Confrontation with Same-Sex Marriage
by Amitai Bin-Nun
February 19, 2004
"Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22).
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? ...Neither the ... homosexual offenders" (1 Corinthians 6:10).
"We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says:" He who does not love does not know God" (Nostra Aetate, Pope Paul VI, October 28, 1965).
"For, in all personal unions such as marriage, friendship, or comradeship, however strong the bonds uniting two individuals, the modi existentiae remain totally unique and hence, incongruous, at both levels, the ontological and the experiential" ("Confrontation", Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, 1964).
There is no need to recount the turmoil that modern thought and means of communication have wrought within religious communities over the past half millennium. The most telling sign of religion's decline is its very claim of a "resurgence," whether referring to the evangelical or ba'al teshuvah movement. This assertion, whether or not it is true, reveals a consciousness of being on the retreat. And now, in the last bastion of Western Judeo-Christianity, the United States, religion faces a key litmus test: Can it survive the erosion of religiously inspired legal impediments to same-sex marriage, heretofore provided by the limitation of marriage to a man and woman? Furthermore, in light of the ever-burgeoning circle of American inclusion, can the religious lobby preempt this impending reality by imbedding its values into the United States Constitution?
Wall Street Journal columnist David Frum opined: "The gay marriage debate is perceived by many as a debate about gays. It is not. It is a debate about marriage." It is not. This debate is about a central issue today's religions must now confront: Should members of the increasingly embattled faith community wage their battle in the public sector? Does battle in the public sphere expose religion to standards and arguments it is not meant to withstand or is simply incapable of addressing? Or, does a failure to nurture an environment friendly to Biblical ethos allow secularism's perceived immorality to fill the public square and spill over into our homes, thereby destroying the last bastion of firm standards?
The Catholic Church circumvents the problem of imposing a religious directive on the public by insisting that the ramifications of the homosexual act go beyond the bedroom and the bodies of two consenting adults. The Catechism of the Catholic Church pronounces: "...homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They [homosexual acts] are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life...[they] lack an essential and indispensable fianlity." By arguing that homosexuality goes against the grain of nature, a ban on homosexuality becomes the imperitive of collective humanity, which, as an entity, sees living in consonance with natural law as a worthy ideal. This idea is representative of the Catholic Church's general tendency to overly conflate rationality and religion.
This argument has obvious flaws, which is not unexpected since it is but a fig leaf for the Christian agenda of confusing natural law with what Michael Wyschograd called "its first cousin, if not twin, natural theology." The main thrust of the argument is to highlight the role man has vis-a-vis creation and contrast it with the homosexual relationship that does not fit this template for humanity's manifest role in the world. It would follow that society should similarly legislate against masturbation and other forms of sexual activity that cannot result in procreation.
Man, as an individual, needs fulfillment, and the experience of love is an essential building block of the human experience. "Homosexual persons are called to chastity" as mandated by creation, maintains the Catholic Church. This theology negates the individual and denies a major component of people (figures on the low end estimate the male homosexual population at 1-2%). An alternative approach, superior in its recognition of the role of the community in regulating the conscience of the individual, can be extrapolated a major essay by Rabbi Soloveitchik.
In "Confrontation," Rabbi Soloveitchik outlines three modes of interaction utilized by man: Non-confronted, confronted, and covenantal (the names of the categories are my own). An individual who engages in homosexual activity lives in the non-confronted regime; he sees the world and, much as Epicure and the hedonists of ancient Greece, finds a repository of pleasure. "Nonconfronted man... fails to realize his great capacity for winning freedom from an unalterable natural order." As there is no sexual norm in the natural order, non-confronted man sees no need to rise above his instinctual desires. Sexual deviancy is a misnomer because deviancy implies going astray from the natural path, but there is no more normative path for the individual than to follow his instinctual desires. It is only when man shifts the focus beyond himself that a rationale for restraint develops.
Confronted man "begins to examine his station in this world and he finds himself suddenly assailed by perplexity and fear." His reaction, like Adam I of The Lonely Man of Faith is to conquer the world, subjecting it to an I-It relationship. Confronted man can react to his trial by despairing, but the greatness of humanity is that it has responded with the "most miraculous of all human gestures -- cognition." This is the universal human community, displaced from -- and transcending -- its natural role of pleasure-seeking. A key milestone on the road to human fulfillment is mastery of the world, not just cognitively, but physically: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth." As a community, cognitive man can oppose homosexuality as a reversion to its more primitive unproductive, and hedonistic state. But on this level, the imperative of productivity devolves upon the community, as a collective mission. The whole of society, including Catholic Man, can be productive even without the contribution of solitary man.
Finally, Rav Soloveitchik states, the highest mode of interaction accessible to humans, and one he must conquer if he desires self-fulfillment, is the confrontation of equals. The gap between two individuals is insurmountable, the uniqueness of every soul unconquerable. And that is the greatness of the human being: in a social encounter, he balances his existential isolation with his need to be a social being who yearns for a "together-existence." That, according to Rav Soloveitchik, is the role of the Jewish people. We are members of the universal human race -- we join with them in the cosmic struggle of making sense of our reality and perpetuating the existence of God's crowning achievement, homo sapien. But at the same time, we answer to the private covenant of Sinai, bound up in the particularistic fate of the Jewish people.
To the extent that God has enjoined us from homosexuality, it is a private matter for our faith community. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch specifically eschews the "natural law" explanation and declares that we do not comprehend the rationale for sexual restrictions. Adherence is demanded solely by out allegiance to God. We do not look for the particular details of religion to provide universal answers, in contrast with Nostra Aetate, which proclaims: "Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition: What is man? What is moral good, what sin?" Not so for us! As Jews, we often engage in private communion with God, but when we close our Talmud or prayer book, we begin to answer these pressing questions anew, on an entirely different and universally applicable matrix.
But what of our responsibility as members of the congress of humanity? Do we have a responsibility to inculcate positive and life-preserving attitudes amongst our brothers with whom we share our confronted existence? Some have suggested that the Bible's extreme denunciation of homosexuality as an abomination can be understood more as a social commentary and less as an ontological barometer of the sin's severity. Indeed, at other times, the Bible uses the word "abomination" to convey an extreme violation of social norms (Egyptians dining with Jews, bringing idolatry into ones house, and, the untimate breakdown of communal norms, the apostate city). However, one verse serves as a notable exception: Deuteronomy 24:4 says one may not remarry his divorced wife who has since remarried to another man: "She has been defiled, for it is an abomination before God." The explanation of Nachmanides, a thirteenth century commentator, can offer insight into why the seemingly innocuous action of retaking a divorced wife is termed "an abomination": The unrestricted ability of a husband to remarry his wife after divorcing her will lead to a cheapening of marriage. By reinforcing the gravitas of marriage, society is strengthened and the moral order is upheld. To do otherwise is to permit "abomination" to propagate, as the verse concludes: "And you shall not bring sin upon the land."
Society sets the dominant ethos that the individual uses as his baseline. As members of general society, we share in this responsibility of creating and maintaining a just and merciful standard. David Greenberg, professor of sociology at New York University, writes in "The Construct of Homosexuality," that it is society that creates the definitions by which any behavior, including homosexuality, is judged as either conforming or deviant. This observation reinforces the notion that our input may be a crucial factor in determining the definition of the American family.
But as secular participants in American democracy, which is the persona through which we participate in political and social affairs, do we really know what "brings sin upon the land"? If we achieve the impossibility of divorcing Jewish ethics from the Jewish God, as the Rav demands for our secular interaction, do we really know what would be left? Perhaps the cherished values of America -- inclusion, enfranchisement, opportunity -- would defeat the vague notions of a natural law divorced from theology!
Unfortunately, this questions is not mere fodder for theoretical ruminations; this issue will be a major factor in many elections to come. Further, it is inevitable that the religious community's hand will untimately be forced. As Americans, we must vote our conscience. Theology notwithstanding, religious individuals tend to be conservative; we will vote "no" to the question of homosexual marriage and will not support candidates who endorse this radical change. However, the greatness of democracy is that, over time, the will of the people builds great nations. If America, confronted as Adam of old, chooses to build a world based on a liberal policy of inclusion, her verdict will be accepted. Confronted man -- society actively engaged in consideration of policy -- may use his sincere intellect to build the world in any manner he sees fit. It is not the role of covenantal man, who maintains a private romance with faith, to interfere with the worldy construction engaged in by wider society. Indeed, his personal perspectives bear no relevance to this debate.
Some argue that an America shorn of its Judeo-Christian guidance will be an unsuitable home for the faithful; such may indeed be the case. However, "the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Democracy has long made America a country hospitable to religion. As grateful residents, we must either find some way to abide by the democratic process, or leave. As constituents, we have a right to influence our democracy, to help break out of our collective confrontation with modernity, but religion does not entitle us to a greater role in this process.
The Jewish people, elected by God, have the greatest of reponsibilities. Our private communion with God instructs us on how to approach homosexuality, and how to instruct non-Jews to approach it as wel. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, instructed his students to embark on a campaign to spread knowledge of the Noachide laws amongst non-Jews. Although our approach may differ, there is ackowledgement that our privately held Torah should publicly maifest itself on this and other matters. I would argue that when we encourage non-Jews to adopt the Noachide Laws, which we may do by providing a sterling example, their acceptance should be in the context of a faith relationship, perhaps within the framework of their own numinous religious reality. Does it magnify the name of God if confronted man accepts his law on the authority of natural law, or even worse, legislation? The Rav's premise implies that the religious injunction against homosexuality is not the analogue of a societal ban adopted using secular law.
In the trying days ahead, may our faith community strengthen its bonds, both to Heaven and amongst ourselves. I pray that the moral example set by our people will spur the non-Jews to participate in our relationship with God and "on that day, God shall be one and one will be his name," for confronted man will have the same agenda as covenantal Man.
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