For Evangelical readers, it may be most helpful to understand ‘same-sex orientation’ through the words of fellow Evangelicals who believe that same-sex relations are condemned by God in scripture and are never morally acceptable, but who have had this experience all their lives.  This removes a number of concerns about gay Christians ‘rationalising’ their faith or morality.  Everyone I quote here is either married to someone of the opposite sex or is committed to lifelong celibacy.  All of them wrote books to recommend this to others to others and encourage them in living similar lives.  They are frequently misunderstood by both LGBT people in society and by other Christians.  If you’re looking for people who pay a consistently high price for their faithfulness to God, look no further than these.

Ever since the beginning of puberty, my sexual desires have been focused on some members of my own sex.  What I thought might be just a teenage phase (I’d read Brideshead Revisited) has never gone away and I remain exclusively same-sex attracted in my mid/late thirties, despite all my best efforts and prayers to change.  (Ed Shaw)¹

[At] the same time that I was learning to engage with God as a hungry, growing young Christian, the realization dawned on me like a dead weight sinking in my stomach that no amount of spiritual growth seemed to have any effect on my sexual preference.  The homoerotic attractions I had been conscious of since waking up to the strange new universe of sexuality remained so constant and unbroken that I came to realize I was experiencing what was usually called “homosexuality”.  I had a homosexual orientation.  I was gay.  (Wesley Hill)²

Ever since I had had any conscious feelings of intimacy and longing, they’d always been toward other guys.  When I became a Christian, I assumed that those feelings would naturally subside and appropriate attractions to the other sex would take their place.  The fact that this didn’t happen left me confused and bewildered, angry with God for not doing what I took to be his job in all this.  (Sam Allberry)³

But none of this made a dent on my same-sex attractions.  I don’t think I had any expectations of what would happen in my sexuality; I was too focused on the newness of Christian life as a whole.  As the months added up in my faith without change in those desires, I never felt ashamed of them.  They were, after all, unchosen, and I was serious about saying no to what they demanded.  I was mentally convinced of the what of my sexuality: to say no to same-gender sexual lust and actions.  (Rachel Gilson)⁴

For easy reference I will sum up this experience of same-sex orientation in the short acronym TULIP:

• It is a (T) total reversal of heterosexual attraction: the absence of it, not just the addition of same-sex attraction.
• It occurs (U) universally in human societies, and so, in all Christian churches.
• It consists of (L) loving and romantic attraction and bonding, not merely sexual desire.
• It is (I) involuntary not chosen,
• and (P) permanent not changeable.

I must immediately add that this is not the only kind of same-sex attraction that exists in the world.  Some people experience bisexual attraction, that is, they have varying degrees of attraction to both men and women.  This is in fact more common than exclusive same-sex attraction (see §7.c, Statistics).  Also, some people’s experience and understanding of their own sexual attraction changes over time, more commonly for women than for men.  On top of which, it can take a long time for a person to recognise and come to terms with this experience, especially if it is not understood in their community or society, or if it is actively misunderstood.  Evangelicals who write and speak about being same-sex oriented spent a lot of time on these aspects of their stories.

However, for a small proportion of all people, this TULIP experience is constant for life – or at least as constant as heterosexual attraction is for most people.  While the term ‘same-sex orientation’ can be used more broadly, I will use it only for this exclusive and permanent attraction.  So when I say ‘orientation’, I mean this TULIP definition.  See if you can spot how the following quotation get orientation wrong.  The author is discussing marriage within the framework of Natural Law.

Note that for a relation so to be ordered to procreation in this principled and empirically manifested way, sexual orientation is not a disqualifier.  The union of a husband and wife bears this connection to children even if, say, the husband is also attracted to men.  (Gergis et al 2010, p.43, n.*)

See the problem?  It would be bisexuality, not same-sex orientation, if a husband were ‘also’ attracted to men.  We would say ‘only’ attracted to men if we meant same-sex orientation.  The author of the footnote has seemingly used orientation as a loose synonym for attraction.  That is not how we are using the word here.  We mean a permanent and exclusive attraction.

It is this exclusive and lifelong experience of same-sex orientation that gives us the most trouble as Evangelicals.  For all practical purposes it is an innate quality.  It may not make sense to say a person is ‘born that way,’ since it will often be the awakening of sexual or romantic attraction in adolescence that makes orientation apparent.  Still, when it is an involuntary and permanent phenomenon, happening more-or-less at random, it’s not a meaningful distinction to say that a person becomes gay at adolescence rather than at birth.  People may as well be born this way for all the difference it makes.

We must allow that orientation has been part of human nature all through history.  As such, it must not be confused with more recent or purely situational concerns.  It is separate and distinct from secularity, the sexual revolution, liberalism, Marxism, and any kind of modern individualism.  Likewise, it has no necessary connection with the gay rights movement, gay ‘lifestyles’ or ‘agendas’ or ‘panics’, and the campaigns for same-sex marriage.  It predates all those things.  It has no necessary connection to sexual liberty or sexual experimentation, as the desire for same-sex marriages should indicate.  It spans left-wing politics, right-wing politics, culture, and culture wars.  It is independent of every human society and every historical moment.  It cannot be assessed through these filters or reduced to these frames of reference.  It must be considered as itself.

Same-sex orientation is often obscured by other concerns.  In our society, young people use a much wider range of self-descriptions for gender and sexual identity than was common even twenty years ago.  Many people who advocate for same-sex oriented people do so as part of a wider commitment to sexual freedoms in society and a moral claim that wide sexual experience is good for people.  However, the incidence of constant and exclusive same-sex orientation has not seen a corresponding rise with these changes.  Orientation should not be confused with cultural or social trends.

Same-sex orientation is a relatively new discovery.  It was largely invisible for most of western history, concealed under notorious homosexual immorality on one hand and the economic necessities of heterosexual marriage on the other.  But same-sex orientation became well understood in western life over the course of the twentieth century, and same-sex marriage became economically viable for ordinary people in the same period.  Evangelicals encountered it in the aftermath of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and for a long time dismissed it as a related development.  Sex researchers like Kinsey noted that same sex attraction and intercourse was substantially more common than had been thought, and thus considered it normal, but in the context of the sexual revolution, this was understood more as justifying liberty and pleasure than explaining orientation.  Liberal ministers and theologians led much of the early engagement with same-sex experience, and that also made Evangelicals suspicious.  In fact, some of us question whether it is worth calling a modern discovery at all.

I think assumptions about sexual orientation make for weak theological arguments for affirming same-sex marriage.  Ethically, it doesn’t really work, since in-born desires don’t justify behavior.  But even the very nature of sexual attraction is complex.  Some people may experience a more rigid orientation where there’s little to no fluidity in their sexual attractions, while others experience unexpected and unpredictable fluidity within their general orientation.  The categories of gay, straight, and bisexual might be helpful for some.  But we should not think of sexual orientation as some ironed-out scientific discovery akin to Copernicus figuring out that the earth revolves around the sun.  (Sprinkle 2018, p.198)

However, I am writing here for the people for whom the terms ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ really are helpful, and really do describe a person’s experience.  I’m not addressing those whose experience is bisexual, or gender-fluid, or anything else.  And I am writing for Evangelicals who have encountered a bundle of new difficulties in both theology and public life precisely because same-sex orientation is now understood in ways it formerly was not.  I’m not addressing people of earlier times, when orientation, if it was experienced by some, was masked by many other issues.  So I will refer to the shift in understanding that has produced our present problems as a discovery.

As we proceed we will examine the idea that “inborn desires don’t justify behaviour” by seeing whether and how arguments from nature, morals, marriage, and theology fare when we ask them about orientation.  For example, when scripture condemns the wilful perverting of one’s sexual desires, it matters significantly that a same-sex oriented person has never done so.  But if course, there is much more to consider here.

We’ll review how common same-sex orientation is in an appendix (§7.c, Statistics).  A few caveats and disclaimers are needed, but the short and rough answer is 1 in 65, or 1–2% of any population.  That’s about 100 million people in the world, a group that, if they were a single nation, would be our sixteenth largest by population.  Just divide the total number for your church, school, locality, nation or denomination by 65 and you’ll get the same- sex oriented group, if you haven’t driven them away.  If you know how to do probability calculations, you could use that 1 in 65 to get the ratio for any small group, say your extended family or circle of friends.  It’s too many people to try and ignore.

Sexual orientation was studied by Havelock Ellis and Magnus Hirschfeld in the late 1800s, then Alfred Kinsey and others in the mid-1900s.  In England, the Wolfenden Report recommended decriminalisation in 1957.  While their work has since been substantially updated, the basic judgement that same-sex orientation exists has by now been completely vindicated.

When should churches have understood and responded to same-sex orientation?  I would suggest from the 1930s, long before it became a politicised issue.  It is especially sobering that, as pastoral practitioners before the rise of psychotherapy, Christian ministers were far and away the best-placed to hear about the experience of orientation from those directly affected.

Timothy Willem Jones’s 2013 book, Sexual Politics in the Church of England, 1857–1957, quotes a modern-sounding exchange from the letters of Cosmo Lang, who was in 1938 the Archbishop of Canterbury.  (He was the cleric with the shock of white hair in the movie The King’s Speech.)  A certain Dr. R. D. Reid had been headmaster of King’s School in Taunton, until discharged from that position after a trial involving some kind of homosexual scandal.  The reporting conventions of the time mean that the details of the trial are not known.

Reid’s letter to the Archbishop argued that ‘inverts’ should not be regarded as criminals or insane, but as “A definite variation of the human species,” a position of which he was convinced “by personal experience, from knowledge of many homosexuals, and from the conclusions of the latest scientific investigators…”.  The church, he wrote, had participated in a vast conspiracy of silence against homosexuals.  It provided no pastoral support or information, and the subject was ignored in moral and theological works.  “The attitude of the ostrich has only served to alienate honest lay homosexual people who try to work out a position for themselves.”  The only official position that he had been able to find was “one prohibiting all homosexual thought and action as being wilful perversion of God given in-born instincts.”  Yet: “As homosexuals know perfectly well that they never possessed these instincts, this advice is worse than useless and serves to discredit what the church may say in other directions.”  Ultimately, Reid charged that the Church “apparently approve, by their silence, of mental invalids being thrust into gaol on charges involving a life sentence – a curious treatment for insanity!”

As Jones notes, while Dr. Reid spoke of ‘inverts’ and ‘homosexuals’, Archbishop Lang wrote of ‘others’ with ‘instincts’ and ‘tendencies’.  He replied, “I have known many others in like position to yourself who have by strength of will or by the grace of God been able to restrain these tendencies and I cannot bring myself to think that the position of those for whom you speak is so tragic as you would represent” (Jones, p.174).  More than eighty years on, this is eerily familiar to anyone up-to-date on the present state of Evangelical discussions.

As I said earlier, when I am discussing same-sex marriage here, I consider it primarily as an Evangelical response to same-sex orientation.  This is the case which, from an Evangelical perspective, covers all other important cases.  An answer that covers Evangelicals will – other things being equal – cover civil same-sex marriages as well, and might also generalise to other Christian viewpoints, especially if we’ve accounted for questions of Natural Law.  And an answer that covers orientation covers the most substantial and difficult objections to Evangelical views, those involving prejudice or discrimination on the basis of innate qualities.  Whether and how this generalises to bisexuality, queerness, or transgender will be briefly considered in an appendix (§8.b, Queerness).

Because we’re looking at same-sex marriage only as an Evangelical response to orientation, we’re asking whether and how the biblical prohibitions of same-sex relations apply to the following situation:

• Faithful Evangelicals
• Same-sex orientation
• Same-sex marriage
• Same-sex relations

So, our question is same one Preston Sprinkle asks in People to be Loved (2015):

The question is not about whether gay sex outside marriage is wrong.  It’s not about whether soliciting a same-sex prostitute or sleeping around with several partners is wrong.  … The question is whether two [same-sex oriented] men or two [same-sex oriented] women can date, fall in love, remain sexually pure before their wedding day, and commit to a life-long, consensual, Christ-centered, self-giving, monogamous union.  (ch.1)

It should be obvious that asking this question – in which we think through the issues of orientation and take them to scripture to solve them – is different to claiming the authority to redefine or ‘revise’ marriage.  If we can answer yes to this question, it will not be because God’s view of marriage has been revised or needed revising.  It will be because it already resolves those questions.  How then do we think this through?

It will seem to many Evangelical readers that there is nothing to think through.  The biblical prohibition of same-sex relations simply MUST apply to orientation and marriage.  As Robert Gagnon writes (2000):

A union of two or more people who enter that union in whole or in part for the purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse, where the aforementioned intercourse is of a kind that can only be sinful in any and every circumstance – such a union cannot be blessed without sanctioning the form of sexual intercourse in question.  (p.490)

Gagnon is of course correct to say that if same-sex relations are always sexual immorality to God, then there can be no Christian case for same-sex marriage.  The only way through is if we can say that God considers this situation morally good and recognises it as a marriage.  Our main reason for asking these questions is that same-sex orientation and marriage present us with some difficulties that clearly weren’t in anybody’s minds in scripture – as we’ll presently see (§1.c, Problems).

To think this through, we’ll take the four main lines of Evangelical argument against same-sex relations – those from nature, morals, marriage, and theology – and apply them to the situation that we find most difficult, that of orientation and marriage (§1.d, Outline).

This will steer a course between the two most common arguments we hear about same-sex marriage.  The revisionist or progressive side usually says that the Bible doesn’t condemn same sex relations at all, or at least, not loving and consensual kinds, and so, to relationships other than same-sex marriages.  The traditional or conservative side says the condemnations must necessarily apply to all cases, and so, to same-sex marriages.  Among LGBT Christians, these are called the Side A and Side B positions.  We’re in the middle, acknowledging the biblical condemnations, and their force and sense, but also acknowledging the difficulty we have applying them to same-sex oriented marriages between same-sex oriented partners.

When we do not consider same-sex orientation or same-sex marriage, then we will find that the biblical arguments against same-sex relations make sense.  They work as intended.  They are not tied in knots by the charge of discrimination in public life.  But when we consider same-sex orientation or same-sex marriage, we will find that the biblical arguments, across the whole spectrum of arguments from nature, morals, marriage.  and theology, do not address or condemn this situation.  They work as intended.  They are not tied in knots by the charge of discrimination in public life.  It is only when we import the assumption that they must apply to same-sex orientation and same-sex marriage, together, that we encounter the problems that we do.

Circular reasoning

Consider the following hypothetical argument.

• Same-sex relations can’t be moral because they can’t be marriage.
• Same-sex relations can’t be marriage because they can’t be moral.

If these are the only two claims being made, then this is a circular argument.  The evidence for A is B, and vice versa.  Someone inexperienced in argument might think it’s highly impressive that the two parts so tightly support each other, but of course, they do no such thing.  A claim must be proven before you can use it to prove something else.  If neither of these claims is independently established, then neither is in a position to support the other.  That is why a circular argument proves nothing.  This is a trivial and artificial example of the problem of circularity, though, and not the kind we need to watch out for.  The more serious kind happens with competing frameworks.

Avoiding the question of orientation

Some Evangelical approaches to same-sex issues avoid talking the subject of orientation.  One is by speaking of ‘lifestyle’ or ‘preferences’.  Of course, this misses the point that an underlying orientation has posed our most pressing challenges, such as the charge of discrimination over innate qualities (see §1.c, Problems).  A similar though more subtle problem appears if we focus on ‘desires’ and ‘passions’.  This may suppose that desires which were willingly acquired are morally equivalent to others that were not, or that orientation is a desire of the same kind as that is condemned in scripture.  But that, of course, is the point to be proved.  If we suddenly have trouble arguing for the biblical prohibitions now that we have to address orientation, does that mean we are addressing a different problem?

But there are larger and more subtle ways of avoiding the question of orientation than terminology.  Consider this argument:

Argument A

Scripture condemns same-sex relations.

Same-sex marriage includes same-sex relations.

Scripture condemns same-sex marriage.

The argument is formally valid.  A condemns B.  B includes C.  A condemns C.  If we know #1 and #2, then we know #3.  The only way #3 can be false or unknown is if #1 or #2 are false or unknown.  We’re not particularly interested in whether some same-sex marriages might be sex-free for whatever reason.  So, this argument does show that Scripture condemns same-sex marriages.

Now consider a second argument.

Argument B

Scripture condemns same-sex relations

– in the case of same-sex orientation and same-sex marriage.

Same-sex marriage includes same-sex relations.

Scripture condemns same-sex marriage

– in the case of same-sex orientation and same-sex marriage.

Is this the same argument as the first one?  Do orientation and marriage change how we understand or apply the biblical condemnations of same-sex relations?  Can we assume that they do?  Can we assume either that they do or do not?  Can we answer the questions decisively without assuming anything?  This is the question that matters, not whether the biblical condemnations can be ignored, as many progressives believe, nor whether orientation and marriage can be ignored – or at least assumed to change nothing – as many conservatives seem to believe.

Evangelicals often find it difficult to discuss this second argument.  It can be unfamiliar and suspicious, as if it were suggesting we simply ignore the biblical condemnations.  But it is precisely the strength and force of those condemnations that struggles with orientation, and involves us in mandatory celibacy, and the charge of immoral discrimination.

Assuming tradition?

If we take a standard Evangelical argument against same-sex marriage, such as Preston Sprinkle’s 2018 book Does the Bible Support Same-sex Marriage?, we find five major lines of argument (ch.2).  Note that there’s an invisible “(in the Bible)” clause at the end of each of these lines.

1. Sex difference is an intrinsic part of what marriage is.
2. Same-sex sexual relationships are always prohibited.
3. The multiethnic global church affirms the historically Christian view.
4. Marriage and sex are not essential to human flourishing.
5. Marriage has a purpose, involving a) symbolism, b) procreation, and c) companionship.

Of these, the first two are the most important.  These are “the historically Christian view” mentioned in point 3.  The other three points are supporting arguments, or in the case of 4, intended to defend against a criticism.  What does the combination of orientation and marriage do to a case like this?  The big clue is in part 3.  Appealing to contexts outside the modern west means appealing to times and places that have not dealt with the modern understanding of same-sex orientation, the modern social viability of same-sex marriage, or the problems posed to Christian theology by the combination or same-sex orientation and same-sex marriage (see §1.c, Problems).

Appealing to global or historical contexts is implicitly ducking the question.  It’s like defending short-ages creation by appealing to pre-Enlightenment thinkers like Calvin, Aquinas, or Augustine, or the ‘multi-ethnic’ authority of modern tribal groups who have never had to think deeply about the age of the earth.  We can’t avoid the age of the earth by those means.  (In fact, we will discuss this in §5.a (Genesis), when we consider arguments from creation.)  Of course, it is the same with same-sex orientation.  We have to consider points 1 and 2 in Sprinkle’s list without.  And of course, he would only see the third point as supporting evidence, since he disagrees with similarly historical views of hell and partiarchy.

Now watch how this plays out in the other four points.  Sex difference is essential for reproduction.  Even modern reproductive technology is mostly just manipulating the goods and services that functionally male and female bodies provide (see §2, Nature).  This was utterly foundation to individual and collective well-being through most historical times and places.  We see this especially clearly in the Old Testament, where only one person is known to have adopted celibacy (see §4, Marriage).  And in every single case, same-sex relations are strongly condemned in scripture (see §3, Morals).  In history in general, same-sex marriage made no moral, social, or economic sense.  Certainly not in scripture where there was an equal expectation of fidelity from both men and women.

Assuming the framework

If we’re involved in a discussion of whether scripture really condemns same-sex relations, an Evangelical will likely think one of two things is happening: the other person is misinformed or not paying attention.  Perhaps they are, for some reason, unable to face up to what is really quite obvious, and so, will be deflecting and obfuscating.  Since the Evangelical argument against same-sex relations has at least four major parts, each with numerous subparts, we can just jump to another part of the argument and see if they’re able to deal with it any better.  So, if the argument seems to be stuck we can just say:

• Yes, but it’s not natural, is it?
  • You know Paul calls it unnatural, right?
• Yes, but it’s not moral, is it?
  • You know it’s sexual immorality, right?
  • You know sexually immoral people have no place in God’s kingdom, right?
• Yes, but it’s not marriage, is it?
  • You know God created people male and female, right?
• Yes, but it’s not Christian or biblical is it?
  • It’s not how God created us, right?

Any reader can readily expand this list, especially as they work through this book.  A kind of circular argument occurs when a person bounces between several presupposed ideas without ever proving any of them.  If you’ve ever done high-school debating or anything like it, you can play a kind of devil’s-advocate game in which one person tries to keep the discussion on-topic, and the other tries to derail it and trick the other into accepting the burden of proof.  The more impatience, dismissiveness, and general contempt they can muster, the better, at least for the purpose of learning how not to argue.

A larger kind of circularity appears in saying traditional Christian sexual morality is part of a ‘worldview’, so that one then compares common worldviews and find it to be the best, the one that is self-consistent, the one that accounts for the most data, and so on.  The can just be a way of presuming a large body of claims without ever having to prove them.  Comparisons between traditions are much the same.

The claims, one by one, must be shown to apply.  Anyone challenging a consensus view bears the practical burden of proof, and I accept that burden here.  But it is also true that in Evangelical life and thought every idea must be biblically supported, and can never be finally justified by an appeal to tradition.