Answers - Long Version
The Answers to the 10 key questions
- to decide which teaching about same-sex marriage meets the ultimate test of Christ’s love - to do good and prevent harm
THE ANSWERS PART ONE
The Success or Failure of Same-Sex Partnerships compared to Heterosexual Marriages
Personal experience
I suspect the sort of evidence that most influences most of us about the success or failure of anyone’s relationships is the evidence we see with our own eyes. This may explain why, even when we were
traditionalist evangelicals, Hannah was always rather more accepting of same-sex relationships than I was. She’d grown up with her family seeing and knowing the lovely relationship of her uncle Jack and his partner, Colin. I hadn’t known any relationship like that within my own family.
Since then I have encountered a number of same-sex couples
(The names below have been changed to preserve their anonomity). These have included: Nigel and Adrian through that Alpha course 21 years ago, my work colleague, Tom, and his partner Sylvian who adopted twin baby girls, Terry, my very chatty work contact at a medical agency who used to regularly share with me his life with his Italian civil partner Luca. Susan and Rebecca, the two young lesbian mums who had their young son dedicated at my previous church, Don and Ian, a gay married couple with their own adopted daughter and son. Kelly and Lisa, a young lesbian couple I’d met a few months after they’d set up home together. I’d met those couples at different places in my journey on the same-sex relationships question and at different points of their relationships. But I have to say, whatever view I held about same-sex relationships at the time, from what I saw their own relationships seemed warm, loving, stable and supportive. And I must admit when I’d held a traditionalist view I found this all quite puzzling and challenging. It just didn’t seem to fit with what I believed.
But are these typical of same-sex relationships? Perhaps it was just by chance that these same-sex couples I’d met seemed to be in a good place at that time? Perhaps they were just exceptions to the norm or perhaps these relationships were all destined to collapse a few years later? At least that’s what my traditionalist self tried to tell my questioning self.
But, at the end of the day, although our own experiences of same-sex relationships may well have the greatest influence on our attitude towards them, they probably aren’t the most reliable guide to their stability or quality. Is there any broader, more objective evidence to show us how good or bad long-term same-sex relationships typically are? Are they as good and stable as traditional marriages between men and women?
Certainly, in this country until more recent years, both church and society seemed to try their best to ensure same-sex relationships failed.
Until the year I was born, 1967, all male same-sex sexual relations were criminal offences and the age of consent was not equalized until 2000. Between 1988 and 2003 local authorities were banned from presenting “homosexual” relationships as “pretend family relationships” and such relationships could not be taught about in schools. There was no means of legally recognizing same-sex relationships in the UK until civil partnerships were introduced in 2005. Likewise, until that year same-sex couples were banned from adopting children. And only now is the law finally about to allow same-sex couples equal access to NHS infertility treatment. Same-sex marriages were only legalised from 29 March 2014. And the large majority of UK churches still ban same-sex couples from celebrating their marriages in church, including the Church of England, the Catholic Church and most Baptist churches. However, from 2016 URC churches started conducting same-sex weddings. That same year the Bloomsbury Baptist Church became the first of a small but growing number of Baptist churches to celebrate such marriages. And from autumn 2021 Methodist churches opened all their doors to same sex marriages. See below, with their kind permission, wedding day pictures of one of the first Methodist married couples, Ben and Jason McMahon-Riley.
But Ben and Jason were unusual. Unsurprisingly, with most church doors firmly slammed shut against their marriages, only a small handful of same-sex couples have had church weddings – 0.7% (compared to 18.7% of heterosexual couples).
Given that history, you might have expected gays and lesbians generally to have turned their backs on traditional marriage from which their own relationships were so often excluded. You might also have expected any long term same-sex couplings to be less stable and successful than traditional heterosexual marriages.
So, 20 years after same-sex civil partnerships were introduced and 11 years after gay marriages were first allowed, what is the overall evidence about such relationships? Do gays and lesbians generally even want such relationships and how stable and successful have they been compared to heterosexual marriages? Rather than going only by personal experience, which may be unrepresentative, what does the overall data tell us?
I did a long trawl of the statistical evidence about the success or otherwise of same-sex marriages. Below is my detailed summary of what I found.
Marriage and divorce statistics
Do many gay or bisexual people actually want to marry a same-sex partner? Yes! According to the last census, as of 2021 only 3.2% of the population of England & Wales over-16 identified as having LGB+ orientation, approximately 1.5 million people. And civil partnership had only been possible for same-sex couples since 2005 and marriage since 2014. Yet as of 2022 there were approximately 234,000 people in formalized same-sex couplings: 167,000 married and 67,000 civil partners. About 57 per cent of legal same-sex partnerships were female and 43 per cent male.
See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/england-scotland-wales-office-for-national-statistics-data-b2519811.html
and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnership_in_the_United_Kingdom
and various publications at https://www.ons.gov.uk
If we’re looking for evidence about the success or failure of long term relationships – whether heterosexual or same-sex – one of the best objective measures surely must be the divorce rate.
With divorce statistics we need to bear in mind the “seven year itch” is a real thing: more than half of all divorces happen within the first seven years of marriage (See e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/06/30/a-psychologist-explains-the-early-years-divorce-and-2-other-common-marriage-dissolution-points/ ) So, since same-sex marriages have only been possible in the UK for just over 10 years, you would expect same-sex divorce rates to currently be rather higher than the general average.
As of 2022 the overall divorce rate in England and Wales was about 6.7 per 1,000 married people. As you’d expect, the same-sex marriage divorce rate in England and Wales was somewhat higher – but not hugely– about 16% higher at about 7.8 per 1,000 married people. However, as with other countries, divorce rates in female same-sex marriages are much higher than male same-sex marriages; at one point they were more than double, although the gap has narrowly a little more recently. For example, the latest ONS figures showed 69 per cent of same-sex divorces were between women.
See: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce
But since female couples also make up most same-sex marriages - about 57% (see sources above), this seriously skews same-sex marriage divorce rates. This means that the latest male same-sex marriage divorce rates are only about 5.6 per 1,000 married people – so not 16% higher but 16% lower than the 6.7 average divorce rate. However, the female same-sex marriage divorce rate is significantly higher at about 9.4 per 1,000 married people – about 40% higher than the overall average and 68% higher than male same-sex divorces. But, to put that into perspective, this is still less than the overall average divorce rate was in 2013 at 9.8, on the eve of UK same-sex marriages. Bearing in mind most marriage failures happen in the first seven years, the above figures could suggest that the female same-sex divorce rate will eventually turn out very similar to the overall average, but the male same-sex divorce rate well below the average.
In fact, the current evidence from a number of countries (including Scandinavia and the Netherlands) is that the divorce rates from male same-sex marriages and civil partnerships are on average slightly better than for heterosexual marriages. So all-male partnerships have, if anything, proved slightly more stable than heterosexual marriages.
Dutch stats:
Swedish stats:
However, in these other countries the divorce rate for lesbian marriages/partnerships has also been consistently significantly higher than the overall average – 26 to 40% higher. So such relationships as an average have so far proved to be less stable than heterosexual marriages.
One possible reason why male same-sex marriages may be slightly more stable than heterosexual ones is that they don’t involve the gender role conflicts that still sometimes afflict heterosexual marriages. Also, sometimes gay couples may find helpful support from the gay community. But if that’s the case then why is the divorce rate for female same-sex marriages so much higher than the average?
Sociologists believe the higher rates of divorces amongst lesbians may reflect a trend of women committing sooner and having higher expectations for a relationship, whether that’s a lesbian or a heterosexual relationship. There is also evidence that women tend to be less forgiving of marital unfaithfulness than men.
Gunnar Andersson, professor of demography at Stockholm University, previously found in successive studies that women in Norway, Sweden and Denmark were twice as likely to dissolve their civil partnerships as men. “This reflects trends in a heterosexual marriage because women are more prone to say they want to marry - but they’re also more likely to initiate a divorce," he told The Independent after releasing his findings in 2013. "Women usually have higher demands on relationship quality, that’s often been said in studies. Even if you control for age there is still a trend of more women ending partnerships than men.”
This is certainly borne out by divorce figures in the UK. Annual figures consistently show British women in heterosexual relationships are far more likely to file for divorce than men - women initiated over two thirds of UK divorces in 2021. (See above ONS source for annual divorce statistics)
So, the higher breakdown rate of lesbian marriages does not seem to be due to these being same-sex marriages; but rather because women generally have higher relationship standards than men – whether the relationship is heterosexual or same-sex. (There may also be another reason which I’ll mention shortly).
Relationship quality studies
But divorce rates can’t be the only measure of how good a relationship is. Perhaps all those enduring gay male husbands are mostly making each other miserable but stoically sticking it out? And perhaps though less stable those lesbian marriages are much happier while they last? But maybe, as many traditionalists have warned us, both male and female same-sex partnerships overall have proven much less happy and successful than traditional marriages between men and women? After all, that’s what you’d expect if only a man and a woman can re-make the original model for humankind to re-join up its male and female sides.
The widest based such research I found to date was a UK/Australian University of Queensland study, Sexual Identity and Relationship Quality in Australia and the United Kingdom, published in the Family Relations journal in February 2018. This studied 25,348 individuals in long-term cohabiting relationships in UK and 9,206 in Australia. They were of mixed ages, ethnicities, education and sexual orientation. (See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fare.12293 )
The results were based on answers to standard national relationship surveys conducted between 2011 and 2013 – just before same-sex marriage was legalised in either country but several years after UK civil partnerships had been introduced. This included questions like how often they worked together on a project, how often they quarrelled or kissed, how well does your partner meet your needs, how many problems does your relationship have, how much do you love your partner? The answers were then translated into overall scores out of 10 for the relationship.
Perhaps the greatest surprise was the biggest differentiating factor in relationship rating was not sexuality but nationality! Whether it was because of the different questions they were asked or perhaps their sunnier climate, the Australians on average marked their relationships rather better than us Brits. Across all sexualities on average Ozzies marked their relationships about 8/10 but Brits rated theirs only about 7/10.
Across the different sexualities the average scores in descending order were:
So, overall, this study found that couples in same-sex partnerships had a very similar level of satisfaction with their relationship’s quality to couples in heterosexual partnerships (7.63 to 8.01). In fact, on average lesbian couples reported the highest satisfaction levels, closely followed by heterosexual men.
Notably, bisexual men and women were the least happy with their partnerships (7.09 to 7.26), regardless of whether they were in a same-sex or opposite sex couple. The authors suggested this may reflect their partner’s greater insecurity because of the potential for unfaithfulness with either sex and a partner’s suspicion that their bisexual partner would prefer to be with someone of a different sex. This could exacerbate any tensions within the relationship.
Other studies have given broadly similar results: partners of same-sex relationships generally rated the quality of their relationship at least as highly as opposite couples rated theirs, but relationship satisfaction tended to be lower with bisexual people, whether they were in a same-sex or opposite sex partnership.
These lower satisfaction ratings for bisexual partners might give us a further clue as to why female same-sex relationships have a higher failure rate than all-male or opposite sex partnerships. Based on the last UK census, it is much more common for women to be bisexual (1.9%) than simply lesbian (1.1%) and it’s the opposite way round for men - 2.7% gay, only 1.1% bisexual. It therefore seems likely that in many all-female partnerships one of the spouses will be bisexual and so, on average, may be less happy with their relationship than if both spouses were allosexual, i.e. just attracted to people of the same sex as their partner. However there’s nothing to suggest that bisexual women (or men) who marry opposite sex partners are likely to have any happier or more stable relationships.
What answers does this evidence give to the key questions about same-sex marriage?
I believe this statistical evidence gives some insight into questions 1 to 5.
1. Do most gay people have similar sexual desires to straight people which can lead to sexual immorality or other sin?
Few would dispute the answer to this question is yes. These statistics don’t directly address this issue, save that it would be reasonable to assume from them that a committed partnership must offer a suitable outlet for gay sexual desire that prevents promiscuous sex. Otherwise, you’d expect much higher same-sex divorce rates, especially among gay men with their presumed higher sex drives.
2. Do most gay people share the same general need to do life with a sexual life-partner?
The above evidence cannot, of course, show us what percentage of gay people share this need. However, the fact that within a quite short space of time many 1,000s of gay people have formed and are continuing successful legal civil partnerships and marriages surely shows that many of them must do.
3. Do all gay Christians, at least potentially, have the gift of celibacy?
These statistics don’t directly address this issue. However, the fact is many gay people are choosing to enter into legally-binding partnerships and those that do so mostly form stable, happy partnerships. We also know that some of them profess to be Christians (explored further below). This would suggest it’s very unlikely all gay Christians have the gift of celibacy.
4. The central question: can and do same-sex partnerships fulfil Scripture’s essential purposes for marriage? Equal, compatible soulmates, helping and supporting each other, permanently covenant-bonded in a close kinship union, within which sex can be enjoyed to help cement the relationship and help discipline and control sexual desires and providing a suitable place to bring up any children?
These statistics show that, contrary to some traditionalists’ prophesies of doom, most same-sex life partnerships do not end in divorce and they enjoy have a broadly similar divorce rate to heterosexual marriages. In fact, male same-sex partnerships have a slightly better, lower divorce than heterosexual ones, albeit female same-sex partnerships have somewhat higher divorce rates (probably for the reasons identified above). This suggests many same-sex partnerships must fulfil the essential purposes of marriage or else far more of them would end in divorce. It certainly shows that such relationships can be just as permanent and committed as heterosexual marriages.
However, I believe, what best confirms that same-sex partnerships mostly do fulfil these purposes are surveys of relationship quality whose questions directly touch on these purposes: compatibility, close bonding, help and support of each other. Same-sex partnerships are there found to meet the essential scriptural purposes of marriage just as well as heterosexual ones. And, even though female same-sex relationships have higher failure rates, if anything, whilst those relationships last, their average quality is rated highest of all.
All this this entirely fits with what revisionists would expect - that same-sex partnerships can and do offer just the same divinely intended blessings of marriage as heterosexual partnerships.
It entirely contradicts traditionalist assumptions that same-sex partnerships could not meet people’s needs for a marriage partner because of the lack of male-female complementarity.
But it chimes with my own personal experience of same-sex partnerships (even whilst I’d held a traditionalist view).
It would also be reasonable to assume from these statistics that same-sex partnerships do offer enjoyable sex that helps bond the union and control sexual desires. Otherwise, you would expect to see much higher same-sex divorce rates due to sexual unfaithfulness, especially amongst gay men with their presumed higher sex drives. Robert Gagnon had expected that the assumed lack of moderation of male sex drive by a female partner would have very damaging consequences for male same-sex couples. Yet divorce rates among gay men are in fact slightly lower than heterosexual couples.
These statistics do not directly show us how well children develop within same-sex marriages. However, the fact that the stability of such marriages is similar to heterosexual marriages may suggest they could offer an equally secure place in which to raise children.
5. Is there something fundamental about sex and marriage that same-sex couples can’t fulfil without harming themselves or others, including any children of the relationship? If so, what?
For the reasons set out above these statistics certainly don’t suggest there’s anything fundamental about sex and marriage that same-sex couples can’t fulfil. Nor do the statistics suggest such partnerships are harmful to the spouses (or probably any children they raise together). Otherwise, you wouldn't expect most same-sex partnerships to both survive divorce and be happy relationships – on a par with heterosexual marriages.
THE ANSWERS PART TWO
The Physical Health of Same-Sex Marriages –
is Gay Sex “Unhealthy”?
A warning here - it’s impossible to properly examine this topic without discussing sexual activities openly and honestly. If this section were given a certificate it would be 15!
The traditionalist arguments
Some traditionalists might concede, yes in some ways many same-sex partnerships do seem to be good and stable, but in the longer term many are storing up physical harm for each other by practicing “unnatural” forms of “sexual intercourse”. This is a common claim made by many traditionalists, like the popular speaker Mike Winger in his YouTube series “Speaking the Truth in Love”. It derives from their understanding of Genesis chapter two and how things have always been “from the beginning”. Robert Gagnon would say that’s because of the need for sex to involve a man and a woman “remaking” the original non-binary Adam by their two bodies joining together in the heterosexual act of coital intercourse. Sex between two men or two women can never fulfil that innate human need.
I have already made the case in my Bible, Sex & Marriage section why, I believe, Robert Gagnon’s “androgenous Adam” theory is effectively Greek myth, unsupported by the Hebrew text. But, even if he’s wrong about that, perhaps he’s right that “homosexual” sexual practices are unnatural and therefore harmful because they substantially increase the risk of health problems?
Similarly, Mike Winger argues revisionists ignore that only between men and women can sex bring about that naturally designed “one flesh” union of bodies fitting together. With same-sex couplings, he argues, sex happens only through an “act of violence” rather than parts “fitting together beautifully” as God physically designed them to. He claims that, consequently, “homosexual” sex often leads to serious harms to physical health.
Does the Bible support these traditionalist arguments?
Read Genesis chapter two for yourself. There’s no reference to any anatomical differences between the man and woman nor even to them actually having sexual intercourse. (This is only explicitly referred to after the Fall in the later part of chapter three). As we saw, before the Fall Adam and Eve are described in terms of their similarity rather than difference. So any sexual union anticipated or implied as part of their “one flesh” union could have been any form of sex – not just coital but manual, oral, even anal. As far as we know, these other sexual activities have always happened between many heterosexual couples and are nowhere admonished in Scripture. And yet these common forms of heterosexual sex are also the usual forms of sex practised by same-sex couples.
The benefits of sex - gay vs heterosexual
We know from experience that sex between two people is capable of helping cement the bond between them – whether it’s just the intimacy of a cuddle, massaging your partner’s feet or more overtly sexual contact. And whilst good sex certainly does not have to involve orgasm, we also know that on orgasm our brains release large amounts of “feel good” chemicals like oxytocin and dopamine. These bring health benefits and can promote feelings of connection and bonding between partners (see e.g. What Happens in Your Brain During Orgasm? www.verywellmind.com). Yet orgasm does not require vaginal intercourse and indeed most women cannot experience orgasm through intercourse alone and require other external stimulation of the clitoris through oral or manual sex (see e.g. Women’s Experience of Orgasm During Intercourse at www.ncbi.nlm.gov ) And men certainly have no difficulty experiencing orgasm without vaginal intercourse!
Since these divinely gifted benefits of sex are experienced as much (if not more) through non-coital sex, they can also be just as easily experienced between two female or two male partners. This is borne out by the experiences of gay and lesbian couples. Hence the statistics just examined do not suggest any sense of sexual frustration leading to serial unfaithfulness and high divorce rates in same-sex marriages.
The health risks of anal intercourse
Virtually all the focus of traditionalists on the physical harms of gay sex has been on the “unnatural” act of anal intercourse between two men.
Let’s have a reality check here. Whilst I have no personal experience of it, biologically, anal intercourse is not as inherently “unnatural” as some traditionalists make out. The anus contains its own erogenous zones and therefore has been designed as if it can or should be enjoyed as part of sex. It is also naturally large enough to accommodate a penis (just think of the size of what usually comes out of there!). If we object to it as “unnatural” because poo comes out of the anus, then on the same basis we should object to all other forms of sex, because they either involve a part of the anatomy from which bloody human waste comes once a month (the vagina) or a part through which urine is passed several times a day (the penis)! The fact is God designed all our sexual organs as multi-purpose and we need to just get over it!
Nowhere does Scripture ban heterosexual anal intercourse. This is even though, inevitably, it would have happened when Scripture was written. After all, it avoided both the risk of unwanted pregnancy in an age before contraception and also avoided breaching the Levitical ban on coital intercourse during a woman’s period. Since the process of heterosexual anal intercourse is identical to gay anal intercourse, biblically it’s difficult to argue that anal intercourse itself is “unnatural” (even if we think it’s unnatural for two men to have sex together). It’s true that, unlike the vagina or penis, the anus has no natural lubrication, but many women need artificial lubrication for vaginal intercourse anyway.
However, it is a biological fact that frequent anal intercourse does come with greater risks than vaginal or oral intercourse, because not only does the anus lack natural lubrication, but it also has a thinner lining than the vagina.
Therefore, there is a greater risk of tears (anal fissures), a greater risk bacterial infections (due to poo) and a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases. This was one of the reasons why in the 1980s the AIDs pandemic was particularly rife amongst gay men who had anal intercourse without a condom. These increased risks still apply today and probably partly explain why as an average sexually active gay men still report higher rates of sexually transmitted disease than heterosexual men. This was confirmed by a report published in 2016 from a survey of 14,000 sexually active men women, Sexual Orientation Disparities in Sexually Transmitted Infections: Examining the Intersection Between Sexual Identity and Sexual Behavior” (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3575167/ )
As Mike Winger and others correctly point out, regular anal intercourse also brings with it an increased risk of faecal incontinence. However, those risks can be exaggerated. A 2021 US study Risk of Fecal Incontinence following receptive anal intercourse (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34645594/ ) surveyed 21,762 men who slept with men. It found men who received anal intercourse more than once a week had a 12.7% risk of faecal incontinence. However men who never received anal intercourse still had a 5.7% risk. So, regularly receiving anal sex does increase the incontinence risk but not by many multiples. It slightly more than doubles the risk. Furthermore, that 12.7% risk group included many men having sex promiscuously outside committed relationship where less care may be taken, and thereby increasing the risk. Also, as we’ll see, most sexually active gay men receive anal intercourse less often than once a week. Many traditionalists may be surprised to learn that anal intercourse is not in fact the gay equivalent of vaginal intercourse.
What gay men actually get up to in bed together
In January 2014, the Journal of Sexual Medicine published a study of nearly 25,000 sexually active gay and bisexual men. What's love got to do with it? Examinations of emotional perceptions and sexual behaviors among gay and bisexual men in the United States (See US National Library of Medicine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24287965/ ) The researchers from Indiana University and George Mason University made some findings about gay sex lives which shattered popular myths about what gay men actually get up to in bed. Contrary to what some traditionalists imply about “unnatural” gay sex, most male-male sex involves doing the very things most heterosexual couples get up to (minus of course vaginal intercourse). And for most, anal intercourse plays a relatively minor supporting role in their sex lives. Of all sexual behaviours that men reported occurring during their last sexual event with another man, those involving the anus were the least common. Around 75 percent of participants reported kissing their partners, giving oral sex, and/or receiving oral sex. The next most common sexual activity was mutual masturbation. By contrast, only 35 percent reported taking part in anal sex.
This study did find US gay men were on average more promiscuous than heterosexual men. However, despite the double fuels of testosterone, the differences were quite modest: just over 40% reported their most recent sexual activity was with their regular partner. A similar earlier study of heterosexual men found their rate to be just over 50%.
Similar studies in Europe have found very similar results. For example, a 2012 online survey of 18,000 men who sleep with men (See Sexual Health: A Public Health Perspective. McGraw-Hill International ISBN 978-0335244812.)
Back in the late 1980s, I remember my housemate Steve challenging my “biblical" views about the obviously “unnatural” nature of gay sex. I dismissively laughed it off when he suggested anal sex was actually the least common form of gay sex. It turns out he was right! It was just one of my many misconceptions about same-sex relationships where my myths were bust by the facts.
If vaginal intercourse is the most common “default” heterosexual act the nearest equivalent for gay men is not anal intercourse but oral sex - an activity also carried out by most heterosexual couples, and the most common form of oral sex for gay couples, just as with heterosexual couples, involves no genitals - it’s where two mouths come together – kissing!
This fact alone should give us a very strong clue that most heterosexual and homosexual sex between regular partners are actually very similar. Just as they involve the coming together of mouths in kissing and other body parts in more overt sex, they involve the coming together of hearts and minds in union, driven by sexual attraction, but which are also about so much more than sex.
Most anal intercourse is actually by heterosexuals!
The majority of anal intercourse going on in the world today is not by gay men but by straight couples! (See Rise in popularity of anal sex has led to health problems for women The Guardian 11 8 22). Anal sex between heterosexual partners has become increasingly popular among younger heterosexual adults, especially in the US where 45% of young people report practising it. Even in the UK 28.5% of young heterosexuals say they’ve tried anal sex. Given that heterosexuals make up well over 90% of any age group it’s not hard to do the maths and work out that most of the anal intercourse happening in the world today is between men and women. And there is some evidence that woman regularly receiving anal intercourse may be at greater risk than men – from anal sphincter injury and faecal incontinence because of less robust anal sphincters and lower anal canal pressures. But the Bible nowhere bans heterosexual anal intercourse.
Overall evidence of health risks of gay male sex
So, the evidence indicates gay men are on average a little, but not a lot, more promiscuous than straight men and women. Also, whilst anal intercourse is the least common sexual activity of most gay men, most gay men do practise it on at least a semi-regular basis. Despite its increasing popularity among straight people, most of them don’t do it. There is no getting away from the fact that, whilst it’s certainly possible to practise anal intercourse without suffering injury and disease, it is the trickiest, riskiest form of common sexual activities. It is therefore particularly risky when practised promiscuously rather than in the safer confines of a monogamous, loving relationship.
Partly because of the increased risks for those regularly receiving anal sex, gay men are overall at somewhat greater risk of sexual injury and disease. However, most of those greater risks result from when gay men carelessly engage in promiscuous anal intercourse, without condoms. The evidence also shows most gay men do not suffer harms to health from their sex lives and such harms are mostly avoided when sex is practised carefully within a monogamous relationship.
The health risks of vaginal intercourse vs. other forms of sex
There can also be significant health risks and issues with vaginal intercourse and it is certainly not accurate to suggest vaginal intercourse always involves parts “fitting together beautifully” as many married heterosexual couples will know from experience!
Even within faithful married relationships, vaginal intercourse carries significant risk of infections - of thrush and urinary tract infections. And, whilst vaginal intercourse generally involves less risk of pain and health problems than anal sex, many women experience pain and difficulty with vaginal sex (especially as they get older). Also for some women, e.g. with endometriosis, anal intercourse can sometimes be less painful than vaginal intercourse and may therefore even be suggested by gynaecologists or sex therapists as an alternative to coital intercourse. (See e.g. How To Make Sex Less Painful If You Have Endometriosis | HuffPost Life Experts explain why sex hurts for many people with endo and share tips to make it more pleasurable. 16 Sept 21 )
Also, unlike anal intercourse or other non-coital sex, of course, vaginal intercourse alone involves the significant risks of unwanted pregnancy (which no contraception can guarantee to prevent).
And occasionally even consensual vaginal intercourse does involve physical “violence” in the way a man and a woman’s bodies come together.
A June 2018 German online survey of 266 gynaecologists, Vaginal injuries after consensual sexual intercourse, found that 83.5% had observed vaginal injuries after consensual sexual intercourse and 59.1% repeatedly. Menopause, use of objects during sexual intercourse, the influence of alcohol or drugs, and previous obstetric surgery were risk-increasing factors for the occurrence of vaginal injuries. Penetrating vaginal injuries during consensual sexual intercourse had led to injuries of a wide range in severity, with 56.3 % of gynaecologists having observed bleeding, 28.1% having to perform surgical suture care, and 20.8% had had to initiate hospital admission.
The health risks of lesbian sex
Lesbians must find all this talk of the health risks and “violence” of “homosexual” sex very puzzling. What exactly do traditionalists imagine two women get up to in bed together? The evidence is very clear that sex between two women is generally far safer and less “violent” than between a man and a woman, let alone between two men. Lesbian sex mostly involves the same sexual activities as heterosexual and gay male sex, albeit obviously minus a penis: most typically, kissing, oral sex and masturbation. The only common sexual activity unique to lesbians is tribadding, or as the Jewish Talmud called it mestolelot - two women rubbing their genitals together. Interestingly, as noted earlier, whilst the Talmud recorded that some ancient Hebrew females did engage in this, it did not prohibit it and most rabbis did not even consider this impugned a woman’s sexual “purity”, so she was still fit to marry a priest!
Unlike heterosexual intercourse, as no penis is involved there are no risks of physical damage to the vagina from penile penetration which we’ve just noted. Nor are there any of the multiple risks of unwanted pregnancy or from taking pharmaceutical contraceptives. Heterosexual sex can sometimes involve penile anal intercourse which has its own risks, probably more so for women - risks which, again, lesbians avoid.
As with heterosexuals and gay men, lesbians can still face health risks of sexually transmitted diseases and infections. However, even there, overall, sexually active lesbian women are significantly less likely to report sexually transmitted diseases than sexually active heterosexual women or gay men (supported by the same 2016 survey referenced above).
So, overall the health risks of lesbian sex are substantially less than heterosexual or male gay sex.
What if any answers does this evidence give to the key questions about same-sex marriage?
This evidence can only assist us with questions 1, 4 and 5
1. Do most gay people have similar sexual desires to straight people which can lead to sexual immorality or other sins?
Yes. Research confirms what we’d expect: sexual promiscuity is common amongst all sexualities, but gay men are slightly more promiscuous than heterosexual men and women. STI rates tend to go hand in hand with promiscuous sex lives. Lesbian women have lower infection rates than either gay or straight men, although this is probably more because lesbian sex carries lower risks. That STI rates are higher amongst gay men reflects both higher risks from anal sex practised by most sexually active gay men and slightly higher promiscuity. This does illustrate the particular vulnerability of some gay men to sexual temptation and immorality (perhaps because of two gay men’s combined testosterone) and the physical harms that can result from this. We saw this tragically through the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and '90s. If the church discourages gay men from finding a safe place for their sexual desires through faithful covenanted relationships, surely this only risks encouraging even more gay men towards harmful sex lives.
4. Can and do same-sex partnerships fulfil Scripture’s essential purposes for marriage? Equal, compatible soulmates, helping and supporting each other, permanently covenant-bonded in a close kinship union, within which sex can be enjoyed to help cement the relationship and help discipline and control sexual desires and providing a suitable place to bring up any children?
The above evidence is certainly consistent with long-term same-sex relationships being very similar to heterosexual relationships in fulfilling Scripture’s sexual purposes for marriage. The statistics show more gay men have promiscuous sex lives than heterosexual men or women, but not a lot more. This confirms that, despite the combined testosterone of two gay men, they are certainly capable of stable faithful sexual relationships with one other man. The fact that, as with heterosexual couples, the most common sexual activity in gay male couples is kissing is an indication that the drivers of these relationships are very similar to heterosexual couplings. This is certainly consistent with the earlier statistics of relationship quality and divorce rates which showed that gay men on average actually do marriage pretty well - their quality ratings are about as good as heterosexual marriages and, if anything, have slightly better, lower divorce rates. This indicates gay marriages must enjoy good rates of fidelity. This all shows that, whilst gay men are naturally more prone to promiscuous and harmful sex lives, marriage serves them very well, in disciplining and controlling their sexual desires to keep sex within one safe monogamous relationship. There is less statistical evidence about lesbian sex lives. However the fact that their sexual disease rates are significantly lower than gay men’s or heterosexuals’ is certainly consistent with the evidence that many lesbian relationships must be sexually faithful.
5. Is there anything fundamental about sex and marriage that same-sex couples can’t fulfil without harming themselves or others, including any children of that relationship? If so, what?
Not sexually anyway. The above evidence only confirms the risks of harm from pursuing irresponsible promiscuous sex lives, whether you’re a man or a woman and whether you’re sleeping with men, women or both. Compared to heterosexual sex, male gay sex carries somewhat higher risks and lesbian sex lower risks. But the evidence indicates that gay and lesbian sex can be and often is practised safely. The safest way to do so is faithfully within a monogamous relationship, which is achieved just as well within same-sex relationships as heterosexual ones.
So, overall the above evidence conclusively shows that for gays, lesbians and bisexuals monogamous same-sex partnerships offer just the same sexual benefits and protections as traditional male/female marriage does for straight people (and bisexuals). If anything, the statistics suggest the benefits and protections of such partnerships are even greater for gay men than for straight people or lesbians.
THE ANSWERS PART THREE
The Health and Well-being of Children of Same-Sex Partnerships
How do children of same-sex partnerships fare compared to children of heterosexual partnerships?
Even if same-sex partnerships generally benefit the partners entering them, what effect do they have on any children of those relationships? Can same-sex couples make fit and proper parents? Or, as I boldly proclaimed to my family law tutorial group in 1988, won’t children brought up by same-sex coupled be inevitably harmed by such “unnatural” parenting, because they lack the complementarity of a father and mother?
If the evidence shows that overall same-sex parenting is more damaging or less beneficial to children than heterosexual parenting then, however good same-sex partnerships are for the couples themselves, it would be clearly wrong to accept same-sex partnerships as equivalent to traditional marriages.
But it’s very easy to come at this issue based on assumptions derived from pre-conceived bias rather than facts - just as I did 37 years ago when I trashed all same-sex parents without having known any!
The following pic is me with some Uni friends about 37 years ago (I’m the short white guy in between the tall white guy and the short Malaysian Indian guy, my friend Nava).
We need to look at the actual facts about the outcomes for children of same-sex parents compared to heterosexual parents. 37 years ago there simply was no research data we could go to, to see who was right. Now there’s a mountain of research studies from both Northern Europe and the USA, comparing the outcomes for children brought up by same-sex couples with those raised by heterosexual couples. Unsurprisingly, some of the most reliable studies with the widest evidence base were from the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries, because those countries were the earliest to allow same-sex couples to marry, adopt and have infertility treatments.
In 2015, Adams & Light published Scientific consensus, the law, and same sex parenting outcomes, reviewing the studies done to date. They concluded that by the late 1990s there was already a social scientific consensus from numerous studies that children’s outcomes were no different for children of same-sex parents than children of heterosexual parents. More recent studies had confirmed this. (See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26188455/ )
Even more definitive and recent evidence came from the British Medical Journal’s Global Health study published in February 2023, Family Outcome Disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual families: A systematic review and meta-analysis . This study reviewed 34 different global research studies on the issue. They found that the mental (and physical) health of the children of same-sex couples on average was at least as good as children raised by heterosexual couples. And academically, on average children of same-sex couples did at least as well as, if not slightly better, than children of heterosexual couples. (See e.g. article in the Science section of The Guardian, Children of same-sex couples fare at least as well as in other families -study, 6 March 2023).
But don’t gay couples turn their children gay?
One of the earliest major studies on this issue was published as long ago as 1981, Origins of Sexual Preference: Sexual Preference. Its Development in Men and Women by Alan P. Bell and others. Its key findings busted various myths about the origins of same-sex orientation. One key finding was that there was no good scientific evidence that being reared by non-heterosexual parents might affect sexual orientation. Generally, research found there was no difference in sexual orientation between children raised by heterosexual and non-heterosexual parents. The one study that suggested otherwise (for lesbian mothers but not gay dads) had major methodological shortcomings.
In 2003, London University academics, Dr Rahman and Glenn Wilson, published, Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sexual Orientation. (See: https://www.academia.edu/49689157/Born_gay_The_psychobiology_of_human_sexual_orientation)
This reviewed research from the previous 15 years into why people are gay, and concluded that most people are born with their sexuality defined due to a combination of genetics and hormonal activity in the womb, and not due to relationships with other people in their early life. In particular, they found no evidence that people could "learn" to be gay and that studies showed children of gay parents were no more likely to be gay than their peers.
In August 2019, the Journal of International Women’s Studies published Scientific Consensus on Whether LGBTQ Parents (See: https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2154&context=jiws )
This was an extensive review of 72 social science research studies between 2001 and 2017. They concluded that over 90% studies had found no association between parent and child sexual orientations. The small minority of studies suggesting otherwise had methodological shortcomings that brought the validity of their findings into question.
To sum up …
There is now an overwhelming consensus of evidence and academic opinion that overall the children of gay couples are no more likely to be harmed by their upbringing than the children of heterosexual couples and that they do at least as well. Furthermore, children of same-sex couples are no more likely to turn out gay than any other children.
Traditionalist fears about the harm done to children brought up by gay couples, which I shared 37 years ago, have no foundation in fact. They are yet another traditionalist belief, which I once embraced, but which the evidence exposes as a myth.
What answers does this evidence give to the key questions about same-sex marriage?
This evidence here can only assist us with questions 4 and 5
4. The central question: can and do same-sex relationships fulfil Scripture’s essential purposes for marriage? Equal, compatible soulmates, helping and supporting each other, permanently covenant-bonded in a close kinship union, within which sex can be enjoyed to help cement the relationship and help discipline and providing a suitable place to bring up any children?
In relation to parenting, the evidence delivers a very clear yes. Same-sex partnerships create just as suitable a place to bring up children as heterosexual marriages.
5. Is there anything fundamental about sex and marriage that same-sex couples can’t fulfil without harming themselves or others, including any children of the relationship ? If so, what?
As far as children of same-sex partnerships are concerned, the answer is a clear no. The evidence clearly establishes that these relationships present no more risk of harm to children of the partnership than heterosexual marriages.
THE ANSWERS PART FOUR
What Good or Harm does the Traditionalist Teaching do for LGBTQ+ people?
Traditionalists have taken the following main approaches to how they "advise and assist" gay and bisexual people to live their lives to conform with their teaching:
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“Healing homosexuality” - medical interventions
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“Pray away the gay” - conversion therapies
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Just marry an opposite sex partner anyway
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Accept you’re gay but keep single and celibate
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Celibate partnerships
Some have followed just one approach, but mostly they’ve advised a mixture of two or three depending on the individual. Let’s examine the evidence for the good or harm those approaches have done for LGBTQ+ individuals. The following is a summary of my main conclusions from researching the available evidence.
“Healing homosexuality” - medical interventions
Medical interventions to try to “cure” people’s “homosexuality" were widely practiced in the UK throughout the 1950s and into the 1970s. They were mostly publicly funded by the new NHS. As of 1972 they were still advocated by the internationally renowned Maudsley psychiatric hospital and the then world leading psychologist, Prof Hans Eysenck. But you will not find a single reputable psychiatrist or psychologist today who supports them. Along with price controls and use of ultra-hazardous "brown" asbestos, these “aversion” therapies were abandoned in the late 1970s - long before homosexuality was declassified as a disease in 1992.
But, like the use of asbestos, this hazardous activity has left a long tail of injury and misery. The reason why these medical interventions were abandoned was quite simply because they were found to be a complete waste of public funds - no one got “cured” but many were seriously harmed or even died as a result. (At least asbestos did protect people from fire!). We saw this most poignantly, perhaps, in the case of Alan Turing. He was a genius who should have been celebrated as a great national war hero but who was instead driven to suicide by the degrading treatment he was forced to endure to avoid a prison sentence for being gay. For a flavour of the context see e.g. https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org./alan-turing-the-medical-abuse-of-gay-men
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been very little formal research into the outcomes of these medical interventions. It’s like the body of a murder victim buried in the back garden. Those who know about it would prefer just to keep it buried! But one quite recent study was published in the British Medical Journal in February 2021, Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s—an oral history: the experience of patients by Smith, Bartlett & King (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC344257/ ). The authors interviewed 31 people about treatments to change their/their relatives’ sexual orientation between 1950 and 1980. The most common treatment was behavioural aversion therapy with electric shocks administered whilst the patient watched photographs of nude men and women. A shock was administered with same-sex pictures and no shock with opposite sex pictures. It was hoped the electric shocks would reduce arousal to same-sex photographs while relief from shock avoidance would increase interest in opposite sex images.
Not a single participant considered the treatments had changed their sexuality or had any direct benefits. Most were left feeling emotionally distressed and half of them were continuing to receive psychological help. Many still found later happiness in same-sex relationships. Four stayed single but all (save one) unhappily, describing it as an unwanted result of the treatment. Some male participants married women in the hope this would complete their “cure”. All except one—essentially a sexless marriage—ended in divorce on the grounds of sexual incompatibility. That participant confessed: “I have great pangs of conscience that, to some extent, I have wasted [my wife's] life, which she says not. We are very much in love, but it's a very gentle, very tender, very caring but platonic love and the other feelings [homosexual] are still there and mount up and up by the day.”
The study concluded that defining and treating same-sex attraction as a mental illness had been completely ineffective in changing sexuality and caused great harm and that, “this should serve as a warning against the use of mental health services to change aspects of human behaviour that are disapproved of on social, political, moral, or religious grounds.”
“Pray away the gay” - Conversion Therapies
Like medical interventions before them, conversion therapies also seek to heal people of same-sex orientation. The large majority of these therapies are carried out by Christian churches/groups. Effectively they are calling on Jesus to perform miraculously what the healthcare system completely failed to do medically – turn gay or bisexual people straight. Their typical methods have involved prayer or exorcism of “demons”, pastoral counselling and pseudo-scientific religious counselling combining spiritual and psychological techniques. Sadly, as we will see, the overwhelming evidence is these conversion therapies have been just as unsuccessful and damaging as the failed medical interventions.
Personal experience
Our views about “conversion therapies” may well be influenced by direct or indirect personal experiences – real-life stories of people we’ve met or at least read about. On that Alpha course 21 years ago (thankfully) the Lord never gave me the chance I was longing for with Nigel to try to “pray away” his gay! But I’ve spoken to a couple of middle-aged Christian men recently who’ve shared with me how as young men they were prayed for to overcome their same-sex attraction. Both are now happily married with children but neither suggested those prayers had altered their same-sex attraction. One of them freely admitted that he remained just as same-sex attracted but, thankfully, found he was bisexual and so this was not an issue in his marriage. The other man, a church minister, didn’t define his sexuality. However, I got the distinct impression that the reason why he did not want to engage in the same-sex relationships debate was that if he discovered his traditionalist views weren’t actually God’s views this would raise difficult personal questions for him that he’d rather not ask! I therefore changed topic.
Robert (I've changed his name for privacy), a Ugandan Christian I met recently, shared with me a rather more extreme form of conversion therapy.
Aged 17, Robert’s father literally tried to beat his “homosexual demons” out of him. This and the Ugandan death penalty for homosexual acts encouraged him to later marry a woman. But none of this changed his gay nature. One day his wife suddenly discovered his true sexuality from a series of messages on his phone. In fear for his life, he was forced to flee the country, leaving behind his two young children.
In their book, Just Because He Breathes, Rob and Linda share a story about their very different attempt to change their gay son’s sexuality. Yet the consequences were still disastrous. From when their 12-year-old son Ryan came out to them as gay they told him, in as loving and supportive way as possible, that the Bible’s teaching made clear if he wanted to follow Jesus embracing his sexuality was not an option. Wanting to please God and his parents, for six years Ryan desperately prayed every day for God to “heal” his same-sex attraction but nothing changed. He felt rejected by God, even though he’d never acted on his same-sex feelings. He was sucked into a cycle of despair, depression and suicidal thought. Leaving home aged 18, he sought relief in hallucinogenic drugs. He overdosed and died aged just 20. A devasted Rob and Linda acknowledged that with the best of intentions they had caused their cherished son’s death. They’d taught him to hate his sexuality and since your sexuality can’t be separated from yourself they’d taught him to hate himself.
In 2013, the then world’s leading anti-gay evangelical group, Exodus International, collapsed after recognising that of the thousands it had attempted to convert from a same-sex orientation they had changed virtually none. This included a number of its leaders whose own “heterosexual" marriages had collapsed.
There were a few who had happily accepted a life of celibacy or bisexuals who without difficulty had married a person of the opposite sex. But, as for actually changing anyone’s sexual orientation, their former chairman, Alan Chambers, conceded “99.9% of them have not experienced a change in their orientation.” Of the very small numbers who had apparently changed, he observed, nearly all had been women (whose sexuality is known to be slightly more fluid than men’s – see my earlier section “Made Gay?” linked here). I would highly recommend watching the Netflix documentary, Pray Away, recording how and why the group’s mission had failed so badly:
https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81040370?preventIntent=true.
For a powerful individual account of the futility and damage of “praying away the gay”, I’d also recommend Vicky Beeching’s autobiography, Undivided.
In his book, Love is an Orientation, Andrew Marin, testifies that his LGBTQ outreach mission sometimes encountered Christians who claimed their sexuality has been transformed (and rather more who didn’t). But for the reasons identified by the research below, I believe we must treat such claims with great caution. This is especially so now that science teaches us same-sex orientation nearly always has some sort of biological cause.
However, if social environmental factors do occasionally alter sexuality, e.g. through epigenetics, then I can see how God or medical science might repair such “damage”, but then surely this could go in either direction, depending on the original biological sexuality?
Research into conversion therapy
Over the past 20+ years numerous studies have looked into the effectiveness of conversion therapies in altering people’s sexualities. This has included a recent major study sponsored by the UK government, Conversion therapy: an evidence assessment and qualitative study, published in October 2021. You can read it at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conversion-therapy-an-evidence-assessment-and-qualitative-study/conversion-therapy-an-evidence-assessment-and-qualitative-study. The authors assessed the evidence from the 46 published studies published between January 2000 and June 2020. They also carried out their own qualitative study on the experiences of 30 people in the UK who had undergone sexual or gender conversion therapy. Their review of the previous studies found no robust evidence that conversion therapy is ever effective at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. Any studies reporting success were unconvincing due to serious methodological limitations or major flaws in study designs.
One survey from 2015 found that only one respondent out of 1,019 - just 0.1% - who had received such therapies efforts subsequently identified as ‘heterosexual’. (Interestingly, this exactly mirrors the experience of Alan Chambers that “99.9%” of the people Exodus had worked with had “not experienced a change in their orientation.” ) No respondent reported the complete elimination of same-sex attraction. 3% reported some change in their “sexuality”, but mostly this involved merely not acting on same-sex attractions or a change in how they thought about their sexual orientation. (See Sexual Orientation change efforts among current or former LDS church members by John Dehlin and other at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24635593/ )
Their own qualitative study found that the large majority of interviewees experienced no change in their sexual orientation or gender identity (even temporarily), perceived conversion efforts to have been a failure and went on to accept their same-sex sexual orientation or gender identity. Only two interviewees (a man and a woman) reported now identifying as heterosexual and were currently married to people of the opposite sex. The man claimed to have been changed by the therapy. The woman did not attribute any change to the therapy. She just recognised in reality she had always been bisexual, even when she had identified as a lesbian and any change was more likely due to her natural sexual fluidity.
In her autobiography, “Undivided”, Vicky Beeching, a scarred survivor of conversion therapy, describes how she herself came very close to suicide.
Many reported previously experiencing temporary perceptions of change due to an expectation of change and being in denial – a placebo effect. Many reported being told that they must have ‘faith’ for it to work, so tried to persuade themselves that they had been ‘healed’ before eventually recognising there had been no change. Sometimes this placebo effect wore off after weeks, sometimes much longer.
One gay man who had become co-leader of a conversion therapy course explained that the longer he deceived himself and others, the more difficult it became to openly admit that no change had occurred. Given this common placebo effect, the authors observed that rare self-reported successes needed to be treated with caution, because asking participants about the outcomes of therapy at a single time point may not provide a reliable guide to the longer term experience.
The study also found increasing statistical evidence linking conversion therapy with poor mental health outcomes, including suicide attempts. In their own qualitative study the majority of people they interviewed described experiencing conversion therapy as harmful, and reported self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Such therapies appeared to make internal conflicts worse and reinforced stigmas associated with minority sexual orientations or gender identities.
A study by John Blosnich and others published in 2020 found that, compared with sexual minority adults with no experience of sexual orientation change efforts, people who had undergone conversion therapy:
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were twice as likely to have had suicidal thoughts
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had 75% increased odds of planning to attempt suicide
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had 88% increased odds of attempting suicide resulting in minor injury
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had 67% increased odds of attempting suicide resulting in moderate or severe injury
See the full paper, Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, Adverse Childhood Experiences, and Suicide Ideation and Attempt Among Sexual Minority Adults, United States, 2016–2018 at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7287530/
Given the overwhelming evidence of the failure and damage of conversion therapies, unsurprisingly, in the developed world health professionals almost unanimously strongly oppose them. Consequently, most developed countries now ban them.
The American Psychiatric Association in its 2010 Position Statement on Therapies Focused on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation stated, “The potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior… Therefore, the American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment such as reparative or conversion therapy.”
Marry “straight” to lose the “gay”
When efforts to change sexuality (almost inevitably) fail, one traditionalist response has been to advise people to enter an opposite-sex marriage. This seems to have been on an existential basis – perhaps if you live the life of a “normal” straight person you’ll become straight? Whilst I've found no research directly focusing on this approach, it is often reported as part of other research. There’s also plenty of personal experience of how effective or damaging this approach has been in practice. The overall results are certainly less devastating than conversion “treatments”, but they have been equally ineffective and still quite damaging.
We’ve seen numerous celebrities try and fail this method of marrying straight to lose (or at least hide) the gay. It almost always ends badly. Think of Oscar Wilde, Little Richard, Jeremy Thorpe, the former Welsh secretary Ron Davies, Michael Barrymore, Philip Schofield, Lord Andrew Adonis, and perhaps most famously of all Elton John. These men tried for years to fool themselves and/or society that they were straight by straightjacketing themselves into a heterosexual marriage. But their true gay nature couldn’t help breaking out in illicit gay affairs or even more squalid encounters.
That 2021 the BMJ published study interviewed several men who had married women in the hope this would cure their “homosexuality” when the medical interventions failed to. All except one of them ended up divorced on the grounds of sexual incompatibility. But that one man confessed: “I have great pangs of conscience that, to some extent, I have wasted my wife's life, which she says not. We are very much in love but it's a very gentle, very tender, very caring but platonic love and the other feelings [homosexual] are still there and mount up and up by the day.”
One stand-out example of the failure of this approach is the once leading evangelical preacher and writer, Dr Roy Clements. He was the former senior pastor of Eden Baptist church, Cambridge,who had baptized both my wife and our friend Jeremy as students.
In 1999, we heard some shocking news – he’d just left his wife not for another woman but another man! Interestingly, my wife wasn’t so surprised. From meeting him in baptism classes she’d suspected he might be gay. The sad truth was (as he later admitted) he’d always been gay, but grew up in a time when active “homosexuality” was a crime and long before any evangelical Christians had accepted same-sex relationships. What brought his sexuality into the daylight was falling in love with another Christian man, Chris. Ironically, Roy met Chris through counselling him to overcome his own same-sex attraction. They are still together to this day.
Roy shared with me some of his experience:
“I was in complete denial about my gay feelings until the mid-1980s. I accepted the view of my older evangelical mentors that homosexuality was a sinful act, like theft or murder. If you didn’t do the act, you were not a homosexual. I married because I knew I didn’t have the gift of celibacy and I wanted a Christian family (which I had long envied in others but never known myself). It was only after 10 years of marriage that I accepted my gay feelings as something more than a ‘temptation’ - this was partly as a result of counselling training and partly as a result of falling in love with a younger man. The relationship was brief - but sufficiently intense to make me ask the questions I had repressed for a long time. Several years of praying and reading about the subject followed, and by the time I met Chris in 1992 my views had changed. Chris and I … became civil partners in 2015 - although we could convert this into legal ‘marriage’ if we wished, out of respect for those who want to keep that word exclusively for a male-female union, we have decided to leave ours as a civil partnership.”
Another prominent gay evangelical who can testify to the foolishness of this approach is Roy’s friend, Jeremy Marks.
In 1988, Jeremy helped start the charity, Courage. Initially, like other “ex-gay” organisations, they tried to “heal” gay people straight, but did so in a gentle, more supportive way. This included encouraging gay people to marry opposite sex partners. Jeremy practised what he preached and tried it himself. But, as with all similar attempts, this experiment failed. I’ve heard Jeremy share how, although he had a loving relationship with his wife, she became very conscious that he simply lacked any desire for her. They divorced by mutual consent and his wife is now happily married to a straight man. By 2000, Jeremy had observed that of those they had worked with, only those who accepted they were gay and found a partner were happy and successful. Happily, Jeremy eventually found such love himself with his husband Paolo. In 2000, his organisation left the “ex-gay” movement and have now became the fully affirming ministry, Post Courage. (See https://postcourage.net ) You can read Jeremy's story on Kindle in Exchanging the Truth of God for a Lie - One Man’s Journey to find the Truth about homosexuality and same-sex partnerships. (See my Further Resources section here).
Of course, it’s very possible to be a bisexual man or woman happily married to an opposite sex partner.
Stay gay but keep celibate
The main current advice of traditionalists to gay people is that they should accept their sexuality but avoid sexual sin by keeping celibate. It’s fair to acknowledge that of the three approaches this is the least harmful. For some this can even be positively beneficial. But for most it’s a prison.
The Pray Away documentary, for balance, shows the work of a more recent “Ex-gay” group seeking to “save” people from a “homosexual lifestyle”. They do appear to have brought about some positive changes for some people through the Holy Spirit - not by trying to convert anyone’s sexuality, but by encouraging gay people to live as celibate Christians in a loving supportive community. The organisation’s founder certainly came across as very much a gay man. But his new supported, celibate Christian lifestyle certainly seemed to give him much peace, joy and order - in contrast to the chaos of his previous drug and sex-addicted way of life. For him and some others touched by his ministry celibacy seemed to be a blessing.
Andrew Marin in his book Love is an Orientation testified that in his outreach ministry he has encountered a number of previously sexually active gay people who have happily come to accept celibacy. However, the one written testimony he included from a celibate gay man revealed someone stoically resigned to his biblically-compelled celibacy rather than someone happy with his situation.
Andrew Marin acknowledged he has also come across many gay people for whom enforced celibacy has had very negative consequences. One of the written testimonies in his book is from a lesbian Christian woman who after prayer to change her sexuality had failed, fatalistically accepted that unless she turned her back on Jesus she had to accept celibacy. But this only led to a desperate rebellion - turning away from God and towards reckless lesbian sex. But then God taught her a third way; he accepted her lesbian sexuality that he had made her with. The clear implication was there would be nothing wrong in fulfilling that through a faithful same-sex relationship.
We should also remember the testimony of Jeremy Marks from the experience of his own failed “ex-gay” ministry – that of those they'd worked with only those who accepted they were gay and found a same-sex partner were happy and successful.
Compelling celibacy on anyone not only risks harming them but opens up risks to others, often more vulnerable than them.
I think of the widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. These priests will have had different sexualities. However, many appear to have been sexually repressed gay men for whom celibate priesthood no doubt seemed a safe way to avoid confronting their homosexuality and the church condemnation that would go with it. But it was long suspected that the church’s 1,000 year rule of compulsory priestly celibacy was a factor in priests' child sexual abuse, because it cut priests off from a proper outlet for their sexual desires that marriage can offer. This was confirmed by a major study on this issue published by RMIT University, Melbourne in 2017, Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: An Interpretive Review of the Literature and Public Inquiry Reports. This report reviewed the findings of 26 royal commissions and inquiries from Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada and Netherlands. One of its main conclusions was that mandatory celibacy for priests was and remains “the major precipitating risk factor for child sexual abuse” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/13/catholic-sexual-abuse-partly-caused-by-celibacy-and-secrecy-report-finds
and the report itself at:
file:///C:/Users/ymere/Downloads/child-sex-abuse-and-the-catholic-church%20(4).pdf
But evangelicals have no right to get all high and mighty about the foolishness of the Catholic church compelling single celibacy on its priests. Most evangelical churches effectively set the same rule for gay people involved in any form of church leadership. Inevitably, this has led to secretly gay evangelical leaders sexually abusing vulnerable young males under their charge.
Men like the late Eddie Long, senior pastor of the megachurch, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Despite being married to a woman and a forceful opponent of same-sex marriage, it appears he was repressing his own gay nature. This seems to have led him to use his pastoral influence to coerce a long line of young men into sexual relationships with him.
Celibate same-sex partnerships?
But perhaps it would be possible for gay people to lead a celibate life in a plutonic partnership with another person of the same sex? Wouldn’t this meet their human need for a life-partner whilst keeping sex off the menu? For some perhaps yes. Cliff Richard famously attests to a plutonic celibate partnership with his friend John, a former Catholic priest.
But for many keeping partnerships celibate has caused great unhappiness. In his book God and the Gay Christian Matthew Vines recounts the story of Stephen, a gay Christian, from a conservative background, who fell in love with another gay Christian man. To be true to “biblical” teaching they tried to build life together as partners but keeping strictly celibate. Attempting to love his friend without violating his understanding of sexual purity became like “torture … like being told to paint a picture, then having my eyes removed … The love …swelled with me, a powerful tide … but there was no way I could ever express it. Marriage was off limits. Any kind of sexual intimacy was off limits. The hope of being able to share bed was off limits. The ability to embrace freely was off limits. We were left in the tortured anticipation of a permanent courtship, destined to always love from a distance without ever coming together.” The pain in the end became unbearable for both and they broke up. He was left “heartbroken, shattered, broken”. Only after much prayer and bible study did he come to an affirming view and find peace with God.
Rather closer to home, I think of Mike Pilavachi, leader of the Soul Survivor Christian charismatic movement. As teenagers my children were much blessed by attending their summer camps.
But in recent years sad secrets have been revealed about how their flamboyant, gifted leader, Mike, misused his spiritual position “to control people and … his coercive and controlling behaviour led to inappropriate relationships” (Church of England report, 6 Sept 2023). Mike never engaged in full sexual abuse. But he formed a series of intimate, inappropriate personal relationships with young men, who lived with him for periods, and with whom he indulged in full-body massages or wrestling bouts. Victims included the now famous musician, Matt Redman. This abuse and its later revelation has done much damage not only to the direct victims but to the reputation and ministry of the wider church and the gospel’s reach. I do not know what Mike’s sexuality is, but if he is gay, could these harms not have been avoided if church teaching had allowed Mike to fulfil any need for male sexual intimacy through a faithful marriage to another man?
The gays, the grays and the As - when my son came out to me as “gray”!
A reason why some gay traditionalist Christians have happily embraced compulsory celibacy is that as well as being gay they’re gray. Graysexuality and grayromanticism are sexualities I was completely ignorant of until my son recently challenged me. See some definitions here: https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-graysexuality and https://www.choosingtherapy.com/greyromantic
I had always assumed that apart from occasional asexuals, everyone else was basically straight, gay or bisexual and, just like Adam had, needed a sexual life-partner. I’m certainly wired that way but actually not everyone is. Since my son’s mid-teens years I’d “encouraged” him find to find a girlfriend in the hope that like me he’d find his special partner to do life with and start his own family. That’s what everyone wants, right? Wrong.
As Sam explained to me recently, unlike me, he’s “gray-ish” - very happy with his single life, connected to plenty of friends but without any great need for a life-partner. Yes, he’s heterosexual and he’d had a girlfriend before and might do so again, but it wouldn’t bother him if he never did. Unlike me, he didn’t need a partner to feel fulfilled. And since our ultimate role model Jesus lived a very fulfilled single life it was very difficult to argue with him!
A quick reminder - what the Bible actually advises about celibacy
It should really come as no surprise to evangelical Christians that compelling all gay people to be celibate doesn’t work out so well. That’s because it directly contradicts scripture. For sure, Jesus and Paul were both celibate and promoted celibacy as an honourable way of life - previously shunned by God’s people. But Jesus was clear in Matthew 19 that marriage was God’s normal pattern for most people and celibacy should be a matter of choice for those made without the innate need for sex and marriage - “eunuchs” (including the As and the grays?) or for those “who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (verse 11). Meanwhile, Paul strongly condemned those trying to compel anyone to celibacy by “forbid(ding) people to marry” (1 Tim 4:3). Instead, he advised celibacy is something people should choose if they have been given the gift of celibacy: “I wish that all of you were as I am [i.e. celibate]. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” (1 Cor 7:7-11)
What answers does this evidence give to the key questions about same-sex partnerships?
The above evidence has some bearing on questions 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 10:
1. Do most gay people have similar sexual desires to straight people which can lead to sexual immorality or other sin?
Yes, of course, they do. Consequently, we’ve seen that when gay people are taught the Bible requires they must never fulfil their desires for a same-sex sexual relationship this often results in sexual immorality in two particular ways. First, many reject the teaching and along with it often reject any sexual moral boundaries, leading to reckless, promiscuous gay sex or other abusive relationships. Second, those trying to force themselves to live by this teaching in the past have often tried to plug their sexual and romantic gap through heterosexual marriage, only to find it doesn’t fit. Sooner or later this unfulfilled sexual need usually leads to marital unfaithfulness with a same-sex partner or partners, hurting both spouses.
2. Do most gay people share the same general need to do life with a marriage partner?
The above evidence certainly shows that many gay people express a need for a sexual life-partner and many trying to force themselves to live celibately lament their unfulfilled need for such a partner. Witness, for example, Stephen’s story, the experience of the interviewees put through conversion treatments and therapies and, again, Jeremy Marks’ Courage group.
Read also Vicky Beeching’s moving testimony in Undivided. As a faithful celibate lesbian she shares her repeated heartbreak after secretly falling in love with various women over the years without ever feeling able to fulfil her innate need for a life-partner.
3. Or do all gay Christians, at least potentially, have the gift of celibacy?
No. Just like heterosexuals, a minority of gay Christians do have this gift. This is why some gay people who have chosen to give up same-sex relationships have thrived in following a Christ-centred, celibate life supported by a loving community. Witness the man leading the celibate ex-gay group seen in the Pray Away documentary. But this just shows celibacy is the right fit for those particular individuals. If certainly isn’t for most gay people. That’s why there are plenty more examples of enforced gay celibacy leading to great unhappiness and rebellion through reckless lifestyles or even abuse of others.
6. If same-sex marriage is unacceptable to God, when gay Christians struggle with their sexual desires does God heal them “straight” so they can enjoy heterosexual marriage or gift them with celibacy?
No. There is now overwhelming evidence both from research and personal testimonies of huge numbers of LGBTQ+ Christians that God has not healed “straight”. Instead, many thousands have been seriously harmed by those failed prayers and therapies, some to the point of taking their lives. Against that, whilst occasionally some claim God has changed their sexuality, as the major 2021 Conversion Therapy study found there is “no robust evidence” that conversion therapy is ever effective at changing sexual orientation or gender identity.
7. If not, how does that fit our picture of God in Jesus and his promises to his people?
It certainly doesn’t fit at all the picture of Jesus I see in Scripture or my own life. Jesus promised he had “come that they may have life and have it to the full.” (John 10:10). And as Paul explained to us in 1 Timothy 4 and elsewhere, this involves embracing God’s good gifts of life in all its fulness, including sex within marriage for those not gifted with celibacy. When Scripture was written same-sex orientations were unknown and the traditional complementarian male-female marriage was society’s bedrock. Therefore, Scripture simply never addressed whether marriage and sex within it could include same-sex couples. But what Scripture does clearly tell us is this:
We should not forbid marriage to anyone and celibacy should be a choice and not imposed on anyone.
Yes, Scripture does require us to control our sexual desires to avoid sexual morality, but the New Testament’s main prescription for controlling sexual desire is to marry and enjoy sex within marriage. (See 1Cor. 7). Why should the prescription be any different for gays and lesbians, for whom only marriage with a same-sex partner works?
I believe God does still heal today - miraculously and through medical science. Although miraculous healings are generally now rather rarer than we see in the New Testament, in and beyond the Bible people have been healed of all kinds of physical and mental diseases – the deaf hear, the lame walk, the leper’s skin made clean. But gays are not healed straight any more than the introverted are healed extrovert or the autistic are healed neuro normative or white men turned black. As medical science now confirms, these aren’t “conditions” - they are all an essential part of what makes up people’s identity – how we were “fearfully and wonderfully made” - usually in the womb.
If God thinks to be gay is to be so broken that you can’t enjoy the sex and marriage he intends for most people, why does he never mend this “condition”? Hasn’t God given us a huge clue here as to what he thinks about being gay? Surely gay people are never healed straight because they don’t need healing? Because God sees LGBTQ+ people not as “damaged goods” but as part of the richly diverse ways it is possible to be a human being made in his image? Black, white, introvert, extrovert, male, female, hetero-normative and hetero-diverse, gay, straight and every shade in between?
Doesn’t God just accept them and us as we are without any need to change this essential part of themselves? So, unless they’re gifted to be celibate, as part of enjoying life in all its fulness, doesn’t Jesus want the blessings of marriage and sex within it to be just as available to LGBTQ+ individuals as the rest of us? And in their case surely mustn’t this mean same-sex marriage?
As Matthew Vines says in God and the Gay Christian, though Christian teachings can be hard to live out, no other Christian teaching that is still taught “has caused so much torment, destruction and alienation from God as the church’s rejection of same-sex relationships. If we tell people that their every desire for intimate, sexual bonding is shameful and disordered we encourage them to hate a core part of who they were created to be.”
Surely this is not the sort of teaching we would expect to come from a God of love who, Scripture tells us, always promotes what does us good and prevents us harm?
10. Does forbidding or promoting same-sex marriage have a positive or negative effect on the gospel’s reach?
We haven’t been looking directly at this issue. But by doing great harm to gay people mustn’t the traditionalist teaching also negatively impact the gospel’s wider reach? Non-Christians witness the suffering traditionalist teaching causes to gay Christians - ostracising them for their sexuality unless they abandon any hope of a sexual partnership with a person they can fall in love with. And they think that’s just evil - if that’s what Christianity is like I want nothing to do with it! 21 years ago, I got that very reaction from my brother’s girlfriend after explaining to my brother why, although Nigel had become a Christian, his church role would always be restricted unless he abandoned his same-sex partnership. Today that reaction would only be more hostile.
We’ve also seen that teaching can cause gifted gay Church leaders to force themselves into celibacy or heterosexual marriage until their unfulfilled sexuality breaks out in abuse, adultery or abandonment of their family. This results in a sudden end to fruitful ministries through which God had been positively impacting many.
It’s difficult to see a plus side to the gospel from the way traditionalist teaching has impacted gay and bisexual people. It’s true that occasionally we see good fruit produced when, challenged by biblical teaching, people give up promiscuous, hedonistic homosexual sex lives in favour of Christ-centred celibacy. Such individuals may then have a very positive impact in the lives of others. However, not only is that quite rare, but it doesn’t require traditionalist teaching to produce this good fruit. Revisionist biblical teaching also challenges gay (or straight) promiscuity, but rather than seeking to force celibacy as their only sexual choice offers them the option of faithful same-sex marriage.
THE ANSWERS PART FIVE
What Good or Harm does the Revisionist Teaching do for LGBTQ+ People?
Encouraging gay people to marry a same-sex partner unless they’re gifted to be celibate
My own limited personal experience is that committed same-sex partnerships seem to offer gay couples just the same benefits as heterosexual marriages do for straight people.
That was certainly the experience of Jason and Ben, the Preston Christian gay couple, amongst the first to be married in a Methodist church in June 2022.
Jason said, “I really believe that this day means the start of something new for my relationship with the whole Church - being recognised and affirmed in my wholeness. This day has been the best of my life, and I can't wait to share the rest of it with Ben as my husband!”
Ben said: “This is a day that I have been waiting so long for, to be able to celebrate my love for Jason and the relationship we share in such a public manner and to be able to show to the wider world the importance of that love being recognised. Most of all, I can now call Jason my husband and all that it means to me.” Read more of their story in https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/20221601.preston-same-sex-couple-among-first-get-married-methodist-church/
I believe their wedding day pictures speak more eloquently than my words ever could about the God-given goodness and love of their relationship.
A rather more famous example of how well same-sex partnerships can work is Elton John’s very successful 30-year partnership with David Furnish with whom he shares two adopted children. What a contrast to his ill-fated four year marriage to poor Renate!
WE’RE STILL STANDING AFTER ALL THIS TIME …
And what about Elton's friend, Brandi Carlile? The sublime Seattle singer-songwriter with whom Elton and Bernie created the brilliant album, Who Believes in Angels? Brandi doesn't just believe in angels, she believes in Jesus and labels herself a "Jesus freak" (a name she possibly re-purposed from Bernie's lyrics to Levon on one of her
favourite Elton John albums?) In 2013, Brandi was so excited to marry the English love of her life, Catherine,
that they had three weddings! But, as a Christian, it pained her that their English wedding had to cut God out of the script, because same-sex marriage wasn't legalised in the UK until a year later. So, they had to have a civil partnership here.
As Brandi says in her autobiography, Broken Horses, "When you are told your whole life that it's wrong for two women or two men to marry, when your homeland agrees and when you realize that you believe it too,
deep within your primitive senses, a reckoning is imperative. It is a process but it's mandatory whether you're
LGBTQ or not. A person's self-worth is dictated by what inalienable rights are allowed to them. The right to
not live your life alone is a big one. If your family can accept you, if they want to celebrate your life and bear witness to your solemn vow, you'll have as many weddings as you need to."
Catherine and Brandi have been gloriously happy together now for 12 years and share two daughters.
(See the link to Brandi's autobiography in my Further Resources)
And let’s learn from the experience of the ex-ex-gay evangelical, Jeremy Marks. During the 1980s and '90s members of his organisation, Courage, earnestly and faithfully tried all the traditionalist approaches recommended to help gay people deal with their sexuality: converting gay to straight and when that failed pursuing celibacy and when that didn’t work either marrying “straight” anyway. By 2000, Jeremy had observed that of those they'd worked with only those who accepted they were gay and had found a same-sex partner were truly happy.
In 2002, Courage quit the huge ex-gay organisation, Exodus International. But it took another 11 years for the parent organisation to recognise its own failures after some of their supposedly ex-gay leaders realised they were as gay as ever and their heterosexual marriages were part of their failed experiment. Many of them have since found peace and happiness in faithful same-sex partnerships. Jeremy eventually found special covenant love himself with his husband, Paolo, whom he married on 24 October 2020.
See here the address their friend, Dr Roy Clements, gave at their wedding, Special Love.
And let’s not forget the survivors of the failed medical “conversion” interventions from the 1950s to '70s. Most were left permanently emotionally scarred by this “treatment”, but where many participants did later find happiness was in same-sex partnerships that became an option for them as society started to tolerate such relationships.
According to the ONS there had been over 55,000 same-sex marriages in England and Wales in the first 7 ¾ years since they were legalised in March 2014 (and almost exactly the same number of civil partnerships in the 8 years before that). As we saw in my part one, statistics in the UK and countries with a longer history of same-sex unions show their divorce rates are overall similar to heterosexual marriages. In fact, all-male marriages actually enjoy a slightly better, lower divorce rate than heterosexual ones. Just as importantly, relationship quality surveys have found same-sex partnerships overall are at least as happy and enriching as heterosexual ones. Interestingly, even though female same-sex marriages have higher failure rates, if anything, whilst those relationships last, on average they are slightly happier than other gender pairings.
We’ve seen that overall lesbian sex carries less health risks than heterosexual sex. However gay male sex on average carries rather greater risks, even though anal intercourse is not their go-to sexual activity. But men avoid the large majority of harms of gay male sex if they keep sex within a monogamous relationship. By contrast, where church and society have rejected their sexuality this has often encouraged them to reject God and his moral boundaries, leading them into risky promiscuous gay sex. I think back to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and think too of the words of The Pet Shop Boys’ classic 1987 song, It’s A Sin. (lyrics by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe)
When I look back upon my life
It's always with a sense of shame
I've always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common too
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin
It's a sin
How many gay men growing up in a supposedly Christian environment might have been saved from AIDS if, instead of being made to feel their every sexual or romantic desire was a sin, had been encouraged to find a husband and practise loving and safe sex with him? After all, we now know that gay men on average actually do marriage very well!
Four decades later, shouldn’t we find a better song to sing that affirms and values queer people and celebrates the faithful romantic love they can find with whoever they happen to fall in love with? Like Coldplay’s Jupiter? (Lyrics by Chris Martin):
… Jupiter longed to be herself or die
"I wanna burst into a butterfly"
"Am I bad? Am I wrong? Am I not okay?"
"Speaking only words that a girl can't say"
Still, she followed the rain to where the rainbow lay
All of the angels singing "Come and say"
I love who I love … the message from above
Is "Never give up", love who you love …
… And it's a battle for your song
You have to hide away for so long
When they say, "Yourself is wrong"
… I love who I love … Oh, I'm okay
It's difficult to see much harm for LGBTQ+ people from teaching that supports same-sex marriage. But, entering any marriage is a risk. As with heterosexual marriages, a minority fail and a small minority fail so badly that spouses suffer great harm and abuse from which they never recover. Some of that small minority may later wish they’d been told to keep single to avoid all that pain. But this can no more be used as a reason against supporting same-sex marriage than against heterosexual marriage.
What answers does this evidence give to the key questions about same-sex marriage?
Evidence of the good or harm of revisionist teaching for LGBTQ+ people has some bearing on questions 1 to 5:
1. Do most gay people have similar sexual desires to straight people which can lead to sexual immorality or other sin?
Yes, yes, and yes!
2. Do most gay people share the same general need to do life with a marriage partner?
Certainly the data shows many of them do. Otherwise we wouldn’t have seen about ¼ million entering same-sex civil partnerships and marriages in the first 20 years since the law recognised them.
3. Or do all gay Christians, at least potentially, have the gift of celibacy?
No. Just like straight people, a minority of gay Christians are happy to live celibately. But the experience of organisations like Courage and Exodus and feedback from those put through medical “conversion” treatments is that most gay people are happiest doing life with a long-term partner.
4. The central question: can and do same-sex partnerships fulfil Scripture’s essential purposes for marriage? Equal, compatible soulmates, helping and supporting each other, permanently covenant-bonded in a close kinship union, within which sex can be enjoyed to help cement the relationship and help discipline and control sexual desires and providing a suitable place to bring up any children of the relationship?
As we’ve already seen in part one, research data (backed by personal experience) show that same-sex partnerships on average are just as stable and enriching for the partners as heterosexual marriages. They certainly do appear to fulfil Scripture’s essential purposes for marriage: equal, compatible soulmates, helping and supporting each other, permanently covenant-bonded in a close kinship union, within which sex can be enjoyed to help cement the relationship and discipline and control sexual desires and providing a suitable place to bring up any children of the relationship.
5. Or is there anything fundamental about sex and marriage that same-sex couples can’t fulfil without harming themselves or others including any children of the relationship? If so, what?
No. The reverse is true, and especially for gay men. Gay men are particularly vulnerable to being sucked into a sexually promiscuous culture that is both physically and spiritually harmful. The success of gay male marriages shows that this can be a great means of protecting gay men from those harms.
THE ANSWERS PART SIX
Does Traditionalist Teaching Help or Harm the Gospel’s Reach?
Some Traditionalists would argue that even if faithful same-sex relationships can be a great blessing to people in this life, what really matters is how this impacts the next life – our eternal destiny. They would argue that 1 Corinthians 6 spells out quite literally that those who indulge in any unrepentant “homosexual” acts will “not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven”.
Please see my earlier explanation here for why I’m convinced this is not what the Bible teaches.
But undaunted by revisionist explanations of the gay “clobber” texts, many traditionalists will argue that:
-
For LGBTQ+ people to be saved they must be taught to resist the desire for gay sex because it stems from sinful human pride totally at odds with the repentant heart required to become a Christian
-
The church particularly thrives and the gospel reaches where the traditional view of sex and marriage is promoted
Does pursuing any same-sex relationship amount to a refusal to repent of sin?
-The Traditionalist argument
Scripture is clear that to be saved and enter Christ’s kingdom we must “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15). In his YouTube series, Speaking the Truth in Love, popular evangelical speaker, Mike Winger, asserts that living out same-sex desires by definition prevents you becoming a Christian because you are refusing to repent of sin. He says that in his book God and the Gay Christian Matthew Vines goes “weird” by claiming that traditionalist teaching must be false, because it produces bad fruit by harming gay people’s sense of dignity and self-worth. Mike Winger agrees that the biblical test of true or false teaching is the good or bad fruit it produces (Matthew 7:15-20). But he says human dignity and our sense of self-esteem are bad not good things, because, when unmasked, they turn out to be human pride which Scripture views as fundamentally bad. By contrast, being brought low is good, because it leads to repentance. In support, he cites Jesus’s parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. He therefore castigates revisionists’ false “human-centric” approach to Scripture.
Mike Winger then repeats the traditionalist line that I myself used to argue: yes, it’s tough if you’re born with a same-sex attraction, but in our fallen natures many of us are born with desires and weaknesses for certain types of sin, whether its alcohol, drugs or gambling addiction or even incest and paedophilia. The fact we’re born with a desire for homoerotic sex doesn’t make it any less sinful to act it out than for a natural alcoholic or paedophile to act on their own desires.
- My response
This was my view until God forced me to re-examine it by seeing a gay man in a same-sex partnership being saved! But I believe Mike Winger is misreading Matthew Vines here.
I certainly don’t see Matthew Vines say anywhere in his book that traditionalist teaching must be wrong simply because it damages human dignity or sense of self-worth. What Matthew Vines actually says is this: although Christian teachings can be hard to live out, no other Christian teaching that is still taught “has caused so much torment destruction and alienation from God as the church’s rejection of same-sex relationships. If we tell people that their every desire for intimate, sexual bonding is shameful and disordered we encourage them to hate a core part of who they were created to be.”
As I understand it, Matthew Vines' real point is not that traditional standpoint produces bad fruit because it causes a loss of self-esteem and dignity, but because, generally, it has those effects without leading to repentance and saving faith. Instead, it mostly just leads to a loss of faith, permanent unhappiness or much worse (see my part five above).
If loss of dignity and damage to self-esteem were good things in themselves, regardless of the consequences, then let’s bring back slavery! But in themselves they’re neither good nor bad fruit. It all depends where they then lead. If that’s repentance and faith/new life then that’s good fruit and loss of self-esteem is just part of the pruning process. But if loss of self-esteem and dignity only lead to a loss of faith, unhappiness (or even suicide) without any positive change that’s just bad fruit.
Also, this damage done to gay people by traditionalist teaching happens to plenty of gay people who haven’t even “sinned” as most traditionalists would see it. As we saw in my earlier parts, many testify to being wracked with shame and self-loathing just because they know they are same-sex attracted and believe that if they followed this through it would lead to serious "mortal" sin. Many also testify to their awareness that if they struck to traditionalist teaching they are sentenced to a lonely single life with no hope of ever finding a marriage partner (and the sexual union that naturally goes with that). It’s not so much the sex they crave but the “one flesh” relationship. (For a personal insight into this again I’d highly recommend Vicky Beeching’s Undivided). This is very different to teaching alcoholics or drug or gambling addicts to give up booze or drugs or betting. Those people will have sinned already by drinking excessively or taking drugs.
And the desire for sex with children ot incest usually ends up with extreme abuse and harm to a vulnerable child or relative. By contrast, as we’ve seen, where same-sex attraction leads to a committed marriage-like relationship this usually greatly enriches people’s lives.
Does the church thrive and the gospel reach where the traditional view of sex and marriage is promoted?
Categorically yes! I have been part of churches and missions where the whole leadership team have held traditionist views about sex and marriage and we certainly saw new people having their lives transformed by Christ – even, to my astonishment, a gay man partnered with another gay man! But I’m now part of an affirming church community that has seen new people coming to Christ.
How’s that possible? Either my old church or my new church must have got this key issue fundamentally wrong. Surely God can only work through churches and Christians who’ve got this right? Wrong. Our God is both much more gracious and more pragmatic than that. The Bible shows us God frequently works through people who have got things wrong. Think of Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon, or Simon Peter. They often got stuff wrong but it didn’t stop God doing amazing things through them!
We see that even on the issue of sex and marriage. Jesus and Paul are clear that God’s intention for sex and marriage was that it should be between two people joined together for life - not a man taking multiple wives like David and Solomon did and certainly not a man sleeping with his wife’s servant to produce an heir like Abraham did! Yet God still worked his purposes through them. And it’s just as true today. If God only worked through Christians who got everything right then the gospel would have died out straight after Jesus’s ascension! We all get something wrong, somewhere!
So, if on either side in this debate we point to new spiritual life growing in our garden as the definitive proof we’ve got the issue right, we’re kidding ourselves. God’s Holy Spirit is too merciful and too powerful not to reach and grab people through our words even where our beliefs aren’t 100% right. The fact is, whether we’re revisionist or traditionalist, we are preaching the same gospel: repent, believe in Jesus, accept his forgiveness, receive the Holy Spirit and start living for him. (See e.g. Mark 1: 15, Acts 2:38, Romans 10:9). That’s what Nick did on that Alpha course 21 years ago. And so, to my astonishment, his life was transformed by Jesus. Because nowhere does Scripture say … oh and to be saved you must also reject (or accept) same-sex partnerships. Nick never abandoned his partnership with Andrew. So he didn’t become a Christian because our church had a traditionalist view of sex and marriage. He became a Christian despite it. And, even though I fretted that we should honestly confront him with our concerns, thankfully God never seemed to give us the opportunity. Our negative views about same-sex relationships were like a nasty violent housemate we had to keep shut up in the attic when a guest came to dinner. Otherwise, if we let him downstairs he’d take a swing at our guest who’d run from the house.
It's not true that the only parts of the world where the church is growing take a traditionalist view.
As we’ll see in my final part, there are an increasing number of thriving and growing affirming churches in this country, including among evangelicals and charismatics. There are certainly plenty of apparently thriving and growing traditionalist churches too, especially Black Majority churches. But how many of their congregants are new Christians who hadn’t grown up in similar traditionalist churches?
Spiritual growth cannot just be measured by the Sunday morning headcount. Many churches growing in numbers are doing so overwhelmingly through churn; existing Christians leaving their previous churches or even countries. Real spiritual growth ought to be measured by the new spiritual fruit those churches produce.
And the sad truth about black churches’ overwhelming opposition to gay marriage is that this position did not arise organically from their own reading of Scripture. It almost always derived from what they were taught (and are still taught) by white Western missionaries and which they then faithfully stuck to. See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268121000585
and https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/19/africa-uganda-evangelicals-homophobia-antigay-bill/
At the 2024 Fruitful Conference, Rev. Paul Bailey, the first openly affirming British black Pentecostal minister, put it this way - in Africa "we had plenty of different flavours" of relationships “until the white man introduced us to vanilla!”
So if it is mostly white, Western churches that are spearheading the movement towards affirming same-sex marriages perhaps that’s only right. After all, we are only putting right the mistakes our ancestors had taught!
So, I believe, the real questions we need to ask are: does the traditionalist view of sex and marriage actually help the gospel’s reach or does it reach people despite that view? Could we reach more people if that traditionalist view were changed for an affirming one?
One harm traditionalist teaching has done is waste so many God-given talents of Christians who happened to be born gay - gifts which could and should have been used to bring new people to Jesus or bring his people into deeper relationship with him. This wasted LGBTQ+ talent is an issue highlighted in the Hays' book as one of the key things that made them recognise the need to review their understanding of what God really thought about same-sex relationships. Much of that wasted talent we will be unaware of because they reside in LGBTQ+ Christians who hide themselves and their gifts in the shadows to avoid their sexuality being exposed to a hostile church. But there are others we do know about. LGBTQ+ Christians who had richly served the gospel and God’s people through ministries cut off in their prime.
I think of the man who had baptised my wife and my oldest friend, Dr Roy Clements, one of the leading evangelical teachers of the 1980s and ‘90s. His ministry was brought to a crashing halt in 1999 when the news broke that he’d left his wife for another man. Of course, I don’t condone any marital unfaithfulness, but it was traditionalist teaching which led him as a gay man into a totally unsuitable marriage with a woman rather than a man. As we’ve seen, such marriages are sandcastles that the tide almost always washes away.
I think too of the wonderfully gifted worship leader and musician, Vicky Beeching. (Follow this link to her autobiography, Undivided, Coming out, becoming whole and living free from shame: https://amzn.eu/d/0nN0mqW .)
Vicky had been a “poster girl for evangelical Christianity”. Nearly all evangelical Christians used to sing her great songs – until 14 August 2014. That day, aged still only 35, she announced to the world, “I’m gay. God loves me the way I am.” (See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/vicky-beeching-star-of-the-christian-rock-scene-i-m-gay-god-loves-me-just-the-way-i-am-9667566.html ) Then they stopped singing her songs. She had been a lifelong celibate and yet when she came out the result was the same as with Roy Clements. Cancellation – evangelical excommunication. God re-purposed her life for good (though sadly she currently struggles with a chronic auto-immune disease). But I wonder how much more good might God have done for her and for the Kingdom through her if the church had simply accepted her sexuality? And to what extent was her disabling illness part of the damage traditionalist teaching had done to her through the serious stress and mental trauma it put her through ?
Wind the clock back 60 years to 1954 ... A 94-year old client of mine, John, (name changed for privacy), shared with me some of his story as a gay man. He first fell in love with another young man when he was in his 20s. Like the young married couple, Ben and Jason, I featured earlier, they both shared a Christian faith and, like Jason, my client's boyfriend was exploring a calling to church ministry. But there the similarities end. Remember this was 1954. Sex between men was to remain a serious offence for another 13 long years. That same shameful year the mathematical genius and war hero, Alan Turing, took his own life after submitting to “chemical castration” to avoid imprisonment for his “homosexual acts”.
My client followed his friend to theological college to explore his own vocation whilst their relationship grew. But it soon became clear to them that the church was a very hostile and dangerous place for men of their disposition. Despite this, his boyfriend’s potential for church ministry was soon spotted by none less than Geoffrey Fisher, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. But the primate gave him a stark choice: never see that young man again or abandon your ministry. He chose the church. It was a devastating double blow for my client. He had lost the man he loved and was effectively excommunicated from the church. From then on he had nothing further to do with the church that wanted nothing to do with him and his "kind". And so he and God became strangers. Happily, he found love again a few years later with another man. They were together for over 60 years until he died. But he never re-discovered Jesus.
Wind the clock 36 years forward again to 1990 … Aged 19 my brother Frazer had been fervently on fire for God. Tragically, before he was 21 that fire was utterly extinguished. (A huge challenge to my then Calvinist beliefs!)
Just one factor in dousing that flame was the church’s condemnation of gay people. He himself was proudly heterosexual – later proven by his boasts of the growing list of women he’d bedded since he’d abandoned his faith! But, unlike me, having actually met real life gays and lesbians he saw they were just ordinary, mostly decent, folk like the rest of us. So he saw too the irrational injustice of how the church mistreated gay people and the serious contradiction of a bible that preached universal love and mercy in one breath and in the next condemned people to eternal damnation just because they happened to be born attracted to people of the same sex. (At the time neither of us realised we were just misreading mistranslated bibles!)
I longed to bring my brother back to faith. It was 14 years later - 2004. I thought it might help to tell Frazer how our Alpha course was bringing Nigel to the Lord, despite being a sexually partnered gay man. Of course, we couldn’t accept Nigel into any ministry role unless he gave up his relationship with Adrian, but in the meantime we’d be happy for the Bishop to confirm him as a member of our flock. I shared this with him at my sister’s wedding.
Frazer was just bemused, but his 20-something year old girlfriend was horrified. “That’s just evil!” she said. Being several years younger, unlike us, she’d grown up in a post-section 28 society where acceptance of different sexualities was increasingly the norm. So to her generation, our discrimination of people based on their sexuality was pure homophobia. She would no more want to have anything to do with a religion that treated gay people as second class citizens than I would want to be part of anything that treated black people that way. My “homophobia” was like a pair of huge ear plugs that blocked out any gospel message I wanted to share.
The annual British Social Attitudes Reports chart how over 40 years this country has increasingly moved from overwhelming opposition to overwhelming acceptance of same-sex relationships. In 1983 only 17% adults of all ages agreed that that there "nothing wrong at all" with people having same-sex sexual relationships. By 2000 for the first time the majority of the UK accepted this. By 2023 67% unequivocally accepted same-sex relationships. The percentage among the young and those without a religious background is much higher still.
So, back in 2004 my brother’s girlfriend was among the large majority of younger adults who unequivocally accepted there was nothing wrong in same-sex sexual relationships. But 20 years later the large majority of all ages take the same view.
The picture is, sadly, rather more difficult for trans individuals (as illustrated by the fallout from the recent Supreme Court decision). But for gay or bisexual people, outside the church, these days, the overwhelming majority of society fully respects and accepts their sexuality. So, why should they have to put up with discriminatory treatment within a church that they don’t suffer elsewhere?
Consequently, when the church today teaches that gay people must choose between damnation or compulsory celibacy this makes it very hard for our gospel message to reach the country’s unchurched majority. Such a “homophobic” message, tragically, tunes many out of reception to the good news of Jesus. It is seen as hypocritically unloving and unjust; the very opposite of what our gospel message tries to preach to “act justly and love mercy” (Micah 6:8) and “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt 22:39).
It also makes the church look very foolish. This is especially so when the media pick up stories of how traditionalist teaching has led key church leaders into harmful actions in their attempt to deny their own homosexuality: witness the scandal 26 years ago when the great evangelical preacher Dr Roy Clements left his wife for another man.
I firmly believe that such great human tragedies just bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into disrepute with the majority of society that we are trying to reach.
And, of course, for LGBTQ+ people themselves the effect is much more acute. With such a long church history of exclusion of gay people it should be no surprise that that so many LGBTQ+ individuals have turned against the Christian church – much more so than the general population. The 2021 UK census found that overall 46% of UK adults described themselves as “Christians” (albeit most did not regularly attend a church!). But only 26% of LGBTQ+ individuals professed a Christian faith.
This was confirmed by census survey data previously on the ONS site but currently unavailable at the time of writing!
Despite this, some gay people do find faith in Jesus. But for many of them their experience of church is far from the love that Jesus said should characterise his followers’ relationships (John 13:35). A Church Times on-line survey published on 31 January 2022 found that just over two-thirds of LGBT+ Christians do not “feel safe to be themselves” in their place of worship and many felt forced to hide their sexuality out of fear for the reaction they would receive.
Similarly, a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 73% of American LGBT adults viewed evangelical churches as "unfriendly" towards LGBT people.
See: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/06/13/a-survey-of-lgbt-americans/
So, when LGBTQ+ folk do develop a faith within traditionalist churches, rather than receiving love and acceptance, they often experience much hurt and exclusion. It’s often very far from the abundant life Jesus promised his followers in John 10:10. (For a powerful testimony about this I would again recommend Vicky Beeching’s autobiography, Undivided).
I was struck by the testimony of a young lesbian woman I met recently. She shared how she nearly walked away from God after being bruised by traditionalist church teaching at charismatic churches. She had naively hoped such churches would be more accepting of her sexuality than traditional churches, only to find the opposite. What saved her faith, she said, was attending a course run by an affirming charismatic church explaining why there was no contradiction between her sexuality and her Christian faith.
How does the above evidence impact our key questions?
It only really addresses one of those questions, but it’s the question that should most concern evangelicals and other Christians longing to see lives transformed through the gospel: Does forbidding same-sex marriage have a positive or negative effect on the gospel’s reach?
Teaching against same-sex marriage does not always stop people accepting Jesus, even gay people. But when LGBQT+ people come to Christ through traditionalist churches they generally do so despite their traditionalist views of sex and marriage, not because of them. God in his mercy still works through his servants even when we’ve got some things seriously wrong. However, in our current times, the traditionalist position is now so out of step with the rest of society that it creates a huge barrier to acceptance of our message – not just by LGBTQ+ individuals but by the large majority of the country, and especially younger generations. Therefore, it must surely significantly restrict the gospel’s reach.
Of course, if it truly were the case that you cannot be saved and be in any active same-sex relationship, then it is a price that must be paid. But I believe my earlier exploration of Scripture shows that this is simply not what the Bible teaches. However, I believe, the key test is this: what evidence is there that people can and do maintain a spiritually active, faithful relationship with Jesus Christ and a sexually active, faithful relationship with a same-sex partner?
That's what we'll look at next.
This is what we’ll look at in the final part of this section.
THE ANSWERS PART SEVEN
Does Revisionist Teaching Help or Harm the Gospel’s Reach?
In his ministry amongst LGBTQ+ folk in Chicago, Andrew Marin never preached about whether same-sex relationships were right or wrong. He just left the Holy Spirit to do his job of convicting people of any sin. His ministry is a powerful test of whether it’s possible to be “saved” whilst continuing in a same-sex partnership. If we don’t tell people whether they can or can’t be a Christian in such relationships does God by his Spirit tell them they can’t be? Or by his work in their lives does he show us he can be totally fine with such relationships?
I believe we see that answer in the pages of Andrew Marin’s book, Love Is An Orientation. It’s a few years old now, but I believe the lessons it teaches are just as relevant today. Andrew Marin there testifies that many gay people he’d worked with had come to or returned to a relationship with Jesus without abandoning intimate same-sex relationships. To my mind, that’s a pretty positive test result that being in a same-sex relationship is no barrier to being a Christian.
Two life stories he mentions illustrate this.
A lesbian woman had endured two failed strategies to reconcile her sexuality with her Christian faith. First, she “repented” of the gay and prayed to be healed straight. When that didn’t work she fatalistically tried accepting a life of self-imposed celibacy. This only led to despair and then rebellion and a pursuit of harmful, promiscuous lesbian sex.
But then God taught her she had no need to follow either of these strategies, “I clearly heard in my spirit, ‘I created you perfectly just as you are. How you walk in your journey regarding the totality of who you are will not take away from what I have already established and cherished in creating you …' What emerged that night was a deep sense of certainty that God had my back and I was the apple of his eye, even if those in the church chose to interpret the Bible in a certain way …” The strong implication was that God was fine with her realising how he’d made her through a faithful relationship with another woman.
Christopher was an older gay man. He’d lost his young Christian faith due to the ruthless treatment he’d received from both his family and church on account of his homosexuality. He and his gay partner of nearly 30 years had foster-parented sick, underprivileged and disadvantaged children from Mexico (since gay couples weren’t then allowed to adopt).
Christopher got really angry towards God and his church. But through Andrew Marin’s ministry he turned back to Christ. With Christopher’s encouragement his foster kids then started discovering Jesus for themselves. He now had four adult children he’d fostered; all straight and each with their own faith in Jesus which they were passing on to their own children. Andrew Marin was stunned by the testimony of this humble, spirit-filled man.
Don’t we see here God actively working through the life and same-sex partnership of a spirit-filled gay, Christian man, to bring great spiritual blessing to a second and third generation?
I haven’t had an amazing ministry like Andrew Marin, but these stories do chime with my own limited experience. On that Alpha course 21 years ago, despite my traditionalist views, I could not deny what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears: Nigel, a gay man in a committed relationship with another man, publicly testified to accepting Jesus as his saviour and being healed of his alcohol dependency. To my puzzlement all this had happened without Nigel “repenting” of his relationship with Adrian. How could the Holy Spirit be producing such fruit in the life of a man who, according to God’s word, was living a seriously sinful lifestyle?
Something didn’t add up here. But, dull as I am, it took me another 11 years to work out what; it certainly wasn’t God’s spirit or his word - just my inconsistently literal interpretation of it! I’d misheard God’s word. “Though seeing, [I did] not see; though hearing, [I did] not hear or understand.” (Mat.13:13). Scripture had never actually said there was anything wrong with a same-sex sexual relationship within a committed, faithful relationship – effectively marriage. (It just never addressed the issue). Nigel and Adrian weren’t legally married because English law even then didn’t allow for same-sex civil partnerships until the following year and same-sex marriages not for another decade. But, even though they lacked the paperwork, I believe such committed, faithful relationships can be a marriage in God’s eyes. (See my earlier piece, Define Marriage here )
I can now see Nigel was able to come to Christ without repenting of his relationship with Adrian because there was no sin to repent of. God’s answer to my prayers - that the Holy Spirit convict him of the sinfulness of his “homosexual” relationship– was a big fat no. By contrast, the one relationship the Holy Spirit did tell Nigel he needed to repent of was with alcohol. So, as he committed his life to Jesus, Nigel asked for prayer to overcome his over-reliance on alcohol. And, as he publicly testified at his confirmation, God faithfully answered that prayer.
I can’t pretend Nigel came to faith because we taught him an affirming view of same-sex relationships. We didn’t. We simply avoided discussing the issue, which didn’t directly come up on the Alpha course. However, by saying nothing whilst actively welcoming Nigel and his partner, we were effectively sending an inclusive message. But it was a misleading message, because if Nigel hadn’t moved to Brighton he would have very soon discovered we were nowhere near as inclusive as we had first appeared: when he found that his “homosexual” lifestyle barred him from playing any active part in the church’s ministry. If he had remained with us I fear our later treatment of him might have strangled his infant faith whilst still in its cot.
That God can and does bring saving faith to LGBTQ+ people in committed same-sex relationships, I believe, is proven by the experience of an increasing number of thriving, inclusive churches. Most (but not all) of these churches are listed by the Inclusive Churches’ Network - https://www.inclusive-church.org/
This includes various “ACE” churches - LGBTQ+ affirming, Charismatic, Evangelical churches. Like John Peters’ former New Wine Anglican church, St Mary's Marylebone - https://www.stmaryslondon.com/ , or Danny Brierley’s Chester Road Baptist Church, North Birmingham - https://www.chesterroadbaptist.org.uk/ And, by the way, I’d highly recommend Danny’s excellent book, To Inclusion and Beyond - Evangelical and affirming LGBTQ+ relationships and equal marriage https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inclusion-Beyond-Evangelical-affirming-relationships/dp/B0CWD3GC1Q
And Keely and Simon Bateson’s Riverside Church, Whitstable (They has previously led Vineyard churches) - https://www.riversideuk.org/
And let's not forget Dave Steell's One Church, Brighton, which was fully affirming long before any of these Johnny-come-latelys!
https://www.onechurchbrighton.org/visit-us/
If you’re in any doubt that churches who accept same-sex partnerships can thrive and grow I’d recommend attending one of these churches.
In May 2024, I was privileged to attend the first Fruitful conference for affirming evangelical Christians, hosted by St Mary’s, Marylebone. I there saw for myself some of the wonderful new spiritual fruit growing amongst LGBTQ+ followers of Jesus. This church is a place where gay, lesbian and trans Christians and their partners are not just blessed by full acceptance but allowed to be a blessing to others through their own spiritual gifts – whether through leading spirit-filled worship music (including encouragement to sing in tongues!), the prayer ministry team, preaching or leading small groups.
I was struck by the testimony of the church’s rector, John Peters. He shared how many years earlier he had prayed to save the life of an unborn child after the mother had been told her child was probably beyond any medical help. To everyone’s astonishment the baby’s life was saved. The woman’s sister (who had transitioned from being a man) then prophesied that John would open the church’s door to LGBTQ+ people. This seemed very unlikely to John at the time. But many years later the prophesy was fulfilled when John led his church to become one of the first fully inclusive, evangelical, charismatic churches in the country. John had forgotten about the prophesy until reminded by the first woman just before the Fruitful conference!
Just one example of how his response to that call has blessed queer folk is the young nurse I met at the church, (mentioned in my previous part). As a lesbian woman, she had virtually abandoned her faith because of the way churches had mistreated her due to her sexuality. She then saw advertised St Mary’s course, Refocusing Faithfulness – exploring the Biblical basis for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Church. She decided to go to give God and his church one last chance. That course and the acceptance she received as a lesbian Christian saved and renewed her faith. She had since become an integral part of their prayer ministry team and was looking forward to the church blessing of her forthcoming marriage to her fiancée. (Sadly, the best a C of E church can legally offer).
By contrast to this lady’s experience of her own church, a recent on-line survey found that over two-thirds of LGBTQ+ Christians did not “feel safe to be themselves” as LGBTQ+ individuals in their own places of worship. See: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/4-february/news/uk/most-lgbtplus-christians-do-not-feel safe-to-be-themselves-in-church-survey-suggests But, more positively, the survey found that factors which most increased their sense of safety within the church included: being able to be open about their sexuality or gender identity, a warm welcome from church leaders, having church leaders openly affirm same-sex relationships and an inclusive statement on the church website.
I know this has been a real relief and blessing to a lesbian lady who joined my own church. For years she had attended traditionalist charismatic churches where she had to hide her sexuality from everyone for fear of being excluded. She finally found a local church where she could just be the person Jesus made her to be.
If LGBTQ+ Christians need these things from their church, how much more will non-Christian LGBTQ+ enquirers need them to feel comfortable enough to even enter a church, let alone hang around long enough to hear the sermon? Where people are made to feel comfortable about their sexuality and gender they are far more likely to come, stay and come back, and so far more likely to hear and receive the gospel. Surely it's just spiritual common sense, isnt it?
And the same applies to the heterosexual majority. Overwhelmingly, they now react as strongly against perceived homophobia as racism and sexism, just like my brother’s girlfriend did 21 years ago. I’m realistic. Offering an LGBTQ+ inclusive message will not send the crowds rushing in to hear the gospel. They’re hardly going to think churches deserve a medal for finally accepting what most of society did two decades ago! There are also many other reasons why most of the country is now tuned out of “religion”. But churches that affirm same-sex relationships do at least increase their bandwidth that people might tune into and listen to, rather than turn the dial to the next station the moment they hear a screechy “homophobic” noise.
I think of a lovely young couple, "Kate" and "Chris", and their two gorgeous kids who have become part of our church community. Neither had a church background, but both have recently become Christians through our church. "Kate" shared how a key early breakthrough for them in finding Jesus was when our pastor Penny (pictured below) shared how we believed Jesus accepted LGBTQ+ people on just the same terms as everyone else. They are both cis heterosexuals, but "Kate" was clear she would have wanted nothing to do with a church or a God who didn’t embrace LGBTQ+ folk the same way he did everyone else and so that had to include their chosen life partners. Our recently adopted inclusivity statement confirms that’s exactly what we believe. https://ebbsfleetbaptistchurch.org.uk/about-us/
But it’s true some churches who adopt an affirming position lose rather than increase their numbers, at least initially, as members with traditionalist views abandon them. I know something of this from my own church’s movement towards inclusivity. Sadly, this resulted in our losing two wonderful, Christ-centred, young couples. Thankfully, we’ve so far gained as much as we’ve lost in numbers. But for black majority churches the loss can be much greater, as Pastor Paul Bailey testified to the 2024 Fruitful Conference.
Paul’s church haemorrhaged numbers when he outed himself as the UK’s first black Pentecostal pastor. He was also cut off from the very lucrative Pentecostal preaching circuit and his best man from his wedding refused to have anything more to do with him. His faithful obedience to God’s calling to affirm LGBTQ+ Christians, despite the personal cost, is truly admirable. But none of his loss of numbers in his congregation, let alone his bank balance, proves that revisionist teaching harms the gospel’s reach. Spiritual growth surely cannot be measured by the Sunday morning headcount, but by new spiritual fruit. After all, a loss of numbers was something even Jesus suffered at one point when he started challenging traditional theology with revisionist teaching. (See John 6:59-71)
And being “saved” by Jesus should be about so much than saying an “ABC prayer of salvation” so that we go to heaven when we die. Jesus declared, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). So, our salvation should also be about experiencing a better, more joyful life here and now, in which God’s spirit enriches all areas of our life. And for most LGBTQ+ individuals, as with most heterosexuals, this abundant life must surely include sharing it with the sexual life-partner they happen to fall in love with, regardless of their gender. Only the revisionist teaching allows them to do this.
My Conclusions
How does the above evidence impact our key questions?
This addresses the last three questions 8-10:
● Can and do people in same-sex partnerships become Christians and bare spiritual fruit?
● Can and do churches which promote same-sex marriage thrive and grow?
● Does promoting same-sex marriage have a positive or negative effect on the gospel’s reach?
Can and do people in same-sex marriages become Christians and bare spiritual fruit?
The above evidence answers this question with a very clear yes.
Can and do churches which promote same-sex marriage thrive and grow?
Again, the above evidence shows that, despite challenges, affirming and inclusive churches can and do thrive and grow.
Does accepting same-sex marriage have a positive or negative effect on the gospel’s reach?
The evidence shows that preaching the gospel alongside a message of full inclusivity – ultimately accepting same-sex marriage - helps the gospel reach LGBTQ+ folk who would otherwise shun the church. They were a group the church had previously made to feel excluded from God’s mercy. Just as women, eunuchs, Gentiles and slaves once saw themselves. But, as with them, revisionist teaching helps LGBTQ+ people to realise they too are fully included in God’s plans, so that “the people living in the land of darkness … see a great light” (Isaiah 9:2), walk into that light and are transformed by it. Then they in turn can shine that light in other dark places.
