[Oe List ...] Matthew Fox on Religion and Gay Marriage

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

It’s  about Love, Stupid!

A word about Religion & Gay Marriage from a  theologian


Dr. Matthew  Fox


When I read churches pontificate about what God says  against homosexuals my 
stomach

gets knots in it. The “God says” argument  doesn’t hold water because the 
Bible is filled

with “God says” items that  do not cut the mustard any longer. Consider for 
example the

following  admonitions from the Bible: Ex 35.2 says a person working on the  
Sabbath

should be put to death. Leviticus 11:10 says eating shellfish is  an “
abomination” (just like

homosexuality). Leviticus 25.44 says you may  buy slaves from the nations 
that are around

us. Do you think Canadians  would mind? Or Mexicans?



Like anything else in life, one has to  use the brains God gave us to 
determine priorities even

and especially  when reading Scriptures. Which of the priority teachings 
might apply to  gay

marriage in the Bible? I would propose three.



One is  the admonition that “God is Love.” That is quite startling and 
still, after  centuries

and centuries, quite fresh. God is Love. Where we give love and  receive love 
there is God. 

Love is the better part of ourselves as human  beings. And it is God showing 
through our

giving and receiving in good  times and bad, in sickness and in health.

. 

My Bible does not say  “God is heterosexual love.” (Does yours?) But that 
God is love.

Marriage  is supposed to build on love, develop it, nurture it and celebrate 
it. A  good

argument for gay marriage. Marriage celebrates and protects love. Of  
whatever stripe.



The second Biblical teaching that honors gay  marriage is Jesus’ teaching to 
put justice first,

to support the anawim,  those without a voice, the outcasts, the oppressed 
ones. Gay and

lesbian  people have clearly been oppressed. Some were arrested, some were 
put in  mental

hospitals and given lobotomies, some were beat up, some were  murdered (such 
as the late

Matthew Shepherd), most have had to hide and  pretend. Clearly, then, Jesus’ 
teaching to

stand by the oppressed applies  to a sexual minority as it does to any other 
minorities.



Lastly,  the religious rhetoric against gay love is always buttressed by the 
famous line,  “it’s

not natural. It’s against nature.” But Science, whose job it is to  explore 
nature, has found

just the opposite. That there are gay couples  among at least 464 other 
species ranging from

dolphins to birds, from  dogs to seals. So it is natural…. for a minority. 
(It is not natural

for  a heterosexual but neither is heterosexuality natural for a  homosexual.)



Religious people have to study creation as well as  Bibles, just as St. 
Thomas Aquinas

wrote in the thirteenth century when  he said: “A mistake about creation 
results in a mistake

about God.” (He  did not have the scientific evidence at that time that we 
have today  about

the naturalness of homosexuality for 8 to 10 % of a given human  population.)

Homophobia makes a very big mistake about God, the author of  nature’s immense

diversity. Including sexual diversity. God is author of  nature and that 
means that God is

author…yes, of gay as well as straight  passions.



The love that is celebrated in gay marriage is  society’s love, not just that 
of man to man or

woman to woman. We all  profit from faithful love whether such joy be lived 
out in

heterosexual  or homosexual contexts. So let us all rejoice that notions of 
God is Love  and

Justice Matters and Nature is God’s Doing are happening in a fresh  way in 
the state of

California. And let us move on to other topics  of genuine moral concern such 
as the fate of 

the  Earth.




Matthew Fox is an Episcopal priest and author of 28  books on spirituality 
and culture

including Original Blessing and One River, Many Wells. See 
_www.matthewfox.org._ (http://www.matthewfox.org/) 



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