COMMENTARY : Human Sexuality Report Tackled Tough Modern Issues : Policy: Delegates recognized the plurality of opinion in the church.

Lesbians and gay men did not walk away from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. without hope. The reasoned debate over the human sexuality report did not reflect the same hysteria throughout the denomination on what Presbyterians thought the report said.

In voting “not to adopt” either the majority or minority views of the committee, and urging the development of sexuality study tools for local congregations, the delegates recognized the plurality of opinion in the church that no single perspective could satisfy.

As one who has lobbied for gay rights at these annual national conferences since 1976, I found the delegates more sensitive to gay and lesbian issues, though as resistant as past assemblies to changing the denomination’s stand. They elected a moderator who spoke favorably of “More Light” congregations, which advocate changing the position of the church on homosexuality.

But the delegates voted to abide by past declarations that homosexuality and homophobia are sins, and that Presbyterians should guard against civil discrimination of gays and lesbians, while enforcing ecclesiastical discrimination. A motion that the current ban on ordination of self-affirming practicing homosexuals be advisory rather than compulsory was defeated, but not as strongly as in other years.

Out of deference to the pain of gays, lesbians and our families and friends, the delegates resisted efforts to reissue the homosexuality policy statement and permitted a silent demonstration on the assembly floor after the vote on the sexuality report.

What I find hopeful about the report is that its prophetic word has broadened the discussion on human sexuality. Instead of using gays and lesbians as convenient scapegoats for a general Christian discomfort with erotic human nature, the study urges that we explore the integral relationship of spirituality and sexuality, discarding patriarchy, sexism and homophobia. And it offers an ethic of “justice-love” that could be applied to every sexual expression, with or without marriage, whether heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual.

Opponents have charged that the report had “given in” to the culture, but Christian sexual ethics have often been influenced by societal norms. For example, Yale historian John Boswell has documented how civil governments urged the church to legislate against homosexual practice in medieval times. His book, “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,” asserts that there is nothing inherently anti-gay about Christianity.

Those who would have us follow biblical models of human sexuality would be horrified if we returned to the then-socially acceptable polygamy of the Old Testament: King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, for instance.

Defenders of “traditional” families would balk at Jesus’ revolutionary re-definition of family in the New Testament when he apparently ignores his biological family to assert, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

While most Presbyterians reject the authority of Jesus when he condemned divorce, they claim that four scriptural admonitions purportedly against homosexuality (none on the lips of Jesus) hold greater authority. This is an example of how one can read Scriptures with heterosexual blinders.

Biblical scholars have long questioned whether one can ascertain God’s view of homosexuality from a handful of Scriptures. Sodom and Gomorrah, according to Ezekiel and Jesus were destroyed because of the sin of inhospitality, grossly expressed by the men’s attempted gang rape of the angels in the story, a common eastern practice of humiliating the stranger and the conquered. Leviticus condemns men who act like women sexually as part of an ancient holiness code otherwise ignored by the church. The code also forbids eating shellfish and wearing garments made of two kinds of materials.

The apostle Paul’s condemnation in his Epistle to the Romans serves his central argument: the revolutionary assertion that Christians are saved by grace through faith, not by following the law. And the supposed reference to homosexuality in the list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God in I Corinthians has been determined to be a mistranslation of two Greek words that more accurately translate as “morally soft” and “male prostitutes.”

If the intent of the report was to speak up for those marginalized by the church because of their gender, sexual expression or orientation, the Assembly’s priority was keeping peace and unity in a church deeply divided on scriptural interpretation. This was clear in the Assembly’s listing of the contents of a pastoral letter read to all Presbyterian congregations last Sunday: the first point was an affirmation of “the Scriptures (as) the unique and authoritative word of God, superior to all other authorities” and second came an affirmation of “the unconditional love of God.”

My belief is that the radical nature of the unconditional love of God requires Christians to interpret the Scripture anew in the light of reason, current scholarship and experience. Fresh interpretations of Scripture led to the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women just as it much earlier gave rise to the very Protestant Reformation of which the Presbyterian Church is but a part. To abandon the tradition of interpreting Scripture for each new age is to give in to the legalism and fundamentalism at which Jesus rebelled.

I believe that if the “Body of Christ,” the church, is to have the integrity of Jesus, it must not allow form to get in the way of recognizing the content of every loving and just relationship. As Jesus said in the Gospel of Mark, ultimately we will be judged not by externals, but by what comes from our hearts. If keeping the Presbyterian body together comes at the cost of compassion, we risk losing our soul.