Gay Marriage

I recently sent out to many of my friends a link to the Friends of Norm website. This was a suggested visit from Andrew Hoogheem, and I genuinely felt moved by the story. Even if you have an issue with gay marriage, if you are a pastor, and your daughter is getting married with or without your participation, I would hope that you would choose to participate.
So, my friend Aubrey was a mite taken aback with this story, and asked me about my views of gay marriage, most notably, had I always supported it. Well, the truth of the matter is, I never really thought about it until recent news events came to the fore.
I do know that when I was a very young man, I remember asking my mother if two men could marry each other, or two women. Having asked this at the age of nine, I came to the conclusion that if homosexuality was truly "unnatural" then a nine-year old child should have known that. I also had to go through much soul-searching about my sexual identity, but by the age of 16, after a thorough literature review, I realized that the male underwear models in the K-mart ads couldn't hold a candle to the brassiere section.
Anyways, I believe there are many social arguments for gay marriage, and there are other far more competent social scientists available to discuss these in other arenas. However, seeing as I am a board-licensed theologian, I will now tackle the difficult issue of Christianity and homosexuality, more specifically gay marriage.
The first thing I would like to say, is, although I believe, as a Christian, that the Bible is the highest word in the realm of theology, that the Bible itself makes no claim to being the only or possibly the final word on the nature of God. There is an admonition, at the end of the Book of Revelations, not to add or remove any words from that specific book. However, this book was placed at the end of the Bible by the early church fathers, somewhat arbitrarily, and this admonition obviously only applies to the Book of Revelations itself.
Also, there are many admonitions in various books to avoid false teachings, however, the early church defined its core doctrine in the following creeds, none of which make reference to homosexuality specifically. Nor do any major Christian denominations define this as a salvific, or creed-worthy issue.
Also, the only time the Bible refers to its own authority, is in II Timothy 3:16. In my mind this verse is more problematic than anything, because the Greek word, graphe, merely refers to any writing in general.
The point being, as Christians, we need more than just scripture to interpret God's will, we can also use the Church, in which some with spiritual authority are already endorsing gay marriage, the Holy Spirit, which is moving some in the church to embrace gay marriage, and our own reason, by which, through science, we have now discovered that homosexuality is quite natural and not deviant at all. However, back to the Bible.
One of the conspicuous things about all of Jesus' collected sayings is that he never mentions homosexuality. He does take some time to condemn divorce, and very gently condemns promiscuity, but not homosexuality. Gay marriage, in an ideal world, discourages both of these things.
Also, homosexuality in the world of the New Testament was always, by nature, extra-marital. In fact, the nature of marriage as a system by which property can be passed from generation to generation is not even biblical itself, but was rather invented by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who were quite tolerant of extra-marital sex, as long as "bastards" did not make any claim to property rights. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs and kings of Israel live much as many Muslims and Mormons do now, marrying as many females as their little heart desired. In fact, it was the cultural practices of the Greeks and the Romans which redefined marriage as to be a contract between and limited to two people. Nowhere in the Old Testament is this definition of marriage to be found.
Therefore, homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world must have been by definition only extra-marital, because a homosexual relationship did not allow for the transfer of property to the next generation, and therefore, when it is condemned in the New Testament, the actual verbiage used specifically refers to men having extramarital affairs with men. The only place where the New Testament is not specifically referring to extra-marital homosexuality is Romans 1, and in this chapter, I believe, the homosexuality referred to is merely a symptom of the materialism embraced by a certain unnamed group of people and not the root of the problem. If this verse were taken to its logical conclusion, W. and Cheney (ol' Bush and Dick, the winning team) would be knocking boots and spreading butt herpes to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al.
Hence, we need to travel to Acts 15, The Council of Jerusalem. The problem the first church council was trying to address, was the conversion of non-Jews to Christianity. Of course, at this stage in history, this oftentimes meant that a man was going to have to leave part of his John Thomas behind in order to follow the way. Also, there were all sorts of kosher rules which they would now have to live with, which would have been completely unacceptable to most Greeks or Romans. Thus a principle this Council decided on, is that the specific moral regulations of Judaism could be adapted based on the predominant culture.
The Council, however, decided that there were 4 things that were worth preserving about the Jewish heritage.
1. Not eating meat offered to idols.
2. Not engaging in "sexual immorality."
3. Not eating strangled animals.
4. Not eating blood.
Well, the first one was already thrown out the window by Paul in I Corinthians. We'll skip the second for a moment, the third and fourth requirements (some would say these are one in the same) were quickly discarded by the early church, the blood requirement being forgotten in the evangelization of the heathen Anglo-Saxons, who loved to eat blood pies.
The point is, God can speak to us through culture as much as he does through scripture. Also, based on our culture, we can adjust our attitude towards scripture and its prescriptions and proscriptions. Our very idea of monogamy is not a biblical concept. Also, our idea of marrying the person you are in love with is unbiblical. Marriage, up until recent decades, was about property, class, and family. Would anyone like to stand up and say that a heterosexual marrying for love is immoral?
Paul is very clear on this point in Galatians, when he states unequivocally that morality is not about legalism, but about our hearts. There are many examples of the Israelites adopting the cultural practices of their neighbors, from the very text of some of the Psalms to the story of Jethro, the great lawgiver Moses' father-in-law, who, although not a Jew, gave Moses some very practical advice in the organization of Hebrew society, which he then followed.
Therefore, we return to the beginning of the argument, if two loving people want to commit themselves to an exclusive sexual relationship, and not spread around STDs, which Paul cryptically suggests as the punishment for those homosexuals in Romans 1, then I think we ought to let them. If someone is seriously so bothered by this that they are driven to distraction, I would suggest that they channel that energy into not lying, cheating, defrauding their neighbor, abusing the poor and the widows, and lording their authority over others.
That is enough of a challenge for me, that I am going to stop wagging my fingers, sign out, and see if I can't start on number 1.
God bless those pagans.