My aim in touching on these hard issues is not to prove a particular case. Usually, it will be fairly obvious where my sympathies lie but what I want to do is simply show that there is more than one interpretation of scripture with respect to these issues.
I want to start with St John Chrysostom, the Golden Mouthed, so called because of his popular preaching. (In the picture he (on the left) is handing a copy of his sermons to the Byzantine Emporer). I'm afraid I've lost track of my references for this but if memory serves, during his time in Antioch John Chrysostom preached a very radical approach to abstinence from sex. It seems this was highly influential and has been traced to some of the more extreme positions against sex in general, through the history of the church.
Why did he do this? It is important to understand that the Christians who took this position during the early centuries were not normally anti-sex. For them the issue was justice. The exploitation of young slaves for sexual purposes by their owners outraged John Chrysostom to such an extent that he banned sex amongst his followers. These practices were so common an overall ban, with all the disadvantages you might imagine, was the only option.
Today we have difficulty appreciating how prevalent sexual exploitation of slaves was during this period. This is why Paul and other writers condemn perversions of various types, because they were carried out by the strong on the weak. Slavery was taken for granted at that time; the message was masters should treat their slaves fairly. Sexual exploitation was not appropriate, whether or not the slaves were Christian.
Broadly, the objections to homosexuality were economic. To the early Church sex was used to exploit slaves and so Christians were opposed to it. The monogamous relationship became the norm. Through the ages of course marriage itself has been a matter of economics and power. The freedom to choose a partner for life is a precious right and has been fought for down the centuries. As recently as the eighteenth century, we have the evidence of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro where the plot turns on the Duke's abdication of his 'right of the Lord' over Suzanna, Figaro's intended.
It is probably impossible to take all matters of wealth and power out of relations between the sexes but the struggle down to the present has been to see marriage as a spiritual discipline rather than as a political or financial arrangement.
Considered in this way I do not see why homosexual arrangements should be any different. If there is love between two people, a real intention to remain faithful, where is the problem? In any society there needs to be legislation to protect consensual unions. The role of churches should be to help couples stay together, to learn to live in community.
The alternative is not promiscuity, always an interplay of wealth and power, but to remain single.
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