Christian and an Ally | Why Being Gay is Okay ✓

What About "Traditional" Marriage?

Congratulations, dear reader; you have successfully made it through the most famous "clobber passages"! However, anti-gay Christians still have more biblical passages up their sleeve, and they all relate to the traditional view of what marriage should be.

The first one is a passage we have already read, also known as Genesis 1:27 — "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." In the next passage, Genesis 1:28, God tells his new creation to "be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it."

I have already gone over a few of the issues that I have with using this passage to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. However, what I have not discussed yet are the specific words "male and female he created them."

What about intersex people?

According to the Intersex Society of North America, "'intersex' is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't . . . fit the typical definitions of female or male." This includes a wide variety of different situations. For example, people can be born with outward male parts but inner female parts and vice versa. People can also be born with both outer parts, both inner parts, or "genitals that seem in between the usual male and female types," such as male parts that are partially female or vice versa. People can be born with a mix of both XX and XY chromosomes, or even the rare XXY chromosome. The number of babies born intersex ranges anywhere from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 2,000.

Today, due in part to people who are intersex, we know that "male and female he created them" is not a true statement. Yes, there are people who are solely biologically male or biologically female, but even if we avoid discussing it or pretend like they aren't there, intersex people still exist. Being intersex is not something that fundamentalist Christians can just wave away; it is a real biological condition. And when we add those who identify as transgender and genderqueer to the mix, things become even more complicated. What about people who don't identify with their biological sex? The Bible is entirely silent on these matters.

This does NOT mean that the Bible should be "thrown away" or disrespected because of its scientific inaccuracies. Once again, as I argued in the last chapter, people who insist on the Bible being 100% accurate are missing the point. The Bible never claims to be historically or scientifically accurate, and that is because it wasn't written to be. It was written to be a work of faith and prose by people who were trying to find their place in God's plan. It is a book where we can find out more about God, love, and the Way as shown by Jesus, but it doesn't have to be our guide to history, science, and every other subject, too.

Within the Ancient Israelites' patriarchal culture, it made sense that God created human beings to be male and female, because they didn't have a clue about intersex and transgender people. Even today we do not completely understand why some people fit neatly into our gender categories and why other people don't. Thus, it doesn't make sense to use Genesis 1:27 to justify why marriage has no room for people attracted to the same gender, when we know that there is more to human beings than just "male and female."

The next oft-quoted passage is also from Genesis, this time 2:21-24. In this passage, God creates Eve from one of Adam's ribs. Adam is overjoyed to have a partner, and in verse 24, the author explains, "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one."

Notice the words "this is why. . ." Genesis 2:21-24 was used by the Ancient Israelites to explain why Israelites were expected to marry, but more specifically it explains "why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife." Nowhere does it say "this is the only legitimate way to marry" or "God decreed it was so" or "anything else is an abomination."

As I have mentioned before, Ancient Israel was a tiny country, surrounded on all sides by neighboring, more powerful, and more aggressive tribes. It was imperative that they increase their population and fertility rates, which included encouraging everyone to marry and have children. It was the same reason why they had prohibitions against marrying between tribes: it would dilute their strength and splinter an already small and relatively weak group of people. Just because the creation story made sense for the Ancient Israelites doesn't mean that we should uphold the same gender roles today.

Along the same vein, we no longer need to "be fruitful and multiply"; Earth only has so much space and so many resources to support our population before we will run out. Our growth has been so rapid that we have no idea what the consequences will be — population estimates for 2100 are as high as 11 billion, which could be catastrophic for our planet. There have been calls to stabilize the human population at 9 billion by decreasing fertility rates, so gay couples would certainly help with this.

Nor do we any longer need to "fill the earth and subdue it." On average, each human uses 16 kilograms of resources extracted from the Earth every single day. Only about 29% of forests on Earth are left, and a species goes extinct every 5 minutes — that's 100,000 species a year! We cut down forests and burn through natural resources way faster than we can replenish them. We do not need to "fill the earth and subdue it" like the Israelites did. God gave humans dominion over His other creatures, not to take advantage of them, but to take care of them, much like loving parents. Unfortunately, we are miserably failing at that commandment.

The point is that the argument for "traditional" marriage, at least using these passages from Genesis, falls flat when we remember that intersex people exist. The case is cut down further when we realize that we are in danger of filling the earth and multiplying to the point of overpopulation. There is not a specific commandment in the Bible that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and as you have seen from my previous chapters, the Bible has very little to say about homosexual sex, and nothing at all to say about same-sex marriage. What it is does say about homosexuality is often misinterpreted (1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-11), quoted out of context (Romans 1:26-27), nestled among obsolete laws (Leviticus 18:16 and 20:13), or simply nothing at all (as in Genesis 19:1-13).

The last two passages used to defend "traditional" marriage feature Jesus and his teachings (specifically Matthew 19:3-6 and Mark 10:2-9), so we will discuss them next week in a chapter entitled, "What Did Jesus Say?" Until then, God bless and spread the love!