Christianity and homosexuality

So I have this group on Facebook, Christians against a Federal Marriage Amendment. I started this group because every Facebook group on this subject that I found argued that all good Christians necessarily oppose homosexuality, or some variation of the same. I therefore decided to start a group for Christians who think homosexuality is not a sin, and that Christians should not support a marriage amendment to the Constitution.

I've received a couple of messages asking about my group. The first one wasn't too bad, it basically argues that Christians need to speak the truth in love, and for that author, the truth about homosexuality is that it is a sin. But the second message I got is the one that really bugged me. I just got it today, and the author of the second message suggests that I haven't read the Bible very closely, questioned whether I had done any research regarding this issue in Christianity, and then asked whether I had taken any courses on the Bible! Both of these authors seem to think that the Bible is very clear about homosexuality. Yet, as I read the text, it is not so clear.

The thing that bothered me the most about the second message was the apparent understanding that any reasonable Christian could have only one view of the issue of homosexuality, the view that homosexuality is a sin. This seems to me to be a very simplistic understanding of sexual ethics within the New Testament. The available literature on the subject of homosexuality in the Bible offers a diverse opinion, ranging from complete rejection of homosexuality to the opinion that the Biblical text does not comment on homosexuality within a loving, mutual relationship. I was also bothered by the implication that I have not studied the Bible, and that I need to take a course on the Bible.

This is not the only complex issue within both the church and the political arena within the United States that is simplified far too often, by both sides. For instance, I have been seeing a lot of political commercials on TV lately arguing that taxes should always be reduced. There is one political commercial that goes through a litany of times the candidate failed to vote for tax relief. Thus, the argument that I perceive from the Republican party is that any vote to keep taxes at their current level or to raise taxes will hurt the economy, and that any vote to lower taxes will help the economy. Yet, if taxes are continually lowered, the government will be forced to either cut services or borrow money, neither of which serve the needs of the constituents. There are times when tax cuts are appropriate, and there are times that tax increases are appropriate. Yet, the complexity of taxation does not come across in these ads. It seems to me that we, as a nation and as the church, need to regain the ability to discuss complex issues without resorting to the simplification and demonization of the opposing view.