“Is homosexuality a sin?” is the question that today is splitting Christendom like nothing has since Luther the Reformer asked (in so many words), “Indulgences? Really?”
What the question “Is homosexuality a sin?” is really asking—what anyone actually means when they ask that—is, “Are acts of homosexual sex sinful?” That’s the question which the whole Christian debate about homosexuality invariably and necessarily boils down to. To discuss the relative merits of homosexuality is to discuss acts of homosexual sex; trying to treat the subjects separately is like trying to talk about breathing without mentioning air. The conversation about homosexuality is never about morally evaluating an abstract condition that never manifests in real life. No Christian argues that the homosexual who never engages in homosexual sex is sinful; in fact, those Christians who proclaim homosexuality a sin praise to the highest degree the chaste and celibate homosexual. They rejoice in his resisting the “sin” of homosexuality. No Christian would assert that a homosexual at home alone reading a book is at that moment guilty of the sin of homosexuality.
And so the thoughtful Christian naturally and logically goes directly from the question “Is homosexuality a sin?” to the question, “Are acts of homosexual sex sinful?”
Arriving at a clear and comprehensive answer to a question depends upon two things: definition and context. Before a question can be properly answered its terms must be defined, and the larger context in which the question has value, or exists at all, must be established.
So answering the question, “Are acts of homosexual sex sinful?” means first defining the phrase “acts of homosexual sex.”
What exactly is an act of homosexual sex? How do we know when such an act has transpired? At what exact point does a fraternal hug become a gay hug? How close can two women sit on a couch before they’re sitting lesbian close? At what moment does any interaction between any two people officially become not whatever it was before that, but an act of sexual foreplay?
A moment’s reflection reveals that determining what actions do and don’t qualify as homosexual sex is virtually impossible, because it insists upon distinguishing between shades of grey too subtle to distinquish where one ends and the other begins.
Which should, right there, completely invalidate the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sin. No fair pretending you can judge something you can’t even define.
But we’ll let that (major) point go. Instead of taking a single step onto that most slippery of slopes, we will step back from that precipice and plant our feet firmly upon the grounds of the famous threshold test for pornography: we will say that while we may not be able to define an act of homosexual sex, we know it when we see it.
Which leaves us with the question of context.
And here we can easily see the first step that needs taking. Discerning whether an act of homosexual sex, in and of itself, is sinful, necessitates first isolating that act from any context which in an of itself could be considered sordid or illicit—or, in a word, sinful. Otherwise the formula for the calculation we’re trying to make will become too complicated to be useful. Trying to determine whether it’s sinful for my wife and me to have sex in the privacy of our bedroom is one thing. Trying to determine whether it’s sinful for us to have coke-fueled sex on the counter of a men’s restroom in a strip club is quite another.
It’s all about context.
All Christians agree that there is nothing sinful about loving expressions of sexuality between a married straight couple in the privacy of their home. It’s the fact that such expressions are happening within the context of a loving marriage that makes them sinless.
Loving straight marriage + consensual loving sex = sinless sex. That’s the rule.
So the question before we Christians is whether or not that formula would remain true if we substituted the word “gay” for “straight”:
Loving gay marriage + consensual loving sex = sinless sex.
Is that statement true or false? If done within the context of a loving, committed, monogamous relationship—if done, in other words, within the context of marriage—do acts of homosexual sex remain sinful? That is the $64 million dollar question.
If such acts do remain sinful—that is, if even the holy state of matrimony doesn’t render loving consensual sex between homosexuals sinless—then the Christian has solid moral grounds (whatever they might then be) for condemning homosexuality and being against gay marriage.
But if expressions of sexual love between two married gay people is not sinful, then the traditional Christian view of gays has long been egregiously wrong, and it’s no more sinful for a married gay couple to have sex than it is for a married straight couple to do the same.
So, to retrace our steps:
1. What the question “Is homosexuality a sin?” actually means is: “Are acts of homosexual sex sinful?”
2. Because “acts of homosexual sex” defy definition, that question simply cannot be answered.
3. No one can judge whether acts of homosexual sex are immoral.
4. But whatever.
5. Context is necessary for answering the question, “Are acts of homosexuality sinful?”
6. Because sex within the context of a straight marriage is not sinful, it’s more than reasonable to ask whether sex within the context of a gay marriage is similarly not sinful.
And so, finally, we Christians are obliged to look in the Bible to see what it says about the morality of a married gay couple having sex.
And what we find there is nothing whatsoever.
The matter never comes up. At all. Not once. Not even a little.
So, in lieu of anything more specific on that particular question, let us look to Jesus, and find his most strident, clear, and comprehensive statement of how we should consider, evaluate and treat others.
And that, of course, would be what Jesus himself called the most important law of all—what he very explicitly called the greatest commandment:
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
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