The Courier Mail has been reasonably open about the gay marriage debate. Here is a piece I wrote recently called And the greatest of these is love.

Absolutely agree with Ann Maree, Steven – excellent and concise article. Well done to get it published.

[ But does this para from the CourierMail website contain a typo, or am I misreading it: ” In the Bible, there are five pertinent references which focus on heterosexual behaviour. In fact, there is no word for homosexual in the original languages.”?? ]

Ann Maree is right. 🙂 For a start, it is hard to account for all the nuances in 600 words in the Courier Mail.

Naturally, there were gay people in ancient times. By and large, however, the bible was written from the perspective of ancient agrarian patriarchal ‘straight’ people.

For example, the men in Romans 1:27 are ‘straight’ men and worship, not sexuality, is the issue. The text is not addressing gay people per se (see Brendan Byrne’s excellent commentary on Romans, in the Sacra Pagina series).

As a postscript, when we are interpreting a text from the Bible, we have to place it in its historical and social context. This helps us to distinguish an ancient time-bound convention from a time-less life-giving insight. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that some times the biblical writers got it wrong (e.g. slavery, sexism). One of the key measures for this process is how a biblical text compares to the generous and inclusive spirit of the ministry of Jesus.