The Evolution of a Sacrament

L. William Countryman is a priest in the Episcopal Church and professor of Biblical Studies at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He is the author of "Gifted by Otherness" and other books on gay spirituality and sexual ethics. We talked to him recently about the sacraments and gay marriage.

The recent Texas sodomy decision by the Supreme Court, Canada's decision to allow gay marriages and the movement here for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage have framed the question in strictly legal terms. What is the spiritual component of gay marriage?
The spiritual component is basically the same whether you are heterosexual or homosexual. The intimate sexual relationship in a marriage or partnership is one of the most important experiences human beings have in transcending our individual limitations and becoming part of a larger whole. Sexuality is what makes that possible. Sexual love is probably the most important door for people into a way of speaking about and understanding our relationships with God.

Erotic imagery has been fundamental for Christian spirituality from the very beginning. In the Middle Ages you find people writing commentaries on it left and right, asking, How does this inform your relationship with God? Later you have St. John of the Cross, and English writers like Henry Vaughn and Thomas Traherne. They all draw very heavily on The Song of Songs.

Do you believe gay relationships are ordained by God in the same way as heterosexual relationships are?
I can see no difference between the way gay partnerships function in building that bond of intimacy and the way heterosexual marriage does. Neither group does it terribly well. So yes, I'd say there are plenty of gay partnerships that this is exactly how the sexual partnership functions.

You say in your book, "Gifted by Otherness" that gay spirituality can improve everyone's spirituality in the Christian community. Would you say that same about gay marriage?
It helps in certain ways. In gay partnerships, the focus is on the relationship between the partners, whereas in heterosexual marriage it's so easy for that to be diffused by social expectations. Gay partnerships, on the other hand, don't fufill much in terms of social expectations--in fact they can get you in trouble--so there has to be a pretty powerful drive toward that kind of intimacy with another person in order for gay relationships to work. Heterosexual people might pay attention to the homosexual experience of partnership. It could be helpful in rediscovering what marriage is about.

It's intriguing, too, that a recent New York Times article reported that not only does gay parenting seem to work as well as heterosexual parenting, it could even serve as a model. That's not because gay people are better parents, but they have to focus on what they're doing because the social order is not set up for us.

Many Christians cite Scripture, particularly Paul, to condemn homosexuality. How do you respond?
I think Paul is almost invariably misread. What he does in Romans 1, which is the relevant passage, is not announcing that gay or lesbian sexual relationships are wrong. He takes advantage of widespread Jewish prejudice at the time to lure his audience into feeling superior. Having turned the audience into that spot, he attacks them. The unfortunate thing is that he lured the rest of Christendom into feeling superior for the rest of its history.

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