As is often the case during Pride month, the hornet's nest of culture war rhetoric is stirred up once again, as our major media outlets stoke us into unending debate over whether LGBTQ+ love is the same kind of love found in heterosexual relationships, and whether LGBTQ+ families should be accepted as families in the fullest sense. I have dealt many times with the Scriptural questions surrounding these issues, and for a half a century the Episcopal Church has proclaimed LGBTQ+ persons to be fully beloved and fully accepted siblings in God's vast Family.
In 1976, the Episcopal General Convention declared that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church” (1976-A069), and that they “are entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other citizens” (1976-A071). In 2012 we created liturgical resources for the celebration of same-sex marriage. Or as we like to call it: Marriage. No qualifiers. Yet, as the same debates and cliches get brought up over and over and over again over the nature of sexuality and marriage and family, it can often seem like we are missing the point in both striking and subtle ways. With all the fear and hate and mockery and dehumanization that is evident in the persecutors and even in the persecuted, perhaps we have lost our Way in following Jesus. Perhaps there is a different Way to frame the reasons why we embrace all persons and families in God's vast Family.
Much of the sturm and drang about sex and the Church reveals we are often a genital obsessed culture. Perhaps most cultures have been, since the genitals have been the primary site of biological and social reproduction. So we really cannot blame our theological imagination for jumping immediately to sex, and confusing sexual behavior as the summum bonum to be sought above all else. But the current biggest armies in our culture wars are those on Team Patriarchy and Team Hedonism. Team Patriarchy wants to use sex as means to give power to a ruling caste of males to govern the means of reproduction as the ultimate arbiters of what counts as a "family". Team Hedonism often wants to equate the Good with what feels good (physically and emotionally and immediately) in a way that usually treats humans as selfish pleasure maximizing machines who can do anything as long as the minimum bar of situational consent is met.
I think both of these moral systems are fundamentally flawed and misguided, and often anti-human. Sexual behavior is not a summum bonum, but one of many sacramental means to participation in the Divine Love that is our Highest Good, Source, and Destiny. Sexuality should be (yes, normative claim here) enacted in relationships that reflect and grow into that Divine Love, as a means of sharing in God's Life for those involved in the sexual relationship. This means sexual relationships can be judged based on the extent to which they model and enact and encourage the faithful covenant Love of God we see embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.
With this in mind, the most anti-Christ, anti-human, and anti-Love sexual relationships are the most predatory in using and discarding people as sexual commodities. The most Christlike, most human, most Loving sexual relationships are those that use the sexual bond as a means of forming in each other the character of God and the fruit of Christ's Spirit in virtuous and godly living. Thus, the worst sexual relations are those where one person uses and abuses the other person(s) without consent. These are not only immoral but also (should be) illegal. The next gradation would be where persons mutually use and discard each other for sexual pleasure using the market logic of situational consent. This degrades humans into commodities to be consumed, but it does so based on free consent (and sometimes payment in money or other goods).
Skipping what could be many other gradations, the optimal context for sexual activity is where sex is a celebration and confirmation of persons who have covenanted their lives together, to help each other grow into the Divine Love in which we live and move and exist. This is the proper context for an act that entwines people’s lives together, and which carries the potential for these persons to be co-creators with God of new life. I know this life-creating potential has only resided with heterosexual couplings until now, but I imagine this may change sooner than we think given technological growth. I know many same-sex families who would love to be able to create life with one another, and would if technology was available and affordable.
This kind of sexual ethic looks traditional in some ways: For instance, in the centrality of the family, in raising children together, in the insistence that a covenant union is the proper context for sexual activity, in opposing predatory sexual activity that commodifies people as consumable and disposable. But it can also look really progressive in other ways: In the insistence that people are wired differently in sexual orientation and should be able to form families in a way that is natural to them, in the understanding that committed families have different shapes for different cultures and identities, and in the celebration of how Divine Love can take many forms in the vast variety of human gender and sexuality.
All in all, if I could direct the churches in any way, it would be to step back from obsessing over genitalia and what people do with them-- people can figure that out-- and to focus instead on how Divine Love shapes families, and how we can encourage each other to develop Christlike character by how we live in covenant faithfulness with one another. And given the prejudice and fear that still pervades our culture, it will also entail standing against those who spread hate and violence against LGBTQ+ persons, as well as rejecting reactionary progressive rhetoric which demeans heterosexual families. Instead our churches should be a place of radical hospitality and welcome for families of all sizes and shapes and kinds, encouraging covenant faithfulness, and empowering families to become places where Christlike Love is formed and shared. We can take Pride in the work of God to form Christlikeness in all of our families, with all of our diversity and differences, bound together by a common Divine Love and shared destiny in Christ!
With this in mind, it seems only right that I end this meditation with Episcopal prayers and blessings for those who are married, and the families they form together:
A Blessing for Marriage (Book of Common Prayer page 430)
Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life. We thank you, also, for consecrating the union of two people in his Name. By the power of your Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing uponthem. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
A Blessing upon Families (Book of Common Prayer page 828)
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who sets the solitary in families: We commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them, we pray, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy wedlock, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent love among us all, that we may evermore be kindly affectioned one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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