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

Here too one must certainly make careful distinctions on the basis of the respective contexts of the churches in society. When a church which has a privileged status in society and state -- one thinks of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland or the Orthodox Church in Russia -- seeks to turn its moral convictions as directly and comprehensively as possible into the basis of state legislation, which inevitably also affects persons of other religious or ideological convictions, it is evident that the guarantee of the human right to religious freedom can be impaired or violated. It must be added that it has always been a great and dangerous temptation of Christian churches to advance their moral convictions with state support, instead of trying to gain the free consent of people.

3. Marriage as the basic order of sexual relationships

Next to questions about the understanding of the Bible and the doctrinal authority of the church, which are hermeneutical issues in the narrower sense, what is central in the ecclesiastical and theological statements on homosexuality is the respective systematic-theological understanding of relationships between the sexes and the meaning of marriage.(25) These two complexes of questions are closely related to each other, and are often completely mixed together, particularly when the argument runs along the following lines: Certainly no person may be discriminated against on the ground of his or her homosexual orientation, but regarding the living together of the sexes the Bible proceeds from the fundamental polar relatedness of the feminine and the masculine sexes; this implies a preference for marriage (many would appeal to Gen. 1:27f, and speak here of an "order of creation") as normative for the sexual behaviour of Christian persons. While the churches of the Reformation in general thus emphasize marriage as the only morally tenable structure of human sexuality. Roman Catholic and Orthodox texts give virtually equal rank to the life-style of celibacy. The latter view is at least closer to the Pauline texts than the widespread Protestant view of marriage as "model".(26)

The heart of the sharp controversies which arise at this point consists of two aspects which must be distinguished. The first centres on the question of whether the approval of non-discrimination against homosexual people may be conditional upon their prior and principled readiness to live in celibacy, that is, to renounce any exercise of their sexuality. The Roman Catholic Church demands this in principle of all its homosexual members; and it seeks to enforce this among the clergy by means of sanctions in canon law.(27) Many Protestant churches, and especially evangelical groups within them, argue in a similar way. A second question is whether the institution of marriage is called into question or degraded by same-sex partnerships or the tacit tolerance or express approval of them. Many church documents voice this concern, particularly in connection with practical questions about the permissibility or the form of special services of blessing or consecration for homosexual people.