Among those who have made a case for the mainstreaming of sodomy, I suppose no other voice has had as wide and respectful a hearing in conservative circles as that of Andrew Sullivan. As a fiscal and foreign policy hawk, Sullivan already has the ear of many conservative news junkies. And on the subject of sodomy, he comes across as affable and reasonable.
Except for the religious right, conservatives prefer conservatism in moderation. Their conservatism is a pragmatic conservatism. They dislike the practical consequences of liberal ideology. But they have a libertarian streak. They think a little religious is a good thing as long as you don't get carried away with it and take it to its logical extreme. They're equally at ease with a little vice and a little virtue as long as neither gets out of hand.
Sullivan is very adept at playing to this crowd by playing both ends off against the middle. He comes across as the voice of reason and moderation. He massages their love of compromise. He flatters their sense of fair-play. And, in the meantime, he also has the liberals and the radicals in his camp. The radicals may not stop where he draws the line, but they find him a useful bridge.
All and all, then, Sullivan is a natural coalition builder. Here's a man who has the ear of liberal-opinion makers as the London Times, New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post, as well as conservative opinion-makers at the Wall Street Journal and National Review. As such, we need to take him seriously and subject his writing to searching scrutiny.
In opposing sodomy, our very advantage can be a disadvantage. We are faced with a familiar philosophical paradox. It is often harder to argue for the obvious than for the mysterious. One function of reasoned argument is to make the mysterious more evident. The ordinary assumption of a good argument is that once a mysterious matter has been clarified, the argument has done it's job. There's nothing more to say, for at that point, the truth should be plain for all to see, and accepted as such.
But what do you do when someone denies the obvious? When what is obvious is where the debate begins, and not where it ends? In discussing the obvious, there's not much more that we can do than describe and paraphrase the obvious.
This is why many men are caught off guard and left speechless when challenged to defend the obvious. They've never given it a second thought. It's something they've taken for granted. You might as well ask them to prove that grass is green.
Now, what could be more obvious than boy meets girl? That is based on common biology and physiology, evident to all. It's where we all come from. At this point, even the teaching of Scripture merely codifies common sense. This is not the disclosure of something deeply mysterious. Here is where special and general revelation overlap. Where Scripture confirms and give grounding to our native intuitions.
For purposes of this essay, I'll simply run through Sullivan's major arguments in his major articles, as well as his book. One of the difficulties with weighing his arguments is that it's often unclear in his writing what counts as an argument. For much of it consists in question-begging assumptions and barefaced assertions stated as though they were self-evident propositions.
Virtually Normal
In his article on "Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough," Sullivan says that "this essay is not intended for those who believe that homosexual love is sinful or immoral...or who claim that homosexual relationships are inherently dysfunctional." However, Sullivan does devote a whole chapter to that group in his book Virtually Normal (Vintage Books 1996). And he admits at the very outset that their position "commands the most widespread support of any of the four arguments outlined in this book" (23). Needless to say, it is also the argument of most interest and concern to Christians. So how does Sullivan try to defuse the religious argument?
It is striking that in a book of some 200 pages, only pp25-31 are given over to a discussion of the biblical materials. That's six pages—total. That comes out to less that 3% of the entire book. Most of the chapter is devoted to a critical analysis of Catholic natural law theory.
But let's go back a page. Sullivan launches his counteroffensive by saying that "a liberal society cannot engage someone who bases his view of homosexuality on religious authority alone. Like unreasoned emotion, unanswerable religious authority is, well, unanswerable" (24).
This statement has a couple of notable features. The first, which is a common tactic of Sullivan's, is to attach a question-begging adjective to the noun ("liberal society"), the effect of which is to make an acceptable noun smuggle the contraband of an unacceptable adjective. Sullivan's statement is true by definition, since a "liberal" society, in his usage, does not defer to religious authority. But this statement is a tautology, not an argument. As soon as we drop the prejudicial adjective, the conclusion falls flat.
The other insinuation, again not an argument, but innuendo, is that an appeal to religious authority is an appeal to blind faith. But, of course, this is a very careless generalization. It all depends on the religion and the religious adherent. If the Bible is the word of God, then appeal to Scripture is an appeal, not only to a higher authority, but to a higher reason—indeed, to supreme reason.
So the relevance of the religious argument cannot be dismissed except on the assumption that religious authority is, indeed, akin to unreasoned emotion. And that, to say the very least, demands a supporting argument.
Sullivan's next move is to claim that "a democratic society can forbid—as the constitution of the United States forbids—the state's coercion of people into unwilling obedience to religious authority" (24).
This calls for two comments. Once again we see the use of a tendentious adjective to tilt the scales. Strictly speaking, the US is not a democratic society, but a constitutional republic. As such, its citizens cannot lawfully forbid anything they please. They are bound by the constitutional rule of law. They can amend the Constitution, but they cannot lawfully violate the Constitution.
In addition, Andrew Sullivan is rewriting Constitutional history. His reading of the Establishment clauses reflects a popular misconception and deliberate distortion of the fact. He turns the Establishment clause into a disestablishment clause—the polar opposite of what it means. But the Establishment clause is only a check on the coercive powers of the Federal government in matters of faith. It forbids the establishment of a national church. But by the same token, it leaves the sovereign states entirely autonomous to regulate their internal religious affairs as they see fit. As far as the Constitution is concerned, an individual state is perfectly free to coerce its citizens into unwilling obedience to religious authority. (Cf. D. Dreisbach, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State [NYU Press 2003]; P. Hamburger, Separation of Church & State [Harvard 2004].)
Sullivan goes on to say that "one of the first principles of liberal societies, as they have emerged from the theocracies and dictatorships of the past, is that the religious is not the same as the political; that its very discourse is different; and that the separation of the two is as much for the possibility of vibrant faith as it is for the possibility of civil polity. So there is no argument here either against a religious conviction that doesn't respect or understand a separate, if related, political sphere (24).
This calls for a number of comments. One concerns the level of abstraction. Historically, a number of democracies have had state churches. So this is a false antithesis.
Sullivan is subtly shifting from a Constitutional question to a prudential question, but blurring the two in the process. Whether or not church/state separation is a good idea or a bad idea, it is not a Constitutional question. That was expressly reserved for the individual discretion of the states.
There are many important issues to which the Constitution does not speak. And for good reason. Nothing is more dangerous or fallacious than assuming that all civil rights or human rights, or matters of right and wrong, devolve from the Constitution. The Constitution is not the source and standard of personal and social ethics. It simply puts in place a political process. It is neutral on most matters of morality.
Whether a secular state is better than a theocracy is a very value-laden judgment. This calls for a supporting argument. And everything depends on how you define a theocracy. A theocracy doesn't select for any particular polity. The OT theocracy could function under both a constitutional monarchy and a tribal oligarchy. The key issue is not the enforcement mechanism, but what social code enjoys the force of law.
The law has a moral basis. Morality has a religious basis. The law codifies social morality. As such, religion has a political dimension.
Perhaps Sullivan would take issue with some of these derivations. But, if so, he needs to work up an argument to that effect.
Before moving to the specifics of Scripture, Sullivan outlines the religious argument in general, as he sees it: "Homosexuality is a choice. There is no significant difference between homosexual orientation and homosexual acts. Homosexual orientation is the willingness to commit such acts or a history of so doing…so any human being can be direct to heterosexual conduct" (25).
This is not how I myself would mount the argument. It contains a number of assumptions and equivocations that I don't make. So his version is, as far as I'm concerned, a straw man argument.
Perhaps the most basic assumption in the way that Sullivan has chosen to frame the issue is the presumption that we cannot formulate a moral public policy until we isolate and identify the root-causes of sodomy. This has, of course, become a very popular assumption, fostered by the social sciences. Every time we have a schoolyard shooting, the armchair psychiatrists, sociologist, and anthropologists opine on the causal origin of this outburst. This has turned a cottage industry, with consultants for hire.
Speaking for myself, this is sometimes interesting, but never relevant. I don't care whether a vicious dog is vicious because he is a mean breed or because he was mistreated as a pup. It isn't necessary to come down on one side or the other of the nature/nurture debate, or apportion their respective contributions. Although I have some opinions on this matter, it isn't necessary that I have some opinions on this matter.
To begin with, then, let's drop the term "orientation." That's a loaded word. Maybe it's accurate, maybe inaccurate. It goes to the question of origins, for which I doubt we can offer a definitive or uniform answer. And, in any case, we don't need to. So let's avoid the gratuitous connotations of that word.
Instead, let's distinguish between homosexual attraction and homosexual acts. Attraction is consistent with orientation, but doesn't commit us to the stronger thesis.
Now there are a variety of differences. It is not a difference between vice and virtue, per se. Both are sinful.
Bad feelings are not necessarily as evil as bad actions. Suppose I feel like killing some one. This could mean that I would kill him if I thought I could get away with murder. In that instance, deeds and feelings are morally equivalent. Or it may only mean that, at a certain level, I'd like to see him dead, but I'd never kill him, even if I could do so with impunity. In that instance, deeds and feelings are not morally equivalent.
Now, one thing we discover very early in life is that we don't have as much control over our feelings as we would like to have. We think bad thoughts. And although we can exercise some measure of mental discipline, our powers of emotional self-restraint are admittedly limited. We fail to feel about others the way we know we ought to feel.
But the fact that some of our bad attitudes are involuntary doesn't excuse them. So I don't go along with the glib assumption that something must be voluntary to be culpable. No doubt there are folks who would disagree with me, but the immediate point is that an argument predicated on common assumptions which are, not in fact, shared in common by the respective parties, is an unsound argument from the get-go. And knocking down that version of the argument doesn't necessarily establish you own case, for my opposition didn't buy into that version in the first place.
Another broad and basic distinction between feelings and deeds is that we enjoy much more control over our actions than over our attitudes. For even if homosexual attraction were uncontrollable, it wouldn't necessarily follow that homosexual expression is uncontrollable.
Having said that, it is probably unrealistic to suppose that a homosexual won't act out on his impulses. So the category of the celibate homosexual, while a bare possibility, is a rather artificial construct.
I don't assume that every homosexual can cultivate heterosexual passion. To begin with, I don't know how we would know that. It's an empirical question, and I don't know by what inductive method we could test such a sweeping claim.
But from a theological standpoint, I think it highly unlikely that every homosexual can be reoriented—if that's the right word for it. Rather, I believe that many homosexuals are hardened reprobates.
My guess is that homosexual attraction is an overdetermined behavior. Many factors may predispose a man or woman to be a homosexual. None of these are determinates. A sinner can't help sinning, but he can choose between one evil and another. Like an acquired taste or obsessive-compulsive behavior, sin can become engrained, become second nature.
Of course, I also believe that God saves sinners—not all, but some. Regeneration effects a basic change in their moral and spiritual disposition. But Christians still struggle with besetting sins.
I reject the category of a Christian homosexual, both because the label implies that sodomy is consistent with Christian ethics, and also because it implies that Christian conversion has no practical effect on our attitudes. But I also don't assume that if a homosexual undergoes genuine conversion, his immoral impulses are totally eradicated. He may relapse in thought and deed. Every Christian is still a sinner, and a sinner is a recidivist. There is, though, a difference between sinning and backsliding, and another difference between backsliding and apostasy. God sees everything in black and white, but pastoral ministry must sometimes distinguish between shades of gray when deciding whether to refer some cases to counseling or church discipline. We can be too soft in some cases and too harsh in others.
In this general connection, Sullivan says that "even the prohibitionists themselves have found it impossible to avoid the term 'homosexual,' conceding by their very language that some people, by their own nature, appear to be predominantly or exclusively attracted to members of their own sex" (30).
This is almost too silly for words. We name things so that we can refer to them for communication purposes. By Sullivan's line of logic, if I call a man a plumber I thereby concede that some men are plumbers by nature, and are either predominantly or exclusively attracted to water closets!
Now let us review his handling of Scripture. When we turn to this section we're confronted with another complication. Not only is there the question of whether his explanations are consistent with Scripture, but whether his explanations are even consistent with one another. So, for clarity of analysis, let us separate the two questions, even though this will entail some element of backtracking. Consider the following statements:
"In the Bible, indeed, the whole notion of heterosexual conduct is a preposterous one; there is merely human conduct, which is assumed to be heterosexual" (25).
"The most important point to realize is that none of the handful of injunctions against homosexual acts in the Bible are based on an argument about nature. Indeed, the whole argument about a universal human nature is absent to the writers of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures" (25-26).
"Paul regards the perversion of heterosexuality to be a crime against the nature of the people involved. But we should not that this is not a crime against 'nature' as such; it's a crime against the nature of individual heterosexuals. What Paul is describing here is heterosexuals engaging, against their own nature, in homosexual behavior…he seems to assume that every individual's nature is heterosexual" (29).
"Without invoking a general natural law, which was unknown to Paul, they have to say that each of us has his own heterosexual calling, and that our abandonment of it is deliberate and perverse" (30).
For the moment, I'm not commenting on the quality of the exegesis, just the question of internal consistency. In summarizing the position of Scripture, as Andrew Sullivan understands it, he manages to say, in the short space of five pages, that there's no such thing as heterosexual conduct, just human conduct (assumed to be heterosexual), that there is no notion of a universal human nature, that there's such a thing as an individual heterosexual nature, which applies to everyone, and that there's no general law governing sex appeal.
It's very hard to harmonize these statements. On the one hand he denies a universal natural law or human nature, on the other hand, he affirms an individual heterosexual nature, and he admits this heterosexual nature applies to every individual human being. To contradict himself so many times in so little time is a truly remarkable achievement.
Let us now go back through the individual exegesis. He begins with the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a false start. The proper place to begin is at the very beginning, with the creation of man as male and female (Gen 1-2).
According to its divine constitution, human nature consists of two genders. Male and female are natural companions, sexual partners and counterparts. This holds true for as along as there are sexually differentiated human beings. It isn't two of one, or one of two, but one of one and one of another, forming a natural pair. A couple of left shoes do not make a pair.
Sullivan also skips over the sin of Ham and the cursing of Canaan, but this is probably the first recorded instance of sodomy, and the malediction reflects the moral opprobrium of Scripture. The parallels between Gen 9:20-27 and Lev 20:17 are telling. More fundamentally, the Canaanites (Lev 18) are accursed in Canaan, the son of Ham. This goes to the principle of tribal solidarity in Scripture.
Let us now pick up where Sullivan left off:
"Many modern scholars, most notably John Boswell, have argued that the story of Sodom does not refer to the sin of homosexual sex but to that of inhospitality to strangers; similarly, Boswell argues that the KJV erroneously translates the term 'kadeshim' as 'sodomite,' when it should properly be understood as 'temple prostitute.' In many passages condemning sex" (26-27).
By way of reply:
i) Sullivan speaks of "many" modern scholars who share this view, but he only names one. So how many are there? And who are they?
ii) Even if we brought inhospitality into the mix, these explanations are by no means mutually exclusive, for homosexual gang-rape strikes me as a rather inhospitable way of treating a stranger or a houseguest. But Boswell and Sullivan are evidently assuming the S&M viewpoint on this score!
iii) Even if we went along with Boswell's rendering in general, what's the relevance to the account of Sodom & Gomorrah, or its parallel in Judges—which Sullivan skips over entirely? When the text says that every male, young and old, was engaged in this behavior (Gen 19:4), are we to suppose that every man and boy was a temple prostitute? Do we even know for a fact which, if any, of these townships had a temple?
iv) How can this be a more accurate rendering of "many passages condemning homosexual sex" when Sullivan twice talks about a "mere handful" of such passages?
v) The fact that a passage like Deut 23:17-18 has proximate reference to temple prostitution does not nullify its normative force:
a) God ordered the execution of the Canaanites for idolatry and immorality alike. Paul makes the same connection in Rom 1.
b) Child sacrifice was also an aspect of the pagan culture, but that doesn't suggest that although sacred child sacrifice is illicit, profane child sacrifice is licit.
vi) Boswell's rendering is equally inapplicable to Lev 18:22 and 20:13, where Moses does not use the word for a cult prostitute (qadesh), but the word for a human male (zakar).
vii) When Ezekiel comments on the fate of Sodom, he alludes, both to Gen 19 and the Levitical code in his use of the loaded word "abomination."
viii) Likewise, 2 Pet 2:7,10 and Jude 7 each finger sexual sin as the downfall of Sodom.
In this general connection, Sullivan also says that "even the prohibitionists themselves have found it impossible to avoid the term 'homosexual,' conceding by their very language that some people, by their own nature, appear to be predominantly or exclusively attracted to members of their own sex" (30).
Moving on to the Mosaic Law, Sullivan says that "the reason here is the proscription of impurity. 'Abomination' is more clearly translated as 'ritual impurity.' In the same context, there are identical provisions against eating pork or engaging in sexual intercourse during menstruation.
So those who use Leviticus to argue for the general prohibition of homosexual acts today have also to say why they are not in favor of a general prohibition against eating shell-fish or rabbit, against cutting hair, or mixing different fabrics in the same item of clothing, or having sex during menstruation, all of which are also proscribed in very similar language in Leviticus. If they truly are fundamentalists, they also have to argue for the death penalty for homosexual acts. Sadly, for the sake of consistency, no such arguments are made" (28).
But, of course, such arguments have been made repeatedly. Yet you'd never know that from looking through his "select bibliography," which is select indeed—by leaving out all of the scholarly literature to the contrary.
By way of reply:
i) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Christians have been inconsistent on this point, an inconsistency can be relieved in either of two directions. There are, for example, Christians who still observe the Kosher laws.
ii) In reading the law of Moses, we need to look both backward and forward. Assuming common authorship, sexual ethics in the Mosaic code has its background in the creation account. That doesn't mean that every detail of the law code is a direct implication of the creation mandates. But the basic binary gender relation and distinction most certainly is. Sullivan might deny common authorship, but that would require a supporting argument, and since he has chosen to address the Bible-believers on their own turn, he bears the burden of proof.
iii) Looking ahead, the NT teaches us that the ceremonial law was discontinued under the New Covenant (Heb 10).
vi) Conversely, as we shall see, the moral valuation of sodomy is carried over from one Testament to the next. So there is no inconsistency at the precise point of comparison.
vii) There is also an overlapping area between physical, ritual, and moral impurity. Although some things are ritually impure as a matter of mere convention, other things are ritually impure because they are also morally and/or physically impure. Ritual purity/impurity is an extension of nature and natural kinds (Gen 1:26-27). This is also the basis for the ban on bestiality.
viii) In Lev 20:13, the prohibition is grouped with other sex crimes rather than the cultic and occult section preceding it, while the ceremonial law resumes in the next chapter.
viii) The question of capital punishment is often raised as a kind of blocking maneuver to silence further debate. But this question is very much in play. However we come down, it cannot be dismissed out of hand.
ix) It is sometimes objected that this would be inconsistent with the church's missionary mandate. But that either proves too much or too little, for it amounts to an argument against the death penalty for any crime by anyone whatsoever.
x) Let us also not be more merciful to the victimizer than we are to the victim. As the Catholic sex scandal has brought out into the open, there's a very high correlation between sodomy and the seduction of minors. Indeed, sodomites lobby to lower the age of consent.
Moving on, Sullivan says that "in the four Gospels, the founder of the Christian religion makes no reference to homosexual acts whatsoever—not a single one. While he seems adamant about the prohibition of divorce, he has nothing to say about the role of homosexuality, to judge from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John" (28).
But this is neither here nor there:
i) Because of Christ's primarily Jewish audience, the question never came up, for this was never an open question in Jewish moral theology.
ii) Christ upholds the Mosaic law (Mt 5:17-19)
iii) In the very context of the divorce debate (in which Christ makes an exception for infidelity, Mt 5:32; 19:9), he appeals to the teaching of the creation account regarding the natural role-relations of male and female (Mt 19:4-5).
iv) Christ cites the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah as a foretaste of the final judgment (Lk 17:29).
v) Christian theology has never been limited to the express teaching of Christ. Christ himself chose the Apostles as his appointed spokesmen (Mt 10:40; Jn 13:20; Acts 9:15)
Moving on, Sullivan says, "St. Paul, however, is another matter. Here again, there are simple mistranslations, as contemporary Biblical scholars have pointed out. Two words translated later to imply homosexuality are, as Boswell has elaborated, more accurately rendered as "wanton" and "male prostitute" (28).
Actually, the compound word (Gr. arsenokoitai=male+lying) employed in 1 Cor 6:9 & 1 Tim 1:10 is lifted straight from the Septuagintal rendering of Lev 18:22 & 20:13. So here the NT directly reaffirms the Levitical law on sodomy. And the other term (Gr. malakoi=soft men) has evident reference to males or boys who are quite literally on the receiving end of the transaction. . If we were using old-fashioned words in their strict meaning, we'd render arsenokoitai as "sodomite" and malakoi as "catamite."
In addition, 1 Tim 1:9-10 is paraphrasing the second table of the Decalogue.
Alluding to Rom 1, Sullivan says that "Paul uses the example of heterosexuals…who yet decide to spurn the 'natural use' of their bodies in order to 'burn in their lust" for members of the same gender" (29).
But this is incoherent on its own terms. Although a normal man can commit sodomy, as is common in prison, he cannot lust after another man. A man who is attracted to another man is not a normal man, is not a heterosexual. That's a distinguishing and defining feature of a sodomite. Both straight men and queer men can engage in the physical act of sodomy, but homoerotic passion sets a homosexual apart, just as heterosexual passion sets a heterosexual apart.
Sullivan then says that Paul "seems to assume that every individual's nature is heterosexual" (29). But Sullivan believes that some individuals are naturally homosexual. So this amounts to a tactic admission that Paul condemns what he commends.
St. Paul transcends the nature/nurture debate by treating sodomy as a punishment for idolatry (Rom 1:24,26). God punishes sin with more sin. Sullivan also misses all of the allusions to Gen 1:26-27 in Rom 1:23,26-27.
Finally, Sullivan says that "Paul and the early Christians lived in the belief of the imminence of the Second Coming…Although sexual desires were, for Paul, something that needed to be satisfied within marriage, they were inherently suspect, as all earthly desires were suspect. Paul's admonitions against the flesh were the corollary of his demanding call to life in the spirit" (31).
This is a classic canard:
i) In Pauline theology, the flesh/spirit antithesis is not synonymous with a body/spirit antithesis. For Paul, carnal sins include, but go well beyond, sexual sins, to take in mental acts (Gal 5:19-21).
ii) Paul has a positive view of the sensible world, and was opposed to asceticism (1 Tim 4:1-5). If Sullivan is alluding to 1 Cor 7, I would just say that what we find there is a balanced and realistic assessment of the respective tradeoffs of the single and married life. Beyond that, people should consult the standard commentaries (by Blomberg, Fee, Garland, & Thiselton).
Sullivan also overlooks one other prooftext. In the list of idolaters and malefactors excluded from heaven, the reference to "dogs" in Rev 22:15 is likely an allusion to Deut 23:18. This makes painfully plain the damnable status of sodomy.
