I've been invited to a flurry of TV talk shows and news programs to discuss this topic. Universities from UP Diliman to UP Manila have asked me to serve on panels and speak at symposia -- on same-sex marriage. Why this widespread interest?
Fernan's Bill
One reason for all attention is a bill filed in the Senate by Senator Marcelo Fernan. Some gay and lesbian activists are outraged by the hasty and one-sided activity in this regard in the Senate of the Republic of the Philippines. A key "teaching" of Fernan's bill is found in his words: "The basic object of marriage is to establish the conjugal family life. The contracting parties, in harmony with biological law, must necessarily be a male and female."
Who says so? That is one-sided, myopic, and too narrow in itself. But it has another malicious homophobic clause designed to "catch" transsexuals who, so few in number, pose so big a threat to machismo. Fernan says, "A man may be changed into a woman and vice versa with a simple operation... The proposed bill seeks to impose a stricter requirement such that only a biological male and biological female may marry."
Even before this present bill, my friend Oscar Atadero and I have discussed for years the injustice of all these positions.
These are very confrontational issues. They drag into the legal forum fundamental human realities, and they arbitrarily assert who have a right to basic human rights and under what circumstances. And from a dominant position they deny these basic rights to others in the minority.
I say "arbitrarily" because the way things ARE and the way those in power say things MUST be is not the way it HAS to be in all the societies. Some societies historically and today do deal with same-sex unions differently -- with acceptance. Those who fall hook, line, and sinker for Senator Fernan's bait cannot assert that their way of restricting human rights is God's way.
The Congress, the government in general, the powers that be all around us can say that this is the way they want to impose their power in this society, but their conclusions are not absolutes. They are arbitrary. They are not any more "right" than the human rights violations of a dictatorship.
Psychology and Religion
Having said all that, I want to get out of the legal forum. I am a priest and a psychologist. My areas of concern are psychology (with its emphasis on basic human entitlements) and religion (with its interest in the relationship of human beings with God). My concern is not laws but sex and salvation.
I embrace the Yahweh/Allah God of Christianity and Islam. My opinions are expressed from a perspective as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am convinced there is harmony between what I believe and teach and what Jesus Christ lived and taught during his earthly ministry as we know it from the Gospels.
For one thing: the very human side of our saving God is shown in the Jesus who healed the bodily illness of a homosexual at the urgent request of his lover, and the Jesus who stopped the death penalty of a person being executed for a sexual sin, and the Jesus who taught that some people are born sexually different from the majority, and the Jesus who enjoyed a foot massage from a sinful woman.
This is the Jesus who shows us what God is like. This is my God.
Those who depict a god who says "No! No! No! No!" all the time have found their god some place other than in the Gospels. The god of "no condoms, no masturbation, no sex outside marriage and no sex in any way at any time in your whole life if I create you homosexual" is not the God of the Gospels. Such a god is a false god.
God is Inclusive
My thoughts on "marriage" go back to Genesis (since those who like to retell the Adam and Eve story constantly take us back to Eden). I suppose you can say God married the mythical Adam and Eve with the Divine Blessing, "It is not good to be alone." These Biblical words show that God understands the human psychology of the human beings God created. Knowing what God is like makes it impossible to believe in a prejudiced and discriminating and homophobic god who allows companionship only for the heterosexual children of God.
The God Jesus revealed to us in the Gospels is an inclusive God. There is evidence of that wonderful fact on every page.
He accepted and included women in his encounters and friendships, although women were marginalized in his day.
He championed Samaritans although these foreigners were hated in his society.
He spent time with the blind, the lame, the crippled, the lepers with bodily sores, and with all the rejected and marginalized people of his society.
He was no mata pobre . He had eyes, ears, heart, and love for all.
Jesus was inclusive and there is every reason to believe his inclusiveness included what we would call gays and lesbians -- as well as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and the sinful woman who bathed his feet with her tears.
How could the real God exclude some of God's children from "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
We learn the lesson of God's reverence for Life from the Pro-Life Movement. We can appreciate that. We cannot accept the homophobic stance of those who will urge, "Kill a bakla for Christ."
We learn the lesson of liberty from St. Paul. He calls it "the glorious freedom of the children of God." He says they are set free from sin, death, and the Old Law by Jesus Christ.
One of the favorite Old Laws of homophobic people is found in Leviticus 20: "If a man lies with a man as with a woman… both of them must be put to death."
But how can anybody believe that Leviticus is relevant without reading the whole book? The "man with man" Old Law is accompanied by hundreds of other Old Laws (that Jesus removed).
If a man curses his mother and father, he must be put to death…
If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, he must be put to death…
A man must not lie with a woman during her monthly period…
A medium or a spiritualist must be put to death…
A woman who marries must be a virgin…
Touching a corpse makes one unclean…
A man with a bodily discharge is unclean…
No man who has any defect may come near...
No man who is blind, or lame, or deformed, or crippled, or hunchbacked,
or dwarfed, or has his testicles damaged…
Do not cut the hair on the sides of your head or clip your beard…
Do not defile yourself with semen…
This is the section of the Bible that says "man shall not lie with man" and he cannot come close to God with defects or damaged testicles or when polluted with semen.
If these rules were still in effect, how could blind, lame, deaf, and little people be Christians? It is easy, then, to see why so many gays and lesbians have left the churches which include them in the list of "rejected ones."
How can unfair, unjust, unthinking, unrealistic churchMEN close the door to men loving men and women loving women on the basis of these (or any other) Old Law Scriptures? St. Paul tells us Jesus replaced all these Old Laws with the new Law of Love.
Salvation
Love, companionship, marriage for people who love each other are not prohibited by the God who came to us in Jesus as He is described in the Gospels.
Sex and salvation are not mutually exclusive. Sex comes from God. You can have both sex and salvation -- and a same-sex wedding cake, too.
Salvation is the gift of God for the people of God -- the blind, the lame, the crippled, the ones with damaged testicles -- and the homosexuals created different but equal, but damaged by church and society.
Our God is a saving God, a loving God, a caring God. Is it not blasphemy to take these attributes away from God in order to persecute minorities among God's people?
The Pursuit of Happiness
Jesus came that we might "have life in all its fullness." How can a person who yearns for a lover have life in all its fullness if denied the fundamental right to fulfillment through love and companionship?
People who are hung up in Leviticus can never allow Jesus to be the Christ, the One Who saves -- from all that stuff.
People who are hung up in Leviticus (18, 19, 20, etc.) can never allow God to love and save homosexuals and persons with AIDS (deformities?).
They cannot even open their eyes to Genesis 2, "It is not good for a person to be alone." They are hung up on Adam's apple tree and Eve's bite, and they forget that all the different human creatures we see in God's realm issued from parents like Adam and Eve, including the blind, the lame, the tall, the short, the light, the dark, and the homosexuals. Even white or tan parents can have dark-skinned offspring. Even heterosexual parents, like Adam and Eve, like most of us, can have gay and lesbian children.
The pursuit of happiness is not limited to heterosexual children of heterosexual parents.
The "man with man" prohibition in Leviticus, furthermore, even if were in effect today, has nothing to do with same-sex LOVE and marriage. It's about temple prostitution.
Same-sex Marriage in History
The hang-up about "man with man" and "woman with woman" has not always been the "only thing" in the history of the Christian church.
For a thousand years and more, the Christian (Catholic) Church considered marriage a matter that was usually left to the "state." There were requirements for priests to be married in church. But in the laity, a man and woman usually "got married" at city hall. It was only the same-sex couples and the priests who regularly had their love and commitment ceremony in church.
The purpose of state weddings often had little or nothing to do with love. The concern was inheritance, biological posterity, and civil matters of this type. Commonly the dowry was given more importance than romance in the practice of "arranged marriages."
While all this was going on, priests were getting married and what we would call gay and lesbian couples were having their Holy Unions in church -- on the basis of love.
But by the middle of the 12th century, married priests were "stamped out" by church disciplinary laws. Priestly celibacy was imposed not by divine command, but for church discipline. Even the pope who enforced the rule was the son of a married priest.
Simultaneously same-sex marriages -- Holy Unions -- lost favor -- not for defensible Biblical or "divine" reasons -- but because of the prejudice of "men."
Precedents and the Present
For whatever it's worth in this whole complex issue, there is a historical precedent for same-sex unions.
Likewise in modern times, some countries have established precedents for recognizing same-sex partnerships, and more and more states are giving human and civil rights to those who are living in domestic partnerships.
The Rev. Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches, began solemnizing Holy Unions in 1968. Also in the Philippines, the Order of St. Aelred solemnizes Holy Unions as a Holy Sacrament. The prohibition of same-sex love and marriage is not God's law, but human tradition, based on homophobic and unjustified fears of "what might happen."
For God's sake, what could happen? Denmark, Norway and Sweden have not sunk into the North Sea or been submerged in the polar ice cap for recognizing the love and commitment of same-sex couples.
I must honestly say I am not an activist for reversing Senator Fernan's bill so that it will allow, encourage, and "legalize" same-sex unions. Our society doesn't know how to deal with that. They still have a Leviticus mentality while they forget Jesus.
The Bottom Line -- Love and Commitment
What I do encourage is loving, committed relationships. When a same-sex couple comes to me and declares they are in love and find it significant for their enduring commitment that they have a Holy Union, I spend some time talking with them and assisting them to have a wedding ceremony that is meaningful for them.
Then, praise God, I am convinced that they are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, "to life in all its fullness," to companionship, oneness and to living happily ever after. For me, that's what the hoopla is all about.
They drag into the legal forum fundamental human realities and arbitrarily assert who has a right to "basic human rights and under what circumstances."
For more information about these or similar issues, e-mail your questions or comments to me at saintaelred@gmail.com (just click on the moving envelope)