HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS REMAIN THE NORM

Marlin Jeschke

The controversy over homosexuality is claiming the time and energy of many Christians, not just Mennonite but also Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, and more. It may be helpful to remind ourselves that this issue too will recede. Remember the elderly woman who said she found comfort in those Bible verses that began with the phrase, "And it came to pass"? Remember too the forebears of the Mennonites and Amish who split in part over buttons versus hooks and eyes? Or other churches who split over the doctrine of "eternal security"?

I have declined to get involved in the debate over homosexuality, in part because the passing of time and people’s weariness over controversy eventually causes the fires of conflicts to burn themselves out. And often new conflicts eclipse old ones. But my reflections have brought me to some baseline principles that guide me for now, even as I remain open to new facts and truth.

The first principle is what we have all observed, and it is already observed in the pages of the New Testament—that not everyone is called to the relationship of heterosexual marriage. When I was growing up we spoke of "confirmed bachelors." We also had "spinsters" in our communities. Sometimes these people continued to live with family. Sometimes they found companionship and living arrangements with friends of their own gender, likely for several reasons, including economic considerations, security, or to escape loneliness.

Unfortunately these people whose calling was not heterosexual marriage were sometimes teased and urged to get married, their "friends" offering to set them up with dates, though usually they were respected. Persons who don’t want to get into a heterosexual marriage should have their choices and decisions respected.

Now whether same-sex orientation is by birth or through social influence or both—on that I believe all the evidence is not in yet. Further scientific research on the subject will surely come. Still, if people are not heterosexually oriented, too much debate in America and in the church ignores the distinctions between same-sex orientation and sexual practices. There is growing evidence that the practice of sodomy has serious consequences for health. Apart from that, companionship of people of the same gender is to my thinking no problem.

The second principle I recognize, related to the first, is that sexual/gender relationships should not be governed by an insistence on immediate personal gratification. We all, I hope, know people who did not indulge in premarital sex or indulge in sex between marriages if they were widowed or divorced. Or did not get into extramarital sex if they had a spouse with health problems.

For the most part such people who refrained from the "right" to sexual gratification often had more and better sex in their lives as a whole and were spared the effects of sexually transmitted diseases to boot, not to mention being spared emotional pain and scars. In addition they often set a good example to their children.

But personal gratification in sex, as in other aspects of life, is almost an obsession in American society today, part of the right to "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness." One of the best friends I ever had—my first wife, actually—once said (not to me but to our children) that a person’s philosophy of marriage should be to make another person happy.

We’ve likely all heard the saying, "Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own." That principle applies also to the search for gratification and happiness, as many people with AIDS have discovered. Be careful about demanding your right to gratification of your personal desires without regard to a consideration of your entire life.

Foregoing the right to gratification of sexual desires may give you a lot more happiness in the long run than insisting upon gratification and showing little concern for the good of the broader society. This advice applies to far more heterosexuals than homosexuals, but it does apply to homosexuals too.

This leads me to the third baseline principle. The lifestyle decisions of people in our society should be governed much more than they are by the good of the next generation, our children and youth. We don’t have to look around us very long to see a lot of people in American society who don’t seem to care about what happens to their own kids, even physically, let alone morally.

Then there are all too many who may care about their own children but are not concerned about the children and youth of our society in general. We should all have heard by now of social scientific studies that show the importance of a two-parent family for the social and moral health of children—a mother who demonstrates tenderness and affection, and a father who demonstrates strength and security, although not without love.

Again, this principle applies far more often to heterosexual relationships than to homosexual or lesbian ones. We are aware of the plague of single-parent families where men have sired children but leave the mother to rear them, even if they may supply an ex-wife or single mom with alimony, which they often don’t until forced by the law.

Some years ago I read a manuscript by a friend of mine entitled, "Why God Should be Called Father." The writer noted that in much of the mammal world of nature males sire offspring but then abandon the mother to let her bring up the young alone. In the human species, he suggested, we have hopefully evolved to the point where males can make the moral decision to be faithful to their sexual partners, their spouses, and to their children, giving their children the benefit of two-parent nurture.

The importance of the two-parent family for the future good of society may not seem to apply to homosexual or lesbian relationships because most of them do not involve children, at least not generated by direct procreation. For now heterosexuality remains the underlying shape of humanity, inasmuch as male sperm and feminine womb are still needed to produce children, at least until same-sex couples are able to produce children by cloning. In view of the importance of traditional two-parent families, the examples of same-sex relationships, becoming more visible or conspicuous all the time, even flaunted, may register an unhelpful influence on the children and youth of our society.

Many people from the gay community say God made them that way and that God made all things good. They embrace their identity. And many parents of gay children accept them and defend them against criticism. Yet I have heard of many gay people saying they wish they had been born straight. Or parents of gay children wish their children had a heterosexual orientation. But I have never heard a heterosexual person wish to have a gay or lesbian orientation, which again seems to confirm heterosexuality as the underlying sexual norm of the human race.

Recently many members of the homosexual community have agitated for legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Canada has made this national law. Such churches as United Church of Christ and Unitarian-Universalist have already recognized it for some time. Some individual ministers have officiated at same-sex marriages in denominations that do not countenance such marriage.

Calling same-sex unions marriage may take care of some legal problems such as spousal benefits, hospital visitation privileges, and so forth. In the end, however, it will surely complicate our vocabulary, inevitably adding an asterisk to the word marriage in popular usage to distinguish between marriage A (heterosexual) and marriage B (gay or lesbian).

Even the demand to call it marriage once again underscores the point, even if obliquely, that heterosexual relationships constitute the norm. Otherwise why should homosexuals or lesbians desire the term marriage for their relationship, a term that centuries have invested with the meaning of a heterosexual relationship, which is precisely what a same-sex marriage is rejecting?

As I read it, from the Christian perspective both the married life and the single life are callings. Both deserve respect. Both have their respective responsibilities with regard to sexual expression. In recent years the plague of sexual immorality, abetted by TV, the movies, the Internet, magazines, and the porn industry, is doing its worst to destroy both the institution of heterosexual marriage and the moral life of people in same-sex relationships.

—Marlin Jeschke, Goshen, Indiana, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Goshen College, where he taught for 33 years. He is the author of various writings on church discipline, including most recently "How Discipline Died," published in Christianity Today (Aug. 2005, p. 31).