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Popular Culture Review
The two men dumped their wives, abandoned Exodus, and
wore each other’s wedding bands.
Exodus Ministries asserts that “even if homosexuality were partially or
completely genetic in origin, that does not change the moral question involved:
God declares in the Bible that homosexual and lesbian activities are sin.”
“God” also declares in the Bible that anyone who “hath cursed” should
be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:10). Leviticus 20:14 calls for sinners to be
burned to death, and Leviticus 15:19 commands a menstruating woman be “put
apart seven days, and vsiiosoever toucheth her shall be unclean.” Leviticus
24:11-16 calls for a community gathering in order to stone to death those who
plant two different crops in the same field or wear garments made of two
different kinds of threads.
When these obvious problems with literal application of “God’s” Old
Testament laws are pointed out, the biblical references usually shift to the
epistles of St. Paul. Exodus Ministries cited Romans 1:26-27 in its claim that
genetics don’t matter. Ironically, what is bypassed in that dogmatic leap are the
Gospels of Jesus. This is to be expected since nothing Jesus allegedly said could
be used to support the campaign against homosexuals or same-sex marriage.
Quite the contrary, the Gospels call upon the faithful to dedicate themselves to
creating a more ethical and just world. They also call for proactive efforts to
assure justice and equality for all “God’s children,” especially the
disenfranchised. Furthermore, as Mark Jordan noted in The Invention o f Sodomy
in Christian Theology (University of Chicago, 1997), it wasn’t until the 11th
century that theologians began to condemn homosexuality as sodomy. Then as
now, the motive was more political than theological.
Moreover, St. Paul’s epistles spoke of fulfilling and being faithful to
the unique nature God had given each person, as Andrew Sullivan noted in
Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (Vintage Books, 1996):
For by Paul’s argument, the key issue is that individuals act
according to their own nature as it is revealed to them (as
Christ was revealed to the Romans). By this logic, the person
who is by his own nature homosexual would be acting against
his nature by engaging in heterosexual acts [and thereby
committing a sin]. His destiny is homosexuality, just as the
destiny of the Romans after Christ was monotheism. (29-30)
Therefore, “God-given” genetics do—or should—matter. “Gay at
Birth?” was the title of an October 25, 2003, New York Times article by Nicholas
D. Kristof: