A Theology for Gay Marriage

by on

First published July 20, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.

When gay activists argue the case for same-sex marriage they make sure to emphasize that they mean civil marriage. The right of various religious denominations to determine the criteria for their religious marriage ceremonies is rightly protected by the First Amendment.

But gays and lesbians who are religious may long for a ceremony that may feel more like the real "wedding," so they feel more fully, satisfyingly married. Although a few churches already offer religious ceremonies, most denominations still do not. They say that same-sex ceremonies are not consistent with their theology.

So we need a persuasive theology for gay marriage.

There is nothing arcane about theology. Theology is simply the way people try to use revered stories and writings, visions, insights, and their own ponderings to understand the nature and intentions of the god or gods they believe in.

Theology is by nature conservative. But just as existing theology conserves the insights and experiences of earlier religious leaders, so theology is, in the long run, influenced by the deeply felt and clearly expressed experience of people living today. And that includes experiencing the presence of loving relationships by gay and lesbian couples.

As the bishops of the Episcopal Church wrote in a presentation to the recent Anglican Consultative Council, "We believe that God has been opening our eyes to acts of God that we had not known how to see before. Members of the Episcopal Church have discerned holiness in same-sex relationships."

But even Christians in denominations less explicitly open to the concept of a continuing disclosure of a god's purpose (what John Henry Newman called "the economy") are not without resources to begin developing a theology for gay marriage. Here are just four of several possible lines of approach.

  1. Some Christian denominations place so much emphasis on procreative capacity as the key criterion for marriage that they almost seem to turn Christianity into a breeding cult. But early texts offer scant support for that view.
  2. The Apostle Paul urged Christians not to marry and if they were already married to act as if they were not married. Paul offered the "concession" that Christians could marry but mentioned only the excuse of assuaging strong sexual desire, not anything about having children (1 Cor. 7:6-8, 25-29).
  3. Some opponents of gay marriage claim the defining characteristic of marriage to be a "one flesh union" of man and wife, citing Genesis 2:24. But they ignore the fact that the bodies do not actually merge (it is a metaphor!) and they miss the broader meaning of "one flesh union."

    Paul, for instance, writes of sex with a prostitute, "Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, 'The two shall become one'" (1 Cor. 6:16). So "one flesh union" refers to any kind of sexual penetration, not marital or procreative activity specifically.
  4. According to Paul, belief in Jesus as the Christ rendered all attributes of social status, nationality and gender irrelevant.
    Paul wrote:

  5. "Before faith came, we were confined under the law ... But now that faith has come we are no longer under a custodian. ... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ" (Gal. 3:24-28).


  6. A more forthright and comprehensive dismissal of the relevance of gender for the religion of Christ could hardly be imagined.
  7. In an interesting new book about same-sex marriage, What God Has Joined Together?, David Myers and Letha Scanzoni point out that the Hebrew prophet Hosea has God liken his covenant with Israel to a betrothal: "I will betroth you to me for ever. ... I will betroth you to me in faithfulness" (Hos. 2:19-20).

    "Perhaps," Myers and Scanzoni write,

    "rather than thinking in terms of gender, we might instead consider the characteristics of that covenant .... justice, fairness, love, kindness, faithfulness and a revelation of God's personhood. ... If these characteristics define an ideal marriage, might two homosexual persons likewise form such a union? ... If we can think in those terms, might we ... accept these (same sex) covenantal relationships as indeed a joining of two persons by God?"

Gay marriage opponents will, of course, offer counter-texts and counter-arguments. And gay-supportive Christians can respond in turn, drawing on additional texts and arguments. That is how theology develops.

To take one example, anti-gay advocates will note "Paul's" apparent enthusiasm for childbearing in a Letter to Timothy (1 Tim 2:15, 5:14). But gay marriage supporters can point out that linguistic and historical analysis have shown that that letter was not written by Paul but by an impostor trying to use Paul's authority to promote his own beliefs 40 or 50 years after Paul's death. (See Werner Kuemmel, Introduction to the New Testament.)

So for gay Christians the project of developing a theology for same-sex religious marriage can be both exciting and enlightening.

Comments are closed.