On a previous thread on this site, there was a discussion about the Biblical model for marriage. While the question of Biblical marriage models may not be strictly ex-gay in nature, the ex-gay movement is heavily involved in the opposition to marriage equality and the argument over the mutability of orientation was integral to the decision of at least one state supreme court.
Although much of the legal argument against equal access to marriage rights for gay people is based on the notion that opposite-sex marriages are better for society, the emotional and political argument is that God ordained a plan for marriage and that plan consisted of “one man and one woman”. And though many people are not particularly religious, most Americans believe in God and a claim of His blessing still carries weight.
Conservative evangelical Christians have been the leaders in the calls to constitutionally prohibit gay people from appealing to courts for equal access. But the anti-gay marriage rhetoric runs counter to form. Having been raised in this faith structure, I can attest that many teachings on daily life and faith are supported by an appeal to the example of Biblical heroes. Yet in this debate there has been a marked absence of appeal to God’s favorites. A quick glance at the marriages of these chosen vessels of God shows why.
I realize that many examples in the Bible are for what NOT to do. And that is particularly true in the examples of marriage and relationships. Nonetheless, I am amazed at how few Biblical giants had relationships that could be considered acceptable by today’s conservative evangelical Christians. Although there are undoubtedly more, the single example I could think of was Isaac.
Please do not use the examples I’m listing below as some God-ordained model for marriage. Some of these choices resulted in horrible results. But with that caveat, I present:
WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT MARRIAGE FROM THE BIBLE
From Adam we learn that there is not need for a marriage.
From Seth we learn that procreation with your sisters is OK.
From Abraham we learn that a man can marry his sister – and lie about it. We also learn that if your wife is barren, she can give you her maid to impregnate.
From Lot’s daughters we learn that if you don’t have a man and you want a child, you can always just get your father drunk and have sex with him.
From Jacob we learn that a wife can be purchased by seven years of labor. We also learn that it is acceptable to deceive a groom into marrying the wrong woman and the marriage is valid. We also learn that having two sisters as wives is a blessing.
From Onan we learn that a man is obligated to impregnate his brother’s widow. We also learn that when having sex with your sister-in-law, you are not supposed to pull out before ejaculating (it’s wicked in God’s sight).
From Salmon we learn that your son born of a prostitute will bring recognition and honor to your name for millennia and your descendant will be the Messiah.
From Ruth we learn that a woman belongs to her husband’s family even after his death. We also learn that premarital seduction is honorable.
From David we learn that marriage (to one of your several wives) is for establishing connection into the royal family. We also find that if you kill a man to take his wife, she’ll provide you an heir who will be both wise and wealthy.
From Solomon we learn that a man can have as many wives as he can afford – along with twice as many concubines.
Paul tells us some very interesting things about marriage: It’s better never to marry (unless you can’t control your passions). And if do have a spouse and they are not a believer, then if s/he leaves you, let them go.
Even Jesus had some opinions about marriage: be sure to have enough wine at the ceremony and second marriages are adultery (even if the ex-spouse is a non-believer).
Yes, there is so much we can learn about marriage from Scripture. But one thing is clear: The idea of “one man, one woman” marriage may indeed be “traditional” but it certainly isn’t Biblical.
Almost everytime I bring up examples like those when debating “Christians” I am either ignored, accused of “justifying my sin,” or of attacking scripture.
Great post!
It’s “traditional,” but not “biblical.” Just goes to show you how flawed the religious right’s arguments are.
Come to think of it, just goes to show you how flawed fundamentalist christian arguments against same-sex marriage are.
Come to think of it, just goes to show you how flawed fundamentalist christianity is.
Pity, really.
Phil,
The point of this thread is not to attack Christianity, fundamentalist or otherwise. Let’s keep the comments to their arguments and the lack of consistency, logic, or pursuasiveness when anaylized.
I have no problem with fundamentalist Christians when they are consistent, honest, and not motivated by hatred or political culture war. Which is the vast majority of people who identify as fundamentalist Christians. Unfortunately they often listen to the handfull who are firebrands, liars, and culture warriors and who have no regard for facts or decency.
Excellent job Timothy,
These are exactly the arguements that need to be taken to the State Capitols and Capitol Hill.
I think it should also be noted that if you cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law’s enemies, you’ll get his daughter for a wife.
(David; 1 Samuel 18:27)
Seems a good Biblical way to avoid that whole pesky dating thing.
Mr. Kincaid, don’t forget what Isaac taught us about marriage–you can’t marry outside your own race:
Gen 26:34-35 = “And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: / Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.”
Gen 27:46 = “And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?”
Gen 28:1 = “And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.”
Jacob also fooled around with, and impregnated, both his wives’ servents. Between the four of them, he had 13 kids. What a slut he was.
This is a really interesting thread…thanks Timothy!
I was thinking about this last week while preparing for a debate with Maggie Gallagher on Voice of America News radio. I was researching the number of wives King Solomon had, and came across a web site claiming that the bible actually condemns Solomon for having too many wives, particularly for using marriage as a way to create relationships with other kingdoms.
Anyway, I think the leaders of the religious right would simply argue their way out of the point Timothy is making. I’ve often heard pastors claim the the laws and customs of the old testament were no longer relevant after Jesus’ birth and death…something about the shift from an “age of laws” to an “age of grace.”
Of course, our reply could be reminding them of instances where they have cited Leviticus as evidence that homosexuality is sinful…
You’re right, Jason. Timothy’s argument about biblical marriage will mean nothing to biblical inerrantists – an irony if there ever was one. Cultural context and original languages, etc. are downplayed or outright ignored until one of THEIR sacred beliefs is at stake. The idea that biblical marriage was anything other than one man and one woman for life will be refuted by any means possible. We LGBT religious folks do the same thing, of course, to demonstrate that the Bible does not condemn our relationships, but it just goes to show we can ALL use scripture to our advantage when we need to. I happen to believe marriage in the Old Testament has very little in common with what takes place in our American churches today. And I think Timothy’s commentary is well written and helpful. Thanks, Timothy 🙂
I can’t find hardly ANY coverage of the Warren Jeffs trail in Utah.
As believers, this polygamist sect is generations old and very influential in their area.
However, this condition of THEIR Biblical interpretation of marriage and children, couldn’t possibly square with the Constitutional protection of privacy…as gay sex does.
Mostly because it’s CHOSEN lifestyle, that had to be modified in accordance with the laws of other states and for Utah to have statehood.
In other words, the laws were for the good of the state and national unity, NOT the specific good of the Mormons.
For much of the country and it’s founders…people were REGIONALLY loyal, not to the entire COUNTRY.
This could be said of the Mormons. They are concentrated in Utah and the Four Corners. Their loyalty is to their religion, NOT their state and country.
The trial of Warren Jeffs is not over his religious beliefs, but of the abuse and mistreatment of those with no political or social power within his religion.
They are citizens first, as are we all.
As for the anti gay marriage, they forget that about gay people.
Gay people are citizens first. Whatever religion they choose to follow is secondary to whatever responsibilities they have to loved ones.
Gay people AS citizens have and do live within the common and accepted boundaries of life as citizens.
It’s others who have created an out of bounds,, out of structure situation for gay people, BECAUSE gay people are kept in that position.
And because the obligations and needs remain the same for gay people, other structures HAD to be created.
I don’t understand why that doesn’t make sense to our usual detractors.
And I resent how much condemnation Heather Poe and Mary Cheney are getting about this being a cruel and destructive situation for the expected child.
As IF, simply a man/woman is enough to assure a happy situation for any child born to them too.
If a person were to apply the simplest logic at it, gay people MUST plan carefully, and go through considerable expense to secure a child.
The choices of surrogates, sperm donor and the like are hardly accidents. No more than the choice of life partner they have. That child is WANTED and can be well prepared for.
The man/woman situation cannot make that claim. And have messed up MILLIONS of children along the way. If their children even live.
In the Biblical times, they had no technology, or artificial means of procreation, nor maternal health and prenatal examinations to help them.
Woman swapping and brokering was the way to assure the descenscion of a man’s own legacy.
We all know it. I’m tired of the anti gay acting like we don’t.
And women are hugely unflattered by most religious texts.
We are blamed for everything, and were no such conduits for God’s word.
How many of the Biblical women were illiterate?
How many had no say or choice in who THEY wanted for a husband?
We are as set up as gay people routinely are to bear the brunt when things don’t go well for the men we are supposed to be subject to.
Medical technology has advanced us as a race, and the need for woman swapping, is redundant.
But…people like Warren Jeffs couldn’t care less about it.
The religious life as a front for being horny, using children as slave labor and isolationism from citizenship is where polygamy and gay marriage ALWAYS parted company.
If any citizen cannot be satisfied with marriage to ONE spouse at a time, well there really isn’t any excuse.
But it’s not gay people who want to live like that, and it’s not gay people DEMANDING more than one spouse, either.
And it’s wrong for those opposed to gay marriage SAYING gay people who want to marry are even in agreement with polygamists.
Polygamy isn’t a characteristic, it’s a LIFESTYLE choice.
The language of doom is being attributed to Mary and Heather’s child. Regardless of both women’s physical health, social and economic privilege.
That’s why I called Alan Chambers on the connection to poverty and children.
Men and women who have children in poverty have more predictable difficulty than a child raised with two mommies and two daddies.
Poor people don’t seem to plan sensibly around a family, and gay people do.
Again…that should be GOOD news to smart people who are paying enough attention.
The wisdom of marriage lies not in the shape it takes, nor the children it may produce, but rather the support it can provide for the partners. I myself am a product of my culture and not necessarily an advocate of multiple spouses, but it is not hard to see how a different society might choose otherwise. In a nomadic, agrarian culture where a lone woman might be completely unable to provide for herself (i.e. Ruth and Naomi picking up a few left over stalks of harvested grain just so they could eat) it was a good thing for a man to bring another woman into his tent if he could afford it.
We can see also the emotional struggles the women faced…Hagar tossed out of Abraham’s household, jealousies between Leah and Rachel…but survival in a harsh world perhaps left them without other choices. And honestly…God neither condemned, nor questioned the form of ancient Biblical marriages or the sexual unions made within those marriages.
Without a family an individual is alone in facing the burdens and complexities of life. Within a loving family, there is support and shared strength. The anti-gay, Evangelical community seeks to deny gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people access to the very thing that God meant for humanity to have: helpers…mates of their choosing.
It does this because it believes our love is sinful. In particular, it believes our natural expressions of love are offensive to a holy God. Yet a casual reading of the history of God’s relationship with people shows that God is not offended by their sexual relationships, but by the abuse of those they are in relationship with. For example, Onan was offensive because without his help, his brother’s widow would never have a son…she’d never be anything but a single outcast woman. God did not care that he spilled his seed on the ground, and God certainly didn’t care that levirate marriage is offensive to American sensibilities; God cared that Onan treated a bereaved woman with such contempt that he denied her the last chance of having a son. With a son, she might become someone, and a part of a family again. His sin was to shut her out from the family. Surely God doesn’t care how we make a family so much as how we treat our family.
The great sin of the anti-gay position is that it seeks to make all GLBTQ folk outcasts. It seeks to prevent us from having the helpmates that God wishes us to have. This dark voice wants us to stay single…alone…without a helper in the travails of living. It despises us. It speaks without compassion for our struggle, and is content to spread a rhetoric of hate and lies that make us afraid to even hold hands in public for fear of being violently murdered.
It is a very great sin to make outcasts of those you dislike. Conversely, it is a very great virtue to serve and welcome the outcasts, aliens, widows, orphans, prisoners, lonely…all despised and rejected…all who suffer on the bloody margins of society.
The ex-gay ministries make a vocation of the sin rather than the virtue.
It is not enough for them to find their own personal path in a harsh world and let others be. It is not enough for them to make a productive business of their lives and choose spouses that please them, even if they quietly hate the love that we know. It does not relieve their passion to devote their labor to helping the poor, homeless and all God’s suffering children. They must spend their days actively working against us and the families we would make. They make an industry of frustrating the lives of their own brothers and sisters. Surely the greater condemnation will be theirs.
Dash-in re the Onan situation: the practice of casting widows out of the family they married into was just as repulsive as his refusal to impregnate her. There was certainly no guarantee that her first child would be a son, and an infant could hardly replace a husband. The rules of the day weren’t just misogynist, they were just plain sick.
Tamar resorted to prostitution with her father-in-law (who apparently didn’t recognize her; how’d that happen?) and upon learning she was pregnant, threatened to kill her until to she proved he was the father.
Now there’s an “explaining the facts of life to your child” conversation I’d love to hear. Especially when the kid realizes his mom used to be married to his brother. Ewwww….
Wow! This is excellent and something that the American public needs to keep in mind when they think they can vote on the civil rights of minorities.
Exactly why can a book with so must nonsense in it be trusted to be a guide to anything? Would you trust a science book with an error on every single page? Exactly how do you liberal Christians justify your continual cherry picking of the Bible? How do you know that ~anything~ in the bible is correct? Seems like you just pull out anything that you like and ignore the rest.
I read all kinds of blog sites. There is a distinct difference between those that are gay supportive and those that are not.
The gay supportive ones have REAL discussions and opinions, and a serious brain trust.
The others just seem to be all abstraction and lack articulation of diverse opinion.
Boring as hell.
There are factions of polygamists everywhere. Some are rather open as in some rural areas of Utah. Polygamists would rather be somewhere outside the glaring eyes of the public and media. They purposely attempted to sequester their kind of community in such extremely rural areas as a means to avoid public scrutiny. I think Warren Jeffs was trying to reconstruct their community in Texas to stay one step ahead of the scrutiny (legal and media-wise). But Jeffs is not the only leader of the only polygamist group in the western hemisphere.
However, I think the public would be surprised at how integrated polygamists are within the mainstream culture.
It is interesting to note the anti-gay marriage initiatives resulted in the following:
In the Utah State Constitution:
“…recognize as marriage only the legal union of a man and a woman.”
In other States:
“ …Marriage is the legal union of one man and one woman. “
Which is legally a whole lot different in meaning: it leaves the door open for polygamy in the Utah Constitution. Mormons are dead-set against this kind of equality for gays but for polygamists…it’s still a possibility they will be welcomed back into the flock.
Love this post….now, my 2 cents…
When Abraham passes his wife off as his sister, his deceit wins the treasury of Egypt…that is kind of like a Las Vegas marriage, no?
The other is a text of terror…Judges 19-21. (concubine gang-raped then cut into 12 pieces) The last time I brought this text up to a ‘bible-believing’ homophobe they informed me that it only happened because Israel was without a leader and that God was trying to show us not only the importance of marriage in this passage but also the importance of godly leadership.
We can find such lovely things in the grossest violence of the bible if we remember to put our rose-colored glasses on!