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

Looking against this background at church statements and studies from the last ten years as a whole, I am struck in most of them above all by the care, the consideration and the effort to allow each side to express itself and to listen to one another. To be sure this is not the case with every document: in some the tone of sectarian denunciation and persecution can be heard, but these are certainly not predominant. In most of the more thorough studies, the insight comes through that changes in attitude and judgment take time. On issues of sexual morality there is no alternative to the readiness to search together, in struggle, conversation and study, for possible agreements and a modus vivendi within and between churches. To be sure, this mutual patience should never be misused as a pretext for hesitating about or blocking possibilities for overcoming discrimination.

Current problems and practical recommendations

1. Of lasting importance and of urgency here and now

It is obvious and probably inevitable that we should speak of sexual moralities in the plural. These always develop in a context-specific way, according to standards set by both cultural traditions and models and by individual- or group-related rules of behaviour. The churches by the way have rich experiences in this area: one need only think of the adaptation of marriage customs and provisions for celibacy in traditionally polygamous societies. What could be helpful in discussions of context-related moralities is the distinction between fundamental criteria of sexual ethics which apply across all contexts and are of lasting importance on the one hand, and moral advice which is specific to the person or the context on the other. This is especially the case when a lived morality is deeply anchored in local and regional structures and traditions; such a morality definitely has its right to be respected, but it cannot from outside be transferred to just any other context whatsoever. For this reason I am convinced that ethical pluralism in sexual ethics is not only inevitable but desirable, so long as it is the expression not of an indifferent, "anything goes" attitude, but rather of consideration for individual, familial, local and regional cultural, religious and political traditions. To be sure, moral environments which were once closed are being broken open by relations between societies, and by the most diverse forms and processes of mobility, communication and modernization. Nowhere do the resulting crises of orientation produce so much irritation and anxiety as in the realm of sexual morality. All the more important, then, to succeed in coming to an understanding with one another about criteria which are indispensable, comprehensive and if possible universalizable. What proves again and again to be of lasting importance in the most diverse cultures is the prohibition of discrimination in the area of human rights -- not least from the perspective of the victims of sexual repression.

2. Some practical recommendations