness to wives as well submission to loving male leadership. (Eph 5:21-26)  

Religious wedding ceremonies have already changed to reflect new conceptions of marriage. Remember when we used to say "man and wife" instead of "husband and wife"? Remember when we stopped using the word "obey"?

Miller does not get around much. “Submission” is not a dirty word in Bible believing churches and is alive and well in Christian marriage ceremonies.

Even Miss Manners, the voice of tradition and reason, approved in 1997 of that change. "It seems," she wrote, "that dropping 'obey' was a sensible editing of a service that made assumptions about marriage that the society no longer holds."

Miss Manners is not Moses nor Jesus.

We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future.

Yes we can and ought to read the Bible as a marriage manual. Miller sounds like she is more familiar and comfortable with radical feminism than with the biblical view of marriage.

The Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage, family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs.

Miller first attacks the Bible as unreliable on marriage but now she wants to look for biblical stories to inspire her unbiblical views. The Bible does not speak of binding together in “loving pairs” for the sake of family. It only speaks of heterosexual marriage.

Gay men like to point to the story of passionate King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he was "one spirit" and whom he "loved as he loved himself." Conservatives say this is a story about a platonic friendship, but it is also a story about two men who stand up for each other in turbulent times, through violent war and the disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his clothes at Jonathan's death and, in grieving, writes a song:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.

Here, the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations.

This is a despicable abuse of the great covenant friendship between David and Jonathan that is perverted in order to justify sodomy when there is absolutely no evidence. Bonds of love can be real and deep and yet not sexualized. Love of brother, sister, son and daughter, etc. are true love, but they are never to be sexualized. Emotionally healthy people have strong bonds with others of the same sex, especially if they have suffered together like war buddies. Love does not make marriage, God makes marriage.

In addition to its praise of friendship and its condemnation of divorce, the Bible gives many examples of marriages that defy convention yet benefit the greater community. The Torah discouraged the ancient Hebrews from marrying outside the tribe, yet Moses himself is married to a foreigner, Zipporah. Queen Esther is married to a non-Jew and, according to legend, saves the Jewish people. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, believes that Judaism thrives through diversity and inclusion. "I don't think Judaism should or ought to want to leave any portion of the human population outside the religious process," he says. "We should not want to leave [homosexuals] outside the sacred tent." The marriage of Joseph and Mary is also unorthodox (to say the least), a case of an unconventional arrangement accepted by society for the common good. The boy needed two human parents, after all.

Exceptions do not make the rule. The marriages of Moses, Esther and Mary and Joseph are not the equivalent of sodomy.

In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of Christ's all-encompassing love. The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

Biblical inclusiveness is real, but not absolute. Jesus invites all, male and female, Jew and gentile, married and single to repent and believe on Him.  (Matt 4:17) The unrepentant of any class or group of people are not included in the Kingdom of God. The Apostles picked up this same theme in their preaching. (Acts 17:30-31)  

The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage.

No, Christ did not want togetherness for its own sake. A commitment to doing the will of God is what unites Christians. Inclusion for the outcasts is based on repentance, including people who engage in homosexual acts.

If one is for racial equality and the common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and family necessarily follow. Terry Davis is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hartford, Conn., and has been presiding over "holy unions" since 1992. "I'm against promiscuity—love ought to be expressed in committed relationships, not through casual sex, and I think the church should recognize the validity of committed same-sex relationships," he says.

Racial equality is not the same thing as accepting illicit sexual activity. Terry Davis needs to repent, too. You can not bless what God condemns.

Still, very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal. The practice varies by region, by church or synagogue, even by cleric. More progressive denominations—the United Church of Christ, for example—have agreed to support gay marriage. Other denominations and dioceses will do "holy union" or "blessing" ceremonies, but shy away from the word "marriage" because it is politically explosive. So the frustrating, semantic question remains: should gay people be married in the same, sacramental sense that straight people are? I would argue that they should. If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that.

Liberal denominations departed from the Bible and the faith decades ago and are adrift in many kinds of apostasy. They are not the standard. I agree that we should not deny marriage on the basis of skin color because it is not biblical. But God still limits who can get married. Christians are forbidden to marry outside of the faith. (2 Corinthians 6:14)

People get married "for their mutual joy," explains the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center in New York, quoting the Episcopal marriage ceremony. That's what religious people do: care for each other in spite of difficulty, she adds. In marriage, couples grow closer to God: "Being with one another in community is how you love God. That's what marriage is about."

If man wants to be happy by marrying someone that God forbids, then he will not be happy nor is he eligible for God’s blessing on an illicit union.

More basic than theology, though, is human need. We want, as Abraham did, to grow old surrounded by friends and family and to be buried at last peacefully among them. We want, as Jesus taught, to love one another for our own good—and, not to be too grandiose about it, for the good of the world. We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad." Let the priest's prayer be our own.

The primary duty of man is to glorify God and human need is not the basis for theology. God has revealed His standard in scripture and it is not always what we want. Having stable marriages and healthy families means we honor God’s institution on his terms. This is the loving thing to give our children.