Churches and homosexuality: an overview of recent official church statements on sexual orientation - Homosexuality: Some Elements for an Ecumenical Discussion

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 1998 by Wolfgang Lienemann

1. Churches have a duty above all to commit themselves to overcoming any discrimination contrary to human rights, including discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation and identity. For this ecumenical solidarity is needed.

2. In liberal states I believe that churches can and should engage themselves in favour of the provision for homosexual couples of legal regulation of binding, lasting partnerships, according to secular family law.

3. It should be decided, preferably at the level of regional churches or dioceses, whether church forms, rites and liturgies can be developed for same-sex partnership -- and if so which ones. For the sake of clarity and honesty a clear factual and terminological distinction should be drawn between marriage and registered partnership, between a church wedding and a rite for a same-sex life partnership.

4. It would be very desirable if the various church initiatives, rule-changes, study processes and the like in the realm of sexual ethical decision-making, pastoral care and canonical innovations were to be the object of ecumenical feedback and careful documentation.

5. Further fundamental and context-specific study should be devoted to the questions of the understanding and use of the Bible in view of the different types and traditions of ethical decision-making.

6. As unbiased as possible a discussion of modern medical and sexual-scientific theories and results of research should be facilitated for the different churches and communities in appropriate ways.

7. Sexual ethics should be the object of church instruction, youth work and family education and counselling. The development of appropriate teaching materials, differentiated according to age groups, basic social conditions and cultural background, would be very desirable.

8. There is an urgent need for intercultural studies of sexual science and sexual ethics and their particular cultural conditioning.

9. Churches often have a great deal of freedom for autonomous structuring of their ordinances and especially their offices. They should work at abolishing any remaining discrimination because of individual sexual orientation in the right to hold office and accept homosexual persons as office-bearers -- of course, as in the case of all office-bearers, according to the measure of their suitability for the growth of the community.

3. Integration in ethical decision-making

Overall, my study of the various church statements has led me to the following conclusion: If a church does not assume (or no longer assumes) a dominant position in its society and within the framework of the corresponding state authority -- whether because it may not, cannot or does not wish to -- then its contribution to public and private judgment-formation on issues of morality in general and sexual morality in particular can have the character only of advice and recommendations, grounded as carefully as possible. At the root of this advice there must be an understandable mode of argumentation which can be usefully applied to other ethical questions as well. Such a model of argumentation, a "theory of ethical judgment-formation, combines and integrates convictions and insights of diverse sorts (empirical findings, biblical and extra-biblical traditions, values and nominative points of view, preferences of goods as well as estimates of consequences) into a synthesis that can be justified and developed here and now. Ethical judgments, pastoral advice or public warnings cannot and may not be established on the basis of a single point of view -- neither solely on the ground of a prooftext, nor according to the measure of traditional common sense", nor on the basis of purely empirical conclusions. The most inclusive horizon of ethical judgment is achieved when advice and recommendations, instructions and warnings are unambiguously determined and carried out with respect for each person.