UTAH BISHOP REJECTS HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE, EULOGIZES GAY 'MARRIAGE'

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue

The Bishop of Utah, Carolyn Tanner Irish, recovering alcoholic and an ex-Mormon who never got baptized as a Christian, says that from a biblical perspective there is very little to support current views of marriage and family.

"Many Christians speak of marriage as a 6,000-year-old tradition. But historical and cultural evolution challenges that view and the Latter Day Saints (Mormon) tradition is a prime example of that." The "sacramentality" that religious faiths now claim for marriage has also evolved. It is doubtful that Jesus would even recognize our institution of marriage as it is, she writes in an Op-Ed article for the Salt Lake Tribune.

"Further, one must look elsewhere than the Bible to support the vague category called 'family values.' I know of no consistently good 'family values' stories in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures. Support for marriage as we define it hard to find in Scripture," she says.

The way we view marriage and family itself has evolved over centuries, says the bishop. "Propagation of the species was, of course, its biological foundation, but culturally it was property arrangements among tribes or clans that followed, and persist in many cultures to this day."

Tanner said that some people believe that homosexuality is a moral issue, not a given orientation. "This implies that these citizens are, in some situations, 'undeserving' of certain political recognition and protection. To others such a view smacks of ignorance or intolerance, sustaining the idea that 'these people would be better if they were more like me [us].' Similarly, some married heterosexuals believe they and their families would be threatened by legal partnerships for same-sex couples and their families. Why? How? Is there any factual basis to support such fear?"

Morality doesn't "belong" to any group on the basis of their sex, their religion or political alliances, said the bishop. Infidelity, exploitation, abuse, oppression and harm - or their opposites - can be found among people of either sexual orientation. Morality consists principally of values, which may be shared, upheld and lived by a broad range of people and institutions. The civic ordering of a democratic society should seek support for such common values as widely as possible, she said.

Ms. Tanner is clearly not familiar with the theology of marriage as it is given to us in Holy Scripture.

The vision of marriage found in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures is one of reuniting male and female into an integrated sexual whole. Marriage is not just about more intimacy and sharing one's life with another in a lifelong partnership. It is about sexual merger — or, in Scripture's understanding, re-merger — of essential maleness and femaleness, says Dr. Robert Gagnon, a prominent Presbyterian theologian.

"The creation story in Genesis 2:18-24 illustrates this point beautifully. An originally binary, or sexually undifferentiated, adam ('earthling') is split down the 'side' (a better translation of Hebrew tsela than 'rib') to form two sexually differentiated persons. Marriage is pictured as the reunion of the two constituent parts or 'other halves,' man and woman."

"This is not an optional or minor feature of the story. Since the only difference created by the splitting is a differentiation into two distinct sexes, the only way to reconstitute the sexual whole, on the level of erotic intimacy, is to bring together the split parts. A same-sex erotic relationship can never constitute a marriage because it will always lack the requisite sexual counterparts or complements."

If Ms. Tanner still believes that any alternative to heterosexual marriage is biblically permissible then she ought to resign her office. To go against 2,000 years of historical biblical and theological teaching is to violate her teaching and pastoral office.