Today Episcopal Diocese of Albany Bishop Bill Love yet again issued a statement about how marriage must be understood as ordained by Jesus to be between one man and one woman. He said that "what the church should be telling partnered gay and lesbian couples is 'Do you love your partner enough not to engage in sexual intimacy? The issue before us is not about relationships but sexual intimacy.'"
I know that the idea of a homosexuality identity, as it is currently seen in our society, is a rather new development for the church to have to address. We have to move slowly and think deeply when we move into uncharted waters. But, why haven't we spent more time looking at what the Bible and the historic faith has to say concerning the closest analogy that people in biblical times did have to deal with?
I have been told over and over, by supposedly well-meaning, theologically grounded people, that God does not deny marriage to any category of people. However, that God requires that, if a person wants to marry, that person person marries a person of the opposite sex: the idea of sexual complementarity, and all that. It has, supposedly, a profound theological meaning... I'd take that view better if God had created everyone as either male or female, but God didn't! Or, I'd expect the Church to have an equally profound and public theological, and compassionately pastoral, response to people who are intersex. It's not like this is a new category of being, or unchartered social waters, we've had the whole of our religious formation period to ponder these questions...
What about biblical theology and instructions concerning individuals who are intersexual? Shouldn't the Bible contain explicit instructions about sex and marriage for people who are neither (or both) man or (and) woman: instructions about whether to abstain from sexual intimacy; instructions that do or do not allow them to marry; instructions for their place in the family and community, if they cannot enter traditional marriage relationships; etc. If gender identity and sexual intimacy are so very central theologically, this should be spelled out clearly, right?
In the ancient world, it was not possible to deny or ignore that some people are born as neither male nor female, or both male and female.* Even at the lower estimates of intersex occurrence, in almost any community of a few hundred people there would be at least one person who was intersex, who visibly combined the distinguishing characteristics of each sex. This was not a secret, nor was it hidden. Moses knew about people (and animals -- Leviticus 22:23) who were born neither unambiguously male nor female, Jesus knew (Matthew 19:11), the early church knew. It has only been in recent decades, when surgical "corrections" and hormonal interventions have been available,** that we have had the luxury of convincing ourselves that sex and gender are absolute dichotomies, that there is no in-between. But that's not how God created us, and fortunately, that understanding is again changing.
 |
| Sleeping Hermaphrodite, 2nd century BCE |
Different ancient cultures dealt with intersex individuals differently. We get our word "hermaphrodite" from the Greeks, who acknowledged a god, Hermaphroditus, the child of Aphrodite and Hermes. In some cultures intersex individuals were thought to be especially spiritual (Indian Hijras, for example). However, the Jews felt that that they should not be a part of "The Assembly of the Lord"-- a term scholars generally think refers to the leaders or rulers of Israel, not the wider faith community. (See Deut. 23:1, a passage that gives instructions about apparently-male individuals who have either congenitally, accidentally, or deliberately deformed male sex organs. Women and apparent-women were already, and ontologically, excluded from the leadership.)
So, with this whole class of people who are neither male nor female, or who are both male and female, there must be explicit instructions relative to sex and marriage and the theology of male and female, right?
In fact, where are the explicit, timeless, theologically-oh-so-important instructions relative to sex and marriage in the first place?
Sure, the Bible talks about God creating "them" male and female, and Jesus talks about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife, and scripture holds up husband and wife as an analogy to Christ and the church. But it also talks about levirate marriage, about polygamy, about love between two men surpassing the love of women, about divorce being ok and about divorce being not-ok, about rapists being duty bound to marry their victims. The bible gives Abraham a pass on marrying his half-sister (his father's daughter) even though later law forbids any man marrying his father's daughter). It talks about adultery being the appropriation of another mans property. (According to the old testament definition, sex with an unmarried woman is not adultery even if the man is married. He is not his wife's property, but she is his.) Paul says (1 Cor. 7) that it is better to marry than to burn with passion -- so why doesn't he tell us how intersex people should deal with their passion, if the church did not allow them to marry***?
When Jesus meets the woman at the well, he remarks that she has had five husbands and the man she is living with now is not, in fact, her husband. If there was ever an opportunity for him to clear up this confusion, to launch into his own views on marriage and what is or is not allowed, this seems like it would be the one! But, he does not even condemn her. Nor do they discuss the theology of marriage or whether she is "living in sin," but they talk about how one should worship God! Even when he gets asked about when and whether divorce is ok, Jesus gets confusing -- he starts talking about Eunuchs and messages being "hard for people to hear." Everywhere I look in the Bible marriage seems to be accepted as social concept -- but not always the same social concept. A man/woman, husband/wife, Christ/church archetype is acknowledged, but marriage is also taken to be whatever the culture and society accept it as. Who is or is not married, who can get married, how many people can be in a marriage, how long it lasts -- it seems to be different in different places and times. And, it never seems to bubble up to the essential, eternal, VERY THEOLOGICALLY IMPORTANT AND NO ROOM FOR ANY DISCUSSION, concept it has become for so many in recent times.
You would have thought the founders of our faith would have been more careful to leave better instruction, if it was really supposed to be so cut and dried -- wouldn't you?
*Estimates range from 0.2% to 1% or so of the population, according to research documented by the intersex society of North America (ISNA) on their website, depending on how one defines sex and gender and what conditions one considers to be "intersex." This number would significantly increase if what we now know about "brain sex" were added into the equation. Further research will continue to elucidate how much and what parts of the sexing of the brain are due to genetic factors and due to androgen exposure levels during different gestation periods.
**In general the "correction" is to render gender ambiguous infants to appear physically female, and parents are (erroneously) instructed that gender identity is a learned phenomena, so that all will be well if they were just raise the child as a girl (unfortunately, sometimes with tragic results -- see Colapinto's As Nature Made Him).
***I cannot, in my wildest dreams, imagine that God would require, nor the true church endorse, requiring intersex individuals to "just pick a gender and stick to it," and thereafter lie about themselves and their truth, in order to fit in with the congregation.
No comments:
Post a Comment