Why Homosexuality Is Not A Sin

This response will not deal with the Bible. It will not address the historical or orthodox teachings. This response is purely a theological argument. Theologies can be wrong, and they can venture into the strange and unusual without proper guidance. Pure theology is impersonal and non-inspirational, but theology is not a useless tool. Combined with our human existence, theology can provide a powerful instrument in helping us understand the boundaries and limits of religious devotion, and it can help translate religious dialogue to a new age.

The reason homosexuality is not a sin is a simple one. It would be immoral if it were. Now, it may just be that God still demands that homosexuality be a sin, at which point it will have to be fairly evaluated if we are to choose between saying homosexuality is a sin and be immoral, or choose morality and believe that homosexuality is not a sin. Whether or not your religious devotion can handle either one, it will be up to the one who receives this argument. But the reality of this choice is absolute. It is my intention to only argue that this is the only choice that exists for us. I take the affirmative stance that homosexuality is not a sin, because it conforms to my moral sentiments, and I accept the burden of what this might mean for my religious devotion, but I make this stance, because I am convinced that this is the only choice that can possible exist between the option of whether or not to affirm homosexuality. Thus, I state quite clearly and confidently that I am not willing to be immoral in order to fulfill religious duty.

God is the Good. In ancient philosophy this question was asked of the Greek

philosophers, because even in the distant past people still struggled with aspects of religious devotion, and these philosophers were asked, “Is God good, because He does good things, or is He good because He makes it so?” This question was designed to be crafty and deceptive. If God is good because he does good things then the moral law is higher than God, and we do not need Him, but if God is good because he makes it so then morality is capricious. God could feasibly make murder and rape good and right, and we would simply have to accept it. The solution discovered by Plato is that God is the Good. God is the source of goodness.

Thus, it is important for any religious follower to understand what this means. There can be no separate moral order for the religious and non-religious. All are subject to the same moral standard. What is wrong for one person is wrong for another. There can be no morality exclusive to special revelation. It is, and can only be a part of God’s general revelation in Nature and Humanity. Now, there are spiritual virtues which can be taught and included in special revelation, like the fruits of the Spirit, and so forth, but in principle if an act or lifestyle is going to receive condemnation by God in all its totality then there must be a moral reason to do so.

This conclusion is easy enough to deduce without appeals to history or dogma. If God were to provide universal condemnations for non-moral reasons then we would have no reason to understand or accept any order issued by such a God. Consider two people groups. God tells people group 1 that all red heads are going to Hell. Unfortunately, within this people group there are some red heads, thus they have to be kicked out of the group. They tell people group 2 what God has told them. When they hear this, they scratch their heads, because they tell people group 1 that God told them that red heads are definitely in, but yellow skinned people are certainly out. How does one adjudicate between these people groups?

There is no realistic answer to this question, which is why realistically speaking, religious duty has always been seen as an extension of ones religious devotion. Failure to conform to religious duty may not get you all those gems you want in your crown, but it is not a conclusive reason to think that a person, act, or lifestyle is condemned by God. Thus, indictments contained in special revelation can only relate to spiritual virtues, and those which correlate to actual moral condemnations are in themselves already condemned.

Thus, it is no surprise to see in many religions a condemnation of immoral behavior, but this is not something we need religion to reveal to us. However, when we see a condemnation of something that is non-moral then our interest must be piqued, for now we have to consider whether or not such a thing is worthy of condemnation. And again, there is an easy enough reason to see why this should be. Consider, again, two people groups. People group 1 receives a revelation from God that Jews from people group 2 are condemned. Thus, they go to tell people group 2 that the Jews contained in their group stand condemned. Again, how does one adjudicate, when universal non-moral condemnations become possible within ones scope of religious devotion?

Not all sin need be associated with morality, but all sin is a condemnation of God. God can condemn rock-n-roll for non-moral reasons. If rock-n-roll worships the Devil then there is a non-moral reason not to do it, and to think that it is a sin, but this condemnation is not universal. It is conditional. It stands to reason that if rock-n-roll stops worshiping the devil, then there would be no reason to think that it would still be condemned by God. So it is only sin that we believe is universally condemnable by God that we must find a moral reason for its condemnation. By extension, if something lacks moral condemnation then it cannot possess a universal reason for it to be condemned by God. God is not capricious. God is not arbitrary. God is the Good.

So special revelation is allowed to consider many things as sinful, or condemned by God, without suggesting that everything considered as such must be worthy of a universal moral condemnation. God created humanity with a moral order, and this is just as much a part of engaging in special revelation as anything else. To worship God with our whole being we must engage in all scripture with our full moral awareness and sensibilities. Devotion to special revelation is furthermore neither threatened, nor diminished when one concludes that a scriptural condemnation of something is not a moral indictment. One can easily conclude that such a condemnation was a conditional one, which is just as authoritative and deliberate.

There is no moral reason to condemn homosexuality. The main reason homosexuality is morally sanctioned is because it is victimless and because it is mutually beneficial to those who practice it. These considerations are made without the need to appeal to natural order or law. They are basic to our volitional nature and are thusly, superior to any other moral evaluation that can be made. The first two, questions that all moral codes must answer before it can be introduced to any other moral synthesis is if it will violate another person’s ability to make moral choices, and if it will enhance your own ability to make future moral choices. So even if homosexuality stands as an anomaly, or aberration, in relation to the natural order it is not being destructive to such an order, nor is it causing anyone else to be self-destructive.

So while homosexuality may not enjoy the full benefits that the natural order of human sexuality offers, it does enjoy, without diminishment, the primary resource offered to us because of our sexuality, and that is intimacy. For all intents and purposes there is no reason to think that homosexuals have a diminished capacity to be intimate with one another, if there were then we would have good reason to think that it was actually immoral, but we do not. So there is no moral reason to condemn homosexuality.

My choice may be different from your choice, but my argument is a good one. Its reasoning is sound. You can either have a capricious God or a relative religion. You cannot have a God who is the Good and a religion that never changes at the same time. I have chosen a non-capricious God who is the source of all goodness. Your choice may be different than mine, but the logic of your choice cannot be different. For me, God is more important then my religious duty or the perception of my religion. I stand for a God who is the source of all goodness that is equally and reasonably administered to all people fairly and justly. I cannot call homosexuality a sin, simply because I cannot find any moral reason to do so, nor can I find any conditional reason that might warrant it. What will become of my religious devotion will have to be figured our later, that seems to be much less of a problem then a capricious God.