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Includes some tidbits stolen from one of Nance's posts and uses a line from lionesspriyanka. The theologian most heavily used in crafting the sermon is Theodore W. Jennings because I found a good article he wrote on-line. In fact, the first half of his article provides the basic outline for the second half of my sermon. However, I depart from Jennings drastically where he persists in referencing "lifestyle." The polished copy of the sermon will be properly attributed.
Here it is, hot of the press, typos, bad grammar and all.
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Why Chose to Be a Heterosexual
January 11, 2009
I remember the day clearly. I was in junior high school when the most beautiful girl in my grade walked into the class. She had gorgeous black hair that always curled away from her face in feathers the rest of us could only dream of duplicating. She had the body we all wanted for ourselves and looked great in anything she put on. Right behind her entered a Greek god in a twelve-year old body. His izod shirt with the up-turned collar and the comb handle sticking out of his back pocket rendered him absolutely irresistible. I instantly knew I had to make a decision. I looked at both of them and thought, “Well, which way am I going to go here?” I’d already decided that opting for both made me incredibly greedy and I was already fairly compassionate at that tender age.
On the one hand, I could become a lesbian and fear the taunting and possibly violent response of my classmates. After all, being the punchline of tasteless jokes and mercilessly harassed sounded like a real hoot. I could lose friends who I thought liked me until they found out I wasn’t like them. Michelle was beginning to annoy me anyway. I wasn’t giving much thought to my future career at that point so it really didn’t matter if I would be discriminated against or lose my job. If I was really lucky, I could get thrown out of my church when the word got around. I’d much rather spend Sunday morning in bed than listening to Dr. Curl.
On the other hand, Richie was just plain hot. Besides, the wedding of my dreams included a tuxedo and I was pretty sure my parents would approve of grandchildren some day. So I made my choice and became a heterosexual.
I sincerely hope you found the opening commentary of my sermon today patently absurd. I honestly cannot fathom how anyone who contemplates the onset of their own awareness of their sexual nature can possibly accept the preposterous notion that sexuality is something we choose. I defy anyone to tell me they woke up one morning, analyzed their options, weighed the pros and cons and made a conscious decision to prefer one gender or another—or both.
Recently I watched a fascinating program on the BBC called The Making of Me. Sadly, only available on YouTube in six parts as best I can tell. This particular episode featured openly-gay actor John Barrowman. I admit it. I have a crush on him. He is the gay best friend I have always wanted. At any rate, the show was riveting because of the scientific tests to which he agreed to subject himself.
The obvious first step was to determine if he was gay or not. Sounds silly, but in order to progress through the exploration it does help to establish that you’re on the right track. I won’t go into detail, but the tests he took indicated that yes indeed, males sexually aroused him while females did not. So the next questions they pursued were how and when he became gay.
They looked at Mr. Barrowman’s early childhood and noticed his play pattern fit with our cultural expectations for females rather than males. I was particularly fascinated by a pair of twins featured in the show—one with a decidedly masculine pattern of play and the other more feminine. I’ll give you an example of the difference using legos or blocks. Males tend to build something to subsequently smash it up. Females will build something to then use in the context of pretend play.
But taking behavioral patterns back to early childhood doesn’t necessarily settle the nature verses nurture debate. A feminine male child can still be a heterosexual and a masculine male child can still be a homosexual. The play patterns can point to probabilities but not flawless predictions.
So Mr. Barrowman took some genetic tests, which surprisingly, were not conclusive. Scientists have not discovered a “gay gene.” But what they did find that pointed to the in utero environment was astounding to me. I am not sure what the implications are for homosexual females, but apparently the odds of a male becoming homosexual increase for each older male sibling he has. Mr. Barrowman had an older brother and discovered his mother had miscarried a male. As the third son, he had something like a 70% higher chance of being gay than a first-born son. Yes, I am watching Aidan to see if I may luck into a son-in-law after all.
In another confirmation of genetic or prenatal environment contributing to our sexuality, they showed an interesting statistical study of hand patterns. If I tell you about it now, I’m going to lose you all as you look at one another’s hands to find out if you conform to the pattern or not. You’ll have to wait for that until the congregational response after our hospitality time this morning. I will tell you that it does seem to hold pretty true to form for everyone I have told about it.
I do hope there isn’t a single person left in this room who will use the phrase “lifestyle choice” in connection with our human sexuality.
I chose to address this topic today for two reasons. One, our congregation is a welcoming congregation and it is important that we continuously renew our commitment to that purpose. I can think of no other group of people today who are more subject to religious persecution than the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. We are called as people of faith to provide an intelligent and compassionate sanctuary for all of our brothers and sisters. We must be willing to challenge the prevailing social construct in our country that promotes homophobia and heterosexism as normative.
My second reason is a matter of timing. When president-elect Obama selected Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration I was absolutely appalled. Warren has compared homosexuals to sexual predators and worked to deny them marriage rights in California. He actually holds a slew of religiously conservative viewpoints derived from sloppy theology, but I could keep you here all day. Now I understand that Obama is free to select whomever he wishes to deliver the invocation and that he is attempting to reach across the aisle as it were and demonstrate his inclusivity. I can sympathize with the notion that this is a political move designed to stifle conservative critics. However, I still believe it was absolutely an appalling choice to make. Actually, as an aside, I am not much in favor of an invocation at the inauguration. It should be a secular ritual simply marking the transition of political power. Be that as it may, the invocation is a tradition we’re probably going to have around for quite awhile and invariably the selection of any particular member of the clergy is likely to upset someone.
So I am going to focus on my issue with clergy like Rev. Warren who perpetuate the absurd notion that sexuality is a matter of choice and therefore willfully advocate statutory discrimination. Honestly, do we really live in a country where people choose whether or not they will be afforded equal rights and protection under the law? I hope not! It is cruel and immoral to expect the GLBT to shut up and be content with their second-class citizenship. The legal protections heterosexuals enjoy in Florida for the cost of a $93.50 marriage license costs thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees for homosexual partnerships and even then the documents might not be upheld if challenged in court.
So how do clergy like Rev. Warren get away with vilifying their fellow human beings and seeking to abridge their civil rights? Bad theology. Very bad theology.
I am going to tread on very dangerous ground here by trying to make some general statements. Please understand that I am going to call this “mainstream non-denominational Christianity,” but there are going to be exceptions depending upon the specific branch of Christianity or a particular theologian. But essentially, Christian theology works something like this.
First principle: God is gracious and his supreme intention is to justify, save and redeem humanity. Not on the basis of deciding between good and bad persons, but exclusively on the basis of God’s own grace. This means that no human act or condition can inherently serve as an obstacle to God’s grace. If we negate this principle than we have placed into human hands the capacity to effect our own salvation. That works for many UUs, but we’re going with basic contemporary Christian theology here. So with respect to homosexuality or homosexual acts, they may not be considered as excluding someone from God’s salvific intent.
Second principle: Interrelated with the first principle is the idea of universality of God’s judgment in relation to human nature. Any attempts to establish ourselves as either righteous or sinful are undermined. This means that even those people who do still believe homosexuality is a lifestyle cannot either defend or condemn it because no human condition is intrinsically justified or righteous (Jennings). The theological Theodore Jennings says, “One should therefore view with alarm discussions of this question which, discovering that homosexuals are sinners, conclude that they are unfit for the ministry and, almost, for the Christian community. Are we then necessarily to conclude that since homosexuals are sinners—and healthy heterosexuals are less so—that Christ died for homosexuals but not for us? Out of our own self-righteousness we therefore have condemned ourselves.”
Some theologians, such as Karl Barth, look to the evidence in Genesis where we are created in the image of God, male and female to justify heterosexism. This is usually done in a way that violates these first two principles, but even when not, is this interpretation justified? For those who consider scripture to be infallible and the literal word of God, perhaps, but I am not so sure the metaphor works that way. If you look around us, we cannot escape the fact that humanity is divided into two types, male and female. I am not surprised the writers and editors of Genesis would note that. But I think the key point here is that human being differ from one another and experience otherness. How is that isolation bridged—by love. This principle is called cohumanity.
We can examine the principle of cohumanity and determine which relationships are better and which are worse. Is a sexual relationship based on lust and exploitation or on love and mutual esteem? Is a political relationship based on transformation or oppression? But when it comes to whether a relationship is heterosexual or homosexual there is no basis upon which to state one is inherently better or worse than the other.
Another area of sloppy theology concerns natural law and works something like this. Sexuality belongs in the realm of nature and was created for the purpose of procreation. Therefore, sexual activity that does not have children as the goal, violates the natural order. Now we would have to be fair and assert that masturbation, contraception, nongenital sexuality between man and woman also pervert the natural order. Mainstream Protestant Christian theology asserts the celebratory aspect of sexuality and renders it less goal-oriented which is why contraception is not a problem. So given this perspective, we can’t exactly single out homosexuality if these other “perversions” are permissible.
Here comes the biggie for contemporary American right-wing clergy, the sanctity of the family. There is a good reason why Dobson calls his organization, “Focus on the Family.” The theology and politics are rooted in the strict father model of family that depends upon dad, mom, two point three kids and a dog or maybe a cat. Anything besides this picture is anathema. But can this social construct be justified theologically? Hard to say when we look at how suspicious Jesus and Paul were with regard to family ties. Our notion of the American nuclear family just does not exist in the New Testament. So even theologians who believe homosexuality precludes marriage and a family cannot claim homosexuality is a priori unchristian.
Responsible Christian theology, of course, utilizes Scripture as a primary source. I have spoken in the past about the resounding biblical silence regarding homosexuality. The word didn’t even exist until something like 1892. It is true there are several passages in the bible condemning homosexual acts, but nothing regarding human sexuality at all. Theologians who use a collection of proof texts to buttress their anti-homosexual arguments are being lazy or disingenuous, possibly both. We call it cherry-picking in the vernacular.
Cherry-picking is when you promote proof texts, passages which appear to support the position you have already taken, while disregarding other passages which might logically negate or create tension with your position. If we are going to put homosexuals to death we must also subjugate women—i.e. I shouldn’t be standing here before you today—keep kosher kitchens, not wear anything made of both wool and linen, and forget everything we learned in science class.
Proper biblical exegesis demands that we determine whether a passage expresses a central principle of faith or should be seen as accidental, peripheral or timebound. The Bible was written millennia ago based on even older verbal traditions. It is simply irrational to expect every word to apply equally to every society in every period of time. A literal and static reading of the Bible is offensive to both humanity and God. Learned, intelligent, responsible and yes, devout theologians neither cherry-pick nor take the Bible as literal and inerrant in its entirety.
Based upon Scripture and the essential tenants of Christian theology, anyone who seeks to condemn homosexuality must engage in extremely irresponsible, careless and shameful theology. They defy the evidence and claim homosexuality is a choice and therefore disobedience to God’s will. But as we have seen, even if that were the case, that does not render the homosexual inapplicable for God’s saving grace. Even more disgusting, however, is the solution to this theological conundrum whereby homosexuals are demonized and removed from humanity altogether. When this is the case, not only legal discrimination, but violence and murder are not just condoned but sanctioned. Soldiers for Christ battling Satan and his minions—and who are these minions? Right now the far religious right in our country has nominated the GLBT community for that role. We cannot afford to be ignorant of this point of view. We have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters to make sure this brand of evil does not prevail. May it be so.
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