Allow me to make a few notes regarding your paper.
In your opening argument I deeply felt the absence of a statement that the Scriptures present a culturally conditioned presentation of sexuality, one conditioned toward a patriarchal society wherein sexuality is equivalent to the sex act, and the sex act reserved to the extension of the species. I am aware you made those points in other places, but sometimes ideas need to stand melded together.
Contrary to your claim and contrary to the view expressed by the bishops of the English Church, heterosexual love is not the foundation! To go on to claim that the divine will for humanity is fulfilled by heterosexual procreative actions is utterly absurd. In chapter two of Genesis, before God reveals the woman in man, God brings all the animals to the man, for man, in the divine judgment, needs a companion, a helpmate. One might argue that woman is just one possible resolve to man’s aloneness, one humanly accepted divine experiment. One might question other strains in the creation story, such as why man was not content with God as a companion. And, of course, if one wants to be literal about such things, one might well ask what happened to the male and female created in chapter one. Let us not dwell in fragments; Scripture, like God, is un-dissectible. I am not about to write a dissertation on the tribal codes consecrated in the great Genesis myths, but the question remains: does sex exist for procreation, or does sex exist for the person. Human sexuality is about communication, communion, trust, giving, caring, loving, and out of that, and within that consecrated state of being, about the procreation and nurturing of children. Not every heterosexual couple is capable of producing children, not every heterosexual act is capable of producing children. Heterosexual acts are about the two people involved in a communion. Homosexual acts are likewise and equally about the two people involved in a communion. To say that homosexual acts are not as complete within the terms of the created order is to confuse gestation with creation, to elevate egg and sperm over personhood and humanity.
You speak of heterosexual relationships as the norm, and grant homosexuality status as an aspect of humanity’s broken nature. If you call the heterosexual the norm, do you not imply everything else the ab-normal? And how can you speak of homosexuality as a result of our broken nature without noting that everything we are, everything we know, including our concepts of God, our religions and churches, our beliefs, and our hopes, is the result of our nature. The argument from “humanity’s broken nature” is an empty argument; we know no other nature, we have no other nature. But, having made the argument, how can you go on to speak of research that gives evidence for the biological foundations for the distinctions in sexual preferences. I am afraid that words like BROKEN and NORM are value judgments in themselves, and all the qualifications you make after them are just excuses to which no one can in honesty subscribe.
You discuss marriage. You do not distinguish between the term marriage used to designate a legal contract and the term marriage used to designate the blessing of the estate created by the contract. The ministers of the church have in some places and at some times acted as officers of the state and officiated over the contract, but as many canon lawyers would gleefully argue, that does not create in the church or for the church any authority over or in the contract itself. The church is merely allowed to act as an agent of state. The church is free to bless whatsoever it will, be it a contract, a car, or a canary. It baffles many that the church is willing to say that God is not an ancient mariner floating in the sky above the ozone and its holes, seated on chubby cherubs and equipped with all the rules for all the world for all time, but that the church is not so willing to admit that God is incarnate in the world, unfolding and evolving toward a day of compassion and justice for all. But is that not what sex is all about? Is not sex about finding God incarnate, growing toward a consummation in compassion, evolving into one who understands the weight, the glory, of justice, of the righteous due of all, a due given by God, a due fore-given by God in the eternal Christ, a due that is, by divine appointment, acceptance and love?
I am sorely tired of sex being relegated to organs and orifices, of morality being chained to rules and regulations; when will we stop confusing the alphabet for literature, the road signs for the road? When will we stop adorning our genitals with doctrines and devotions and begin to adore one another? When will the church lead the way rather than be dragged along screaming? When will the church discover the Jesus who came to liberate us from legalism and literalism? When will the church find a new Pentecost and (as in Acts) go about seemingly drunk at nine a.m.? When will the church allow itself to stop worrying about what people will say, what people will do, and allow itself to manifest that intoxicating, that self-liberating spirit of compassion and joy? Our eschatology is our mask, our shield, our lie; the Day of the Lord is now. Our petty fears, our fragile egos, our Nicodemus-style discipleship keeps it veiled, keeps it from transforming ourselves and the cosmos. When will we realize the law is dead, that it lost its identity in Mary’s womb when the Holy One overshadowed it, that it radically mutated in order that the living word, the enduring presence, the unfolding revelation of God might dwell among us? In this season of the Coming, is that not a proper reading of the mythos of the virgin, a proper vision of the mysteries of incarnation?
I think the universe is infinitely more simple than we imagine; I think our fears are infinitely more complex than we are willing to admit.