Episcopal Church and the Gay Debate
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:03:41 -0500
To:
From: "Peter Greenwood"
Subject: RE: [forum] Re: [HoB/D] What would it look like to honor all members'
convictions?
Message-ID:
Lew and Ann
> I shan't attempt to speak for Ann, but I think her question was about
> intersexed persons, that is, people who have both male and female
> genitalia. Hermaphrodites, if you will. "Male AND female created He
> them." Where do these persons fit into your equation? If a person has
> both male and female characteristics, then ANY sexual expression would
> be, in a sense, same sex behaviour. How do we square this with either
> position?
You are right that I misunderstood the word 'intersexual'. (I also prefer to
use spelling such as 'colour' and 'favour', and am familiar with the term
Hermaphrodite, so that will have to point to the origin of my ignorance!).
In any event ...
I would imagine that in the first position (what I referred to as Position
A) the existence of intersexed persons is evidence that human sexuality is a
multidimensional phenomenon, not simply a matter of maleness and femaleness.
The Bible therefore needs to be read with this in mind. Maybe the statement
in Genesis would be taken (by those holding this position) as constrained by
a pre-scientific understanding of the variety in human biology; we need no
longer to be so constrained.
As for the second position (but I'm not referring to the bigoted version
thereof!) the fact that there are intersexed people does not say anything
about what God intended for humanity. We cannot use what we see going on in
the world around us to reliably discern God's intent. Were we to do so, with
all the oppression and suffering that so many experience, including
children, not to mention the awful effects of natural disasters, we could
easily come to the conclusion that God is a capricious and cantankerous
ogre, or alternatively a powerless and incompetent pseudogod. It is only by
his revelation that we can reliably believe in his love and his justice, and
what his intentions are for humanity.
(Concerning the specific issue as to what sexual expression is God's intent
for intersexed persons, the easy answer is "We haven't been told." No doubt
the moral and ethical theologians amongst us could do better than that. But
we have now strayed quite far from the issue facing the Church, which has to
do with same-sex orientation of people who are either male or female; while
sexual expression for intersexed persons is obviously important, especially
for intersexuals, it's not the issue generating the heated and sometimes
acrimonious argument.)
So in terms of my primary argument, namely that there are two fundamentally
different ways of understanding God's creating humanity that lie behind the
dispute about blessing same-sex practices, I do not see it being impacted by
the fact that there are intersexed persons. Each view has it's own way of
understanding the significance of the fact that there are intersexed persons
(whether convincing to the other view or not). But the two fundamentally
different views still exist.
So we should be debating what lies at the roots of the dispute, not what we
see at the symptom level.
Peter
Pittsburgh
