+Rowan on homosexuality

There's been a kerfuffle in recent days over alleged comments made by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he is said to have told a Dutch interviewer that homosexuals would have to change to get right with the church. Actually, if you read the actual text of the Dutch interview (available here in English), that's not really the case. Rowan may think it -- his actual comments leave that interpretation open -- but the earlier reports read his remarks prejudicially.

I thought one of the most interesting things he said, though, was this:

Q: Do you have an explanation as to why Anglicans are prepared to let the Church split now over homosexuality, and not for example when a Bishop denied the Resurrection of Christ?

A: I am intrigued by that. On the one hand it says something about our own age, which is obsessed with sexuality - left and right. But I think there's something else. Christian often find it difficult to describe what distinguishes them. More and more they live like the people around them. Divorce is a sad case in point. For some people homosexuality is the last issue where you can draw a clear line. And then it is for many people a central issue of the authority of Scripture. I don't want to minimize that. Even about divorce there are certain things in the Bible that seem to give a bit of room for manoeuvre. It is harder to say that about homosexuality.

I think he's spot-on there. A friend of mine -- gay, orthodox Catholic, chaste -- does not favor gay marriage, but has observed to me before that the culture of divorce and general heterosexual free-range rutting has surely caused far more damage to society -- especially children -- than anything gays have done. Yet we don't see too many Christians willing to rush to the barricades to defend "traditional marriage" when it's under assault from straights in the name of sexual autonomy. His point is very well taken, not as a premiss from which to argue for gay marriage, but as an observation about hetero hypocrisy.

I mean, look, what the gay-rights movement is asking for flows naturally from the premises of the sexual revolution. If you are a "naturalist" about sex (versus a "sacralist" -- see previous post) and human nature, then you will want to see social and moral strictures relaxed so that individuals can choose to do what they like, within broad boundaries (i.e., no child abuse). If sex has no intrinsic meaning outside of the individual's experience, why not? And if you believe that, by what right do you tell gay couples that they should be treated in the law differently than straight couples?

I would suspect that Hugh Hefner is all for gay marriage. At least he's honest. The dishonest ones are straight people who think society should accomodate without judgment their multiple marriages, their abortions, their rutting, etc., but God forbid the gays should insist on being accomodated.