Answers for same-sex marriage apologist Matthew Vines.

atthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Chris­t­ian—in which Mr. Vines claims to give the “bib­li­cal case in sup­port of same-sex relationships”—recently post­ed “40 Ques­tions for Chris­tians Who Oppose Mar­riage Equal­i­ty.” “Too often,” Mr. Vines laments,

LGBT-affirm­ing Chris­tians are the only ones asked to explain and defend their views. But there are many press­ing ques­tions that non-affirm­ing Chris­tians fre­quent­ly do not address.

Oh, well, then! No one, not ever, has answered these ques­tions before! Let me cor­rect this over­sight for those who (like Mr. Vines) hath ears to hear.

• Do you accept that sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is not a choice?

First, Mr. Vines, I must object to how you phrase the ques­tion. “Do you accept?” implies that your view is nor­ma­tive, and it saves you the prob­lem of prov­ing what has yet to be proven. It is no more than a ploy to put those “non-affirm­ing Chris­tians” on an imme­di­ate defen­sive. Even the phrase “non-affirm­ing” casts them in a neg­a­tive light. The right way to phrase it would be “Do you believe.”

Nor, Mr. Vines, do you make clear what it would mean if sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion were not a choice. Lots of things are not a choice; that does not mean they are good, or that God some­how meant for them to be. Sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion could be “not a choice” because var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors dis­tort an indi­vid­u­al’s psy­cho­sex­u­al devel­op­ment. Or it could be “not a choice” because—and I think this is what you mean for us to believe—someone is “born that way.” In oth­er words, the real motive of your ques­tion is to plant in peo­ple’s minds the idea that God makes cer­tain peo­ple gay.

But even if (which no one has shown) peo­ple are born gay, that does not imply that God made them that way. All of us, gay or straight, are born with orig­i­nal sin. It’s called “con­cu­pis­cence,” and the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church defines it in §405 as “an incli­na­tion to evil.” It is “a depri­va­tion of orig­i­nal holi­ness and jus­tice.” That is to say, it is not what God intend­ed. The dis­obe­di­ence of Adam and Eve brought it into the world. The Cat­e­chism con­tin­ues:

Bap­tism, by impart­ing the life of Christ’s grace, eras­es orig­i­nal sin and turns a man back towards God, but the con­se­quences for nature, weak­ened and inclined to evil, per­sist in man and sum­mon him to spir­i­tu­al bat­tle.”

Sim­ple obser­va­tion of the world will tell us that con­supis­cence man­i­fests itself in dif­fer­ent ways in dif­fer­ent peo­ple. One per­son may be prone to anger, while anoth­er is prone to glut­tony. Where these par­tic­u­lar lusts come from—whether a per­son is born a glut­ton, or whether envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors act­ed upon orig­i­nal sin and lat­er inclined him to shove his mouth full of food—is not the real issue. The real issue is that we all have sin­ful impuls­es of one kind or anoth­er; we are all “born that way”; it is not what God intend­ed; and there­fore the right response is spir­i­tu­al bat­tle, not acqui­es­cence.

• Do you accept that [homo]sexual ori­en­ta­tion is high­ly resis­tant to attempts to change it?

Yes, but that’s not the point. The ques­tion is not whether it’s resis­tant to change but whether it’s dis­or­dered. All sin is resis­tant to change, as are all sin­ful desires, because “the heart of man is deceit­ful above all things and des­per­ate­ly wicked” (Jer. 17:19). Here is what St. Paul says in Gal. 5:17: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spir­it, and the desires of the Spir­it are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each oth­er, to pre­vent you from doing what you would.” Of course they’re resis­tant to change; that’s why it’s called spir­i­tu­al bat­tle. That’s why St. Paul again said that fight­ing one’s sin­ful desires requires him to “put on the full armor of God” against “all the flam­ing darts of the wicked one” (Eph. 6:11, 16). Do you think, Mr. Vines, he would have said those things if it were easy?

• How many mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with LGBT peo­ple do you have? How many open­ly LGBT peo­ple would say you are one of their clos­est friends?

None, and I don’t know what dif­fer­ence it would make if I did. I sus­pect that the point of your ques­tion is this: If only you knew LGBT peo­ple, you would see that they’re not these awful peo­ple. In fact, I don’t need them to be “these awful peo­ple” to know that sodomy is a sin, any more than I need to think that I’m some awful per­son because I sin in dif­fer­ent ways. Every­one I have a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with is a sin­ner. Just because I like them, that does not turn their sin into virtue. Nor am I required to have a “mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship” with every­one as a con­di­tion for being able to dis­agree with them, or call their sin by its name. I con­fess I don’t know where such an idea as that comes from.

• How much time have you spent in one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with LGBT Chris­tians about their faith and sex­u­al­i­ty?

None, and again I don’t know that I’m required to. I know all the argu­ments quite well. I will add, how­ev­er, that I am very famil­iar with the writ­ing of Eve Tush­net, a Patheos blog­ger, les­bian, and celi­bate Catholic who argues against same-sex “mar­riage.” Are you? She wrote a recent book called Gay and Catholic. Have you read it? She writes at length about her faith and sex­u­al­i­ty, both in her book and on her blog. I don’t agree with every­thing she says, but she is an exam­ple of how a per­son with same-sex attrac­tion can remain celi­bate, faith­ful to Church teach­ing, and not have to be “alone.” If you are not famil­iar with her work, you should be.

• Do you accept that het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage is not a real­is­tic option for most gay peo­ple?

Yes, I know that they don’t think it is, but that’s not the real ques­tion, Mr. Vines. The real ques­tion is this: So what if it’s not? The Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church says that those with same-sex attrac­tion are “called to chasti­ty.”

By the virtues of self-mas­tery that teach them inner free­dom, at times by the sup­port of dis­in­ter­est­ed friend­ship, by prayer and sacra­men­tal grace, they can and should grad­u­al­ly and res­olute­ly approach Chris­t­ian per­fec­tion.

The idea that some­one needs to be mar­ried, or needs to have sex, in order to have a ful­filled and hap­py life is a pecu­liar myth of our own time. As I said, Eve Tush­net has writ­ten a lot about this.

• Do you accept that life­long celiba­cy is the only valid option for most gay peo­ple if all same-sex rela­tion­ships are sin­ful?

Yes, on the assump­tion that “most gay peo­ple” are not will­ing to con­cede the pos­si­bil­i­ty of het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage.

• How many gay broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ have you walked with on the path of manda­to­ry celiba­cy, and for how long?

None, and if your point is that to do so would there­by make me more sen­si­tive to how dif­fi­cult celiba­cy is, you’re bark­ing, as they say, up the wrong tree. I am celibate—not because I am gay (I’m not) but because I am not mar­ried and have no inten­tion to mar­ry. So I know per­fect­ly well. I walk with myself every day. I doubt, Mr. Vines, that you would say that gay peo­ple some­how have a hard­er time with celiba­cy than straight peo­ple, so that my own expe­ri­ence is not enough. In any case, the real point is not whether some­thing is hard, but whether it is right.

The Catholic Church, unlike the Protes­tant church­es, has a more ful­ly-devel­oped the­ol­o­gy of celiba­cy, and many mod­els for how that works in prac­tice (our cler­gy are celi­bate!), such that peo­ple with same-sex attrac­tion have more resources for sup­port there than else­where.

• What is your answer for gay Chris­tians who strug­gled for years to live out a celiba­cy man­date but were dri­ven to sui­ci­dal despair in the process?

Well, I reject the impli­ca­tion that one must be giv­en a license to sin in order to avoid “sui­ci­dal despair.” God can not be black­mailed in that way. It’s like the kid who says to his par­ent, “Unless you let me go to that par­ty, I’ll run away from home.” In this case, you just raise the ante: “Unless you let me indulge in sodomy, I’ll kill myself.” That’s child­ish nar­cis­sism, Mr. Vines: It’s all about me and what I want; I’ll show you.

• Has manda­to­ry celiba­cy pro­duced good fruit in the lives of most gay Chris­tians you know?

Yes. Eve Tush­net. The late Fr. Hen­ri Nouwen. It has also pro­duced good fruit in the lives of straight Catholics who are, for exam­ple, priests and reli­gious. The mar­ried seek to please their spouse but the unmar­ried seek to please the Lord (1 Cor. 7:32–35).

• How many mar­ried same-sex cou­ples do you know?

I reject the cat­e­go­ry. Mar­riage is one man and one woman by def­i­n­i­tion (Mark 10:6–7). You may as well ask me how many round squares I know.

• Do you believe that same-sex cou­ples’ rela­tion­ships can show the fruit of the Spir­it: love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-con­trol?

No. In the very pas­sage in Gala­tians 5 that you are cit­ing, Mr. Vines, St. Paul makes it clear that these things are opposed to the flesh. They are the fruit of those who reject the flesh’s sin­ful desires. So your sug­ges­tion that such rela­tion­ships can “show the fruit of the Spir­it” is the very oppo­site of what St. Paul says. It’s an abuse of the text. To take just one exam­ple, giv­ing in to an impulse to sodomy pre­cludes “self-con­trol.” Where’s the “con­trol” if you’re giv­ing in to lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes?

• Do you believe that it is pos­si­ble to be a Chris­t­ian and sup­port same-sex mar­riage in the church?

You are a Chris­t­ian so long as you are bap­tized in the name of the Trin­i­ty and are not guilty of apos­ta­sy or heresy. The Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith is clear that Catholics have a duty to oppose same-sex “mar­riage,” so you cer­tain­ly can not be a Catholic and sup­port same-sex mar­riage. Also, Canon Law expert Dr. Edward N. Peters makes a seri­ous and con­vinc­ing case that sup­port of it may con­sti­tute heresy since it is a denial of divine rev­e­la­tion about what mar­riage is. So that would pre­clude being a Chris­t­ian of any kind and sup­port­ing same-sex “mar­riage.” Any­way, as I stat­ed above, say­ing that one is “for” same-sex mar­riage is like say­ing that one is “for” round squares.

• Do you believe that it is pos­si­ble to be a Chris­t­ian and sup­port slav­ery?

Do you mean penal slav­ery or chat­tel slav­ery? I can’t answer the ques­tion unless you clar­i­fy what kind of slav­ery you have in mind.

• If not, do you believe that Mar­tin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards were not actu­al­ly Chris­tians because they sup­port­ed slav­ery?

Well, I get that the ques­tion is intend­ed as a trap, but you’ll have to direct that trap at Protes­tants. I’m Catholic. I will tell you—I go on the assump­tion that you mean chat­tel slavery—that it was specif­i­cal­ly con­demned by Pope Gre­go­ry XVI in 1839, in an apos­tolic let­ter enti­tled In Supre­mo Apos­to­la­tus. Catholic apol­o­gist Mark Brum­ley has more detail on the ques­tion of the Catholic Church and slav­ery here. But in address­ing this ques­tion, Mr. Vines, one must be care­ful to dis­tin­guish between penal slav­ery and chat­tel slav­ery. You do not do that.

• Do you think sup­port­ing same-sex mar­riage is a more seri­ous prob­lem than sup­port­ing slav­ery?

Again, I can not answer the ques­tion unless you tell me whether you have in mind penal slav­ery or chat­tel slav­ery. I assume you have chat­tel slav­ery in mind. It is equal­ly seri­ous. All sin is equal in the eyes of God, and the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church is clear that chat­tel slav­ery is a sin against the sev­enth com­mand­ment. “The sev­enth com­mand­ment,” it says, “for­bids acts or enter­pris­es that for any reason—selfish or ide­o­log­i­cal, com­mer­cial, or totalitarian—lead to the enslave­ment of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like mer­chan­dise, in dis­re­gard for their per­son­al dig­ni­ty” (§2414).

• Did you spend any time study­ing the Bible’s pas­sages about slav­ery before you felt com­fort­able believ­ing that slav­ery is wrong?

Do you have in mind Phile­mon 1:16? How about Exo­dus 9:1? What does the Bible teach about slav­ery, Mr. Vines, and how do you know, and what kind of slav­ery is at issue in this pas­sage or that pas­sage, and how is this all rel­e­vant to the top­ic of same-sex “mar­riage”? Or do you like red her­rings?

• Does it cause you any con­cern that Chris­tians through­out most of church his­to­ry would have dis­agreed with you?

About what? Are you talk­ing about penal slav­ery or chat­tel slav­ery? Or are you lump­ing the two togeth­er and fail­ing to make impor­tant moral dis­tinc­tions?

• Did you know that, for most of church his­to­ry, Chris­tians believed that the Bible taught the earth stood still at the cen­ter of the uni­verse?

Using which bib­li­cal texts? How do those texts com­pare in clar­i­ty to those which treat same-sex attrac­tion and behav­ior? I don’t need to believe that the Bible is equal­ly clear about all things, or that pas­sages from which the details of astron­o­my are inferred can be com­pared to pas­sages which treat of moral right and wrong in very direct terms. To do that is to dis­tract from the real issue by com­par­ing apples and oranges. The Bible is not the Big Book of Every­thing; those who treat it that way are bound to abuse it. It was not writ­ten to inform us about astron­o­my. It does, how­ev­er, have a lot to say about moral right and wrong.

• Does it cause you any con­cern that you dis­agree with their inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible?

None what­so­ev­er. I am Catholic. The Catholic Church has nev­er taught a belief in geo­cen­trism. When you leave peo­ple with the Bible alone, with­out the guid­ance of the Church, they’re going to fall into error. That’s the very thing Christ found­ed the Church to guard against (John 16:13, 1 Tim. 3:15). What would con­cern me is if I dis­agreed with some­thing the Church has taught to be revealed by God and the Scrip­tures. If 99% of Chris­tians go off with their Bible alone and mis­read it, because they will not lis­ten to the Church (cf. Matt. 18:17), that’s not my con­cern.

• Did you spend any time study­ing the Bible’s vers­es on the top­ic before you felt com­fort­able believ­ing that the earth revolves around the sun?

There are no vers­es on the top­ic.

• Do you know of any Chris­t­ian writ­ers before the 20th cen­tu­ry who acknowl­edged that gay peo­ple must be celi­bate for life due to the church’s rejec­tion of same-sex rela­tion­ships?

Do you know of any Chris­t­ian writ­ers before the 20th cen­tu­ry who believed that sodomy was accept­able to God?

• If not, might it be fair to say that man­dat­ing celiba­cy for gay Chris­tians is not a tra­di­tion­al posi­tion?

The belief that sodomy is always a sin is the tra­di­tion­al posi­tion. (See here for some exam­ples.) Mr. Vines, you’re try­ing to make the issue whether Chris­tians through the ages have demand­ed celiba­cy, and that’s a clever attempt to dis­tract from the real ques­tion, which is not that celiba­cy is demand­ed but that sodomy is for­bid­den. No one ever for­bade mar­riage, right­ly under­stood as one man and one woman, which is the only con­text in which sex­u­al activ­i­ty can moral­ly exist.

• Do you believe that the Bible explic­it­ly teach­es that all gay Chris­tians must be sin­gle and celi­bate for life?

The Bible explic­i­ty teach­es that sodomy is an abom­i­na­tion to God. If to you, Mr. Vines, this implies remain­ing sin­gle and celi­bate for life, then that is what it would mean. St. Paul says, “It is bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9). The con­verse would also be true: It is bet­ter to be sin­gle and celi­bate than burn because of the sin of sodomy, if you can­not receive God’s design for mar­riage.

• If not, do you feel com­fort­able affirm­ing some­thing that is not explic­it­ly affirmed in the Bible?

Since my answer is “yes,” this ques­tion does not apply. But I am Catholic and do not believe in sola scrip­tura, so I do not require that the Bible “explic­it­ly affirm” some­thing in order for me to believe that it has been revealed by God. The Bible is indeed the Word of God, but no one book can pos­si­bly address every ques­tion that will ever come up for Chris­tians. That is why God gave us a liv­ing and teach­ing Church and not the Bible alone.

On the issue of sodomy, how­ev­er, the Bible is very explic­it in many places. It makes no dis­tinc­tion between mar­ried sodomy and unmar­ried sodomy. Pos­si­bly this is because there is no such thing as mar­ried sodomy.

• Do you believe that the moral dis­tinc­tion between lust and love mat­ters for LGBT people’s roman­tic rela­tion­ships?

I don’t believe that LGBT peo­ple who are in “roman­tic rela­tion­ships” under­stand the dis­tinc­tion, so no. Love, in the roman­tic and sex­u­al sense, implies dif­fer­ence. That’s true in the Bible (“he made them male and female”) as much as it is true in nat­ur­al law. God did not design a man to fit with anoth­er man sex­u­al­ly, nor a woman with a woman. The design of sex and mar­riage in the Bible is for pro­cre­ation (Gen. 1:27–28), and for that rea­son there can be no such thing as sex­u­al love between two peo­ple of the same sex. We can know this is true by rev­e­la­tion as well as by the design of the human per­son.

• Do you think that lov­ing same-sex rela­tion­ships should be assessed in the same way as the same-sex behav­ior Paul explic­it­ly describes as lust­ful in Romans 1?

Since there is no such thing as a “lov­ing same-sex rela­tion­ship” that includes the sex­u­al act, this is a non­sense ques­tion.

• Do you believe that Paul’s use of the terms “shame­ful” and “unnat­ur­al” in Romans 1:26–27 means that all same-sex rela­tion­ships are sin­ful?

Yes, if you mean to imply, as I think you do, that sex is part of that rela­tion­ship. But noth­ing pre­cludes two gay men from friend­ship. What’s “shame­ful” and “unnat­ur­al” is sex between two men or two women, in every con­text you wish to name.

• Would you say the same about Paul’s descrip­tion of long hair in men as “shame­ful” and against “nature” in 1 Corinthi­ans 11:14, or would you say he was describ­ing cul­tur­al norms of his time?

I’m sor­ry, Mr. Vines, that you are unable to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the use of the same word in two dif­fer­ent sens­es. Paul uses the word “nature” in Romans 1 in the sense of nat­ur­al law as defined by the cre­ation (Rom. 1:20). In 1 Corinthi­ans 11—a dif­fer­ent let­ter, dif­fer­ent audi­ence, and dif­fer­ent context—he uses the word “nature” in the sense of cus­tom (see 1 Cor. 11:2, where he sets the con­text). If you hon­est­ly believe, Mr. Vines, that an abstract word like “nature” admits of only one pos­si­ble usage, and you can­not dis­cern between dif­fer­ent uses of the same word, then I am afraid you are just not the right per­son to be cross-exam­in­ing any­one about the prop­er read­ing of a text.

• Do you believe that the capac­i­ty for pro­cre­ation is essen­tial to mar­riage?

No, but you’re try­ing to con­fuse the issue by your care­ful use of the word “capac­i­ty.” Some peo­ple get mar­ried but are no longer able to pro­cre­ate because of age. Some peo­ple get mar­ried but are not able to pro­cre­ate because of some phys­i­cal defect. That does not touch on the valid­i­ty of the mar­riage. But two men or two women are not able to pro­cre­ate by design. The rel­e­vant issue is how God designed the human per­son, not what some par­tic­u­lar per­son becomes inca­pable of due to defect or age.

• If so, what does that mean for infer­tile het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples?

See my response to the pri­or ques­tion.

• How much time have you spent engag­ing with the writ­ings of LGBT-affirm­ing Chris­tians like Justin Lee, James Brown­son, and Rachel Murr?

Not as much as some oth­ers you refuse to debate, but you can find sev­er­al posts on this blog in which I do so. To name just one, I have engaged Dr. Can­di­da Moss of Notre Dame in this post. I refer you to it because I spend a good deal of time there exeget­ing the rel­e­vant bib­li­cal texts on the ques­tion of how God defines mar­riage.

• What rela­tion­ship recog­ni­tion rights short of mar­riage do you sup­port for same-sex cou­ples?

None. Eve Tush­net, who I have men­tioned above, does sup­port the Catholic Church for­mal­ly bless­ing celi­bate same-sex friend­ships as a spe­cial form of love, but I think she is wrong, and the Church has already reject­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any such thing.

• What are you doing to advo­cate for those rights?

In light of my answer to the pri­or ques­tion, I active­ly advo­cate against those “rights.” There is no such right.

• Do you know who Tyler Clemen­ti, Lee­lah Alcorn, and Blake Brock­ing­ton are, and did your church offer any kind of prayer for them when their deaths made nation­al news?

I know who Josh Alcorn was and have not heard of the oth­er two. I do not recall my own parish offer­ing a pub­lic prayer for him by name after he killed him­self; it may have. I pray, as my Church does at every Mass, for the souls of every­one who has died “in hope of the Res­ur­rec­tion”, as well as for “all the depart­ed.” That includes Josh Alcorn.

• Do you know that LGBT youth whose fam­i­lies reject them are 8.4 times more like­ly to attempt sui­cide than LGBT youth whose fam­i­lies sup­port them?

What do you mean by “reject them”? Do you mean reject them as per­sons? Do you mean dis­own them? Or do you mean reject their sin? And what is the source of this sta­tis­tic?

In any case, Mr. Vines, you need to review my answer to ques­tion #9 above, since this is essen­tial­ly a rehash of the tac­tic of emo­tion­al black­mail you used there: “Accept my sin or I’ll kill myself”; “Accept my sin or I’ll make you respon­si­ble for my sui­cide.”

• Have you vocal­ly object­ed when church lead­ers and oth­er Chris­tians have com­pared same-sex rela­tion­ships to things like bes­tial­i­ty, incest, and pedophil­ia?

No, because there’s no rea­son to object. Leviti­cus 18 puts these things in the same cat­e­go­ry, as does Leviti­cus 20. Sex­u­al abom­i­na­tion is sex­u­al abom­i­na­tion.

• How cer­tain are you that God’s will for all gay Chris­tians is life­long celiba­cy?

100%. I give this num­ber on the assump­tion that their sex­u­al per­ver­sion is not cor­rect­ed and they do not enter into het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage (a redun­dant expres­sion, by the way). And I base my cer­tain­ty on both the Bible and the pas­sage of the Cat­e­chism I quot­ed above.

• What do you think the result would be if we told all straight teenagers in the church that if they ever dat­ed some­one they liked, held someone’s hand, kissed some­one, or got mar­ried, they would be rebelling against God?

This is a ridicu­lous ques­tion, Mr. Vines, because those things are not rebel­lion against God. What do you think would hap­pen if we told all those who did­n’t steal that their fail­ure to steal was rebel­lion against God? What if we told Chris­tians that they could be obe­di­ent to God only by indulging in glut­tony? The assump­tion behind the ques­tion is that no one can ever be told that any­thing they do, no mat­ter what it is, con­sti­tutes rebel­lion against God. It’s non­sense to turn a sin on its head and say: But what if the oppo­site were a sin?

• Are you will­ing to be in fel­low­ship with Chris­tians who dis­agree with you on this top­ic?

I have no author­i­ty to excom­mu­ni­cate any­one. That author­i­ty belongs to duly-ordained bish­ops in my Church. How­ev­er, for the rea­sons stat­ed by Dr. Peters in the arti­cle I linked to above, I believe that sup­port­ing same-sex “mar­riage” con­sti­tutes a rejec­tion of divine rev­e­la­tion, and is there­fore heresy. Do not be unequal­ly yoked with unbe­liev­ers. What fel­low­ship hath light with dark­ness? (2 Cor. 6:14–17)