sex between men is grotesque – a repost

I rather liked this argument from a while back…

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If we push the various assertions and arguments, whether secular or religious, the end point seems to result in a rather simple assertion that same gender love is inherently "ungodly" because it is grotesque. It's gross. It's nasty. Because it's gross and nasty, it must be wrong.

The grotesque proceeds from an ordered structure of experience when opposing or differentiated terms are combined in a way that unifies terms that ought to be differentiated, and differentiates terms that ought to remain unified.  In short, the grotesque is an often radical disturbance of an ordered structure of experience (Tatusko, 2005).

Hence, disorder and anything gross should be held up as mutually exclusive terms. Robert Gagnon grounds his fundamental argument that same gender love is wrong in a form of complementarianism in which the law of nature as God designed it is that a family must, without exception, ultimately begin with a man and a woman who are covenanted to each other with God before child rearing. He argues that this is not simply "sexual" but psycho-social as well. The human being is designed to be raised by the complementary two halves of full humanity which becomes fully realized when man and woman are united.

This argument is a form of what is called "natural law".

In this way of thinking, society defines marriage as a sexual union between a husband and wife, based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers.

Certainly Paul uses the word "natural" in Romans 1 which is perhaps the most cited passage in the New Testament regarding same gender "relations" – which in biblical terms means sexual intercourse in this context. Hence, the ordering or structure of the relationship is disordered and so, grotesque. The specific biblical reference is to male-male relations. What all of this boils down to is a consistent argument that roots a disfavor of same gender love in an intuition that such relationships are disordered when measured against the ordered structure of creation as revealed by God in scripture. With disorder as its source, it is clear that the real issue is that same gender love is simply, grotesque.

Throughout scripture there are other orders of human relationships that are set forth. Slaves and masters, women and men, kings and the people, etc. All are not orders set up by arbitrary pronouncements from humans, but are established by God unambiguously. A breach of this established order is often placed in the context of idolatry. If we rebel against the structure that God has established, then we are erecting idols of our own choosing. Idolatry at its root is the result of a disordering of the laws of God. Sin is a function of disorder as well. However, especially in America, we have forbidden slaves, legislate an egalitarian view of women, view all races with equality, have rebelled against any notion of kings, etc. The structure of the United States is absolutely nothing like what anyone who wrote any portion of the Bible could have imagined or even desired for such a structure and view of human being was simply not in their shared cultural imagination.

This is why we cannot segment one biblical grotesquery from other forms of the grotesque that we no longer generally understand as grotesque. There is a certain sense in which our traditional lenses of accepted cultural practice always mediate what the spirit of the letter actually invites us to do and issues regarding sex, gender, race, and social structures are always mediated through our present situation. That much is inevitable. The question, therefore is not what Scripture simply says, but how we allow the completely foreign world of Scripture to inhabit our own cultural sphere in a transformative way.

No one follows the Bible word for word. In fact no one has, even Jesus. The question is why one rejects certain structures in the Bible that appear to be grotesque such as slavery or complementarianism, and why one accepts specific definitions of the grotesque in the Bible with little or no critical apprehension of one's own limited cultural assumptions. The distinction between non-negotiable and negotiable orders of nature in Scripture is a rather arbitrary decision when viewed in the course of human history. In fact, it may be more truthful to argue that nothing present in Scripture has ever been a non-negotiable including the command to love God and love neighbor – otherwise denominations and traditions within any religion or ideology would simply not exist. Love is wholly dependent on its object. Sin is the process of missing the mark of that object and loving something else. How we understand same gender love, among many other things, is therefore forged in the tension that exists between sin and love.

Until all people in this issue can understand the assumptions that ground their own understanding on the present order of creation and what is actually ordained by God now, a split is inevitable. Such is the legacy of a religion rooted in the negotiation of sin and love between members of a frail and clueless humanity when it comes to the things of God. Thinking that you have the whole truth regarding sin and love in your grasp is the first sign that you are missing the mark – the necessary end of which is idolatry.

N.B.:: Other thoughts on the recent Newsweek: Mollie at Get Religion posts a good rebuttal (referenced above), although it is clear I disagree with the fundamental assertion she makes. She nonetheless does a more than adequate job with the conservative position. John Shuck would no doubt also disagree with Mollie. NT Wrong distills the article in a few important excerpts. You can be sure that many other thoughts will follow so be on the lookout! I will add an update or two here as they file in.

UPDATE:: Politico has a summary of reactions. What intrigues me about the reactions so far from the groups cited in this piece and others is that there is no distinction made between what a text says and how it ought to be read. At the same time, they get offended when they are accused or described of being "literalists".

Related posts:

1. carney culture and the grotesque