The Pastoral Response to Homosexuality

In his September 1, 2011 column “Gay and Christian,” Russell Saltzman addressed my article in the New Oxford Review, in which I sketched a brief history of homosexual politics over the past two and a half millennia as a background for understanding the present controversy. I wrote that: “It is an uncomfortable fact that for a long time a campaign of hatred and persecution has been waged against those who experience same-sex attractions.” Saltzman takes issue with what he imagines to be an argument against the authority of St. Paul’s theological views on the morality of homosexuality. He interprets my argument as proposing that: “The contemporary gay experience [is] non-exploitative, mutually enriching, and increasingly monogamous [and] ought to be accepted as a normal alternative.”

That is not my argument at all. There are two basic elements to the Christian response to homosexuality: the theological, and the pastoral. I have absolutely no disagreement with the theological argument that was put forward by St. Paul. What I was trying to explain is the harsh pastoral tone so often taken in early and medieval writings on the subject of homosexuality.