The question occasionally is raised in these pages of whether one can oppose same-sex unions or the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals and not be guilty of homophobia in some form or other. The answer, of course, is that one can and the reasoning is quite basic: The division over homosexuality is not between those who love homosexuals and those who don't, but rather between those who do and do not share an understanding that sexual proclivities are defining. The issue is one of how we are to answer the psalmist's question, "What is man?"

In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault claims that the word "sexuality" now serves the same purpose as did the word "soul" in the Middle Ages. It provides a means for joining the various aspects of human identity into a unified whole. Whereas in Christendom, man was seen primarily as an immortal soul, post-Enlightenment man is now defined primarily as a sexual self. This belief is clearly stated in the 1992 report of the Maryland Diocesan Task Force on Human Sexuality: "[Sexuality] is our [sic] identity as a unique person, either male or female, and the ways we express our identity as we interact with other people."

The understanding of man as sexual self easily translates into the view of homosexuality as an ontological category. To deny one's sexuality is presumably to deny one's essential identity. A homosexual, for instance, who marries a member of the opposite sex is believed to be denying who he is in a fundamental way and his marriage, therefore, is a sham. Being true to oneself, in this view, involves honestly and openly embracing one's sexual proclivities as gifts from God and expressing them as one's appetite dictates (with, of course, caveats such as being loving and respectful of any others involved, etc.).

This is an interesting view, and not, I suppose, without its merits. I see, however, absolutely no compelling reason to accept it. I recognize the extent to which the concept of homosexuality is claimed to be the result of scientific advance. It is not. It is the creation of 19th-century ideology.

It is important to recognize how limited a realm science really is. Science does not explain. It describes. As its description of the observable world gets more accurate, it is said to progress. This progress, however, takes place within very narrow bounds. Repeatability and objectivity require taking into account only those phenomena that can be directly observed (or converted into a signal that can be directly observed). In the arena of the study of humanity, this results in attention being paid to biology and behavior to the exclusion of other, nonobservable (or at least non-repeatable) considerations.

In a striking, but not terribly surprising, leap, Victorian thought (and a good bit of pre-Victorian thought) sought to center its definition of man around biology and behavior. Thus was conceived the belief in the existence of such things as homosexuals, a category of humanity the conceptual framework for which had not previously existed.

Christendom had not previously recognized the existence of homosexuals, not because it was ignorant of science, but because it held a largely teleological view of sexuality (along with just about everything else). In traditional Christianity, sex has to make sense, not as a means of assigning identity, but as part of man's inherent sacramentality. In and of itself, sex has no particular reason for being. As a sign of God's relationship with his people, it has a place in the Christian world view.

It is instructive that the word for erotic love (eros) is not used at all in the New Testament. When, in Ephesians 5, husbands are instructed to love their wives, the Greek word used is agaph, which, in this text, is tied directly to our Lord's self-sacrificing agaph for his church. Wives (listed first and in the place of greater honor) are similarly instructed to sacrifice themselves by obedience to their husbands. While a sexual relationship by definition exists in marriage, it is not the first concern of the Bible writers (and, presumably, of God). The relevant texts on sexuality (the creation story, the seventh commandment, Ephesians 5, and the end of Revelation where the bride is at last joined to the true bridegroom) do not concern themselves with sexual attraction, but with self-sacrificing faithfulness, particularly God's to his people (a people distinctly other than himself, represented in Christian marriage by the difference between male and female) and his concomitant expectation of their faithfulness to him. All of which is represented in Christian marriage, defined and ordained by God himself in holy scripture and Christian tradition (the experience of the church over 2,000 years).

What would I suggest we make of this? Three things, to start with. One, the essentially mechanistic view of man as a sexual self doesn't work well for Christians as it is too temporal. The sexual self exists only on earth, where there is marrying and giving in marriage. The soul is meant for eternal life. There is a sense in Christianity in which the individual will outlive his sexual desire, the real purpose of that desire being fulfilled in entering the heavenly city and seeing God face to face. Penultimate sexuality ought properly to be understood as pointing to the ultimate union with the eternal God.

Second, the identification of "human" with "sexual" has resulted in an unfortunate de-emphasis on other forms of human relationship. In the New Testament at least, nonsexual friendship is as ubiquitous as erotic love is absent. The latter isn't as important as the former. Hence, while friendship stands on its own (our Lord, in calling his disciples his friends, singularly ennobles it), erotic desire finds itself placed, along with a great many other things, under the capacious auspices of holy matrimony. While sexual attraction has proven very helpful in inaugurating marriages, its efficacy in maintaining them has been rather more ambiguous.

Finally, I suppose I'm saying that, in a sense, I don't believe that homosexuals exist. There are undeniably those afflicted with a sexual desire for others of the same gender. This, however, doesn't say much of anything either relevant or even interesting about them insofar as the doctrine, discipline and worship of the church is concerned. As the homosexual lobby is fond of arguing, they might as well be left-handed. As does the Bible, the church has always recognized the reality of homosexual actions. And that these actions say something, often something fairly important, about the persons committing them. But neither the act, nor the desire that produced it, define who the person is. I am not what I do, nor what I will, but you will know who I am by what I do.

I do not for one moment deny the church's pastoral responsibility to those who understand themselves to be homosexual, nor would I deny or trivialize the pain in and difficulty of these individuals' lives. My concern here, however, is with a proper Christian understanding of sexuality (I find references to human sexuality rather pretentious - as if we were in biology class and will presently move on to simian, feline, and arachnid sexuality) and not, as I am not trained as a pastor, with methods of pastoral care. I am of the opinion that proper definition and clarification of the former will focus and enhance the latter.

If, as I argue, sexual attraction (of whatever flavor) is of less moment for Christians than biblically revealed norms of human relation, then the church has no good reason either to change the definition of marriage or to develop new liturgies for blessing the expression of more outré sexual proclivities. As the burden of proof lies entirely with those who would change 2,000 years of church tradition, I can see little room for argument for those who would have the church bless gay sex.

I do not question either the reality or the power of sexual urges. I do explicitly doubt their centrality either to the definition of the human person or to the explication of Christian moral imperatives. As the multifarious sexuality task forces are wont to remind us, sexuality is a gift from God. In the hands of sinful man, however, it is, at best, a gift fraught with ambiguity.

And at worst, given its prodigious vigor, it can be tremendously damaging. It is because of this that being right about sex is important. It is becoming increasingly clear that the sexual revolution was devastatingly wrong about sexuality, not merely in its mind-boggingly naive belief that technology in the form of modern contraceptives had successfully separated sex from procreation (the fallacy of which assertion is grimly attested to by the 1.6 million annual victims of abortion), but in its popularization of the beliefs of the Victorian intelligentsia concerning the centrality of sexuality to the definition of man. Because these ideas are questionable in theory and have proven damaging in practice, I would contend that we do neither our Lord nor the world any favors by blindly assuming their veracity in our conversation or adopting them in our liturgy. q

Daniel Muth is an occasional contributor to TLC who is a member of Christ Church, Port Republic, Md.