Homosexual Gnosticism

On my Alfred the Great website, I wrote an article on the Gnostic overtones of the gay 'marriage' movement. The article is rather long, so I'll summarize the salient points here. If you want the full deal, then visit 'Gay ‘marriage’ and the Revenge of the Gnostics.'

The movement to legalize same-sex ‘marriage’ is a return to Gnostic ideas about the body, at least in some important respects. Advocates of gay ‘marriage’ will frequently downplay the physical aspects of marriage, urging instead that marriage is not primarily about becoming one-flesh physically, but a spiritual and emotional connection for which our physical experiences are extrinsic rather than intrinsic.

In downplaying the importance of consummation in marriage, advocates of same-sex ‘marriage’ have tried to reduce the meaning of marriage to merely a loving and committed relationship between two adults. It’s an emotional and relational union that creates the necessary conditions for marriage, they argue, not what you do with your bodies. In fact, the physical anatomy of the adults in question is irrelevant. Marriage is first about the communion of souls in a committed and affectionate relationship and only secondarily about physical union. You can find statements like this scattered throughout the gay and lesbian literature.

Within the Christian tradition, bodies are
important and help to define who we are.
Our bodies are not an irrelevancy like race

By contrast, in Christian tradition one cannot disengage the relational and the physical aspects of union. Indeed, our bodies are important and help to define who we are. Our bodies are not, as homosexuals claim, an irrelevancy like race. Despite the crucial importance of the emotional and spiritual dimensions of sex, what we do with our bodies is fundamental to the marriage union. As the homosexual movement continues to deny these important truths (as I shall shortly prove) they have colluded with the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.

For the homosexual community, what we do with our bodies is irrelevant because what really matters is the motivation behind it; therefore, if the motivation behind the sex acts of homosexual partners is the same as the motivation behind the sex acts of heterosexual married couples, then the former should be able to qualify as an instance of marriage. The fact that homosexual sex acts are completely different to full sexual intercourse in marriage is irrelevant within the neo-Gnostic paradigm of the gay community: for them what really matters is what happens in the mind, emotion and soul and not the body. In fact, if their mantra that “marriage is a relationship between two committed individuals” were taken at face value, the body has little or nothing to do with marriage at all.

This de-emphasis on the physical dimensions of marriage surfaces again and again in the literature of the gay community, and comes out most prominently in their polemics against monogamy. The notion that “Fidelity is not between your legs but between your ears” (quoted in When Gay People Get Married, p. 95) is a typical position within the homosexual community.

In discussing the differences between heterosexual unions and homosexual unions, Dermot O’Callaghan noted the tendency for homosexual men to downplay the importance of  Monogamy, with the consequence that the sexual dimensions of the relationship are minimized. He writes,

A study called The Male Couple  found that “all couples with a relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity …”

Another study, Beyond Monogamy, indicates “a positive correlation between longevity and non-monogamy.”  It says, “… non-monogamy isn’t by nature de-stabilizing.  In fact, the results of this study would suggest the opposite – many study couples said non-monogamy enabled them to stay together”.

The agony of non-monogamy amongst gay men surfaces repeatedly in the literature. Other terms include:

-    Modified Monogamy
-    Monogamy of the heart
-    Negotiated Non-monogamy etc.

Monogamy of the heart? What do these terms represent other than an attempt to steer away from the importance of the physical dimension of our existence (i.e., that monogamy is something you do with your bodies) to a spiritualized (dare I say Gnostic) reconstruction of monogamy?

How different this is from the Biblical understanding. In the Christian tradition, our bodies are important and help to define who we are. I relate to the world as a man, and this is rooted in my biological experience as a male. Similarly, my wife relates to the world as a woman, and this is grounded in her experience being biologically female. The different perspectives we bring to the world as men and women is something to be embraced, relished and enjoyed, not trivialized. By contrast, many within the homosexual community argue that our experience as members of one particular gender is really irrelevant to our functioning in the world.

The biological sex that one happens to be is like one’s race, they suggest. Indeed, one of the most frequent arguments for same-sex ‘marriage’ is that opposition to it is akin to opposition to interracial marriage. Just as race is, or ought to be, irrelevant to marriage, so they argue that one’s gender is similarly irrelevant, that my actual physical anatomy is as irrelevant to my experiences in the world as the colour of my skin.

This Gnostic-like trivializing of the body has led homosexual activists to claim that one’s biology as either male or female makes absolutely no difference to a person’s experience as a parent. A dad is just the same as a mom because our biological differences are irrelevant to our lived experiences in the world. Listen to what Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse said in an article reflecting on her debate with Judith Stacey:

I crossed swords with Judith Stacey…at a debate at Bowling Green State a few years ago. I asked her point blank if she believed men and women were completely interchangeable as parents. In front of that very friendly audience, she said absolutely: the gender of parents doesn’t matter….

Treating same sex unions like marriage amounts to saying that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. It is a coin toss from a child’s point of view, whether they have two moms, two dads, or one of each.

By reducing our physical experiences as men and women to irrelevancy like this, the homosexual community has colluded with the Gnostic lie that our bodies do not ultimately matter.

Further Reading

• Gay ‘marriage’ and the Revenge of the Gnostics
• Apples, Oranges & Gay Marriage, or the Name Game and Hidden Assumptions
• Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Threatens Freedom
• Slippery Slopes Do Exist
• The Tyranny of the Minority  How the Forced Recognition of Same-Sex “Marriage” Undermines a Free Society
• Sophistry in America
• How Gay ‘Marriage’ Became Plausible
• The Gender Wars

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