In its cover story this week, 'The Religious Case for Gay Marriage', Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers arguments for the recognition and acceptance of same-sex marriages.

In the article, she uses 2,771 words to offer the view that the Bible was irrelevant to any contemporary discussion on marriage. The Bible she argued was time-bound and not timeless. Furthermore, she stressed that the idea of marriage being one man united with one woman was hardly a feature of Jewish life as recorded in the Bible.

"Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel - all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments - especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. 'It is better to marry than to burn with passion', says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple - who likely woke up on their wedding day harbouring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love - turn to the Bible as a how-to script," wrote Miller."

A commitment

A same-sex couple walks away from City Hall in San Francisco, wearing signs saying 'Just Married'. County clerk offices opened their doors last June to hundreds of gay and lesbian couples with appointments to secure marriage licences and exchange vows on the first full day same-sex nuptials were legal throughout California.

The Newsweek journalist wrote that "As a religious institution, marriage offers a commitment of both partners before God to love, honour and cherish each other - in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer - in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married - and a number of excellent reasons why they should."

Miller said the "traditional family" was scarcely to be found in the Bible. "These are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat - or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?"

Custom and tradition

Curt Garman (left), and Richard Looke hold hands as they look for a quiet spot to hold their 'wedding' at City Hall in San Francisco, last June.

Citing Neil Elliott's book, The Arrogance of Nations, she said where the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter one makes reference to those who "were inflamed with lust for one another" that this is really a reference to "really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God". Thus, she posited that "Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition."

She said "If the Bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course - specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire".

Predictably, Miller's essay has met with opposition from theological conservatives. Among those leading the charge is the Rev Dr R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary which is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Mohler writing in his blog (http://www.albertmohler.com/blog.php) which appeared last Monday, said the Old Testament did not exemplify the idea of 'traditional family', such as characterised America during the 1950s. However, he posited, "The Old Testament notion of the family starts with the idea that the family is the carrier of covenant promises, and this family is defined, from the onset, as a transgenerational extended family of kin and kindred."

Tim McQuillan (left), of Ames, Iowa, speaks to reporters accompanied by his 'husband' Sean McQuillan, after the Iowa Supreme Court heard arguments in a challenge to the state's same sex marriage ban, last Tuesday, in Des Moines, Iowa. Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in 2005 on behalf of the six gay and lesbian Iowa couples who were denied marriage licences, as well as three of the couples' children. - AP

Miller's argument that Jesus did not define marriage as one man joined to one woman, says Mohler is untrue. He refuted her by citing Genesis 2:24-25. He cited also Matthew 19:1-8 where Jesus taught on marriage and which the seminary president stressed, makes absolutely no sense unless marriage is between man and woman is understood in the text to be normative.

Miller misunderstands the Apostle Paul argues Mohler. The apostle, he wrote "Did indeed instruct the Corinthians that the unmarried state was advantageous for the spread of the Gospel. His concern in 1 Corinthians 7 is not to elevate singleness as a lifestyle, but to encourage as many as are able to give themselves totally to an unencumbered Gospel ministry."

Concerning her claim that "Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire", Mohler counters by saying "She would have done better to look to the Bible itself, where in Romans 1:26-27 Paul writes: "For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error."

It is not only the religion editor of Newsweek that is dismissive of conservative interpretation of the Bible with regard to same-sex marriage. Jon Meacham,Newsweek's editor in an editorial of the same edition, writes, "no matter what one thinks about gay rights - for, against or somewhere in between - this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism."

Meacham continues, "Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt - it is unworthy of the great Judaeo-Christian tradition."

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