Julie Maxwell writes: It is now a couple of months since the Church of England General Synod meeting where we discussed the Bishop’s proposals following the lengthy Living in Love and Faith process, and it is clear to me that there are two broad views. The first is that God’s design for marriage and sex is good and living according to it is beneficial; the other view is that to deny our sexual urges and to have to conform to God’s design is harmful. These two views are in total opposition!
This is the speech I would have made if I had been called (there were so many excellent speeches which were far more powerful than mine):
Louise Perry is a feminist author and journalist who campaigns against sexual violence. In her recent book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution she examines the impact of the so called “sexual revolution” that was supposed to bring freedom and happiness to all. She says “What we need today is a new morality, a new set of virtues: the sexual revolution failed, but women and children were the greatest losers”
As a paediatrician I am all too aware of the current crisis in mental health with question around identity and sexuality frequently part of this. There is also a crisis around the sexualisation of children and the effects of pornography on children and young people. Last month the Children’s Commissioner released a devastating report that details the horrific extent of this problem.
So do we need a new morality as Louise Perry says? Surely what we need is to return to the pattern given to us in the Bible in Genesis, reiterated by Jesus and by Paul. Children need to be told that there is a better story!
Matthew 19.4–6 says: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
God’s good design as our loving creator is for sexual intimacy to be only within a lifelong relationship between one man and one woman. This is the best way to protect particularly women and children from harm. Our young people are growing up in such a toxic, sexualised environment and they need to hear that there is a better story, that God’s wonderful gift of lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is the only proper context for sexual intimacy and that this is a good thing. They need to hear that singleness and celibacy is also a good thing! God is not withholding anything from us.
As Paul makes clear in Ephesians, marriage and sexual intimacy are a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. They point us towards Christ and we do not choose the terms he does!
I urge you to stand for a biblical definition of marriage that is good and protects us from harm and to reject anything which threatens to undermine or change this definition.
We also had a debate at Synod about safeguarding which throws up some interesting issues when we fundamentally disagree about what causes harm and what protects in this area!
Safeguarding is a term that anyone who works with children will be very familiar with. According to the NSPCC “Safeguarding is the action that is taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.”
One of the biggest concerns today for parents, grandparents and anyone who works with children is the sexualisation of children. It seems that almost every day in the media there are stories of children being exposed to highly sexualised material. There are the obvious dangers of on-line pornography and social media, but increasingly there are concerns about relationships and sex education (RSE) and public events such as Pride marches and Drag Queen story times in libraries as well as sexual health websites aimed at teenagers.
I first became concerned about the content of RSE in schools over 10 years ago when as a school governor in my children’s Primary School I was made aware of the material they used. As a parent and a paediatrician, I was shocked at the explicit nature of the material (cartoon people engaging in intercourse) as well as the lack of teaching about marriage. Sex seemed to be portrayed as something fun you do with someone when you love them (whatever that means to a 10 year old)! I was extremely disappointed at the time that few of my Christian friends shared my concerns but was thankful to discover information and support from organisations such as Lovewise and Family Education Trust.
Over the last 10 years the situation has become worse and Christian teaching on marriage, sex and identity is now seen as being harmful to children and proposals for a broad ban on so-called ‘conversion therapy’ could make such teaching illegal. Over this period, however, parents have become increasingly aware of some of the things their children are being exposed to—many parents are unhappy but do not always feel able to raise their concerns. It has also become increasingly difficult to opt out of inappropriate RSE due to many aspects becoming compulsory and LGBT themes being incorporated into all aspects of the curriculum. This has led to a growing number of parents and organisations exposing the vast numbers of groups and individuals delivering highly inappropriate content to children and young people (for example The Christian Institute and Safe Schools Alliance).
Are children being taught the truth on issues around sex, relationships and marriage? So often we are told that we must teach (or not teach) children certain things in order to be inclusive, non-judgemental and kind—but is that really what is best for them? Is what they are being taught protecting them or is it actually harming them? Children need to be guided and protected by the adults around them in so many areas—children are taught about healthy eating, getting enough sleep and about the harms of drugs and alcohol so why is is deemed unacceptable to teach them about the harms of experimenting sexually?
Perhaps you think I am exaggerating! Lets have a look at some examples and consider how they may be harming children. There have also been two recent reports evidencing the extreme nature of resources being used in schools and the disregard for safeguarding, one from New Social Covenant and the other from Policy Exchange.
All relationships are equally valid
We are told that we must not be judgemental and risk making children feel excluded if they don’t live in a traditional family and we must therefore treat all types of families as equally valid. But is it actually harmful to teach that ideal situation is for children to be living with both their biological parents?
There is plenty of research evidence that points to the fact that children do better in a variety of outcome measures when they are brought up by both their biological parents—so surely not to teach children about this is harmful. In addition many children who have experienced the pain of losing a parent or separation from one or both parents could be harmed by being unable to acknowledge this and to be told that they must not see their situation as anything other than good! Of course we must also acknowledge that most parents/guardians in whatever type of family are doing their best to parent but none of us are perfect.
Teaching very young children about same sex families can also be very confusing for them. In order to do it in an “age appropriate” way the descriptions of course contain no references to sexual intimacy. This can lead children to become confused about friendship, thinking that being friends with someone of the same sex means that they “in love” with them and are therefore gay. They can also become confused thinking that two men or two women can naturally conceive a baby.
Gender ideology
The current narrative is so often that to teach sex as binary and to assume a child’s gender is harmful. There are books designed for very young children that tell them adults only guessed their sex when they were born and that “only you know who you are.” This is so confusing for children and places huge pressure on them to have to discover their “true self”. This ideology tells children that their feelings are more important than biological reality. It tells them that for some in order to be their authentic selves they will need to undergo medical and surgical treatment that will render them lifelong medical patients who are infertile and often with no sexual function at all.
Surely the most beneficial and protective thing to do is to help children understand the reality of their bodies and to understand this is how God made them and that their bodies are good. For those children who are struggling with gender dysphoria surely the least harmful thing is to help them to become comfortable in the bodies they have.
Queer theory
I think many people misunderstand what queer theory is all about. It’s about much more than not being homophobic!
Queer theory is a way of thinking that dismantles traditional assumptions about gender and sexual identities. The field emerged from sexuality studies and women’s studies. Queer theorists analyse gender and sexuality as socially and culturally constructed concepts. The self-confessed goal of many of those teaching this to our children is to “smash heteronormativity”.
It is not about teaching children tolerance or even mere acceptance but the total destruction of traditional values. Elly Barnes of Educate and Celebrate said this in April 2017: “the bottom line is just to completely smash heteronormativity, that’s what we want to do so our kids can grow up and be who they are”. No Outsiders is a resource which has also caused huge concern among parents.
Given that the vast majority of the population remain heterosexual and as we have seen children do best when growing up with their biological parents surely teaching children about queer theory is harmful whereas teaching them traditional values is good!
Sex-positivity
Being “sex-positive” sounds good and as Christians we should definitely be positive about sex as a wonderful gift from God, given to strengthen the bond between a husband and wife and for the creation of children. However what society means as “sex-positive” is this: “an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation.” The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.
As a result children are taught about all kinds of extreme and potentially harmful sexual behaviours and encouraged to explore all aspects of sexuality with little or no judgement being made about any physical or psychological harms that may result. BISH is a website for 14+ that gives information on all kinds of extreme sexual behaviours . In the media recently was a dice game used in schools by the Proud Trust where pupils were encouraged to throw the dice (each face has the name of a different body part) and then discuss what could be done between the two body parts shown.
Consent
So when the boundaries of marriage between one man and one woman are removed then it seems as though pretty much anything goes as long as both (or more) parties are consenting. As a result much sex education in schools focuses on consent. Obviously the concept of consent is important in many different situations however is it really protective in the context of sex and relationships? How often do we consent to do things that we don’t really want to do because we feel obliged or pressured? We have clearly said yes and agreed but actually have only done so because we feel under pressure. Sexual consent is fraught with difficulties and especially in teenagers where peer pressure is so significant and when we know that the teenage brain is not yet mature. Risk-taking is common and decision-making is based on the here and now rather than weighing up possible long-term consequences.
With all this in mind surely it is clear that teaching children an orthodox Christian perspective on marriage, sex and identity is not harmful but is actually protective. The Christian teaching about being male and female, that marriage is a lifelong union between one man and one woman and that sexual intimacy belongs within marriage is good news for society and for children. We as Christians need to be at the forefront of protecting our children from the harmful narratives that surround them and counteracting this with a far better story which is why I was one of the authors of the Greater Love Declaration and I encourage you to join me in signing it.
Julie Maxwell is a paediatrician and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.
“As Paul makes clear in Ephesians, marriage and sexual intimacy are a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church.”
I think that, strictly speaking, Paul presents marriage as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. There isn’t any explicit use of sexual intimacy in his portrayal, and as recent discussion surrounding a publication in the US shows, attempting to do so can lead down some very strange paths…
1. It is, however, David, a clear separation, distinction made, between male and female, bride and groom and no present day inversion and mangling of language will change that.
2 For questions of intimacy check out Song of Songs, including its reach into New Testament symbolism, groom and bride; male and female?
Your point 1 is a much better formulation of how Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5 about the relationship of Christ and the Church impacts on our understanding of marriage.
Point 2 – yes, I am aware of Song of Songs, and if the post had drawn on that would have given it consideration. However, what was quoted was Ephesians 5, and I think that has to be interpreted, as much as possible, in its own terms (bearing canonical context and echoes in mind of course) before we start pulling in other texts
Geoff, but it is a logical fallacy, and provably false, to say that because there is a clear distinction in (a metaphor in) scripture that therefore there are
No human beings that have both male and female components
No human beings who are exclusively attracted to the same sex
That it is sinful or disordered to be a person in either of these categories.
When Shakespeare wrote
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate
He didn’t mean that there is never a day in June, July or August when it is a bit chilly!
Geoff, but it is a logical fallacy, and provably false, to say that because there is a clear distinction in (a metaphor in) scripture that therefore there are
No human beings that have both male and female components
No human beings who are exclusively attracted to the same sex
Nobody’s ever claimed that these things don’t exist, do they?
That it is sinful or disordered to be a person in either of these categories.
And again no one claims it is sinful to be a person in either of those categories.
It is clearly disordered to be a human being with both male and female components, as such a situation only arises due to an illness like androgen insensitivity syndrome (indeed these are called disorders of sexual development). Illness is a disordered result of the Fall.
Whether it is disordered to be exclusively attracted to the same sex is more controversial, but again, it’s not clear that it isn’t disordered. After all lots of people have disordered attractions (often with a genetic component); alcoholics, for example, gambling addicts, and many psychological disorders have genetic links.
S
Then what are you trying to prove with this text?
As a person who falls into one of those categories, with friends who fall into the other, I *strongly* disagree that we have a disorder. (However, I think if conservative religious people treated us as disabled rather than a sin we would have a lot more peaceful lives and there would be fewer arguments within the church!)
But are you disagreeing with S or with the Bible?
Then what are you trying to prove with this text?
Which text?
As a person who falls into one of those categories, with friends who fall into the other, I *strongly* disagree that we have a disorder.
You disagree that illness is a disordered result of the Fall?
Anton
Im disagreeing with the illogical deductions being made from this (metaphorical) statement in scripture.
Peter: If I wanted to determine doctrine on homosexual relations, I would not base it on the Song of Songs; I was referring to the entire corpus of scripture. What do you think that has to say about the subject?
Peter,
The whole of scripture is of a piece in connection with m+f (as is Natural law teleological theology).
There is no scriptural warrant to support sss or ssm which is scriptural anathema, an affront to God’s Common Grace.
It is more than that, it represents, is evidence of God’s present day judgement in handing us over to our sinful, desires. Roman 1.
No whole Bible, scriptural logical fallacies there.
But we’ve even here many times, before.
It’s another logical fallacy to say that if a document doesn’t mention something that therefore it bans it…I’d say especially if it would be anachronistic for the document to mention it.
Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice includes walking, coach riding and horse back riding as methods of transport, but it would be an illogical conclusion to suggest that Jane Austin wrote Pride and Prejudice as a treatise against the combustion engine.
Why can’t we take this issue more seriously and avoid the nonsense?
It’s another logical fallacy to say that if a document doesn’t mention something that therefore it bans it…
It would be a logical fallacy to say that, you’re correct, but that’s not what Geoff or I or anyone else has ever said on this issue. And what we have said is not logically fallacious.
S
Then, again, what *are* you claiming?
it would be an illogical conclusion to suggest that Jane Austin wrote Pride and Prejudice as a treatise against the combustion engine.
Indeed it would be particularly unlikely if her surname really were Austin rather than Austen.
Anton
The passage we are discussing is from Ephesians.
I scripture speaks against same sex rape. Other than that I think it is very difficult to make it say anything conclusive about same sex ‘relations’. The closest we have to same sex marriage is the relationship between David and Jonathan. It’s hard to say that had no erotic component, but equally hard to say that it’s sufficiently close to SSM to make any particular judgement on it.
And you think that the scriptures describing lying with man as with woman, ie sexually, as toevah, are irrelevant to the issue?
Anton
I don’t for one moment think that the intended meaning was related to gay people no. If you consider the context and cotext then it’s very very clearly about heterosexual men and probably in the context of rape. And it doesn’t help your case that its surrounded by laws that virtually no modern Christians keep.
Your comment about the inapplicability of Mosaic penalties to gentiles post-crucifixion ignores the fact that the passage describes man lying with man as with woman – sexually – as toevah (look it up). What is right and wrong does not change at the crucifixion; rather, how God deals with the latter changes.
Ancient Greek has no word for a homosexual; it had a verb but no noun, because the Greeks did not recognise ‘homosexual’ as an identity, what you are rather than what you do. Mosaic Law prohibited acts, simple as that.
Leviticus 20:13 condemns both men to death in ancient Israel. Since God would not condemn a victim of anal rape, this verse refers to a consensual act.
If you consider the context and cotext then it’s very very clearly about heterosexual men
Why on Earth would God prohibit heterosexual men from having sex with other men?
Anton
I think its anachronistic to claim that Leviticus 18.22 applies to same sex marriage. The most widely known male male sex at the time was what we would now call rape by heterosexual men.
Presumably you dont think it is prohibiting heterosexual women from lying with men so we can at least agree that the prohibition was never universal?
Again the scriptural evidence just isnt there to convincingly support your opinion.
It certainly is anachronistic. What we have is a blanket ban. You are paddling in the shallows on page 1 when you should be reading the long careful exegesis that has already been done. De Young, Gagnon, Schmidt, & see Fortson and Grams.
And which aspects of the content and context? I don’t understand what you are saying.
It reminds me of the people who think Paul in Romans 1 is selecting as the quintessential Gentile sin ‘heterosexual’ people acting homosexual. Which is a highly recondite minority thing so it is not exactly likely that he would select that of all things. But it is highly likely that 21st century people not educated historically would impose their own categories on the 1st century.
S, Anton, Christopher
Heterosexual men rape other men as a sign of dominance, especially in war. That’s what Sodom was right? It wasn’t a community of gay married men. It was a (mostly) straight community who acted to violate their visitors.
As for not condemning victims of rape…the OT does not have a concept of consent in sex. Women who now would be considered rape victims are not let off scott free – especially if they are not heard crying out!
It’s clearly not a blanket ban because none of you would apply the ban to women. The reader is assumed to be a Heterosexual male.
Heterosexual men rape other men as a sign of dominance, especially in war.
That’s not the context of Leviticus, though. It’s not a set of rules for war. It’s laws for living in a settled peaceful community. So why in that context would God prohibit heterosexual men from having sex with men?
That’s what Sodom was right? It wasn’t a community of gay married men. It was a (mostly) straight community who acted to violate their visitors.
That’s not what the text says.
Peter: Man lying with man as with woman, ie sexually, is toevah according to Leviticus. Simple as that. Secular gays who deplore Leviticus understand it better than you. I have no problem with secular gays. They need to hear the gospel, just like any nonbeliever. But those who claim to be Christian and wish to change a criterion for what needs to be repented of – a criterion that the people of God have acknowledged for 3000 years – should be shown the church door.
S
You would really really struggle to find any community in the modern era that was predominately homosexual. The idea that somehow there was a mostly homosexual community in the iron age (Sodom) is frankyl ridiculous and is not supported by the text at all.
This is why I get so frustrated with conservative arguments against same sex marriage – you guys don’t take it seriously. It’s like you don’t take any care to even ask basic questions about the text
You would really really struggle to find any community in the modern era that was predominately homosexual. The idea that somehow there was a mostly homosexual community in the iron age (Sodom) is frankyl ridiculous and is not supported by the text at all.
So you agree that’s not what the text says; you’re bringing your own assumptions to it.
All the text says is that they wanted to have sex with the visitors. The text is silent about their motives. Any claim you make about their motives is not in the text.
This is why I get so frustrated with conservative arguments against same sex marriage – you guys don’t take it seriously. It’s like you don’t take any care to even ask basic questions about the text
Whereas you don’t engage with what the text actually says at all, instead making up extra details that aren’t there until you can get the text to say what you think it ought to say. Which is at least as frustrating, if not more.
S
Trying to force someone to have sex with you without their consent is rape. I disagree most strongly that the Bible is silent about their motive. It’s very very cleat. It just doesn’t fit your theology.
Trying to force someone to have sex with you without their consent is rape.
Indeed; a crime which can have multiple motives. Sexual desire; humiliation of an enemy; establishing dominance; to name just a few of the more common ones.
I disagree most strongly that the Bible is silent about their motive.
Then quote the bit of the text which explains their motive please. Of course you won’t be able to because there isn’t one.
Whoever mentioned marriage? According to Leviticus, man lying with man as with woman, ie sexually, is toevah.
At the moment the “Daily Dose of Hebrew” is going through the Song of Songs verse by verse. Following this, I have been struck how much the imagery given of the beloved women relates to fertility. Some of it is quite surprising. For instance, her teeth are like ewes going up a hill and each one is carrying twins and none is not pregnant.
One of the core problems with the modern world is the view that sex is unconnected to procreation. In contrast, the consistent Biblical view is that sexual activity is directed towards procreation.
David
Well when all the straight Christian leaders stop having non procreative sex then and only then can they tell everyone else that sex is only for procreation
One area not touched on in this important article is the effect on physical (as opposed to mental) health of the ‘Sexual Revolution’, and the surely increasing load it is placing on the NHS. Has anyone done a survey with stats on the burden that STDs etc are causing, in terms of medics’ time, drug costs and increased treatment delays for people with other medical conditions? I’m guessing too that the mental health of many GPs and the sense of value of their calling is taking a hit as a result (though of course the only thing the press fastens on is their pay grievances).
James
I can see two drawbacks to such a study
1. No accurate data on STDs before 1963
2. The study wouldn’t allow for any positive information. The sexual revolution *may* have increased STDs, but it also allows women rights and freedoms close to a man’s and decriminalizes homosexuality. Without the sexual revolution there would be no Margaret Thatcher, Mo Mowlan or Richard Coles. The first two would be housewives and the last would have died in prison. Actually there would be no Boris Johnson or Donald Trump either. Assuming divorce was even legal, they would be pariahs, not champions of western conservatism.
Actually there would be no Boris Johnson or Donald Trump either. Assuming divorce was even legal, they would be pariahs, not champions of western conservatism.
Some may think that no bad thing, obviously.
But the ‘no positive information’ thing is an obvious nonsense. No single study can cover everything. and there are plenty of studies already about the benefits of the sexual revolution, including the increased freedoms of women. The point would be for this study to give a fuller picture by including drawbacks that have hitherto remained hidden because they were not studied.
S
But it’s not really a valid scientific study if you aren’t doing it to ask a question. You already know/assume that there are more STDs now than in the 60s. If nothing else HIV didn’t exist then.
But it’s not really a valid scientific study if you aren’t doing it to ask a question. You already know/assume that there are more STDs now than in the 60s.
Um, the whole point of a scientific study is firstly to take something that seems to be the case and then do a rigorous observation to work out whether it is the case, and secondly to see if that thing can be quantified.
So although intuitively we might assume that there is a higher rate of STDs now than before the sexual revolution (and actually I don’t think it’s that obvious that there are: there might not have been HIV then but there wasn’t penicillin either, and that must have a powerful effect in the other direction) it is only by doing a proper study that we can work out if that is actually the case and by how much.
It would therefore be a perfectly valid scientific study to do.
I think what you are actually trying to test is if the sexual revolution increased or decreased STDs. But all we could test is if we have more records of STDs now than in the 1960s and clearly we do.
A true scientific study would involve demonstrating not just that one thing caused the other, but that it was repeatable.
I think what you are actually trying to test is if the sexual revolution increased or decreased STDs. But all we could test is if we have more records of STDs now than in the 1960s and clearly we do.
Maybe, maybe not. There are ways to deal with poor record-keeping. For example, when comparing crime rates across time and between societies, you have to ignore most statistics and concentrate on the murder rate; because while other crimes can go undetected or be classified differently according to political fads, dead bodies tend to be kind of obvious.
Is there an equivalent of the murder rate for the STD question, that can be used to get useful data even though there are differing standards of record-keeping? Maybe, maybe not. Wouldn’t it be useful to look and see if someone can find one?
A true scientific study would involve demonstrating not just that one thing caused the other, but that it was repeatable.
Not necessarily. There are scientific studies of, for example, how the climate has changed through the centuries; and none of those can demonstrate that anything is repeatable, but they are still scientific studies.
I was meaning the 21st century sexual revolution rather than the 20th century one.
I agree, definitely something worth looking at. I will have a think about how this might happen
The elephant in the room, when discussing any scientific, social study, quantitative or qualitative research is objectivity/ subjectivity.
Checks and balances include:
1 methodologies
2 conflict/declaration of interest.
3 independent peer reviews
Where personal and cultural, academic, and pressure group vested interests abound the funding of such research would seem to be remote.
Thank you, Julie.
STDs are not a modern post-60s phenomenon. The original outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in the 1490s and is estimated to have killed 5 million people.
In the 19th century, this country (despite being in the grip of Victoria morality) was so concerned about rampant STD infections in the armed forces, passed the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1864, 1866, and 1869.
I agree with the concerns around the topic of safeguarding – we have the same problem in our (non-CoE) church. Some members are pushing for expansion of safeguarding, to both children and adults. “Safeguarding” is a trojan horse.
A further impact of removing sexual intercourse from the context of marriage is the killing of 200,000 unborn children each day across the world.
A significant proportion of abortions occur within the context of marriage.
No way. Abortion rates in marriage are more than 3 times lower than outside marriage.
Why did you omit to mention that?
The only reason there are a lot in marriage is that so high a proportion of the world is made up of married people.
It is precisely the flight from marriage that has been part and parcel of the huge increase in abortions.
But to read your words, it looks for all the world as though you are trying to debase marriage and bring it down to the level of the sexual revolution. Whose side are you on?
ok so a quarter of abortions happen inside marriage?
it is clear to me that there are two broad views. The first is that God’s design for marriage and sex is good and living according to it is beneficial; the other view is that to deny our sexual urges and to have to conform to God’s design is harmful.
I’m afraid no. Readers will know I am no fan of the liberal view, but this is a mischaracterisation of it.
The liberal view is not that ‘to have to conform to God’s design is harmful’; rather, the liberal view is to deny that the design for marriage found in the Bible is God’s design.
The liberal argument is that the Bible was written by fallible human beings; and that when they thought they were writing down God’s design for marriage, what they were actually doing was reproducing the values and prejudices of their own cultures and societies and projecting those onto God.
And now we, in the twenty-first century, are the first people in history to be able to understand what God’s design for marriage and sex really is. Because, uniquely in history, we are not fallible human beings merely reproducing the values and prejudices of our own society and projecting those onto God.
Obviously this view is logically nonsense; and equally obviously it is incompatible with Christianity, because it rests on denying the authority of the Bible as the Word of God.
But, that is the argument, and you have to deal with it as it is, not imply that the liberals are openly claiming to deny what they admit is God’s design.
S
I think there are lots of liberal arguments just as there are lots of conservative arguments.
I would say most liberal Christians simply do not see the “design for marriage” in scripture that conservatives see.
I’ve said this before, but it was not until the parliamentary debate on same sex marriage that I was even aware that some people interpreted Matt 19 as prohibiting same sex marriage and Id been regularly attending church since before I was born!
I would say most liberal Christians simply do not see the “design for marriage” in scripture that conservatives see.
Well, there are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.
Yeah sorry I don’t see it.
Simply because Adam was a heterosexual is a weak argument against same sex marriage.
You also, from my perspective, ignore potentially pro SSM passages, such as Jonathan’s love for David, 1 Tim 4 and Galatians 3
Simply because Adam was a heterosexual is a weak argument against same sex marriage.
It would be, you’re correct, but that is not the argument I nor anyone else has made, and the arguments that actually have been made are strong.
You also, from my perspective, ignore potentially pro SSM passages, such as Jonathan’s love for David,
You think the sex life of King David is meant to be an example of virtue?
1 Tim 4 and Galatians 3
You what?
S
I don’t believe that David’s sex life is virtuous. I merely said it is probably the nearest scripture gets to depicting same sex marriage (and it isnt anything like same sex marriage).
What are these strong arguments? I see people make grand claims about the “whole witness of scripture”, but when it boils down to it there seems to be very little specific to back up these claims, especially if you agree that appealing to Adam and Eve is weak.
“You what?”
Exactly. You guys make grand statements about “the whole of scripture”, but then you’re not actually considering what all of scripture has to say about gay people.
I don’t believe that David’s sex life is virtuous. I merely said it is probably the nearest scripture gets to depicting same sex marriage (and it isnt anything like same sex marriage).
So it isn’t relevant, so why did you bring it up?
What are these strong arguments? I see people make grand claims about the “whole witness of scripture”, but when it boils down to it there seems to be very little specific to back up these claims, especially if you agree that appealing to Adam and Eve is weak.
When asked about marriage, Jesus explained that the reason marriage exists is that God made humans in His image, male and female. Marriage does not exist for company, or for sexual fulfilment: it exists because God created human male and female, in His image. Therefore a male/male or a female/female union cannot be a marriage, because it does not embody the image of God as He made it in humans as male and female.
Nothing to do with whether Adam was heterosexual (nothing to do with Adam at all in fact; Jesus didn’t mention Adam, He directed us right back to Genesis 1, before Adam is even named); everything to do with how the image of God is embodied in humanity, according to Jesus.
‘But Jesus didn’t explicitly rule out same-sex marriages!’ Actually, He did. He defined exactly what a marriage is, explicitly ruling out anything that isn’t that from being a marriage. He ruled out same-sex unions just as explicitly as He ruled out polygamy. And there’s far more polygamy in the Bible; David was explicitly polygamous. Yet I don’t hear a lot of people (who aren’t Mormons) arguing that we should allow polygamy because Jesus didn’t say anything about it and look, King David. Yet the basis for disallowing polygamous marriages and the basis for disallowing same-sex marriages is exactly the same.
Exactly. You guys make grand statements about “the whole of scripture”, but then you’re not actually considering what all of scripture has to say about gay people.
Sorry none of those have anything to say about gay people.
S
I brought up David and Jonathan and two other passages to debunk the claim that the whole of scripture supports a simplistic model of male/female duality, with no SSRs.
I would like people who oppose same sex marriage to consider what the whole of *scripture* has to say.
Your extrapolation of Jesus teaching is too weak for such a serious topic.
Your claim that marriage is nothing to do with companionship is provably false. God created Eve because “it is not good for man to be alone”
The arguments against allowing gay people to have relationships *only* strength is that they have been repeated so often that they are accepted without question, but they totally fall apart even under amateur scrutiny
Nope. Total straw man.
Were not the changes made in 1967 a mistake?
It is extremely remarkable that it is being treated as controversial which system to adopt, given that the Christian one that had such a massively and statistically demonstrably superior track record (to replace the present failing secularist one) was within living memory.
It is like the Communists. Anything pre 1963 ”we” don’t talk about.
It’s an interesting conversation and for sure a minefield. I think there are some unhelpful conflations here, though. For example – consent under pressure or duress is not true consent, is it? Highlighting examples of bad teaching of good principles is unhelpful. Certainly my experience (as a millennial growing up amongst the influences of ‘purity culture’) was that churches, with their ‘traditional teaching on marriage’ had utterly failed to teach the teenage boys I dated not to push boundaries of consent. But my 5-year-old already knows that she should be an ‘enthusiasm detective’ when engaging in physical play or affection with other children. ‘Don’t hug people who don’t want to be hugged by you’ to me seems like a better early way of teaching what is fundamentally a christian principle (of loving people by respecting their bodies) than sweeping all ideas of consent and sex under the carpet.
I think maybe we underestimate children and their ability to accept things without cultural or moral baggage, and also their ability to come to helpful conclusions without being told, ‘THIS is the way’. My daughter attends a school where families are wildly complicated, but our own family (with a birth child and an adopted child) is also complicated. What does teaching her a ‘biblical view’ of relationships mean, at age 5? Does it mean setting her up in to primarily view all her classmates’ parents, and indeed our adopted child’s first family, as falling short of a standard, or does it mean acknowledging that in our world, the reality is that families can look very different but there is still nearly always good, that is of God, to recognise within them? We frequently have conversations with her about where our family values differ from those of other families, but I think that happens more convincingly not when we shield children from the reality of the world, but when we teach them to be reflective human beings, able to discern their own belief systems and values themselves. Knowing that some families have two mums, or that some families have one parent, or that some children can’t live with their families because they have personal struggles, doesn’t mean my child will choose that path for herself. Surely equipping children with age-appropriate knowledge (and doing that by reflecting on our own cultural conditioning) is the best way to produce adults capable of making wise, godly choices?
I agree. I think teaching theory of family life that pits one type of family against another is not only destructive, but also doesn’t even achieve anything.
In my generation of our wider family we have one family which is a heterosexual couple with adopted kids, one single parent family with biological kids and one homosexual couple with biological kids. None of us chose our circumstances and in every case forcible removing the children from each “substandard” family would be *worse* for the child not better.
What is achieved by teaching children that some wierd 1950s fantasy is optimum? They cant choose to change their parents and none of the kids in my family would choose that even if they were able.
It’s just cruelty dressed up as religion
I agree. I think teaching theory of family life that pits one type of family against another is not only destructive, but also doesn’t even achieve anything.
It’s not ‘pitting one type of family against another’ to point out that it is best for a child to be raised by its biological parents, but that in this fallen world the best is sometimes not achievable (parents do sometimes tragically die while their children are still young; or they are incapable of taking care of their children for some reason) and in those cases adoptive parents can fill the gap.
In my generation of our wider family we have […] one homosexual couple with biological kids
No you don’t. A homosexual couple can’t have biological kids. At most the kid is the biological child of one of the couple, and has been legally adopted by the other.
None of us chose our circumstances
The homosexual couple did, I assume, choose their circumstances, because it takes considerable effort for a homosexual couple to have a child that it biologically related to even one of them. It involves artificial insemination and/or surrogacy; it does not happen by accident and is most definitely a choice.
What is achieved by teaching children that some wierd 1950s fantasy is optimum?
Children being raised by their biological parents isn’t ‘some weird 1950s fantasy’, its the normal way of life throughout all of human history.
And we don’t tell the truth because we want to ‘achieve something’ by it. We tell the truth because it is the truth.
S
But its obviously not always best for kids to be raised by their biological parents. Telling kids their parents are inferior is not true, but it might cause upset. Out of my kids and their cousins 2/5 are not being raised by their biological parents and they are better off not being so. I see the sacrifice and love my relations put into caring for their adoptive children and it actually makes me very angry that people like you are so nasty about them. How dare you? This isnt Christian! It’s just nastiness!
But its obviously not always best for kids to be raised by their biological parents.
That’s wrong. The only circumstances in which kids should be raised by people other than their biological parents are if their biological parents are dead, or are unable to take care of them for some reason (eg they are drug addicts). Both of those situation only arise because we live in a fallen world, and so it would clearly be best, and would be the case in an unfallen world, for the children for their biological parents to be alive, not drug addicts, etc, and able to raise them.
Children being raised by people other than their biological parents is a result of the Fall, and therefore by definition, although it might well be better than any alternative available in this fallen world, not the best thing.
You seem to take after Dr Pangloss and thing that just because something is, that means it is natural, right or the way things should be. You need to remember that everything in this world is broken, corrupt and wrong, and nothing is as it should be.
S
I just think you have not got much experience of real life. It’s far messier than your theories allow. I don’t know who Dr Pangloss is, but I know really well that my in laws are fantastic self sacrificing parents and I am angry that you continue to insist otherwise. You’ve never even met them!
I just think you have not got much experience of real life. It’s far messier than your theories allow.
This is mere ad hominem and not worth a reply.
I don’t know who Dr Pangloss is,
Clearly.
but I know really well that my in laws are fantastic self sacrificing parents and I am angry that you continue to insist otherwise. You’ve never even met them!
Where have I ever made comment on anyone’s self-sacrificing ness? But if you mean the homosexual couple, I don’t see how meeting them could possibly change the biological reality that if you have two people of the same sex, at most one of them can be the parent of any given child. That’s nothing to do with how self-sacrificing they may be, it’s just reality.
S
Forgive me I didnt mean it as ad hominem, but I have three parent-children families within my wider family that totally break your simplistic model of what is “best” for children.
No I was not referring to the homosexual couple, but the couple who have adopted.
What would you like to see happen with the 5 children in my wider family who you say do not have good parents?
What would you like to see happen with the 5 children in my wider family who you say do not have good parents?
I never said anyone wasn’t a good parent. This is another example of you doing what you do with the Bible: not reading and engaging with what is actually on the page, but with some other version of the text that exists only in your head.
S
I think it’s not that I don’t read or engage with what you are saying. It’s that you don’t realize the sheer nastiness of the opinions you write!
Saying that it’s best for a child to be raised by both biological parents is a judgment of every parent that does not fit that mould!
Saying that it’s best for a child to be raised by both biological parents is a judgment of every parent that does not fit that mould!
Saying that it’s best for a child to be raised by both biological parents is simply saying that it’s best for a child to be raised by both biological parents, and that all alternative arrangements are less good.
That doesn’t mean that alternative arrangements can’t be good. There are some excellent adoptive parents who provide great homes for orphans children. But however good those homes are it would still have been better if the orphaned children’s parents hadn’t died and had been able to raise them themselves.
Do you really disagree with that? You think it’s good that orphaned children’s parents died because their adoptive families are better than being raised by their actual parents? That’s just bizarre but it seems to be the stance you have taken.
You seem to read where I write ‘less good’ and respond as if I wrote ‘bad’ there instead. But I didn’t and please can I ask you to read what I actually wrote, not randomly replace words in your head and then respond to things I never actually wrote.
S
Being gay doesn’t make you infertile or an inferior parent.
S
The homosexual couple did not choose to be homosexual and nor did they have kids by artificial insemination or surrogacy!
The homosexual couple did not choose to be homosexual and nor did they have kids by artificial insemination or surrogacy!
They can’t have had kids at all. At most the ‘kid’ can be the child of one of them.
S
Well then either they are a figment of my imagination or the world isn’t as simple as you’ve been told! Maybe venture outside and meet some real life gay people and then you may understand!
Well then either they are a figment of my imagination or the world isn’t as simple as you’ve been told!
So explain then how two people of the same sex can both be biological parents of the same child. What was the process?
Because if what you are saying it true, it’s nothing short of miraculous — it would be the only time it has ever happened in the history of humanity — and I’m sure the entire medical world would be dying to know about this astounding breakthrough.
Or, and this is what I suspect, you’re talking absolute rubbish.
S
Children being raised by both their biological parents has been the majority of families throughout human history and still is, but other methods have been common too. Until very recently it was really common for women to die in childbirth and orphans were commonplace.
The fantasy is that its possible or desirable to have all kids raised that way.
Until very recently it was really common for women to die in childbirth and orphans were commonplace.
Because of the Fall. Obviously it would be best if women never died in childbirth and there were no orphans.
The fantasy is that its possible or desirable to have all kids raised that way.
It’s not possible in a fallen world, no. Because the world is fallen. But of course it is desirable! We must never lose sight of the fact that the world is corrupt and wrong — we must never accept the way things are as being anything like the way the world was made by God to be!
We don’t live in the world that God intended us to live in. We live in a broken, corrupted version of it. Everything is wrong.
S
So presumably you dont think it is the woman’s personal fault for dying in child birth. Why then is it the gay person’s fault for being gay?
So presumably you dont think it is the woman’s personal fault for dying in child birth. Why then is it the gay person’s fault for being gay?
It’s not and I never said it was; yet again you’re not engaging with what is actually written but with some cock-eyed idea of it in your head.
Exactly, Peter. People get disaffected from their biology as a reaction against the anti-biology that is unnecessarily imposed on them post sexual revolution in the shape of disrupted families. This happens from such an early age (and is so large and foundational that they are right to react against it) that it is indeed not their fault. But that doesn’t stop it being a bad thing. People should be allowed to have stable families, and there are societies and presuppositions that do allow that, which nations are at liberty to adopt and frequently have. Those that do not, do not care.
Look at it whichever way you will, the pushing of an agenda which will certainly cause less stability for children cannot be justified and has a cause. The only cause that I can see that coheres with the overall picture is that older people want to create a society where the maximum number of people are potential sexual partners.
That is an absolutely horrific attitude to bringing up children, but it is confirmed by the utter laxity with which adults have not prevented children being able to access pornography at the touch of a button, and the paucity of adults that tried to prevent this eventuality.
In a sexual revolution society, adults care for themselves (as opposed to others) to a greater extent; and the amount of care for children vastly decreases. This is also confirmed by the number of hours spent at work, the amount of childcare by third parties, and the number of people now willing to volunteer for voluntary organisations to work with children.
1/2
I think as a baseline for morality nobody who is themselves doing X should be teaching someone else, especially impressionable young people that they may never do X. If you are not personally seriously suppressing sexual or romantic expression then stop teaching others that they must. If you are married stop telling others that they may never be married. Its not just that it is hypocrisy, but it is that you have no real understanding of the impact of that on their lives. Many young people will assume that you do and trust that you know what you are talking about.
Ultimately when every third headline about the church involves sexual assault by a church leader it’s difficult to trust that any Christian leader has any authority left to teach on sex or relationships.
nobody who is themselves doing X should be teaching someone else, especially impressionable young people that they may never do X… If you are married stop telling others that they may never be married. Its not just that it is hypocrisy, but it is that you have no real understanding of the impact of that on their lives.
This is nonsense. Bible teachers have a duty to explain what the Bible says is sinful. They have a duty to remain clear of sin and, where they fail, to repent. Testimonies are of course an invaluable supplement to Bible teaching.
Jesus himself teaches to take the plank out of your own eye *first*.
According to your criterion, Jesus had no right to preach anything about marriage.
Actually I disagree. Jesus is the son of the living God. He has every right and every authority to teach on any matter. I just don’t agree with you that people who have read his teachings in the gospel are necessarily equipped to tell young impressionable people that they must live single and lonely lives.
But I grew up during the height of purity culture which might be why I can see the dangers of this way of thinking. A friend of mine was taught that she should marry a man she wasn’t attracted to so that “lust” didn’t enter into the marriage. That was from a Christian leader to a group of impressionable young people.
You take the view that Jesus is the son of the living God from the Bible. Is it not then inconsistent and hypocritical to reject what the Bible says about homosexual relations?
Anton
No because I dont reject what scripture has to say about homosexual relations. Scripture doesn’t really mention homosexuality.
Please see my comments above.
So you are saying that because ‘Scripture’ does not mention a modern concept (and how could it?) then all we have to do is tweak our concepts and Scripture will never refer to anything in the modern world at all. But it does, because there are large Venn diagram overlaps between the realities and experiences of that world and ours.
So that is an excuse, and you seem to be happy that the debate is not advanced but rather kicked into the long grass. Why? What have you to hide?
You should have mentioned that ‘homosexuality’ refers both to orientation and behaviour and sometimes both. You are restricting it to orientation, inaccurately.
However, even if the word did refer to orientation only, ‘Scripture’ has always said plenty about homosexual behaviour, which you are trying to brush under the carpet by delaying tactics.
Christopher
Both you and Anton seem to have invented a whole load of comments I haven’t read.
I didnt want debate on same sex relationships kicked into the long grass. I am very frustrated that ten years after SSM became legal in the UK the Church of England has made no progress at all on providing teaching on and for people who are attracted to the same sex and seems to have spent most of that time deliberately avoiding discussing real gay people’s lives.
Far from being kicked into the long grass, it sometimes seems that people debate nothing else. It is like the blob. It eats up everything else and all the time that could be devoted to anything else. Which for some (but not present company) is precisely the intention.
2/2
I think there’s a huge misunderstanding around teaching “consent”. I doubt anyone anywhere is teaching that consent is all that matters in sex or a relationship. It should be the bare minimum.
We need to distinguish between medical information (including mental health), human rights and religious beliefs/culture because they all come into play in these topics, but they are not all the same thing! I think there is a tendency for religious teachers and cultural figures to seek to overrule medical information and human rights because they feel their teachings and culture are threatened by these other sources of authority. It’s really a lack of confidence that the teachings or culture are really true/good, in my opinion.
3/2(!)
I’ve said this before, but it’s now a decade since same sex marriage became legal in the UK. Ignoring this won’t make it go away. Waiting for another decade means that there won’t only be same sex parents “confusing” other people’s children, but same sex grandparents too.
I don’t understand why the writer of this article thinks that it’s appropriate to teach very young children about heterosexual intimacy, but not about homosexual intimacy. Either they are old enough to learn about intimacy or they are not!
I don’t think its ok to teach young children about any kind of sexual intimacy! The problem comes when trying to teach young children about same sex relationships without talking about sexual intimacy – it ends up being taught in a way that makes it more like friendship and therefore is confusing to children.
Julie
So explain to me why you can teach heterosexual relationships to children without sexual intimacy, but cannot for homosexual relationships. I’m sorry, but this makes no sense to me why there would be any difference. Why is it more like a friendship in the homosexual relationship? Why can’t you teach the difference between romantic love and brotherly love?
Because they are not in the same category, in fact are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
One is in accord with biological function, the other is not.
Biological function is the key factor in human bodies and in the male/female binary.
Do you think that by using similar-looking words ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ people will get conned into thinking that these are 2 similar things?
Christopher
Wouldn’t teaching kids sexual reproduction count as sexual intimacy?
Exactly. So it all depends how you define ‘kids’ – what age.
Christopher
But Julie is claiming you can teach heterosexual relationships without talking about sexual intimacy, but you cannot easily teach homosexual relationships without talking about sexual intimacy.
I’m asking why not? What’s the difference?
The difference is that talking about sexual intimacy in the ‘homosexual’ instance would mean that the behaviour (for which there is no scientific warrant) was being presented as something acceptable and healthy. That would be to force everyone to think that, whether or not they actually did think it, and whether or not science agreed. Without scientific warrant, people are not likely to think that without a lot of jamming, repetition and brainwashing. But anyone who submits to social brainwashing is not a thinker anyway.
However, you are talking to someone who does not think that the details of any kind of sexual intimacy should be discussed in schools beyond biological function.
And also to someone who understands that the very vague word ‘relationships’ is a Trojan Horse word, and that those who use it thus are either happily complicit in that dishonesty or else are vague thinkers and are therefore to be assessed accordingly.
Christopher
Thanks, but I wasn’t asking you and you are still talking about this with respect to sexual intimacy which is the complete opposite of my actual question!
Peter – I didn’t get the impression that the writer thought it was OK to teach young children about heterosexual intimacy. The writer of the article is very concerned, as is any person of decency, about pornography (all forms of pornography) being rammed down the throats of young children.
When Monte Python in their `Meaning of Life’ did a sex education class, everybody thought it was a joke – but now it no longer looks like a joke; people seem to think it’s OK to present children with that sort of thing in the context of school lessons. Of course, one of the entertaining pieces of the Monte Python piece was absolutely correct – overexposure leads to boredom and one of the children in the class was declining a Latin verb when he ought to have been paying attention to John Cleese having-it-off with his wife.
Of course, we have a God in heaven who punishes the wicked – and we know that people who think it is OK to ram pornography (as described in the article) down the throats of children will burn in hell for eternity – and we are very thankful for this. It’s a great pity, though, that such wickedness occurs. (Similarly, we do not have much comprehension, from a theological point of view about the current war in the Ukraine, which seems horrific and senseless).
Jock
There’s a huge difference between sex ed and pornography.
Three good arguments for teaching sex ed pre puberty are 1. that children understand the changes that are about to happen to their bodies and how to deal with them, 2. to keep children safer from sexual predation and 3 to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
Peter-
Sec education began in earnest in the UK in 1967.
So – by comparison
(a) how much more or less sexual predation is there now?
(b) how many unmarried or rejected pregnancies are there now?
Christopher
There’s far less sexual predation now. I am certain of that. Children are not as easy to prey upon and are more likely to understand behavior that is unacceptable and more likely to be believed if they speak up. Thats why there are so many legal cases of sexual predation in the news now and there weren’t any in the 1960s!
I honestly don’t know the answer to the unwanted pregnancies question. However at least, with decent sex ed, people have the tools to avoid those situations. When I was a kid it was still rumored that you could get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat that hadnt been cleaned.
I did my schooling in the 80s and 90s and there was virtually no sex ed then! I hope it’s significantly better now.
Peter: it is possible to be certain but wrong.
Anton
Of course, but there’s no way to prove it beyond pointing out that predators are starting to get caught now and they didn’t use to be.
For accurate stats, see What Are They Teaching The Children? ch10.
Christopher
Is that a book? Why do you trust that book?
I don’t trust any book or any assertions. I trust large scale studies. And it is the large scale studies collected together to be mentioned in that book, and their statistics, which I commend to you.
You are saying that a book is one thing, and you either trust or mistrust the entire thing!! A package deal. Not very likely. This book, like most books, is not one thing, but a vast number of different pieces of information each of which is to be assessed individually.
Christopher
OK but why do you trust it? Are these studies surveys? Who wrote them? What was their agenda?
Peter. The answer will be different for each paper. Surely you can see that.
Secondly, the higher the level of the scientific journal, and of the peer review, the higher the objectivity.
If we restrict ourselves to proper scientific/statistical studies with large random samples, then we are doing the best we can.
Christopher
OK if these are peer reviewed scientific papers then that’s a good reason to give them some trust. I didn’t know that because all you did was fire a book title at me. It didn’t sound like a research journal
There’s a huge difference between sex ed and pornography.
Indeed, which is way it’s a problem that so much of what goes on in schools these days is closer to pornography than sex education.
Three good arguments for teaching sex ed pre puberty are 1. that children understand the changes that are about to happen to their bodies and how to deal with them, 2. to keep children safer from sexual predation and 3 to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
These are all indeed good reasons. But again they apply to sex education, not pornography. If a school teaches pornography instead of sex education, as many schools do these days while calling it ‘sex education’, that makes it more likely that children will be sexual prey, and more likely that they will experiment sexually and therefore run the risk of becoming pregnant (or, alternatively, increasing their risk of cancer and many other disorders later in life by unnecessarily taking hormonal birth control from an early age).
S
I agree with everything you say except that I have not seen any evidence that kids are being taught pornography in schools.
I have not seen any evidence that kids are being taught pornography in schools.
Of course you haven’t. I’m reminded of what Jimmy Abbe said about being shown around the countryside of Stalin’s Russia on one of their propaganda tours:
‘Sure, we saw no forced labor. When we approached anything that looked like it, we all closed our eyes tight and kept them closed. We weren’t going to lie about it.’
S
I live in the US now so our kids attend American public schools. They are great at telling us what is going on in the classroom. There has been no pornography.
I keep in touch with my niece who did all her schooling in English state schools and is now in Sixth Form College. Nothing about pornography has ever come up and the only issue with sex ed she has had was being taught against abortion in her evangelical sunday school as a pre teen. She spoke up about that so Im sure she would have spoken up if she had seen anything pornographic at school.
What’s your evidence?
Peter – oh my goodness. How on earth does the subject of abortion come up at a Sunday school? It sounds as if this evangelical Sunday school was quite depraved (bringing up the issue in front of pre-teens is awful – even if they did get the right answer).
S
I’d imagine that they had been convinced that it was their job to scare young girls into never having abortions and therefore save lives? This is my point earlier on sex ed – just reading the bible and having good intentions doesn’t mean that someone is going to teach kids helpful instructions on how to lead their lives. Thats why I say that people who are married (especially if they are on their third marriage!) should not be telling young people that they must never marry. People who have not carried out serious sexual repression should not be telling youths that they will be better off if they carry out serious sexual repression. Etc
How on earth does the subject of abortion come up at a Sunday school?
Is that shocking? Any pre-teen with a younger brother or sister will know that babies grow inside their mummy’s tummy, and can understand that it is wrong to murder them before they come out.
There is no need to go into the mechanics of how the babies came to be growing there, any more than you would when preparing a young child for the arrival of their sibling.
S
Anyway my point is that thus far the most controversial sex ed any of two generations of my family have had in the UK was from a well meaning sunday school teacher at an evangelical church.
I want to know what the evidence is that state schools are teaching pornography.
Peter – to quote from Julie Maxwell’s article
‘the explicit nature of the material (cartoon people engaging in intercourse) ‘
That is pornography; hard evidence of hard porn being rammed down children’s throats (unless you are trying to say that the author is a liar).
S – as you say, it depends on the context. If the subject of having-it-off comes up in any way in a Sunday school for pre-teens, then the Sunday school teacher is a depraved monster who is going to burn in the eternal fire.
On the other hand, it could be a discussion of the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’. In which case, is it all right to kill a healthy new born baby? Clearly not. How about a healthy foetus? etc ….. On the other hand, I don’t see it. One would inevitably come up with the question ‘what if the foetus is there as a result of rape?’ and then you’re introducing concepts that simply shouldn’t be introduced.
the Sunday school teacher is a depraved monster who is going to burn in the eternal fire.
There is no monster so depraved that they cannot be saved from the eternal fire if they truly repent. Which is lucky for me.
One would inevitably come up with the question ‘what if the foetus is there as a result of rape?’ and then you’re introducing concepts that simply shouldn’t be introduced.
I don’t see how that’s inevitable. Depends on the children, of course. If they’re young, they’re unlikely to have a concept of what rape is, and so won’t see how it could be connected, unless of course they’ve had a secular sex education, in which case the damage has been done.
S – well, go back to Pharaoh. I think the wording is quite pointed; for the first few plagues, Pharaoh hardens his heart against God and will not let the people go; towards the end, the wording is that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.
When we’re talking about something as heinous as ramming pornography down children’s throats – quoting from the article ‘the explicit nature of the material (cartoon people engaging in intercourse)‘ to describe what is being presented to the children – this is just so sick and twisted that it looks to me like the product of God’s judicial hardening of the hearts – so that their place in the eternal fire is sealed and secured – of those who are prepared to give the children such education. They have already defied God in such a way that God has replied, ‘if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you are going to have it’ – and they’re destined for the eternal fire.
Yes – of course I accept that in some theoretical sense repentance from such people is possible, but this is just so sick and twisted that I can’t believe that such theory actually applies here.
Jock
Yeah I don’t agree that cartoons or diagrams of how to have sex is pornography and I think children have the right to learn how sex works before they become sexually active.
What is sexually active supposed to mean?
That is secular language. Just like ‘sexually compatible’ which was a phrase ‘cunningly’ designed to normalise people sleeping together without the commitment that is marriage.
Even if they do get married after being ‘SA’ or proving they are ‘SC’ that makes for a disordered life-story. Most will on that basis also be ‘SA’ with others, thus increasing the disorder. And even if they do marry, the bond will be less firm/exclusive than otherwise, with knock on effects everywhere, including to any children, who will thereby be wounded or badly affected through no fault of their own.
The Christian way, as you know, is to marry. Within living memory even in this same country, anything outside that was taboo.
And why is the instruction needed? It can be done by reading, or mutual married exploration.
Christopher
Sexually active means they have had sex at least once. They may indeed wish to wait until marriage, but marriage could be when they are still only a teenager. I’m saying that kids have a right to be educated about sex before they are at an age where they can have sex and certainly before they can legally marry.
It would be quite wrong for adult fears around sex to mean that a young newly wedded couple had no understanding of sex before their wedding night. It would mean a disastrous first night of the marriage
Inaccurate stereotype. People don’t need to learn how to hug. Once married, they have their whole lives ahead of them so can you explain what is the rush? Exploring together is fun.
Christopher sex can be traumatic and damage your body if you dont know how to do it safely.
Sex ed is important even for people who wait until marriage and are never sexually assaulted.
You are with the one you have longed for. You have danced together. You are aching to be one. What is ‘traumatic’ about that? Sounds like the precise opposite.
Well it seems to me that we need to look carefully are the doctrine of the Fall. The devil’s approach “Did God really say?” resound through much of the debate – ‘Doesn’t it look good? God would be evil to deny such a good thing to you, you should be free to make the decisions, YOU are in charge’ (I enlarge and paraphrase) but it flows through all the rhetoric in favour of self idenfication of gender (and race) it is there when people promote homosexual relationships and same sex marriage. Who I be going to far to call it demonic? As Wormwood says “These humans fall for it every time”. The question about what should be taught and at what age is always going to be thorny. Parents have abdicated the role to others where the natural parental answer to a childs question has advantages as the wording question reveals much of the way the child understands to issues, and ech child is different.
When it comes to Adam I have to admit not being a Hebrew scholar I’m drawing on marerial from peoole I belive to be scholars. Adam, Adaman one who is drawn from the earth , does not denote gender. Only when Eve is former does the two have gender thus when two are brought together they become one flesh. That which was divided into two genders is reunited as one. Marriage is about the reuniting the two which no two men and two wonen can accomplish.
Oh and finally as a lofe long single man and am not alone and lonely. I am free ro enjoyimg many and varied relationships (with sexual intimacy) with men and women. I have a full and actice life.
I had great parenting from two Christian parents who are my biological parents. I have never been attracted to the opposite sex.
These theories have been debunked time and time again.
The reality is that through no fault of their own a small proportion of people are gay as part of natural diversity and schools need to prepare pre teens to understand that reality both for the gay kids to understand the upcoming changes in their bodies and for the straight kids so they can understand their peers
What a simplification, so inaccurate. No-one has ever said that one factor accounts for everything.
There are factors that *strongly increase* the chances of homosexual self identification, and you are ignoring every one of them. Broken homes. Inadequate parenting. Lesbian parenting. Early molestation. Cultures that push a message, and where things are not taboo. Urban environment for men. College for women. Being a mid teenager. Wanting to shock or wanting attention. Being bored with vanilla. Wanting revenge on the other sex. The sexual revolution itself, inasmuch as that is what produces many of the above. Do you honestly think that *all* of these apply in *every* case?
What is “homosexual self identification” supposed to mean? And is there such a thing as “heterosexual self identification”? If so, what are the factors that strongly increase the chances of it occurring?
It is proper careful precise talk that does not assume too much.
You know very well that all these many factors disallow us from saying that babies are homosexual, that people are born homosexual.
Your final question is a bit silly. You are pretending that you need me to remind you that the entire biology of the plant and animal kingdom, over millions of years, is geared around reproduction which has one male and one female element. That is why our bodies are designed as they are. You are saying, unbelievably, that something called ‘heterosexual’ is just one option among many.
Christopher
Oh yes we really must stop educating women it turns them gay.
Men get turned gay by having over bearing mothers, absent mothers, mothers with ginger hair, eating too many parsnips and attending church
Peter – my entire point is that not all the factors apply any time. Go back, read, think, and start again.
There are factors that are on average present to a greater degree than chance would allow. Much greater. You are surely not denying that. I am repeating this point, but to most people I would not need to repeat it.
To be frank, Mr Shell, it doesn’t strike me as “proper careful precise talk” at all. Quite the contrary, in fact: it strikes me as vague and imprecise. I note that you still haven’t told me what it is supposed to MEAN. Not that I’m particularly surprised.
Yes, I’m well aware that reproduction in all the higher plant and animal species require both a male and a female element, and I have never for one moment disputed it. I have little patience with the way in which the words “identity” and “identify” are increasingly used. For example, “identifies as” now seems most often to mean either “claims to be” or “pretends to be”. You appear to acknowledge – and rightly so – that being heterosexual is not a matter of how someone “identifies” in that sense. Being homosexual isn’t either. The word “option” implies a choice. I have never suggested that being heterosexual is “just one option among many” or that it is an option at all. I’m perfectly well aware that it is no such thing. I’m equally well aware that being homosexual isn’t an option either.
Good article.
I do think we need to focus more on the theme of *identity* in articulating our response(s), and while many of the things here would be entirely consistent with that theme I’d have liked it to be more explicit. What the Gospel offers, quite fundamentally, is a new identity in Christ, into which (and in the light of which) all other facets of our identity are to be re-worked and subsumed, even removed. Any attempt to make our ‘christian-ness’ simply a facet of a larger worldly identity (the standard narrative of much progressive politik, both secular and christian) is simply getting things in the wrong order, and we must be clear what the proper starting point is.
For all it’s weakness and criticisms, this was what issues got right; any discussion of sexuality must come as part of a discussion about what it means to be truly human…
Moreover, I think this is the most compelling argument many of those who’ve written from the ‘living out’ perspective make (I’m thinking of David Benett, Ed Shaw et al), namely that while they initially felt their identity(ies) in some vital sense consisted of finding fulfillment and gratification in their sexuality, they ultimately discovered through encounter with christ that this is only a small part of their identity, and finding a greater sense of identity in Christ is what causes them to live the way they now do. Sexuality can and should remain a crucial part of identity, but should not be a defining one.
That’s a bit convoluted, but I hope the general thrust of that makes sense. The irony of critiquing the author for not articulating things as I’d like them to, while rambling in this manner isn’t lost on me. 😉
Mat
While you may not welcome, may even cringe at, an endorsement from me, that is spot on, Mat.
Our central identity is Christ himself – a new creation in him.
Any other verges on idolatry, some expressions of which have fringes and hinges of cultic drivers.
Paul was no longer Saul: to lives is Christ ; having died, his life hidden in Christ in God.
Colossians 3:3
You will know Mat, that Carl R.Trueman considers questions of identity in his book;
The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self – Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to the Sexual Revolution
And here is an ( extreme?) identity rant. No discussion allowed.
Is it for real?
Or a passing phase, or a profoundly unfunny skit?
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1645647784048209921/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1645647784048209921¤tTweetUser=stillgray
The old TV Western series, The Cisco Kid will have to be destroyed, rebranded.
With thanks for a heads-up from David Robertson’s blog/ podcast.
Reconfigured Gnosticism run amok?
1 John 5:19 springs to mind.
I think Christians spent too much time on social engineering
Steve – it ain’t the Christians who are doing the social engineering here – it is the anti-Christian element of society that has decided that `Relationship and Sex Education’ is an absolutely spiffing idea. Peter Jermey (for example) has stated here that he thinks that a man and woman who wait until they are married before having-it-off actually need a teacher to tell them how to do it properly.
I’m reminded of Steve Bell’s cartoon in The Guardian back in 1997 showing Gordon Brown saying, `I believe in quality education. After all, it was a teacher who taught me how to READ; it was a teacher who taught me how to THINK; it was a teacher who taught me how to talk out of my A***’ (I prefer not to insert the word that Steve Bell used, since this blog is also read by ladies).
As a Christian, I’m not particularly keen on socially engineering people who don’t want to be socially engineered; I simply don’t want my children to be exposed to all the lurid depravity and perversion that is part and parcel of what passes for RSE (described in the article) – whose proponents try telling us that something that is clearly and plainly sick and twisted pornography isn’t pornography at all.
We are living for Christ in a pagan world, with all the depravity that is part and parcel of the pagan world; we’re simply hoping that our children can be saved from exposure to this depravity – at least for long enough so that they can have a happy and innocent childhood.
Hi Jock,
The World sees the good things Christians do and replicates them. Then Christians try to ‘work within the system’. I see no need to analyse the faults in society or rectify it. It is what it is. This blog feels like a lot of ‘good ol’ boys’ venting. The zeitgeist is moving away from liberalism and swinging towards authoritarianism. The World moves on. Bishops will, in ten years, spout right-wing tropes like the Orthodox. Then what?
Statistics Shamystics! Like a bikini, its revelations are interesting, but what they conceal is even more interesting.
Steve – with me it is somewhat personal – I have a son going through the system who might get the RSE garbage inflicted on him. Fortunately, we’re not in the UK, so we might be OK.
I LOVE the description of Statistics! It is brilliant …..
Jock,
That was a quote from my maths teacher circa 1972..
My children are mid to late 30s. But I totally get where you’re at. I am just aware that as I’m now a beardyweido It is easier to prescribe stuff in abstract truths …especially here.
Anywhere actually, but especially in a discussion lamenting an over sexualised society this sexist, blimey comment on bikinis has no place Steve.
David – umm well – if I had been a betting man (I’m not) I might have put a wager (e.g. a pint of guinness – well, maybe not – I’m not a drinking man either) on a professional offence-taker coming along and making a comment such as yours.
I’m a statistician myself – and I was thinking of the enormous difference between 1972 and 2023 – when a teacher *could* come up with a mild remark like that as a light-hearted aside, to try and loosen things up a little (I mean statistics, as a discipline, can be really really boring) – unlike today – when anyone who made a remark like that would very quickly find themselves crucified (and out of a job at the very least) by the professional offence-taker gestapo. I’m sorry to see that you seem to be in their number.
In the context of this discussion, the remark was probably aimed at Christopher Shell, who seems to think that statistics gives us sanctified truth.
Your usual excitable language here Jock. No. It’s simply male sexism. It is dishonouring – even in the familiarly male preserve of these blog threads. But I have made my point. If you don’t believe me try comments like this at work or in the school staff room.
I mean statistics, as a discipline, can be really really boring
Well personally, I find an advanced understanding of statistics to be vital.
S – you may be right about this – so probably a good idea if you and Christopher Shell get together and write a treatise with the title ‘why statistics is not boring’ touching on applications of statistical reasoning to questions of marriage, sex and identity.
probably a good idea if you and Christopher Shell get together and write a treatise
If only there was time; but there aren’t enough sands in the hourglass to assemble the figures that would be required for such a work.
Jock, read What Are They Teaching The Children chs 10-11 where I give statistics on such matters.
Christopher – I just looked up the book on amazon and I have a mind to buy (and read) the kindle edition – if indeed it is about R.S.E. (sex education), what children are being presented with in this context and the damage being done.
But some of the reviews suggested that the book went further than simply a critique of R.S.E.. It’s a multiple author book and the reviews suggested that at least one of the authors holds the ‘Intelligent Design’ ideology and in one of the chapters was complaining that `evolution’ is being taught in schools – the author at least thinks there is something wrong with presenting `evolution’ without presenting ID alongside it as a valid alternative.
If this is indeed the case, then I’m simply not interested. If we believe in a creator God, then we believe that this creator God created the natural laws. ID seems to take the opposite view; ID seems to take the view that nature working `by law’ would not be evidence of a creator God; instead ID takes the view of a creator God who basically made a botched job to begin with and repeatedly has to intervene with `miraculous interventions’.
For Christians there is one `miraculous intervention’, the one that saves us, God made man and living among us at a specific time point in history, the lowest point, `crucified under Pontius Pilate’. The laws of nature cannot save us – we needed a once-for-all unique special revelation for that.
So in my view ID makes God looks stupid and makes science look stupid at the same time – and actually presents the children with something that looks incredibly brainwashed.
I’m not sure which is more damaging -on the one hand, the incredibly damaging R.S.E. that children are being subjected to – which is, frankly, traumatising (at least for sensitive children) pornography rammed down their throats or, on the other hand, the brainwashed ID theories which some from the lunatic fringes of Christianity want to see presented as a scientific alternative to evolution – and which just look incredibly swivel-eyed.
I’ll buy the book if you indicate that these reviews are wrong – and that there aren’t any proponents of ID in the list of authors.
For Christians there is one `miraculous intervention’, the one that saves us
Uh what? What about all the other records of miraculous interventions in the Bible? The plagues of Egypt? The Red Sea? Elijah and the prophets of Baal? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Paul and Silas in prison? Ananias And Sapphira?
Taking no stance on Intelligent Design — mainly because it’s too vague a term, you never know what the person using it actually means by it — but it is simply not the case that there has been only one miraculous intervention.
S – yes, you’re quite right – my use of language was sloppy. `Crucified under Pontius Pilate’ and rose again is the key; everything else that you describe points toward the `once-for-all’ event by which we are saved, establishing that Jesus really was who he said he was – the Messiah.
With ID – yes – I get the impression that it is somewhat vague. But with everything I have seen there seems to be an underlying assumption that events accounted for `by law’ wouldn’t (in their view) point towards God as Creator; a Creator who can come up with a beautiful set of natural laws isn’t good enough for them.
Got there before me Jock!
It was aimed at Christopher and Slogic. Statistics should be inadmissible in a theological discussion, despite the fact that they do work in favour of traditional Christian ethics. I point to Ahithophel as an example of intelligence making fatal errors. He was it seems a highly regarded brainy person in the employ of king David. His mistake was to be to clever to know God.
But, Apologies to David who rightly pointed out my sin.
Thanks Steve
Steve – you shouldn’t have apologised. As I pointed out (and then David Runcorn pointed out – I don’t think he read my post), your teacher would have been *crucified* by the professional offence takers if he had made the remark in 2023 rather than 1972 – and he would probably have been sacked if he was teaching and making such remarks today.
Yes – agreed – the remark was a bit off-colour – it’s certainly not the sort of thing I would ever say myself – but I give absolutely no quarter to the professional offence takers who will use anything to proclaim offense and do their best to destroy peoples lives over what is basically innocent banter and an admittedly clumsy attempt to brighten up an otherwise dull subject.
It certainly wasn’t sexist as D.R. claimed – there was no suggestion in your original post that the bikini was being worn by a woman.
Indeed Jock,
DR has been hoisted by his own progressive petard; being sexist by claiming sexism, looking at it through his own non inclusive, non LGB etc eyes!
Though I think we’ll leave it there as Steve has accepted that it wasn’t appropriate, was out of order.
Though I can vaguely recall on here a few years ago now DR writing something about eroticism ( in art maybe) that I thought was out of order, inappropriate. Maybe you can help me there David.
I am grateful to Steve for receiving my comments as he has. When and wherever my own words are judged by others I hope I will receive it with the same grace. I was not engaging with the debate here which I no longer choose to do.
Geoff – thanks for yours. I don’t particularly want to engage with D.R. either – so his last comment is a relief.
Actually, what I found most interesting was the response by S to my assertion that `statistics can be really, really boring.’ And if he had the time, he would rise to the challenge of writing a text entitled ‘Why Statistics is Not Boring’. I more-or-less agree completely with Steve’s assessment – that we shouldn’t be arguing from statistics – this has nothing to do with the moral issues of right and wrong.
Hello Jock,
I’m neither a mathematician nor statician, but stats does not reveal the detail, data behind the numbers.A couple of weeks ago, at the end of the service at church, I chatted to a man who I think largely attends because his wife does. He is a maths lecturer at a local university, but his background is in stats.
He was interested in a bookI mentioned; God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God, by (poly) math Dr John Lennox.
I mentioned that it has a lot of maths and stats in it. We had a laugh when I said that being a statistician he may not agree with Lennox’s conclusions!
It also reminded me of a 1970’s comment about stats, comparing it to loose women. But I’ll not go further with that. It was after all a time of the sexual revolution, now deeply malodorous, except when now employed in the direction of progressive liberalism.
Anyhoo, I was extremely grateful to Gary Linaker. I was able for an all t short period of time, to watch Match of the Day, without any commentary and punditary and the swamping of the game by distracting stats. I was able to enjoy the skill in a way I remember when I watched, played, local football and attended match day City Centre matches and the wisecracking supporters.
I can just imagine how that has now changed: ” He’s hopeless, should get him off that’s only the second time he’s been in the opposition half all game.” “But, that’s your goalkeeper!”
Geoff – thanks for yours. Well, ummm …. this is why I use a pseudonym ‘Jock’ rather than my full name (of course, my first name is Jock – but that isn’t really very informative). I do teach statistics for a living – so I can’t really be seen writing things such as `statistics can be really, really boring’ under my full name.
Following your post, I just looked at the amazon page for ‘God’s Undertaker’ – and – well – while I might have some sympathy, there are suggestions that the author endorses ID.
As you know, I have great difficulties with this -God created the laws of nature and nature works in a beautiful way according to the natural law that He created. The starting point of ID seems to be the fallacy (or at least I see it as a fallacy) which opposes events that happen `by law’ with events that happen through `miraculous intervention’ – as if `by law’ somehow negates the need for a creator and `miraculous intervention’ somehow does.
I picked up these expressions `by law’ and by `miraculous intervention’ from the introduction to Darwin’s `Origin of Species’ – and I get the impression that that is how they thought back then. Of course, nowadays, where scientific theories have evolved so that `natural law’ seems to have a starting point (known as the `big bang’), our understanding of `natural law’ is completely different from what it was at the time of Darwin.
But, for me, the whole ID business bothers me enormously, because it seems to be based on the fallacy that `by law’ somehow doesn’t need a creator (to create the law of nature) and they’re on the look-out for `miraculous intervention’ whereby the laws created by the creator seem to be inadequate and require intervention (at least that’s how I see the author’s understanding of some DNA analysis – which he seems to think substantiates the ID position).
The `miraculous intervention’ is the saving act, the once-for-all event where God became man and lived among us and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The `natural law’, beautiful as it is, can’t deal with our sin.
With apologies for the digression.
Hello Jock,
Thanks for putting me right. Like Israel I thought you were a nation as well as a person, statistically speaking.
Though I suspect that might be buying into the “no true Scotsman fallacy.”
Geoff – well, maybe I’m not a true Scotsman. Getting back to Steve’s bikini, I have been known to wear drawers from time to time.
“What the Gospel offers, quite fundamentally, is a new identity in Christ, into which (and in the light of which) all other facets of our identity are to be re-worked and subsumed, even removed.”
Which sounds all well and good until you remember we’re having this debate inside the Church of England. So national identity it turns out, is perfectly fine to keep. So to are labels about being “reformed” or “evangelical”. Some go further, describing themselves as not merely Christian, but “born again”, or “Calvinist”. Nor does anyone have a problem with people identifying themselves as men and women (and some actually have a problem with not doing that). For some reason only one identity is ever really talked about as something to be removed if you are Christian, and that’s sexuality. How interesting.
Thank you for a thoughtful retort.
That’s ok Mat. Thanks for engaging.
Two more things that occur to me:
It’s really striking to read what the Catholics make of all this. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.”
Secondly, I worry that the Church is struggling to catch up with what’s happening. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago we could imagine that the conversation with a gay person which involved telling them to embrace celibacy in order to follow Christ, was essentially asking them to stop sleeping around or drop the casual boyfriend/girlfriend they were seeing. That probably wasn’t that true then, but it’s massively not true now. Having that conversation now is as likely as not to entail telling them to divorce their partner and break up the family home. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this is the thought process that has led the Bishops – if they encountered a married straight couple who were divorcees (i.e. had previous marriage partners) they wouldn’t dream of telling them to return to their original spouses. They don’t think the Godly thing to do is to attempt to smash up that family home in the hope of returning to earlier, purer, relationship. And so, they cannot in good conscience assert that gay marriages ought to be dissolved.
Secondly, I worry that the Church is struggling to catch up with what’s happening.
Well, good. Why would you want to catch up with a society that’s haring off hell for leather in the wrong direction? Catching up with someone going the wrong way just means there’s two of you getting to the wrong place equally fast.
Well, we are supposed to telling them the Good News, S…
we are supposed to telling them the Good News
Absolutely we are supposed to tell them the right way to go. But if they then ignore us and start walking in the wrong direction we don’t just follow them! All that achieves is two people going the wrong way!
Dr Maxwell writes that restricting sexual intimacy to a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is the best way to protect women and children from harm. I am one of many thousands of people who can testify that being the child of such a marriage was no protection from harm – it was where the harm occurred. My father was controlling, violent, and sexually abusive, and yet he presented our family as a model Christian family for others to imitate.
‘Traditional’ models of marriage and family, of which the modern nuclear family is only one, are no guarantee of safety for wives and children. Christians opposing alternative models need to be honest about this sad reality.
Thanks for sharing your experience Janet. But Julie doesn’t say anywhere ‘Marriage guarantees no harm’ and it is odd that people have read it thus. She provides research evidence that this is the best structure.
Sinful people sin, and no structure prevents this.
Ian
Im thinking of someone known to me who was in an abusive relationship, escaped with her child and has been raising that child mostly on her own.
What does it say to her when the church says shes an inadequate or substandard parent and the best thing is for her child to be in a family with a biological father and mother? I just feel time and again conservative church teaching is failing to engage with real life. Reliance on simplistic models leads to being mean, dismissive or hostile to people in tough situations who are just doing their best
What does it say to her when the church says shes an inadequate or substandard parent and the best thing is for her child to be in a family with a biological father and mother?
But the Church doesn’t say she’s an inadequate or substandard parent. It says her abusive husband is an inadequate and substandard parent because he has by his behaviour robbed his child of its chance to grow up with a biological father and mother, which is the ideal situation. And I don’t see how anyone could have a problem with that. Clearly it would have been better for the child to grow up with its biological father and mother; and clearly (if things are as you describe) the blame for depriving the child of that lies squarely with the abusive father.
I just feel time and again conservative church teaching is failing to engage with real life.
‘Failing to engage with real life’ would be to pretend everything is fine when, in the situation you describe, things are very very very far from fine.
S
But you’re not saying that!
Time and again on this page parents who don’t fit this stupid ideal model are being defamed!
But you’re not saying that!
You’re claiming I’m not saying what I actually wrote.
I am saying what I actually wrote. what I am not saying is what you have made up your head, that I never actually wrote.
Time and again on this page parents who don’t fit this stupid ideal model are being defamed!
Quote — actually quote, verbatim, not inaccurately paraphrase as you usually do — anywhere I have defamed anyone.
Janet,
What you describe is grievous, to you and to God.
Could it be suggested that being a father is such a high calling, a call to model our heavenly Father.
Yet all too often we model our heavenly Father on human father, (even an absentee one.)
Family breakdown, ( even a one which stays together) which does cause harm is not of itself an argument against, but an argument for good health family relations.
Misuse is not an argument for none use, but for good, proper use.
There will many who gave grown up with manipulating, domineering, controlling, abusive mothers.
Does your comment not indicate a longing for a
living stable childhood with both parents?.
Having worked temporarily in a Local Authority care home and having been approved with my wife for respite care for children with disabilities I have seen the heart-rending cost to children of self absorbed, boundary-less parenting and family breakdown.
A risk today for some is in the opposite direction where children are idolised, and instances where parents live out their own hopes and dreams through their children’s lives.
There is an expression: hurting people, hurt people, which bears some thinking about in the Christian context: maybe those sinned against, sin against others, “the sins of the fathers”… down the generations… except only One who is sinless.
Not forgetting, that there will be those who visit this site whose formative years were in boarding/ public schools largely separated from parents! School parenting as oppose to parent schooling in the wider sense.
Mat
I think a challenge is that the only churches that actually act as if sexuality is a minor part of your identity are those that are fully inclusive of LGBT people.
For me growing up in churches meant I couldn’t marry or have a family of my own because of my sexuality, yet a major part of church culture focused on family life. People were seen as successful if they married young and had children and backward if they were still unmarried by their 30s. Sex acts may be a minor part of someone’s lives, but relationships are not.
When I eventually opened up about my attraction I was punished by the church for it. I was encouraged to leave and lost most of my friends, even though I had never had sex with anyone. This does not feel like the church considers my gayness as a minor issue.
Subsequently church leaders have blamed gays for everything from flooding to Christians being persecuted in Uganda. Again this is not the church saying sexuality is a minor component of a person’s life. This is defining who the problem is based on someone’s sexuality
The church I attend now is the only church I have attended where gay people are treated just like anyone else. We recently left our denomination because the denomination made it the worst prohibition for its churches to marry gay people.
When churches behave in such apocalyptic ways toward gay people it makes it impossible for gay people in the church to treat their sexuality as inconsequential because in the eyes of the church leadership it’s almost the only thing that matters
I have worked in a none Christian mental health charity where most of my colleagues were LG and their commitment to their work/ clients was commendable, but their whole lives and identity -who they were, the very essence of their being- revolved around their sexuality and their own communities.
One of difficulties I see in any church with a number children and young people is an emphasis on marriage and families so that, by implication, if you are single as a Christian, your life is somehow incomplete and only in marriage will you be *completed*.
And from outside the church comes the cultural clamour for sexual fulfilment, almost as part of the air we breathe, or absorbed through processes akin to transpiration, osmosis.
We are only ever truly complete(d) in Union with Christ.
Or is that too much like radical conversion to Christ! That some LGB etc are seeking to render unlawful.
Certainly any personal *Lordship prayer* along these lines would be a no – no, banned:
https://wearecrossing.com/notes/2017/12/13/lordship-prayer
While I know nothing of that church, their statement of belief.csn be found on their site.
I have come across a similar prayers in the UK, ( and that is what stimulated a web search) but not in the CoE. The prayers certainly bring to light our true, if hidden, and unadmitted, desires and drivers.
I think it’s quite natural to form communities with people with a similar life experience, especially if the wider culture is intolerant of you.
The opposite can apply. It can form a group the is unwelcoming, exclusionary, divisive, with a sense of cutting edge, superior differentiation in a missionary opposition to boring heteronormativity.
In social science terms it may engender *building* social capital but detonate “bridging* social capital.
What to me is fascinating is your avoidance of questions and points that don’t fit your narrative. It could in fact be deduced that your sexuality is your primary life essence identity.
And if I remember correctly from your comments on David Robertson blog over the years it is the only topic that draws any comment from you, with nothing on doctrine, scripture, core Christian beliefs.
Again if I recall correctly, it was outside church, when you were a university student that you came out.
I have asked you questions before which you have avoided and I can now see why, it is because of your living arrangements, in ssm.
As you will know Rosaria Butterfield and Jackie Perry are example of those who have publicly, come out of coming out, and gone against the flow of cultural rapids.
But ultimately, does this not boil down to what is and isn’t sin In the eyes of God ?and how we deal with it in our own lives: defend, justify, ignore, avoid, continue, redefine?
I have been accused of being immature, but at my age, and I’ve had another birthday recently, I’m sure there is any hope of that now, but it does beg the question; what is Christian maturity? Does it include defending the faith or a slide into apostasy, skepticism, a drift into Biblical amnesia and illiteracy?
Geoff
I came out about a decade after I left university. It was a Cofe church and I had been attending and doing voluntary roles in the church for almost all that time whole working a full time job. Of course the way I was treated after i came out is the most significant thing to have happened to me in the church of England. That’s not *my* fault. I did not choose to be treated like that.
You seem to be accusing me of biblical illiteracy. I would love some serious discussion of what the Bible actually has to say to real life gay people.
I no longer live in England, but am still a British citizen. I am married with two children. I don’t recall ever making a secret of that. I note that you have not demanded to know these details from any other person commenting here and nor have you told me any details about yourself.
You seem far more interesting than me! What’s your experience of parenting?
Herein lies a serious problem – once Protestantism got rid of the discipline of celibacy, we set ourselves up for this idea that your life is incomplete without marriage, because everyone is supposed to be getting married. And we’ve completely forgotten the lessons from the Catholic and Orthodox traditions who kept an acknowledgement of lifelong celibacy. They know that knowing your life is a celibate one is different to just happening to be (and end up) single. They also know that trying to live that way in isolation and in secret is difficult and dangerous. Hence, the traditions that take celibacy seriously practice it very differently, with a celibate community and a strict requirement for careful discernment of the calling to celibacy.
A large problem with applying the Bible to modern questions of sex and marriage is that the Bible is written in the context of an agrarian society with a very different family structure and marriage/sexual customs than the ones we have in our post-industrial society where small nuclear families are the norm. When the Bible or early Christian writers talk about marriage they fundamentally aren’t referring to the same thing that we are referring to when we speak of marriage.
When the Bible or early Christian writers talk about marriage they fundamentally aren’t referring to the same thing that we are referring to when we speak of marriage.
But the ultimate author of the Bible is God, and He most certainly is referring in His Word to the universal thing that He intended for marriage, isn’t He?
Are you suggesting that God was using a modern definition of marriage even though the Bible’s original audience interpreted the concept of marriage differently? That’s absurd. The Bible was written for an Ancient Near Eastern audience, not a 21st century one.
Are you suggesting that God was using a modern definition of marriage even though the Bible’s original audience interpreted the concept of marriage differently?
Of course not. I’m suggesting that God’s definition of marriage applies to all humans in all times and all places. It is no more a modern definition than it is a bronze-age one. God’s definition of marriage is as written into the fabric of creation as God’s laws of physics.
You might as well suggest that gravity worked differently in the ancient Near East.
The Bible was written for an Ancient Near Eastern audience, not a 21st century one.
Of course the Bible was written for a 21st century audience! And for a first-century audience, and for a fifteenth-century assistance and for a 31st-century audience, and for every audience in between!
The Bible is God’s written Word, it’s His revelation of Himself addressed to the entire human race, in all times and in all places. If we go out into space and set up colonies amongst the stars, the Bible will be just as relevant on Alpha Centauri as it was in Judea in AD 100 and as it is for us today.
Yep.” Even if you make your home among 5he stars I will drag you down. ” Obadiah I think. So, for that prophecy to be fulfilled we will need a colony on Mars at least. Perhaps the word won’t end just yet.
Ancient culture was agrarian and its family structure included :
-arranged marriages based on economics and the production of children
-romantic love downplayed in relation to marriage; if it developed between spouses after they married then it was a bonus but not itself sufficient for a successful marriage; spouses were warned not to love each other too much; men could be mocked by their peers for being too infatuated with their wife
-singleness was a luxury, not the rule; people who had that luxury were usually well-off and either divorced or widowed and had produced offspring already
-early marriage
-no reliable contraception
-a high birth rate and high child mortality
-large, multigenerational households
-children lived with parents until marriage, and often after. When offspring did establish their own households they usually stayed close to family
-most people worked on the family farm or took up the family trade
-homeownership was easily attainable; most people built their own home
-few careers required advanced education
Our culture is post-industrial and its marriage and family structure includes:
-marriage based on romantic love and personal compatibility (marriage for love only dates back about 200 years)
-the hyper competitive dating market
-late marriage
-low birthrate and low infant mortality
-reliable contraception
-small nuclear families
-singleness is the default for adults; getting married is relatively hard
-children move out of their parents house around 18 or so and often attend faraway colleges and/or rent apartments with a roommate or two
– the family business is a dying institution
-most careers require college degrees and the accumulation of student loan debt
– more and more people are priced out of homeownership altogether; even if they can buy a home it requires a mortgage and happens relatively later in life
This is what I mean when I say that the Bible and modern readers are talking about two fundamentally different things when they talk about marriage and family. When the Church and society as a whole accepted that marriage was based on individualism and being “in love”, then gay marriage and premarital sex became inevitable. Time to accept the logical conclusion of your own beliefs. We are not going back to arranged marriages for 16 year olds. The Revolution has already happened. The horse has bolted from the barn and it’s too late to close the gate.
“Love has triumphed over marriage, but now it is destroying it from inside” – Pascal Bruckner
–
This is what I mean when I say that the Bible and modern readers are talking about two fundamentally different things when they talk about marriage and family
Well on this we agree. The point is that this is because the Bible gives God’s design for marriage which is correct for all time, whereas each human era — ours, the ancients, the moderns, and all future eras too — is seduced by Satan in its own way.
What we need to do is ignore the claims of our culture and instead look to God’s eternal Word.
So, which one of those two systems is the correct one?
Do we go back to an agrarian society where arranged marriages for 16 year olds are the norm? How do you propose to accomplish that?
So, which one of those two systems is the correct one?
Neither. The correct design for marriage is the one God wrote into the fabric of creation and revealled to us in the Bible.
“Neither. The correct design for marriage is the one God wrote into the fabric of creation and revealled to us in the Bible”.
That’s not an answer. Describe the correct “design”. Should we go back to arranged marriages for 16 year olds? How do you propose to accomplish that?
Describe the correct “design”.
That’s easy. At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
The correct design is a man and a woman becoming one flesh because the Creator made them male and female.
That still isn’t a proper answer. You’re just citing a verse from Genesis that means different things to 1st century and 21st century people. What do you mean by “marriage”? What do you mean by “family”? Which definition is correct? Do you propose we go back to arranged marriages for 16 year olds? How do you intend to accomplish this? Answer the questions directly.
What do you mean by “marriage”?
A man and a woman uniting to become one flesh, because the Creator made them male and female.
What do you mean by “family”?
People descended from a common pair of ancestors.
Which definition is correct?
Those ones I just gave there.
Do you propose we go back to arranged marriages for 16 year olds?
No.
How do you intend to accomplish this?
I don’t.
Answer the questions directly.
Done.
You aren’t getting it. The “Christian sexual ethic” only works in an agrarian society with a family structure like the one I described. It doesn’t apply to a post-industrial individualist society. When you accept marriage for love then premarital sex and gay marriage are inevitable. All you’re doing is citing a single verse over and over, one which says nothing about family structure or marriage for love. The original audience of the Bible understood marriage and family one way and we understand in a very different way. This underpins every discussion of marriage in the Bible. The one verse you quote over and over is not the only plsce where marriage customs and sexual mores are discussed in the Bible, far from it.
Is marriage based on economics or on being “in love”? Is arranged marriage or dating the proper way? Is early or late marriage better? Are households supposed to be formed by large, multigenerational families or small nuclear families?
When you accept marriage for love then premarital sex and gay marriage are inevitable.
They are only inevitable because sin in inevitable. But they are still sinful. That’s the point.
The original audience of the Bible understood marriage and family one way and we understand in a very different way.
Yes. But neither of those ways matters. All that matters is how God designed marriage.
The one verse you quote over and over is not the only plsce where marriage customs and sexual mores are discussed in the Bible, far from it.
It’s the foundational one on which all the others are built. It’s the one Jesus went to to show how when it comes to any question about marriage you have to work it out from first principles, and the first principle is that He created them male and female.
Is marriage based on economics or on being “in love”?
Can be either.
Is arranged marriage or dating the proper way?
Can be either.
Is early or late marriage better?
About as god as each other.
Are households supposed to be formed by large, multigenerational families or small nuclear families?
Can be either.
All those things are inessential, mere accidental properties of how a particular society might arrange marriages. None of them are particularly better or worse than others. None of them are outside the bounds of what marriage can be.
But what matters — what is the essence of marriage (you understand the difference between essence and accident, right?) — is that a marriage is formed of a man and a woman becoming one flesh because the Creator made them male and female.
So there are some things that are outside the bounds of what can be a proper marriage.
For instance:
Can a marriage have more than two people in it? No. Polygamy is out.
The features the two concepts of marriage that I described are not accidental. They are essential to each culture’s definition of marriage. Biblical authors like Paul would not recognize our modern concept of marriage.
As for polygamy, Ancient Near Eastern Jewish readers would disagree with you. They would not have interpreted that verse as prohibiting polygamy. Polygamy was in fact quite common in the 1st century, and some Jewish communities practiced it as late as the 17th century. Cultural definitions of marriage have changed greatly over time.
If you accept marriage for love then you have no reason to not accept gay marriage and premarital sex.
The features the two concepts of marriage that I described are not accidental. They are essential to each culture’s definition of marriage.
But they are not essential to God’s definition of marriage and that’s the only one that matters.
Biblical authors like Paul would not recognize our modern concept of marriage.
So? Paul’s word doesn’t matter, and Paul would be the first to admit that. All that matters is God’s Word.
As for polygamy, Ancient Near Eastern Jewish readers would disagree with you. […] Cultural definitions of marriage have changed greatly over time.
As above, all cultures’ idea of marriage are flawed, in different ways, to the extent they don’t match up with God’s definition, as He has revealled to us in His Word, the Bible.
If you accept marriage for love then you have no reason to not accept gay marriage and premarital sex.
Of course I do. The reason is that gay marriage and premarital sex do not fit within the design for marriage that God has written into the universe, which transcends culture and applied in all times and all places. That reason isn’t changed by whether or not I accept marriage for love.
(It would be changed if I accepted that love was the only defining element of a marriage, as modern culture does, such that love is a necessary and sufficient condition for a valid marriage. But I don’t accept that. I accept that you can marry for love and that’s valid, but not that only love-marriages are valid nor that any love-union is automatically a valid marriage. That is, I don’t think that love is necessary for a valid marriage (you can have valid marriage without love eg arranged marriages) and I don’t think love is sufficient for a valid marriage (you can have love-unions that aren’t valid marriages, eg, where one party is already married to someone else). And if something is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition, not a prohibition, then it is a mere accident.)
Genesis 1:27 is descriptive not prescriptive. The books of the Bible were written in an Ancient Near Eastern context, with Ancient Near Eastern cultural assumptions about marriage and family. That includes Genesis 1:27.
You seem to be implying that Genesis 1:27 is the words of God while the Mosaic Law and the Pauline Epistles aren’t. The definitions of marriage used in those writings are totally alien to the modern definition.
Are you totally obsessed with Genesis 1:27? Can you cite any other text that can indicate that the biblical authors had anything like modern individualistic marriage for love in mind when they discussed marriage?
Genesis 1:27 is descriptive not prescriptive.
Yes. It describes God’s design for marriage embodied in Creation.
The books of the Bible were written in an Ancient Near Eastern context, with Ancient Near Eastern cultural assumptions about marriage and family.
No, because the ultimate author of the books of the books of the Bible is God, who does not operate within any human cultural context.
You seem to be implying that Genesis 1:27 is the words of God while the Mosaic Law and the Pauline Epistles aren’t.
I am absolutely not. all the Bible is the Word of God. That includes Genesis, the Mosaic Law and the epistles.
The definitions of marriage used in those writings are totally alien to the modern definition.
In which case it’s the modern definition that’s wrong, isn’t it?
Are you totally obsessed with Genesis 1:27?
That’s like asking a physicist, ‘are you totally obsessed with General Relativity?’ Or a mathematician, ‘are you totally obsessed with the calculus?’
It is simply the founding truth. That by which everything else is understood. Do I recognise that? Yes. Does that make me ‘obsessed’? You can call me that if you like, I don’t care.
Can you cite any other text that can indicate that the biblical authors had anything like modern individualistic marriage for love in mind when they discussed marriage?
I don’t care what the Biblical authors had in mind. I care what God was communicating through them. God frequently communicates through the Biblical authors things which they themselves did not have in mind; for example, the authors of the Old Testament texts about Jesus certainly didn’t have Jesus in mind when they wrote those passages, but they are still about Jesus.
My view
The Bible has very little to say about marriage and doesn’t define it.
People who try to extrapolate a definition of marriage from the Bible don’t end up with enough structure for it to hold up in the real world
The Bible has very little to say about marriage and doesn’t define it.
Jesus defined marriage in the exchange recorded in Matthew 19. That’s in the Bible.
“it’s the modern definition that’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Then we’re getting back to my earlier question about whether we should return to agrarian society with large multigenerational households and arranged marriages for 16 year olds. You claim that we shouldn’t and then you go and say this.
Can you comprehend that the Biblical authors wrote within their cultural context and had ancient concepts of marriage and family?
Do you understand that God didn’t just dictate the words of the Bible verbatim and that it had human authors along with a human audience that lived in a specific time and place?
Then we’re getting back to my earlier question about whether we should return to agrarian society with large multigenerational households and arranged marriages for 16 year olds. You claim that we shouldn’t and then you go and say this.
Do you think that there are only two possible definitions of marriage? Such that if the modern one is wrong then the only alternative is an agrarian society with large multigenerational households? Do you think I think that? Have I ever suggested I think that? If not, why are you writing stuff that doesn’t engage with what I actually wrote but with something I have never suggested?
Can you comprehend that the Biblical authors wrote within their cultural context and had ancient concepts of marriage and family?
I can. Can you comprehend that the Bible is the Word of God?
Do you understand that God didn’t just dictate the words of the Bible verbatim and that it had human authors along with a human audience that lived in a specific time and place?
God didn’t dictate the words of the Bible verbatim; but God is the Bible’s ultimate author, and the Bible is the Word of God — His revelation of Himself to the human race, in all times and in all places.
If you deny that, how do you explain the passages of the Old Testament which are about Jesus?
The issue here is that you think the “biblical” definition of marriage is found in Genesis 1:27, while I think that the biblical definition is to be found in the cultural context and assumptions that underpin every biblical discussion of marriage and family.
So much for agreeing on the definition of marriage; we can’t even agree on the definition of what a definition is!
The issue here is that you think the “biblical” definition of marriage is found in Genesis 1:27, while I think that the biblical definition is to be found in the cultural context and assumptions that underpin every biblical discussion of marriage and family.
So you think the Biblical definition of marriage is to be found in… stuff that isn’t in the Bible?
Do you even read what you write?
So much for agreeing on the definition of marriage; we can’t even agree on the definition of what a definition is!
No, you’re just wrong. Imagine you’re looking for the statutory definition of something. The statutory definition of something is the definition that’s in the statute. If there isn’t a definition in the statute then it doesn’t have a statutory definition.
You can’t say ‘the statutory definition is to be found in the the cultural context and assumptions that underpin the discussions in the House of Commons during the debates on the Bill’.
If it’s not in the statute, it’s not part of the statutory definition.
And if it’s not in the Bible, it’s not part of the Biblical definition of marriage.
So whisht with your ‘cultural context and assumption’ nonsense. God doesn’t have cultural context and God doesn’t make assumptions.
We can study the cultural norms of the Ancient Near Eastern society that was ancient Israel. The Old Testament authors are operating by those cultural norms and their writing clearly reflects that. Agrarianism, with early arranged marriage and all the other features I have previously listed is the assumed norm. You can easily see this by reading biblical accounts of what marriage and family life was like, as well as by reading texts like the Mosaic Law. Nowhere is anything like dating or love marriage even mentioned, let alone assumed.
If we want to compare this to English law then this is closer to Common Law, upon which statutory law is ultimately based.
The redefinition of marriage already happened long before anybody ever thought about gay marriage. The Sexual Revolution and the redefinition of marriage is such a radical and irreversible break with the past that the Bible can barely be applied to issue, if at all. It ultimately isn’t even talking about the same thing that we are when we talk about marriage.
We can study the cultural norms of the Ancient Near Eastern society that was ancient Israel. The Old Testament authors are operating by those cultural norms and their writing clearly reflects that.
Indeed but as I keep saying I don’t care what cultural norms the Old Testament authors are operating by. I care about what God is revealling to us through his Word. Because that isn’t bound by any cultural norms, is it?
Nowhere is anything like dating or love marriage even mentioned, let alone assumed.
Neither are printing presses, cars, firearms or iPhones. So what? What God is saying to us doesn’t change just because we have iPhones or because teenagers go on dates.
The redefinition of marriage already happened long before anybody ever thought about gay marriage. The Sexual Revolution and the redefinition of marriage is such a radical and irreversible break with the past that the Bible can barely be applied to issue, if at all.
And if — if — that is true then surely you must agree that any break which takes us so far from the Bible, form God’s Word and God’s design for our lives, was a terrible terrible error and we must work to reverse it as soon as possible.
Do you think the sexual revolution was a terrible terrible error?
Yes. The Sexual Revolution is a crisis state. But the toothpaste is not going back in the tube. We are not going back to a primarily agrarian society, early marriage will no longer be the norm, people will not be living in large multigenerational households, and we will not overturn the Sexual Revolution. Instead of operating as if Traditional Marriage still existed, the church has to equip its members to live under the conditions which we have been given.
Yes. The Sexual Revolution is a crisis state. But the toothpaste is not going back in the tube. We are not going back to a primarily agrarian society, early marriage will no longer be the norm, people will not be living in large multigenerational households, and we will not overturn the Sexual Revolution.
But if it was a terrible mistake, then we have to work to overturn it, don’t we?
(Which doesn’t necessarily mean ‘going back to a primarily agrarian society’ — there was rather a long time before the sexual revolution when society was not primarily agrarian, showing that it’s possible to have a non-sexual-revolution sexual ethic in a society which is not primarily agrarian).
Instead of operating as if Traditional Marriage still existed, the church has to equip its members to live under the conditions which we have been given.
Which means, surely, ensuring its members know that the modern sexual ethic is sinful, and equipping them to live lives apart from and in resistance to it, even if that means they are mocked or worse by their secular peers. Yes?
The Sexual Revolution is a logical and inevitable outgrowth of individualism and post-industrial capitalism. Your suggestion that “it’s possible to have a non-sexual-revolution sexual ethic in a society which is not primarily agrarian” is typical conservative thinking which assumes that if we can turn the clock back to the 1950’s (or the Victorian era, or Medieval Christendom, or… ) then we’ll solve our problems, as if the problems we have now weren’t a logical progression from those times.
The French author Michel Houellebecq puts it quite well when he says “It is interesting to note that the ‘sexual revolution’ was sometimes portrayed as a communal utopia, whereas in fact it was simply another stage in the historical rise of individualism. As the lovely word ‘household’ suggests, the couple and the family would be the last bastion of primitive communism in liberal society. The sexual revolution was to destroy these intermediary communities, the last to separate the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day”.
But we are not going back. The “Christian sexual ethic” is no longer viable under present conditions. God did not design people to live sexless lives until they finally get married at 38, if ever. The Will To Life, as designed by God, says otherwise.
This goes back to my assertion that so much has changed that the old ethic can no longer apply. No norm is applicable to chaos.
The Sexual Revolution is a logical and inevitable outgrowth of individualism and post-industrial capitalism.
I’ve seen that claim before but I’ve never seen any actual evidence for it.
Your suggestion that “it’s possible to have a non-sexual-revolution sexual ethic in a society which is not primarily agrarian” is typical conservative thinking which assumes that if we can turn the clock back to the 1950’s (or the Victorian era, or Medieval Christendom, or… ) then we’ll solve our problems,
No it’s not. The point is simply that the existence of non-agrarian societies with non-sexual-revolution sexual ethics simply proves that it is possible for such to co-exist.
What we may need to do is not return to the Victorian era but go forward to a new era with a sexual ethic which is closer to God’s intended design, but which is non-agrarian.
The “Christian sexual ethic” is no longer viable under present conditions.
Rot. Total, utter, daemonic rot. It’s entirely possible to live in accordance with the Christian sexual ethic in the modern world. You just have to be prepared to stand out from the crowd. But Christians are supposed to stand out from the crowd, aren’t they?
This goes back to my assertion that so much has changed that the old ethic can no longer apply. No norm is applicable to chaos.
Chaos makes following the correct moral norms more important, not less. Just like the chaos of war, when law and order breaks down, makes it more important to act morally and not take advantage of the chaos to loot, rape, etc, so the breakdown of sexual order makes it more important for each individual to make a conscious choice stick to God’s design for their lives; because they can no longer rely on society’s mores to keep them on the straight and narrow, they have to do it themselves.
“I’ve seen that claim before but I’ve never seen any actual evidence for it”.
Then you should read Michel Houellebecq’s books as well as Carl Trueman’s The Rise And Triumph Of The Modern Self.
Then you should read Michel Houellebecq’s books as well as Carl Trueman’s The Rise And Triumph Of The Modern Self.
I have not read the former though I keep meaning to read either Atomised or submissions.
I have read the latter. I agree with its account of the development of the modern view of the self almost entirely. I do not remember seeing in it any convincing evidence that that development was inevitable.
Ideally, read all of Houellebecq’s books in publication order, including his book on HP Lovecraft. Then read Whatever, The Elementary Particles (also called Atomized depending on your country), then Platform. If you don’t have the time or energy to read all of his books then those will do. I also really liked The Possibility Of An Island and Submission.
F Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia In Power is also a very good non fiction book about the Sexual Revolution.
Ideally, read all of Houellebecq’s books in publication order
If only I had mortal time enough, but now you’re really avoiding the issues. Do we assume from that that you concede the remaining points?
Raphael thanks for your contributions here. Very interesting.
Raphael, I have been saying this progress-of-individualism-and-capitalism thing for years. But looking around people are not free but enslaved. They can see that the cultures and individuals who do things the Christian/family way are more successful, happier, more stable, more healthy. Yet some collective contagion makes them refuse to acknowledge the evidence of their eyes. Whatever increases slavery and decreases family stability which is a main source of security and happiness is regress not progress. I think you acknowledge this above.
I’m not conceding anything. But it’s obvious at this point that you and I aren’t going to convince each other of anything.
Raphael – Jesus said something along the lines of ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Scripture is written for Christians – i.e. people who are not of this world. I would therefore say that, while Scripture is certainly referenced in the world where the various authors lived, its authors were basically God-ward people whose lives had been transformed by the Holy Spirit (and, as such, were no longer of this world).
Actually, I have a problem with this – since for much of the OT, while I believe the authors were honest, they do seem obsessed with a wrong perspective. For example, the authors of Kings and Chronicles seem much more obsessed with the temple being in good order rather than people living decently according to the commandment to ‘love thy neighbour’ and it’s difficult to see how these authors really are Christians (i.e. those whose hearts and minds have been transformed by the Holy Spirit).
Nevertheless, whatever the society and social perspective may have been when the various books of Scripture were written, God intended Scripture to talk to His people, those ‘not of this world’. That was the audience; not those caught up in the vanities of this world (e.g. the so-called `sexual revolution’).
Indeed, it is quite clear in the book of Genesis that the patriarchs violated every single sexual ethic that is presented in the ten commandments (e.g. Rubin sleeping with his father’s concubine, Judah having-it-off with prostitutes, etc …..).
So I don’t see the definitions as something rooted in the societies in which the books of Scripture were written; the ethical teaching of Scripture is supposed to transcend this – although I’d fully agree that the stories illustrating where it all goes horribly wrong are very clearly a product of the society.
For example – you mention polygamy. A careful reading of the story of Jacob shows that his difficulties-of-life would have been greatly reduced if he had called Laban out and refused the deal that was deceitfully imposed. Nevertheless, even though Jacob sinned (in the matter of polygamy) – and Scripture gives a graphic account of the consequences of this sin (in terms of a very difficult family life), nevertheless he was, through it all, a man of God.
“it is clear to me that there are two broad views. The first is that God’s design for marriage and sex is good and living according to it is beneficial; the other view is that to deny our sexual urges and to have to conform to God’s design is harmful.”
Which is strange, because that’s not the two broad views at all.
There is, if you poke and scratch and cajole, still a school of thought in the Church that sticks to what we might think of as an early modern view: pretty much everyone ought to be getting married (heterosexually) because marriage is the divine design for life. It’s uncomfortable with celibacy as suspiciously papist and unreasonably demanding, but will allow it as a consequence of some people simply happening to never get married (not an active choice and not to be encouraged as a calling). That school of thought ends up telling you that there is no such thing as gay and straight, no one has a meaningful sexuality, just some people are confused and need help. It’s epitomised in the ex-gay movement of the 80s and 90s that desperately (and often very cruelly) tried to crowbar gay people into straight marriages, promising them change that never arrived. It’s utter collapse in the early 2000s is why we’re still having this debate.
The Church of England pretty much rejected the ex-gay movement in the early 90s, when Issues in Human Sexuality warned against trying to change your sexuality. So did/does the catechism of the Catholic Church. But that throws up an alternative problem and teaching: God’s design for marriage is irrelevant for gay people, as they are to live outside it in lifelong committed celibacy. This though isn’t terribly straightforward. Scripture is extremely wary of telling people that they are commanded to lifelong celibacy. The Church, even when more comfortable with celibacy, views it as a calling to be discerned with great care. Gay people who live celibate lives because of how they interpret Scripture have not viewed it as a calling, and instead treat it as a command or martyrdom. This entire teaching is apparently deeply uncomfortable even for those who advocate for it. CEEC for example have been adamant they don’t want their members to have to answer questions about it. Nor does it take seriously the implications of a celibacy command – that those in celibate lives are meant to be more dedicated to the Church and more focussed on serving God.
Then there are those who argue the true teaching is a sexual ethic that is applicable to all – i.e. we are all told by St Paul that it is better not to marry, but it is better to marry than burn with passion, and marriage is a remedy for sin in this regard. They argue that we need more honesty and clarity. If we don’t argue for celibacy for straight people, and encourage marriage instead, the same should go for gay people. They look at the rules and caution around vows of celibacy, and find themselves unable in good conscience to throw that caution aside. They are troubled by the suggestion that either there’s no such thing as gay people (i.e. everyone could have a happy and successful straight marriage and be encouraged into one), or that we can casually command a whole section of people to lifelong celibacy when they experience no such calling. So they take the teaching of marriage, and apply it to everyone.
Finally, there is the most liberal position which is given serious voice. This suggests we aren’t in the business of ex-communication anymore. It’s a school of thought that looks at how the Church has shifted on the marriage of divorcees, and celebrating the marriages of couples it knows are already living together. They note that the Church refuses to tell a couple where one or more are divorced to split up and return to their “original” partners. Nor does the Church refuse to marry those who are already living together. Instead it encourages to bring their current relationships into a state of Holy Matrimony. That isn’t an “anything goes” school of thought, but one that could be characterised as seeking to persuade rather than condemn. But it retains a clear view on the importance of Holy Matrimony.
Then there are those who argue the true teaching is a sexual ethic that is applicable to all […] So they take the teaching of marriage, and apply it to everyone.
Thing is, nowhere in this paragraph can I see a theological justification for this teaching. It’s all based on finding a teaching which is comfortable, out at least not too uncomfortable.
But we shouldn’t be concerned with what is comfortable, but with what is true. The true teaching might well be one which is intensely uncomfortable; but in that case we should still teach it because truth is what matters, not comfort.
So if you want to persuade people to follow this teaching you’re going to have to provide a convincing argument for why it is true, not just say ‘the alternatives are very uncomfortable’.
Can you do that? Do you have any arguments for the truth of this teaching? Because there aren’t any in your reply.
You don’t recognise the Scriptures when they’re quoted at you? That’s interesting.
My point wasn’t that the teaching was uncomfortable (or not) for those who receive it. But that it’s a ropey teaching, when those who say they want to it to be the teaching, are so very desperate to avoid talking about it. It’s a funny sort of evangelical who claims something is a Gospel issue but then doesn’t want to be asked about it.
But that it’s a ropey teaching,
Define ‘ropey’.
when those who say they want to it to be the teaching, are so very desperate to avoid talking about it. It’s a funny sort of evangelical who claims something is a Gospel issue but then doesn’t want to be asked about it.
This is all pure ad hominem. The validity of an argument has nothing to do with the behaviour of those putting it forward.
Errrr it’s not ad hominem at all. It’s literally about the position they hold, and their consistency in it.
Forgive me, but I cannot see clearly where in your post you are quoting Scripture. Perhaps if you could give references, that would help.
1 Corinthians 7, David:
“Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: it is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
1 Corinthians 7
Your paragraph, of course, went far beyond anything Paul wrote, and without any logical or theological basis; just vibes.
Sigh, S
We went through this at the start of February (see Article “Last Rites for ‘Living in Love and Faith'”). Ian understandably, and rightly, doesn’t want to see the same debates repeated ad nauseam, but to save you the trouble of going back to look it up, this is what I wrote in response to you then:
Celibacy can be a good thing, but we are warned not to prize it too highly:
1 Corinthians 7 – better to marry than burn with passion
Matthew 19 – sexual desire is normal so don’t avoid marriage
1 Timothy 5 – young should marry to stop the Church being reviled
Beware legalism and placing heavy restrictions on each other.
Matthew 12 – Christ desires mercy not sacrifice
Matthew 23 – beware those who tie up heavy burdens on others, but will not move them with their finger
1 Peter 2 – live as people who are free
It is not about what is permitted. It is about what we should do. This is why Jesus fulfills the law, and this is why he so often turns around the Pharisees’ questions about whether something is permitted.
Mark 2 – Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath
Romans 13 – love does no wrong to a neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law
1 Corinthians 6 – all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful
Marriage is a concession for us to channel our sexual desire, and to find companionship
Genesis 2 – it is not good for man to be alone
Ecclesiastes 4 – two are better than one
1 Corinthians 7 – marriage is a concession, not a command
Hebrews 13 – sexual immorality is what defiles the marriage bed
So, given gay people are not able to change their sexuality, what are they to do if not called to celibacy? Scripture says that if you not called to celibacy, you should be able to marry. Is an opposite sex marriage a healthy concession for channelling sexual desire and avoiding burning with passion and temptation if you’re gay? Would we therefore concede that same-sex marriage is the way to go? Scripture seems to be pretty clearly against commanding celibacy, treats celibacy rather than marriage as the calling, and says if you struggle with celibacy you should be permitted to marry.
So, given gay people are not able to change their sexuality, what are they to do if not called to celibacy? Scripture says that if you not called to celibacy, you should be able to marry.
No it doesn’t. Nowhere in scripture is it promised that everyone not called to celibacy will find someone to marry. Nowhere. And lots don’t.
Scripture seems to be pretty clearly against commanding celibacy, treats celibacy rather than marriage as the calling, and says if you struggle with celibacy you should be permitted to marry.
Permitted, not given any with no right to. What if the one you burn with lust for is already married to someone else? Lots of people aren’t called to celibacy, and aren’t prohibited from marrying, but nevertheless don’t find anyone they can legitimately marry — which is the same whether that’s because the people they wish to marry die before they can (happened the Patrick Moore, I understand, he never married because his fiancée was killed in the Blitz), or are already married to someone else, or don’t want to marry them, or are the same sex as them.
You have a very selfish and one-sided view of marriage, S. It’s completely out of step with 1 Corinthians 6, or Romans 13, or Ephesians 5 (to name a few examples).
You have a very selfish and one-sided view of marriage
I do? I’m not the one claiming everyone who doesn’t want to remain single has some sort of right to marry. That’s the really selfish and one-sided view. An unselfish view realises that sometimes in life we don’t get what we want.
AJB,
You seem to regard celibacy as a calling, rather than being a part of Christian singleness.
As for marriage and desire it was only ever between male and female.
Any sss is not and can not be requited by ssm as it is a sin and would represent a consummation of sin. Romans 1.
M+F sexual cohabitation, (sinful) can be rendered unsinful, nullified, voided (perhaps even unwittingly akin to repentance; sinful sex being in effect redeemed) by subsequent marriage.
SSS can not be so rendered as it represents a covenant promise, vows, to continue sin.
Lawful in the eyes of the State, sinful in the eyes of God.
You seem to regard celibacy as a calling, rather than being a part of Christian singleness.
Some are called to celibacy; but some are simply celibate by circumstance.
Please, define, describe, explain, Holy Matrimony.
It is suggested that while it involves more, it is not less than any sexual intimacy that God considers is unholy, is sinful.
Go to the Bishops. It’s their argument, not mine.
No, thanks.
I don’t accept it. At least, as it was put forward at the time.
Just why are you putting it forward, if you can’t explain or maybe don’t understand it, (in their befuddlement?) Or don’t agree to their explanation?
I’m not putting it forward. I’m describing the different arguments at play, as I see them, to demonstrate that the “two broad views” described by Julie isn’t the actual state of things.
If I had to articulate it, having read their report, I’d say that the Bishops draw a distinction around Holy Matrimony as having a role of cosmic symbolism as representing Christ and the Church and requiring sex difference to achieve that. That leaves gay marriages probably seen as a dispensation rather than Holy Matrimony (although that’s speculation as Bishops stay well short of spelling their views out).
BTW AJB,
without going into some of the points relating to singleness and marriage with which I disagree if you care to look, and I’m not suggesting that you should, from my earlier comment you may see that I agree with the general drift of your comment: the emphasis has been on marriage and singleness for whatever reason is to be regarded as an outlier.
It seems that today that singleness may be on the rise and may be embraced by many not kept secret.
However, while you emphasise singleness as a Catholic/Orthodxy, perhaps higher calling, with a greater devotion to God, lack of fornication outside marriage is to be for all single Christians.
Sam Allberry has written and spoken well on the matter of singleness in Church: The Seven Myths of Singleness. There is much more online and here is a short review of the book:
https://modernreformation.org/resource-library/web-exclusive-articles/the-mod-7-myths-about-singleness-by-sam-allberry/
Another review is here:
https://www.9marks.org/review/book-review-7-myths-about-singleness-by-sam-allberry/
And a podcast here:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/acts-29/singleness-church-planting/
One Anglican reviewer, Danielle Treweek, in Themelios writes in conclusion:
“A book on singleness that, many would argue, is long overdue. A book on singleness that intentionally seeks to counter and correct the dominant evangelical narrative that all too easily veers toward a view of marriage as the normative experience, desired goal and greatest good of every Christian.”
AJB,
From a comment I made above, I think you have a point, over the question of singleness in the church.
I’ve responded with a longer comment that awaits moderation, mostly, I think, but could be wrong, because it contains 3 links.
The links relate to Sam Allberry’s writing and talks, a book entitled “The Seven Myths of Singleness.”
There is much available on the internet, with youtube talks, podcasts, and written reviews.
One Anglican reviewer, Danielle Treweek, in Themelios writes in conclusion:
“A book on singleness that, many would argue, is long overdue. A book on singleness that intentionally seeks to counter and correct the dominant evangelical narrative that all too easily veers toward a view of marriage as the normative experience, desired goal and greatest good of every Christian.”
Thanks Jeff,
Ultimately I think Allberry’s are a bit shallow. He blends together widows, people not yet married, people called to celibate lives, and people told they have to live celibate lives whether they want to or not, and calls it all singleness. He thinks they’re great for the church, but in a really vague way. And the thrust of his ideas are similar to Ed Shaw’s to encourage couples and families within the church to effectively adopt a single person. Does it make sense of the scriptural passages he leans on? I don’t think so.
It’s insulting to tell a 16 year old staring down the barrel of a life of celibacy that they’re not much different to half the married couples who will survive their partners and be widowed after years of marriage. It’s a daft proposition that sees the primary fear being “dying alone”, for which marriage is neither the only solution or a guaranteed solution.
I think you fail to account for the very positive view of celibacy/singleness in the New Testament.
I would also point out that to “celebrate the marriages of couples it knows are already living together” is not contradictory to the ‘traditional’ view of marriage. After all, the couple are simply putting right their relationship. What I hope churches do not do is ‘bless’ unmarried couples.
The thing is David, I’m not sure the New Testament has a very positive view of celibacy/singleness. Firstly, they’re not synonymous: a celibate person knows they’re going to be single for the rest of their life, whereas a single person is just single until and unless they marry (whenever that happens). The single person has a hope of marriage which the celibate person does not.
Neither Jesus nor Paul treats celibacy as a general command, and both are very concerned to make sure it’s not taken as such. Jesus in Matthew 19 swiftly rejects the idea that it would be better to avoid marriage is divorce becomes difficult, and roots marriage as a natural consequence of sexual desire (drawing on Genesis). Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 similarly firmly rejects the idea that Christians are required to embrace celibacy. He is adamant that celibacy is a gift for some (like him), but that marriage is no sin, but a concession so we do not “burn with passion”. Where Paul sees an advantage is that the celibate can devote themselves to God and be concerned only about the Lord’s affairs.
So, whilst there is no command to marry, and marriage is not idealised (it’s a concession), there is no command to celibacy and instead a wariness of embracing it too eagerly. This poses lots of problems for the Church today. Since the Reformation, Protestant Churches have erred away from any discipline of celibacy. We have no sense of what celibate people who are more concerned with the Lord’s affairs than everyone else ought to be doing. We have some who happen to be in the clergy, but are no different to married clergy in what’s asked of them. Amongst the laity we agonise over how to make the celibate and single feel included, and not “less than”. By contrast the Orthodox and Catholic Churches have retained dedicated roles for celibate Christians reflected this more focussed devotion – monks, nuns, priests and bishops. But they also have a history of caution about any assumption that because being gay means you live a celibate life, that this is the same as a calling to celibacy which leads to Holy Orders.
AJB,
You seem to regard celibacy as a calling, rather than being a part of Christian singleness.
As for marriage and as a receptacle for sexual desire, it was only ever between male and female, not to be indulged outside wedlock.
Any sss is not, and can not be, requited by ssm as it is a sin and would represent a consummation of sin and commitment to it. Romans 1.
M+F sexual cohabitation, (sinful) can be rendered unsinful, nullified, voided (perhaps even unwittingly akin to repentance; sinful sex being in effect redeemed) by subsequent marriage.
SSS can not be so rendered as it represents a covenant promise, vows, to continue sin.
Lawful in the eyes of the State, sinful in the eyes of God.
I think it’s a really vital part of the debate to recognise that celibacy and chastity are different things.
People live chastely whilst they hope for marriage, date and see people, form relationships and display affection, and live chastely within marriage reserving sex solely for each other. Celibacy is a life knowing you will not get married, cannot hope to marry, do not seek opportunities to marry, and do not form relationships that could turn into marriage. Straight 16 year olds are told to wait until marriage to have sex. Gay 16 year olds are told they are to live celibate lives, in effect they are monks and nuns but with someone else already taking the vows on their behalf, and without the community, purpose, or free choice to embrace such a life afforded to actual monks and nuns. It’s an enforcement of a loneliness that is the first thing in creation that God recognised was not good (Genesis 2).
It’s interesting that you raise Romans 1. That was the text for the earliest homily attacking homosexuality by St John Chrysostom. When you read the homily though it’s immediately apparent that a central plank of St John Chrysostom’s argument is that this is about straight people playing at being gay. He is explicit that it is central to his argument that people had legitimate intercourse available to them. We therefore have to reapproach the ethic if we believe, as we should, that gay people cannot change their sexuality or simply adopt a different one.
Or: he understood that everyone is created biologically ‘straight’, as you call it, so that the only way that they could act ‘gay’ is by going against their nature. Your argument here depends on making Chrysostom use 21st century categories and worldview. Why would, and how could, he do that?
Is that your answer Christopher? That no one is actually? Homosexuality doesn’t really exist and it’s just a confusion that people can get rid of?
AJB,
I don’t agree with you chastity point. I think you seek to make a distinction without a difference.
Romans and other Biblical text has discussed exhaustively.
As has the question of homosexuality, its term and meaning.
You’ve not responded to Sam Allberry on Christian singleness.
Nor to the question of identity: primary identity which Mat brought into the discussion.
And a great avoidance is the question of sin in our lives and what we do about it. What it is and isn’t, who it is against, how do we know and how if possible to talk about it courteously.
Apologies AJB,
I was and am on phone and hadn’t back-scrolled to see your brief rejoinder, above, to Allberry.
Who is our First Love?
This is a First Order matter.
With our first love, Christ, we never die alone, even without family and friends, whether married of single, or live alone.
Or “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”
Q &A 1
Q What is your only comfort in life and death.
A Heidelberg catechism, found here and elsewhere.
https://students.wts.edu/resources/creeds/heidelberg.html
Thanks Geoff,
I find Allberry’s framing that this is heavily about a fear of dying alone strange – you can be single and die with someone at your bedside holding your hand, and you can be married and die without that. But it’s his framing. I think it’s a serious misunderstanding of what people are saying when they say they don’t want get old and die alone: it’s a reference to their life, not their literal deathbed.
There is a bigger point though. It’s tempting to burnish our piety by declaring no one should feel lonely, or any need to marry, because we have Christ. For those who are called to celibacy, that’s probably true.
But I can’t help noticing a few things. Firstly, this is an argument very often advanced by men who never seriously considered celibacy for themselves, and got married (often fairly swiftly in their 20s). Secondly, looking across the Church, choosing a celibate life is vanishingly rare. Indeed, we are deeply reluctant to recommend a celibate life to young people in the Church (unless we find out they’re gay in which case we u-turn and declare it to be a command from Scripture). We’ve had this reluctance for the last 500 years or so. Thirdly, Scripture itself acknowledges loneliness and the role of marriage in addressing that. Adam was lonely before the Fall. Despite being able to walk in Eden with God, he was lonely and God saw that this was not good. If Adam in Eden is so lonely God institutes marriage for him, is it so surprising we might be lonely in a fallen world even with the comfort of Jesus?
Adam was lonely before the Fall. Despite being able to walk in Eden with God, he was lonely and God saw that this was not good.
The Bible doesn’t say that Adam was lonely.
Also, Matthew 16:24.
AJ-
First of all, as you know but did not acknowledge, the word can mean a behaviour or an orientation, 2 separate meanings.
Second, some orientations are inborn, some acquired.
So you are treating it as simpler than it is, without having addressed these questions.
You’re dodging the question Christopher. Have the courage to say what you think! Is homosexuality a real thing? Is anyone really gay? Or are we all actually straight and some of us just have a confusion we need to be (and can be) brought out of?
I can see how that would make anti-gay marriage stance intellectually easier. It just requires you to explain why the ex-gay movement failed so badly to sustain that view, why Issues in Human Sexuality and the Catechism of the Catholic Church disagree with you on this point, and why those who hold the view are so reluctant to articulate it.
I have written on this many times, but you will not have seen all of it.
Many people are SSA *now*, which of course may just as well be the result of circumstances, families, environment, acquired psychology as of anything endemic. Saying babies are ‘gay’ is quite a thing. Is that something you would say?
There are however ways of testing. The identical twins data suggests the biological component is about 11%, nonbiological 89%. None of which is determinative, only indicative of tendency.
The whole debate is set up as though gay/homosexual is a thing. As though orientation is a thing. The former is a thing at any given point in time rather than in any more stable manner, unlike gender and pigmentation which some people are minded to lump with it. These 2 are 100% observable and objective, the other 0%. Quite a leap. Having set up the debate like that, no-one is allowed to dissent! But of course, the imposed view is not even the one there is evidence for (see above). It is imposed to forestall debate. Because if debate took place, it would be lost. So the best tactic is to locate the false move in the presuppositions which are never questioned.
Dodging the question again, Christopher…
Is homosexuality a real thing? Is anyone really gay? Or are we all actually straight and some of us just have a confusion we need to be (and can be) brought out of?
PS: Babies have no sexuality. The only people who can say babies are gay are those, like my late grandmother, who might have described a smiling child as looking “bonny and gay”
What an unpleasant and inaccurate way to speak to someone: ‘Dodging the question again, Christopher.’. I never dodge any question. I never will. I have always been committed to that. I always will be. Test me and see.
You have accurately said babies are not gay.
Babies are male or female, they have a pigmentation which they retain.
So you have already agreed that the lumping together of gay/’straight’ with male/female and black/white is inaccurate, and designed to hijack the civil rights narrative. It was part of the amoral strategy of Kirk and Madsen which took into account people’s likely reactions and psychology regardless of the actual truth of the matter.
If babies are gay no-one is endemically gay. If no-one is endemically gay no-one is gay since the words gay and homosexual are used with the understanding that we are speaking of something endemic.
People have orientations now. So they are gay at a given point in time. Some things we are, others we become. Others we cannot easily escape from because of the choices we have previously made and/or the circumstances we have had.
You cannot simultaneously maintain that babies are not gay, and that being gay is endemic. But if it is not endemic it is not something people are but something they become. We therefore agree.
As for the word ‘straight’, it is a word that pretends that something is one option among many at an icecream stall rather than being the default. Once again, if the error is sneaked in at presupposition stage, people fail to notice it, so that proves a successful tactic. Cunningest point to sneak an error in. It is not you who sneaked it in, but the social engineers whose sexual-revolutionary plans you may have swallowed.
For ‘if babies are gay’ read ‘if babies are not gay’.
Babies are male or female, they have a pigmentation which they retain.
Skin pigmentation can change through life, in patches or all over, temporarily or permanently, due to various causes.
You cannot simultaneously maintain that babies are not gay, and that being gay is endemic
Here and throughout you use the word ‘endemic’ when I think you mean intrinsic’.
S
Blame the classicist in me. Endemic means the same as intrinsic etymologically, and though its semantic range is not identical that remains one of its meanings. Yes, substitute ‘intrinsic’.
Pigmentation can indeed change. And (my point again) it is circumstances that do so. Pigmentation is one key part of a larger picture of geographic heritage, and that is what is firstly inborn and secondly immutable.
There was a time, within living memory, of the Boomer generation (1946 -64) and before when Christianity, the church shaped western society, a time when sexual intercourse outside male and female marriage was known as impermissible fornication, a time when living together without marriage was known as *living in sin*.
A time when the church shaped sexual morals and ethics, and there was a merger between morals and law, but in the post war spring high- tide a great reversal swept in separating law and morals and then reconfiguring law to new morals and the porous Church was being conformed to society and the spirit of the age(s).
Will it be dissolved, absorbed, washed away?
Or like the oil of anointing will it be immiscible with societal water(ing- down)?
Geoff
But that was also an age of rampant domestic violence and sexual abuse of children…all to often at the hands of those claiming to be moral leaders.
This age has lost deference for “betters” and lots of them are finally finding justice catch up with them as a result.
I am particularly grateful for Peter Jermey, Raphael Tisserand and AJ Bell for what their courteous, thoughtful and biblically aware engagement has brought to the discussion here.
Thanks David.