JACK ROGERS’S FLAWED USE OF ANALOGICAL REASONING IN
JESUS, THE BIBLE, AND HOMOSEXUALITY
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon
Associate Professor of New Testament,
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Nov. 2, 2006
© 2006
Robert A. J. Gagnon
[For proper pagination, spacing, font size,
margins, and especially printing, I recommend the pdf version
here.]
Jack
Rogers, in his multiply flawed book Jesus, the Bible, and
Homosexuality (Westminster John Knox, 2006), predicates his argument
for homosexual practice largely on the use of analogies. He
insists—parroting many before him—that slavery and women’s roles
constitute the best analogues to the issue of homosexual practice.
According to Rogers, the church’s reactions to homosexual persons follow
a similar “pattern” to earlier reactions to persons of African descent
and women. The discussion of these matters dominates chs. 2 and 3 of
Rogers’s book (pp. 17-51, notes on pp. 131-37). It is also the opening
salvo in Rogers’s online “11 Talking Points . . . And how Robert Gagnon
gets them wrong” (http://www.drjackrogers.com/)
in which he contends:
1. For 200 years leading theologians taught that
the Bible supported slavery, segregation, and the subordination of
women. The reason they got it wrong is
that they were relying on Scottish Common Sense Philosophy
(including appeals to “natural law,” selective literalism, and
proof-texting) and the scholastic theology of Francis Turretin
instead of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Many of those who oppose
equal rights for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
transgender (LGBT) rely on these same discredited approaches to
scripture.
[Note: For part 1 of my response to
Rogers’s “Talking Points” and the (to date) four part critique of his
book go to
http://www.robgagnon.net/ArticlesOnline.htm and scroll down; or,
more directly, click
here for my response to “Talking Points,” and
here,
here,
here, and
here for installments 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively, of critique of
his book.]
In
contrast to Rogers’s claim, I make the following argument:
The New
Testament’s and the church’s opposition to committed sexual unions of
three or more persons and to loving adult incest is a far superior
analogue to Scripture’s and the church’s opposition to adult, committed
homosexual unions than is support for the oppression of blacks and women
by some leading theologians of the past.
I am referring here to adult, consensual, and committed incest
and polyamory, not incestuous rape, pedophilia, or promiscuity. Rogers
never addresses this problem with his argument.
Good analogical reasoning requires
an ability to distinguish between near and far analogies. The best
analogy is the analogy with the most points of correspondence to the
object of comparison and the fewest points of substantive dissimilarity.
Rogers has chosen distant analogues over close analogues because the
closer analogies won’t get him to where he wants to go: approval of
homosexual marriage. The church still rejects multiple-partner
unions and incest, even of an adult, loving, and committed sort. Since
these prohibitions are formally and logically related to the church’s
absolute opposition to homosexual practice (as we shall see), the
church’s ongoing opposition to faithful incest and polyamory suggests
that the church should continue to oppose homosexual unions. Rogers
doesn’t like that conclusion so he instead ignores altogether the
closest analogues and opts for more distant analogues in order to prop
up a predetermined ideology.
Why
Slavery and Women’s Roles Are Poor Analogues
The bottom line is that alleged
analogies from slavery and women’s roles are inferior analogies. As
regards slavery, (1) the Bible nowhere endorses theories
of racial inferiority of African persons, while the New Testament
rejects distinctions based fundamentally on ethnicity. Although
Rogers repeatedly tries to lump together ethnicity and sexual impulses
as equally benign—a homosexual “orientation” is nothing more than a
sexual impulse—the New Testament categorically rejects such an equation
by scrupulously maintaining distinctions between different kinds of
sexual impulses.
(2) The biblical witness also
offers no compelling witness for preserving the institution of slavery.
Yet it does clearly show a strong vested interest in preserving a
male-female prerequisite for valid sexual unions. Indeed, there is a
great deal of material in the Bible that is critical toward slavery, in
both Testaments—and this toward a form of slavery that was in many
respects less pernicious than the race-based institution of slavery of
the pre-Civil War American South. But there is no indication anywhere in
Scripture of the slightest hesitation in rejecting homosexual practice.
The two-sex prerequisite for marriage is presented in Genesis 1-2 as a
pre-Fall structure; slavery is at best a post-Fall structure. Slavery is
a penultimate evil tolerated in ancient societies that lack both a
welfare net for the impoverished and long-term prison facilities for
criminal offenders. It is not lifted up in Scripture as a wonderful
institution. In short, the Bible doesn’t provide the kind of witness
for slavery that it shows against same-sex intercourse.
Rather, the Bible’s countercultural
witness on slavery moves in the direction of greater critique than what
prevails generally in the ancient world—the same direction in which
Scripture’s countercultural critique of homosexual practice moves.
Both when we reject slavery and when we reject homosexual practice we
follow Scripture’s countercultural trend. This is where the analogy
should take us—not a rejection of slavery and an endorsement of
homosexual marriage (contra Rogers). Endorsement of homosexual
practice, not its rejection, is actually closer to an endorsement of
slavery in that it supports the continued enslavement of persons with
homosexual desire to passions that run counter to God’s clearly
expressed will in Scripture (cf. 1 Cor 7:23: “You were bought with a
price; don’t become slaves of human beings”). Romans 6:16-21 makes this
very point:
Don’t you know that . . . you are
slaves of that which you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of
obedience [to God] leading to a verdict of acquittal? . . . Having
been freed from sin you were enslaved to righteousness. . . . For
just as you once presented your members as enslaved to sexual
impurity [akatharsia, the term Paul uses to describe same-sex
intercourse in Rom 1:24-27] and to [other forms of] lawlessness [cf.
Rom 1:29-31] leading to lawless behavior, so now present your
members as enslaved to righteousness that leads to holiness. For
when you were slaves of sin . . . you bore as fruit . . . things of
which you are now ashamed [cf. Rom 1:27], for the outcome of those
deeds is death.”
As regards women’s roles,
(1) the attempt to equate being a woman with experiencing homoerotic
impulses is a gross confusion of categories, as is the attempt to equate
ethnicity with homosexual orientation. For one thing, sex (gender)
is 100% congenitally determined (i.e. by chromosomes), unlike same-sex
attractions. Despite what Rogers alleges or infers, no scientific study
has ever demonstrated that same-sex attractions are 100% congenitally
determined; indeed, a number of studies—for example, the biggest and
best twin studies—suggest that same-sex attractions are not even 50%
congenitally determined, much less 100%. If Rogers thinks otherwise, let
him cite the study that proves his belief. To date he has cited none.
Another category-confusion on Rogers’s part is that being a woman is not
a direct or primary desire for behavior strongly and absolutely
prohibited by Scripture. An impulse to have sexual intercourse with
persons of the same sex is precisely such a desire.
(2) As with the matter of slavery,
there are many biblical texts critical of the oppression of women but
absolutely none that are critical of a categorical rejection of
homosexual practice. Indeed, the subordination of women is presented
as a post-Fall curse (Gen 3:16), not a pre-Fall blessing like the
remerging of man and woman. Yet as regards homosexual practice the
witness of Scripture expresses complete revulsion. The direction of
Scripture’s countercultural witness is once again toward a greater
affirmation of women than generally prevailed in the ancient world, just
as Scripture’s countercultural witness toward same-sex attractions is
decidedly toward liberation from the oppression of such impulses.
As with slavery, the analogy points us in the direction of rejecting
homosexual practice rather than, with Rogers, affirming it.
For
more extensive discussion of the use of analogies (other than the
Gentile-inclusion analogy, which I will deal with [again] in connection
with Rogers at a later time), see my treatments in: The Bible and
Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon, 2001),
441-52; Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress, 2003),
44-50 (with online notes, 7-20 [pp. 2-4] at
http://robgagnon.net/TwoViews.htm); “Slavery, Homosexuality, and the
Bible: A Response” at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoKrehbielResponse.pdf, and
“Slavery, Homosexuality, and the Bible, Part II” at
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoKrehbielResp2.pdf; “Bearing
False Witness: David Balch’s Effort at Demonization and His Truncated
Gospel,” 4-9 at
http://robgagnon.net/articles/homoBalchFalseWitness.pdf; “Are There
Universally Valid Sex Precepts? A Critique of Walter Wink’s Views on the
Bible and Homosexuality,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 24:1
(June 2002): 72-125 (also online at
http://robgagnon.net/articles/homoWinkHBTResp.pdf); “Why the
Disagreement over the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice?”
Reformed Review 59:1 (2005): 80-82, 90-101 [online]). While
there is some overlap, each of the above treatments provides some new or
different insights not found in any of the other treatments. See too:
William J. Webb, Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the
Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Intervarsity, 2001).
Rogers’s “Pattern of Misusing the Bible to Justify Oppression”
Rogers gives a paltry three sentences
(six lines) to laying out the case that I and others have made against
the use of slavery and women’s roles as appropriate analogues for the
endorsement of homosexual behavior (p. 17). He then contends,
All of these arguments miss the
point. The issue is not what we now think about slavery and
women. The issue is, What did American Christians think about these
subjects for more than 200 years when the accepted view was
completely different than what we now think? (p. 18)
Here it is clearly Rogers who misses
the point. Essentially Rogers is asserting that it doesn’t matter
whether or not an alleged analogy is in fact an accurate exegesis and
application of Scripture. The only thing that matters is that an
analogy was attempted, which makes all “similar” analogies wrong, even
those that do accurately interpret Scripture. In short, Rogers’s
reasoning treats as functional equivalents both inaccurate
interpretations of Scripture and accurate interpretations of Scripture.
Yet, although this is what Rogers argues, his own repeated (but
failed) efforts at insisting that there are no biblical texts
that condemn absolutely homosexual practice suggests that Rogers himself
knows deep down that his whole case hinges on what Scripture clearly and
consistently does say. For Rogers insists (wrongly) that the view that
“the Bible condemns all homosexual relationships. . . . is simply
incorrect” (p. 70).
According to Rogers, support for
oppression of blacks and women in the church followed a similar
“pattern” to today’s rejection of homosexual practice:
In each case, leaders in the church
claimed that (1) the Bible records God’s judgment against the sin of
people of African descent and women from their first mention in
Scripture; (2) People of African descent and women were somehow
inferior in moral character and incapable of rising to the level of
full white male, “Christian civilization”; and (3) people of African
descent and women were willfully sinful, often sexually promiscuous
and threatening, and deserved punishment for their own acts. (p. 33)
Problems with the First Element of the
“Pattern”:
First Mention in Scripture
There are insurmountable problems with
this alleged pattern and today’s rejection of homosexual practice. Let’s
start with the problems associated with his first element of this
“pattern”; namely, the claim by some leaders of the church over the past
centuries that the “sin” of blacks and women appears in Scripture the
first time that they are mentioned. Rogers’s implicit rationale here
is untenable: if something is viewed negatively in its first mention in
Scripture then this is a good indication that it ought not to be viewed
negatively (!). So, by this reasoning, since Cain commits the first
murder and Scripture views this murder negatively, we should rethink
whether murdering one’s brother out of envy is wrong? Rogers’s “logic”
here leads to absurd results. Contrary to Rogers, we would expect
Scripture to view as wrong the first mention of something that is, in
fact, wrong. So it is very silly to cite this as an element that should
make one suspicious of the use of the biblical text.
This is all the more so since the
first mention of people of African descent and of women is not in
fact a judgment story. As already noted, the first mentions
of women in Genesis 1-2 are quite positive; the sin of woman does not
appear until Genesis 3. The story of Ham’s offense against Noah in
Gen 9:20-27, which pro-slavery/segregation forces in previous
periods of American history liked to cite and which Rogers now likes to
throw back at proponents of a two-sex prerequisite for marriage—is
not a general indictment of people of African descent but rather
an indictment of the indigenous and idolatrous Canaanite population.
Martti Nissinen—whose book Homoeroticism in the Biblical World
(Fortress, 1998) Rogers loves to cite but only when it suits his
purposes to do so—and I both agree, following Hermann Gunkel, Gerhard
von Rad, and many others, that Gen 9:20-27 tells the story of Ham’s
incestuous, same-sex rape of his father. (Rogers doesn’t even mention
this interpretation in his book, let alone refute it, even though he
claims to have read thoroughly both my work and Nissinen’s.) Here is
the first explicit mention of incest in Scripture, as well as of
same-sex intercourse and rape. Should we then conclude—as
Rogers’s logic seems to suggest that we should—that sex with one’s
parent is not, after all, a bad thing, at least not if it is loving
relationship?
What about polyamory or polygamy?
Rogers contends that it “is simply not true” that Gen 1:27 (“male
and female [God] made them”) and Gen 2:24 (“For this reason a man shall
. . . become joined to his woman and they [or: the two] shall become one
flesh”) contain a monogamy principle (p. 86). This would have
been news to Jesus who argued for the monogamy principle precisely
on the basis of these two texts (Mark 10:6-9 par. Matt 19:4-6). In
Jesus’ opinion the derivation of something from pre-Fall creation is
precisely what gives the twoness of the male-female bond precedence over
any subsequent watering down of the Creator’s will—even if that watering
down should be from Moses (“but from the beginning it was not so”: Matt
19:4, 7-8; cf. Mark 10:5-6). So, if we accept Jesus’ view of things
rather than Rogers’s, we must conclude that a prohibition of
polyamory or polygamy is implicit in creation and
that this is a good argument for retaining the prohibition, not
(as Rogers’s thinks) for eliminating it.
And let us remember that a monogamy principle was
always incumbent on women in ancient Israel. The inconsistency was with
the Mosaic allowance for men, which Jesus attributed to human (chiefly
male) “hardness of heart” and then revoked.
This matter of polyamory or
polygamy is also particularly relevant for our discussion of
homosexuality, for two reasons. First, one could attempt to
justify “polyfidelity”—incidentally, the theme session of the
Gay Men’s Issues in Religion Group at the 2003 American Academy of
Religion national meeting—by appeal to a sexual orientation,
just as Rogers and others attempt to justify committed homosexual unions
by just such an appeal. Many people—certainly most men—are “oriented”
toward sex with more than one person. In other words, they are
“polysexual,” experiencing strong and frequent sexual desires for more
than just one other person in the course of life. Yet this does not mean
that God “created” them to live out their polysexual orientation, nor
that this orientation is “natural” in the sense of being ordained by
God—though Rogers reaches precisely these conclusions for homosexual
orientation, which he thinks (falsely) is an immutably predestined
congenital condition. Second, it is evident that Jesus
predicated his view of marital twoness—the limitation of sexual
unions to two people—on the creation of two sexes.
There was no reason for Jesus to cite “male and female [God] made them”
except to assert the self-contained twoness of the sexes as a foundation
for the twoness of the marital bond. A third party is neither necessary
nor desirable because the only two sexes that exist, the two sexual
complements or counterparts created by God, have merged to reconstitute
the sexual whole out of which two sexes emerged. Two sexes may become
one flesh in a sexual bond because out of one flesh two sexes emerged
(so the picture in Gen 2:21-24). These connections strangely escape
Rogers’s notice, despite my previous publications on the matter. For
openness to multiple-partner sexual unions in the homosexual movement
(Andrew Sullivan, William Countryman [Episcopal], Marvin Ellison
[PCUSA], the Metropolitan Community Church, high-placed Unitarian
Universalist officials, and others, see my “Why the Disagreement over
the Biblical Witness on Homosexual Practice?”
Reformed Review 59:1 (2005): 35-43 [online]).
All of this is to say that the
first element of the “pattern” identified by Rogers is unworkable as an
indication of improper exegesis or hermeneutics. By it one would have to
justify incest, adultery, polyamory, murder, and dozens of other sins.
Problems with the Second Element of the “Pattern”: Inferior in Moral
Character
The second element of the alleged
pattern is also problematic; namely, that blacks and women have been
characterized in the past, and homosexual persons have been
characterized now, as “inferior in moral character and incapable of
rising to the level of full white male, ‘Christian civilization.’”
First, as we noted above, there is
nothing in Scripture that suggests that people of African descent are
any more inferior in moral character than humanity generally. While
some texts in Scripture suggest that women are more susceptible to
certain types of sin (as are men with other types of sin), Scripture
also provides many positive portrayals of the high moral capacity of
women (Deborah, Esther, Mary, the women co-workers cited by Paul in
Romans 16, among many others). But Scripture categorically
rejects gratification of desires for same-sex intercourse, like desires
for incest within the nuclear family and desires for more than one
sexual partner concurrently (by women in both Testaments and by men in
the New Testament), whether “loving” and “committed” or not.
It is not
“beside the point” to point out that the evidence from Scripture is weak
as regards one claim
(the
alleged moral inferiority of persons of African descent and women)
but strong as regards another (rejection of gratification of
homosexual impulses). That is
the point. One claim is not a justifiable appeal to Scripture, the other
clearly is.
Second, Rogers is also once
again mixing apples and oranges. Ethnicity and gender cannot be
compared with specific impulses to do what Scripture pervasively,
strongly, absolutely, and counterculturally forbids. Rogers does not
seem to understand the distinction. Quite simply, ethnicity and gender
are:
-
100% heritable
-
absolutely immutable
-
primarily non-behavioral
-
inherently benign
Homosexual “orientation,” like many
impulses, especially sexual impulses, is:
A case in point, with which even
Rogers would hopefully agree, is pedosexuality (pedophilia), which
Dr. Fred Berlin of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins refers
to as a sexual “orientation” that nobody chooses to have (“United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops: Interview with Frederick S. Berlin,
M.D., Ph.D.,” 1997,
http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/kit6.shtml; retrieved 10/25/06). It is
not 100% heritable in the way that ethnicity and sex (or eye color) are,
though there probably are indirect congenital influences and significant
socialization factors in very early childhood that create risk factors
for its development. Though it is very difficult to eliminate altogether
pedophilic impulses from a pedosexual person, change still has a limited
role to play. For micro- and macrocultural factors can have some impact
on the incidence of pedosexuality in a population; moreover, some hope
exists for at least a reduction of intensity of the impulse over time
for some. It is a primarily behavioral condition insofar as it is a
fundamentally a desire to do something. Therefore, whether it is benign
has to be evaluated on the basis of factors other than claims to being
“born that way.”
A pro-pedophilic movement
like the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which
does not advocate coercion but loving sexual relationships between a man
and boy, could latch onto the second and third elements of
Rogers’s “pattern” and then charge Rogers himself with portraying
pedosexuals (pedophiles) in exactly the same light that he castigates
others for allegedly portraying homosexual persons. Doesn’t
Rogers consider pedophiles to be “somehow inferior in moral character,”
“willfully sinful, often sexually promiscuous and threatening, and
deserving of punishment for their own acts”? So I suppose if one
follows the second and third elements of Rogers’s “pattern,” one would
have to adopt a different stance toward pedophiles and their practices,
learning to distinguish between loving pedophilic associations and
non-loving ones. For a number of scientific articles have been published
over the last ten years, in American Psychological Association journals
no less, that acknowledge, if not affirm, that a sexual relationship
with an adult often does not produce scientifically measurable harm in a
child. Perhaps, too, we could add the first element of Rogers’s
“pattern” inasmuch as the creation of man and woman for sexual pairing
in Gen 2:21-24, not children, implicitly rejects sexual intercourse with
a child.
In saying all this, I am obviously not
contending that we should endorse pedosexual practice or even that
pedosexual practice equates with homosexual practice. Rather, I am
asserting that Rogers’s “pattern” for detecting faulty hermeneutics
is of no practical use for discriminating between good and bad arguments
because it cannot even distinguish between improper applications to
blacks and to women on the one hand and proper applications to
pedosexuals (and polysexuals) on the other.
Third, those who experience
homoerotic passion are “inferior in moral character” only if they
act on desires to engage in behavior that is contrary to the will
of God. This is true for all other sinful desires. The mere
experience of sinful impulses (i.e., an impulse to do what God deems
sinful) is not sinful; nor does it necessarily define a person’s
identity unless a person chooses to construct an identity around a
particular desire. A person who experiences involuntary arousal for
multiple persons is not a “polysexual” unless he (or she) chooses to be
identified in this way.
Problems with the Third Element of the “Pattern”: “Willfully sinful,
promiscuous, threatening, and deserving of punishment”
Finally, multiple problems apply to
Rogers’s third element in the alleged pattern; namely, portraying people
of African descent and women, and now homosexual persons, as “willfully
sinful, often sexually promiscuous and threatening, and deserv[ing of]
punishment for their own acts.”
What the Bible Actually Says
about Women and Africans
The Bible often portrays men
as more sexually promiscuous than women and, as stated above, does not
offer a single text that suggests that people of African descent are
more sexually promiscuous than other people groups. For example, in
the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11-12; cf. Ps 51), it is not
Bathsheba that is blamed for David’s fall, but rather David himself. The
same point comes across in the story of Tamar and Judah (Gen 38) and in
countless other biblical stories.
Rogers’s Attempt at Confusion with
the Phrase “Willfully Sinful”
Rogers attempts to confuse by his
use of the phrase “willfully sinful,” for he regularly lumps together
under this phrase both (a) the mere experience of unwilled impulses and
(b) willful behavior consonant with such impulses. For example, he
portrays me as claiming both “that homosexuality is a willful
choice” (p. 83; emphasis added)—the blatant falsity of which I have
demonstrated in
Installment 4 of my online piece “Does Jack Rogers’s New Book
‘Explode the Myths’?”—and “that all people who are homosexual have
willfully chosen that behavior” (p. 82; emphasis added).
Well, unless behavior is in some way
externally coerced (for example, if someone puts a gun to one’s head) or
someone is out of his or her mind (does Rogers pejoratively imply that
homosexual persons are insane?), all behavior is at some level always
willful. For example, a polysexual is not compelled to have sex with
multiple persons. A pedophile is not without the will to resist having
sex with children. A greedy person is liable for exploiting others
materially. A hyper-aggressive person is responsible for perpetrating
violence on others. Conversely,
So Rogers’s reference to
characterizing persons as “willfully sinful” is virtually meaningless.
All behavior is at some level biologically caused and all non-coerced
sane persons are morally culpable for their behavior—obviously.
Persons may not have had a choice in experiencing any given impulse but
they are responsible for what they do with their impulses.
Rogers’s Misguided Remarks about
Sexual Promiscuity and Homosexuality
Rogers’s attack on those who refer
to homosexual males as “sexually promiscuous” is misguided on several
counts.
First, the fact of homosexual males
having significantly higher number of sex partners lifetime than
homosexual females or heterosexuals is well documented. Rogers
conveniently ignores the largest, most long-term, and most
representative studies. He simply asserts that “comparative studies of
gay couples and heterosexual couples show virtually no difference in the
stability of their relationships” and offers a brief footnote that says
this:
George Chauncey, Why Marriage? The
History Shaping Today’s Debate over Gay Equality (New York:
Basic Books, 2004), 133: “One study had shown that of couples
together for ten years, breakup rates were 4 percent for married
heterosexual couples, 4 percent for gay men, and 6 percent for
lesbians. Other comparative studies show virtually no difference in
the quality of relationships between gay couples and heterosexual
couples. (p. 146 n. 1)
Not only does Rogers not provide any
bibliographic referents to the studies themselves—there is no evidence
anywhere in Rogers’s book that he ever read a single scientific study
for himself (the few he cites are picked up from secondary
literature)—but also the one study specifically referred to by Chauncey
does not demonstrate what Rogers (or Chauncey) claims that it
demonstrates. Once a researcher limits a study of this sort by
pre-selecting only “couples together for ten years,” the behavior of the
vast majority of homosexual persons who have not been able to attain to
a 10-year relationship is ignored. If 85% or more of married
heterosexual couples are able to stay married for 10 years but only 15%
or less of homosexual couples stay together for the same period—for this
is what the best studies to date do indicate—then there is indeed a vast
difference in the sexual behavior of the two groups. Nor is there any
information here about the sample size, the representative nature of the
study, or even what percentage of the male homosexual couples remain
monogamous during the ten-year interval (studies indicate a significant
percentage of long-term male homosexual unions are not strictly
monogamous). So this is what Rogers bases his categorical assertion of
“virtually no difference”? And he castigates others for making
poor use of scientific data (pp. 98-101)?
For
studies see my online
“Immoralism, Homosexual Unhealth,
and Scripture: Part II: Science,” pp. 5-13; and The Bible
and Homosexual Practice, 453-58).
Second, the significantly higher
rate of sex partners among homosexual males is primarily attributable
not to a particular moral depravity—though violating one major
societal standard may increase the propensity to violate other norms—but
rather to basic differences between men and women as regards sexual
stimulation patterns. This is a point that I make in The Bible
and Homosexual Practice (pp. 459-60) but which Rogers ignores.
(These patterns are incidentally present in the animal world as well;
see, for example, Linda Mealey, Sex Differences [San Diego:
Academic Press, 2000], 244.)
Putting two men together in a sexual
union is not normally a recipe for lifelong monogamy. As I noted in Part
1 of my response to Rogers’s “Talking Points,” even David Myers, whom
Rogers normally loves to cite, has to admit in his recent book with
Letha Scanzoni that high rates of sex partners on the part of homosexual
males exists and is attributable, in the first instance, not to
homophobia but to unbridled male sexuality that does not have to
negotiate its interests in relation to women (What God Has Joined
Together? 124-25). The homosexual male population experiences
disproportionately high rates of sex partners because they interact with
other males rather than with females, who generally have a different set
of relational expectations.
Third, the sexual promiscuity that
typifies male homosexuality is not the root problem but a symptom of the
root problem: sexual arousal at the distinctive features of one’s
own sex and engaging in a form of intercourse whose logic presupposes
that one is only half of one’s own sex. Incest is not wrong in the
first instance because of disproportionately high rates of
scientifically measurable harm that attend such activity. The
deep-structure harm comes in the form of attempting sexual merger with
what one essentially already is, here on a familial level. So arguing
that a small minority of homosexual couples are able to achieve
long-term monogamous unions is no more effective than the argument that
some adult incestuous unions can express love and commitment in an
intentionally non-procreative bond.
Is Homosexual Advocacy
“Threatening”?
As regards the perception of
homosexual persons as “threatening,” does Rogers think that societal
approval of sex between a man and his mother/sister or of a committed
sexual union involving more than two persons is “threatening”? I presume
he does because it fundamentally changes the definition of marriage
with consequences for society as a whole. At least I hope he
thinks this. Homosexual persons are not necessarily
“threatening” but advocacy for homosexual unions is. Among the
effects of cultural endorsement of homosexual practice, some intended,
some not, will be:
1)
The
erosion of any formal or structural prerequisites for sexual unions
(first the limitation of unions to two persons, then prohibitions based
on close blood relations, and so on), owing to (a) the rhetoric for
justifying homosexual unions (which stresses the quality of affective
bonds over formal prerequisites), (b) the jettisoning of the logical
link that exists between a two-sex prerequisite and prohibitions of
polyamory and incest, and (c) the non-monogamous and short-term
character of the overwhelming majority of homosexual bonds.
2)
An
increase in the incidence of homosexuality and bisexuality in the
population, with its disproportionately high negative side-effects for
health.
3)
The
“dishonoring” or “degrading” (as Paul puts it) of the integrity of
maleness and femaleness as complementary facets of a sexual whole (this
is an intangible quality but no less real than the harm that comes from
endorsing sexual bonds between close blood relations).
4)
An
infringement on the civil liberties and livelihood even of those who
express loving opposition to cultural endorsement of homosexual unions,
ranging from forced indoctrination in schools and workplace, to forced
“affirmative action” hiring of homosexual persons, to penalties for
“discriminatory speech” (fines, termination of employment and loss of
career opportunities, and, perhaps with time, imprisonment).
In Rogers’s thinking, we are supposed
to pretend that these threats do not exist.
For
points 1-4, see my discussion of “Why ‘gay marriage’ is not good for
society” on pp. 125-30 of “Why the Disagreement over the Biblical
Witness on Homosexual Practice?”
Reformed Review 59:1 (2005): 35-43, online. For civil liberty
threats that have already taken place in public and private sectors in
some Scandinavian countries, in Canada, and even in parts of the United
States, see: my online critique of David Balch, “Bearing
False Witness,” pp. 9-19; my online “Open
Letter Regarding the Current Hate Crimes Amendment”; and
Alan Sears and Craig Osten, The
Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to
Religious Freedom Today (Broadman & Holman, 2003).
The Question of “Deserving
Punishment for One’s Own Acts”
Rogers’s pejorative reference to
persons “deserv[ing] punishment for their own acts” overlooks a few
elementary points. (1) All persons who sin—in other words, all
people—are deserving of divine judgment. This is Reformed
Doctrine 101. (2) All people who accept Jesus’ death as
atoning or amends-making for their sins and who, by God’s
grace through faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, live a life of
ongoing faith in Christ—which includes dying to self and orienting one’s
self to a life lived for God—are assured of inheritance in God’s
kingdom. (3) Persons who experience homosexual desires, like
any persons who experience deeply engrained desires to do things that
God expressly forbids, are to be won over to the kingdom of God, not
consigned to hell. This pattern of outreach was exemplified in
Jesus’ outreach to “sinners and tax collectors.” Jesus’ primary aim was
to recover people for the kingdom who, by virtue of their
behavior—especially people grossly exploiting others for material gain
and people committing serious sexual offenses—were at risk of not
inheriting the very kingdom that Jesus proclaimed (see The Bible and
Homosexual Practice, 210-28). What would Rogers’s have the church
do? Have people continue in patterns of behavior that put them at
eternal risk? Such would not be love in Jesus’ view.
That’s why Augustine formulated the
saying, “Love, and do what you want” (Dilige, et quod vis fac;
in Homilies on First John 7.8), to show that love cannot be watered
down to mean permissiveness and tolerance. His illustration for the
saying? A father disciplines rigorously his child, while a “boy-stealer”
caresses a boy. Which expresses love? The one who disciplines. So if you
act out of love you can do what you want, meaning that you can implement
disincentives to commit sinful behavior. Perhaps it is best to conclude
with Augustine’s own words on the subject:
If any of you
perhaps wish to maintain love, brethren, above all things do not
imagine it to be an abject and sluggish thing; nor that love is to
be preserved by a sort of gentleness, nay not gentleness, but
tameness and listlessness. Not so is it preserved. Do not imagine
that . . . you then love your son when you do not give him
discipline, or that you then love your neighbor when you do not
rebuke him. This is not love, but mere feebleness. Let love be
fervent to correct, to amend. . . . Love not in the person his
error, but the person; for the person God made, the error the person
himself made. (7.11; NPNF, slightly modified)
In a subsequent essay I will critique
Rogers’s flawed critique of Scottish Common Sense philosophy and Francis
Turretin (specifically, his reference to “appeals
to ‘natural law,’ selective literalism, and proof-texting”), treat
Rogers’s flawed use of hermeneutical guidelines, and finally address the
alleged divorce/remarriage analogy.