A review by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Issues Analyst

A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics. By William Stacy Johnson. 330 pp. Eerdmans. $25 hardcover.

[12-6-06]

It is a typology on which Johnson began working in 1993 (p. 262), and on which he did an impressive amount of digging in subsequent years. He has now enlarged it to seven types and changed some of the designations.

More on this later, since an expanded discussion of this typology is the core of the book. But it must first be said that this book ought to be of interest to many different kinds of people because of its breadth —

Because of these characteristics it is one of the most informative and stimulating books to be written in this area.

Now we come to the expanded seven-part typology, which is helpfully summarized in a chart on p. 108:

Non-affirming Viewpoints

Prohibition: same-gender desire and behavior is a perversion of God's created order ("intrinsically evil" and "objectively disordered" in Roman Catholic parlance); this created order is the chief source of guidance (often in the form of "natural law") concerning the kinds of behavior intended by God.

Toleration: same-gender orientation is a tragic burden, and same-gender people are to be welcomed but their lifestyle is not to be affirmed; their appropriate response is repentance and abstinence.

Accommodation: same-gender desire is one of the many consequences of fallen human life, but it is open to traces of grace; thus exclusive same-sex partnerships, while disobedient in form, are the lesser of evils if monogamous.

Welcoming and Affirming Viewpoints

Legitimation: same-gender desire is like all other sinful conditions; thus we should not single out gay sins while ignoring other sins, and we need to create a just world in which differences cease to be important.

Celebration: homosexuality is a fact of natural life, to be regarded as God's good gift.

Liberation: Cultural attitudes toward same-sex orientation are socially constructed and usually are caught up in wider injustices; therefore we need to challenge binary gender classifications and affirm the complexity of gender choices.

The Welcoming, Affirming, and Ordering Viewpoint

Consecration: sexual orientation is ambiguous, needing to be rightly ordered by consecrating one's sexuality in an exclusive, committed relationship blessed by the church.

A dialectical process is at work here, acknowledging points made by the more negative positions but noting their weaknesses and contradictions, then moving toward other positions that accept many of the points made by the earlier positions (at least pedagogically and strategically) but go beyond them. Yet it is acknowledged that even the more positive viewpoints have their weaknesses, sometimes by being naively positive, sometimes by failing to acknowledge the vulnerability of human life. Thus the resolution must be a complex one that acknowledges difficulties and requires a committed response. One cannot help but be reminded of the "moral development" theories put forward by Kohlberg and Foster, moving from punishment to convention to social contract and autonomous reasoning. But this is a better one, sensitive to the many complexities of Christian anthropology.

The "consecration" approach, which may look at first glance like a wild, far-out position, was set forth in a classic essay entitled "The Body's Grace" by Rowan Williams while he was a Regius Professor, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury. It emphasizes not the orders of creation, not rules for conduct, not repentance alone, but God's call into covenant relationship and the offer of sanctification through the Holy Spirit. Rather than the "textualism" of the non-affirming positions and the "contextualism" of the welcoming and affirming positions it calls on us to "consider what the gospel is bringing into being in our own context" (p. 98), which means concretely that sexuality must be respected and ordered with awareness that "it is not sex but rather humans who are God's good gift" (p. 100). This approach looks not to a fixed, legalistic order of creation, not to the abiding conflict of simul iustus et peccator, but to a dynamic, performative order of redemption, a context in which grace can abound. Rather than celebrating sexuality it calls for ordering, but ordering that is covenantal in nature, with the free participation of all who are involved.

On this basis Johnson moves into a consideration of the theology of marriage, focusing on companionship, commitment, and community; it is in this context that he examines the biblical passages that are often cited, coming to conclusions that do not deny but deepen Scripture, reading with it in order to see beyond what its writers themselves could envision (p. 110).

Johnson points out that in Galatians Paul lists the works of the flesh (5:19-21), then goes on to list the fruits of the Spirit (5:22-23), adding that, with regard to these, "there is no law." This is perhaps the core of his "consecration" approach. It genuinely fits Paul's ethics, for Paul often emphasized freedom, spontaneity, confidence, going beyond the letter of the law and often defying the spirit of legalism. Even before Paul the early church made new openings to Gentiles, eunuchs, and women. Our own Reformed tradition speaks of the "third use of the law" — not regulating outward behavior, not convicting people of sin, but offering guidance to those who consent to be guided by the Spirit (C-4.086; 5.085; 6.106; 6.108).

There's the theology, and it is a valid one, drawing upon important if often neglected aspects of the Bible and the doctrinal tradition. But how does it relate to the political, legislative, and legal struggles of recent years? These struggles are so important that it is valuable for non-lawyers to learn their way around the case law and the legal principles that have been applied, often affecting GLBT people in intensely personal ways.

Johnson argues that same-gender relationships should not only be "consecrated within our religious communities" but "validated within our legal systems" and "welcomed within the framework of our democratic polity" (p. 3). How does he support this?

The Constitution says that persons are to receive "due process" and have "equal protection" under the law. That is why he takes a dim view of the anti-gay referendums that were successful in a number of states (Colorado's and Nebraska's were especially notorious): in the name of majority rule, and often with the claim that GLBT people are being given "special rights," they discriminate against some citizens and deprive them of equal protection and due process, not because of any criminal behavior but simply because of who they are. This is the main reason given by the courts when they strike them down. It is not "judicial activism" but a consistent reading of the Constitution. Rights are not subject to majority vote.

Johnson argues, against the strict constructionists, that the Constitution acknowledges liberties that are prior to and broader than the Constitution itself (hence the "right to privacy," which is not there in so many words but emerges from a long series of legal decisions). Democracy means more than majority rule. It even means more than following the procedures explicitly laid down in the Constitution. Thus it is necessary to develop a theory of "deliberative democracy," which means giving reasons that are "mutually acceptable and generally accessible" to a broad public, with the understanding that decisions remain open to challenge and revision in the future (p. 208, citing Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson). This is, we might say, the political analogue of the "consecration" approach in Christian ethics, not resting with what is written in stone, as Alabama's "Ten Commandments judge" Roy Moore would have us do, but calling for mutual responsibility and openness to new insights. And just as the consecration approach goes beyond both repression and celebration, deliberative democracy requires us to go beyond both the communitarian insistence on shared values and the traditional liberal rhetoric of "rights" to a consideration of consequences and a more reflective language of "goods" (pp. 213-18; 318, n. 70).

Recent victories and setbacks have often revolved around the issue of "gay marriage" and the alternatives to it, intensely debated in recent years. Here again we are given some helpful clarifications. A number of European countries have made provision for "registered partnerships" or "domestic partnerships," recognizing that a same-sex couple constitute a household and even a family. But this falls far short of the marital rights that are embedded in U.S. law. Another alternative is "civil unions," adopted by the Vermont legislature and signed into law by Howard Dean. This has the advantage of adopting a different label and letting "marriage" have its customary meaning. But even when it offers the same rights and privileges under state law, it is not the equivalent of marriage under federal law, especially after DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. Analysts count 1138 benefits under federal law that can go only to heterosexual couples. Under present circumstances, civil unions are "separate but not equal."

Thus same-sex marriage is the only approach that is truly just under U.S. legal principles. And yet recent experience indicates that "marriage" is far more a hot-button term than "civil unions." In Vermont, the furor died down within a few years after the adoption of civil unions by the legislature; in Massachusetts, the state supreme court's insistence on "marriage" has fueled unremitting controversy and now a demand for a referendum by Governor Mitch Romney. This suggests a political strategy of (1) making a forceful case for gay marriage, but, (2) while pursuing this goal through democratic exchange, being willing to compromise with civil unions while the public is being educated and learning to live with a new issue, and (3) demanding the repeal of DOMA and kindred constitutional amendments and statutes which deny equal benefits to gay couples (pp. 219-20, 227). Even winning the "m" word would not be a victory of couples cannot receive tangible benefits.

Let me end by mentioning that controversial consideration of tactics, for it is a point that some GLBT advocates may want to contest. It is one of the many ways that this book not only opens up new perspectives but provokes us to fresh reflection and debate.

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