The Written Word
for June 11, 2000

The issue of homosexuality continues to be part of the political position taken by the Canadian Alliance as they struggle for the hearts and minds of Canadians. Put briefly, the Canadian Alliance is against it for two compelling reasons – many of the Alliance politicians are against it but more importantly, so is its core support in the religious community.

Many people, including myself, can’t figure out why the big fuss? Different strokes for different folks. Live and let live. But the hostility against gays in the right-wing Christian community is white hot. They talk frequently of a “gay agenda”. This agenda evidently extends to the wholesale conversion of kids to this sinful lifestyle. Whenever I do programs on the subject I can be sure of outraged response – in fact I did an article for Westcoast Families on the subject which brought enormous outrage from people who were convinced that the paper, in using my column, were giving in to this mysterious “gay agenda”.

I have trouble understanding where this hostility comes from. Is it just the typical puritanical arm of Christianity’s dislike of pleasure of any kind? Is it just the glumness we associate with drippy nosed, Ichabod Crane sorts of Presbyterian Preachers from the teetotalling Lowlands of Scotland?

The case these people make is that two passages from Leviticus forbid man having sex with man as one would with a woman. This is brought into Christianity, according to them, when Jesus, who was silent on the subject of homosexuality, did exhort his followers to obey the laws of God as set down by the prophets.

But there are some unusual factors to all this. Leviticus doesn’t forbid homosexuality, just sodomy. It says nothing about oral sex or mutual masturbation for example. And it says nothing whatever about lesbianism. This has led some Biblical scholars to conclude that this was not an injunction against male homosexual practices on moral grounds but reflected health concerns.

One has to assume that homosexuality was as prevalent in both Old Testament times and during the life of Christ as it is today. Indeed, in contemporary Greek and Roam societies it was quite accepted. That being the case why doesn’t Leviticus forbid all homosexual practices? And why no injunction against lesbianism? Of greater interest, why is it not one of Moses’ 10 Commandments? Surely, if it is as sinful as some modern day Christians proclaim, it would be as bad if not worse than adultery, for example. Or coveting one’s neighbour’s wife or ass (the animal, that is). And why wouldn’t Christ have been very specific about it? Surely if the sin, if it be so, is such that some modern day Christians all but set their hair on fire at the thought of it they must have more to go on than references to chapters in Leviticus which only forbids one form of homosexuality – chapters that one can only infer that Jesus might have agreed with but certainly not to the degree he viewed not loving God, neighbours and oneself.

I am a profoundly heterosexual Christian and must say that I dissociate myself from those of my co-religionists who get so excited on the matter. I think the questions of gay marriages or the blessing of gay unions does present some interesting theological disagreements – indeed my church, the Anglican Church is going through considerable discomfort on that very subject. But just how it is that the subject can cause so much anguish as it does to those Christians who so easily support the Canadian Alliance is quite beyond me.

I may not love his lifestyle but I do love the homosexual as my neighbour which I would contend is just what the teachings of Jesus were all about.