Stanton L. Jones
40
11. Richard J. Neuhaus, for instance, provides a helpful and recent sketch of the considerable disagree-
ment within the American Catholic Church with the various authoritative teachings of the Church dis-
cussed here in fn 3 in his article “The Truce of 2005,” First Things, February 2006, pp. 55-61.
12. See the classic book, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer
Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1990; quotes pp. 183, 189).
13. Often when the issue of prejudice is raised, advocates like White have in mind not an intellectual
prejudice but the seemingly “natural” response of many heterosexuals that there is something distasteful
about the idea of sex between two people of the same sex.The suggestion seems to be that anyone who
has such a reaction is “biased” and their views delegitimated. But is this a “prejudice,” or might it have
something to do with a deeply engrained and widely shared sense of what God intended as natural and
good (heterosexual sex) versus that which was not intended by creational design?
14. Two resources for this story: 1) Virginia Heffernan,“Was the killing of Shepard an anti-gay hate
crime?” New York Times, November 26, 2004, Sec. E, pg. 34; accessed electronically via Lexus-Nexus. 2)
ABC News, November 26, 2004,“New details emerge in Matthew Shepard murder,” retrieved October
25, 2005; at http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1
15. David Sisler,“Hate crimes,” retrieved May 6, 2005 at www.catholiceducation.org/articles/media/
me0033.html
16. For “sexual immorality” (Matthew 19:9), or for desertion (1 Corinthians 7:15); these “exceptions”
to the condemnation of divorce are widely debated. It is worth noting here that quite a number of writers
point to the issue of divorce as a powerful example of hypocrisy in the evangelical church.Why, they ask,
do evangelicals “go ballistic and absolutistic” on homosexual conduct and yet placidly accept rampant
divorce in their midst? I would argue that this point is an excellent one, but is our best answer to say “since
we have accepted morally lax standards on divorce we must also on homosexual conduct”? or is the better
answer to say,“You are right, and we must begin to treat divorce with the moral seriousness that Scripture
itself does while also maintaining its clear teachings on homosexual conduct.” It must be acknowledged,
though, that Scripture itself allows for divorce under certain circumstances, but that there are no circum-
stances where homosexual conduct is allowed.This means there will always be “gray” in the Church’s
teachings on divorce.
17. Prostitution is termed “wickedness” in Leviticus 19:29, throughout the Proverbs (e.g., 7:6-27), and
in other places in the Scriptures (e.g., Deuteronomy 23:18).
18. The developmental character of God’s special revelation of his will for our lives is obvious in
Scripture. In the New Testament we see a raising of the expectations when, for instance, Christ goes
beyond mere behavioral restrictions (adultery) to condemn even states of the heart (lust). It would appear
that God revealed more and more of his standards to his people as they were ready to understand and live
by those standards.This helps us to address polygamy, for example, which (like slavery) is described and
regulated (e.g., Deuteronomy 21:15-17) in the Scriptures, but never approved.The earliest biblical state-
ments about marriage undercut the practice of polygamy; after all, how can a man and woman become
one flesh, as in Genesis 2, when there are six women and one man? Yet God, in his mysterious wisdom,
chose not to try to forbid polygamy in early Israeli society but rather determined and willed that it would
simply die out as the Hebrew people grew in number and sophistication in understanding God’s work
among them and his will.
19. Deuteronomy 23:10.
20. See particularly Acts 10-11; 15:22-35.
21. On sanitation, Deuteronomy 23:12-13; on building codes, Deuteronomy 22:8.
22. This is discussed in chapter 5 of Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse,
Homosexuality:The Use of
Scientific Researc
h in the Churc
h’
s Moral Debate
(Do
wner
s Gr
ove: InterVarsity Press, 2000).
23. Emphasis added.
24.
Rober
t A. J. Gagnon, pp. 57-59, in Dan O.Via and Robert A. J. Gagnon,
Homosexuality and the
Bib
le:
T
wo
Views
.
(Minneapolis:
F
or
tr
ess,
2003). I should also add that were I to revise my 1994
The Ga
y
Debate today, I would change the way I dealt with this passage in light of Gagnon’s excellent treatment
cited her
e
. I failed to see how this passage
does addr
ess sexual sin.
25.
See
,
for example
,
the r
egulations about disease in Leviticus 13.
26. Deuteronomy 25:5-10.
27.
For a readable explanation of this, see chapter 4 of Thomas E. Schmidt,
Str
aight and Narrow?
;
for
the mor
e complete and scholarly tr
eatment,
see Rober
t
A. J. Gagnon,
The Bib
le and Homosexual Pr
actice
.