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

[Isobel & Jim Bishop]

Dear Jann,
Thanks you so much for posting both these articles. 
We are preparing for World Youth Day down here and the visit of the Pope.  It is during a 3 week School holiday time, so Jim and I and  all our family will keep some distance from all the crowds.  Our Church is hosting some 30 young ones from the Church of Scotland, so the World Youth Day event is an Ecumenical occasion..
Grace, peace and love,
from Isobel. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: LAURELCG at aol.com 
  To: Oe at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 9:44 AM
  Subject: [Oe List ...] Matthew Fox on Religion and Gay Marriage


  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.





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