Sex, gender and Christian liberty

by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

As Garret Keiser points out, "All the divisions that exist in society at large also exist in the church" (Christian Century, 2/16/00). And if the church could embrace the kin-dom of God, defined as "an awareness of God as the only real absolute," we would be able to show the world what it means to live in a peace that surpasses understanding. Are we willing to release some of our most dearly prized positions for the sake of God’s kin-dom? Our attitudes about sex and gender offer an excellent test case: Are we willing to let our certainties be disturbed by the facts of other peoples’ lives?

Many of us have succumbed to an idolatry of the nuclear family. Not just heterosexuals, either; as Kathy Rudy comments in Sex and the Church, many lesbian, gay and transgender couples have become adept at impersonating the nuclear family so adored in conservative American religion and politics. "Conventional interpretations teach us to make rules about abstractions," Rudy says: "Sex inside a marriage ... is moral, sex outside marriage is immoral. As long as we are within the boundaries, we never have to think about whether ... our own souls are open, desirable, or even [yearning]." But a truly Christian evaluation of sexuality would "return to the heart of the moral tradition by examining concrete practices in context rather than accepting hollow dictums on abstracts and identities."

Honoring God as our only absolute, Christian people could dare to let go of oversimplified concepts of sex and gender and enter fearlessly into awareness of the splendid biodiversity within the human race God has created. In this issue, the glossary of transgender terminology will provide a glimpse of some diversities that have usually been ignored in churchly discussions of human sexuality. We have truncated ethical discussion by silencing too many voices, ignoring contexts and requiring people to adjust their lives to fit our generalizations.

Churchly debate has tended to deny that sex and gender are socially constructed. Most of us have accepted the essentialist notion that male and female genitals carry with them "masculinity" or "femininity" as well as heterosexuality. This complete notion has been termed the binary gender construct. In order to uphold the binary construct, many church leaders have argued that all forms of transgender (including homosexuality) are evidence of humanity’s fall from grace, not part of God’s original creative plan. So homosexuals must either repent of sin or else find healing; cross-dressers must cease and desist, no matter how that might wither their personal fulfillment; transsexuals must live with their sense of dislocation, even if it isolates them or drives them to suicide; and intersexuals must submit themselves to as many operations as it takes in order to conform to binary gender and keep viable the Defense of Marriage Act. For if marriage is to be reserved exclusively for the relationship between one man and one woman, as D.O.M.A. dictates, it becomes essential to deny the existence and/or full humanity of all individuals who are both male and female, whether they are physically so (intersexuals) or psychologically so (transsexuals, cross-dressers, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenderists in general).

But what if God truly is "above all, through all, and in all," as Ephesians 4:6 asserts? What if we were to take seriously the traditional Christian doctrine of God’s omnipresence? If God really creates, sustains and dwells within every person, what gives some of us permission to try to limit the fulfillment of others of us?

In this issue of The Witness, theologians Mary E. Hunt and Mary McClintock Fulkerson deal with some of the nuances and contextualizations that are necessary for mature ethical discourse about sex and gender. Ethical pronouncements based on the experience of the normative group may seem correct and universal to that group, but they may, nevertheless, exact major penalties from everyone: stupendous penalties from those excluded from the debate, but less conscious costs from even the most powerful among us. For instance, Sissies and Tomboys (reviewed in this issue) emphasizes that training in how to perform masculinity has been conducted chiefly by devaluing females and femininity. The cost has been stupendous for girls and women, placing us in physical danger and limited roles. But it has also been very heavy for boys and men, depriving them of access to and expression of their own feelings of vulnerability, the desire to nurture, and the like.

Similarly, the debate about abortion and reproductive freedom has often been characterized by stereotyped accusations and oversimplifications. In this issue, Marianne Arbogast provides a sensitive depiction of real human kindliness among people who are "pro-choice" as well as "pro-life." And Marge Piercy’s poem portrays a woman’s right to her own moral agency ("Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives"). But she also emphasizes every baby’s right to be welcomed and nourished. As our society ponders the appalling violence among teenagers and preteens, we must consider Piercy’s assertion carefully: "Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due...with interest, an anger that must find a target." Hence mature discussions of sex and gender ethics must begin to emphasize ways of affirming children of every gender, orientation, race, class, shape, and level of ability.

And we must cease discussing sexuality as if everyone were married or soon to be so. In this issue Diana L. Hayes defends celibacy as an honorable vocation for those who are called to it and gifted for it, but she also implies that responsible sexual partnerships can be equally valid. The point is that like everyone else, Christian singles must learn to approach one another’s vulnerability with tender loving-kindness.

Furthermore, during churchly discussions of premarital or extra-marital sex, Adrian Thatcher’s research suggests that it would be wise for us to overcome our amnesia about Christian history. It is surely relevant, for instance, that two currently widespread practices – cohabitation before the wedding and entering into marriage at later ages (26 or 28) – are similar to the practices of 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century British and American Christians.

All mature ethical discussion must recognize the tremendous power of social constructs. For instance, when Victorian Englishmen constructed "virtuous femininity" as being free of all sexual responsiveness, many married women sought counseling and even clitorectomies to cure their "illness" and/or "evil" – and prostitution flourished for the men who could not find contentment with wives who regarded intercourse as distasteful duty. For another instance, in a 1920 study, over 50 percent of American college women admitted to having "intense emotional relations" with other women, but in 1938, only 4 percent admitted to any such experience. What could account for a 46 percent drop in same-sex college romance in only 18 years? A shift in the social construction of relationships and singleness among women: During the 1920s and 1930s, lesbianism was pathologized and unmarried women were mocked with names like "pseudo-masculine" or "mental hermaphrodite." And college women got the message loud and clear.

It is because sex and gender are socially constructed that gender roles differ from culture to culture. Social construction also explains why many non-Western leaders deny that homosexuality exists in their culture. For instance, in Kenya the Meru people recognize a powerful religious leader, the mugawe, who dresses like a woman, is often homosexual and sometimes marries a man; the Azande people of Zaire and the Sudan have practiced lesbianism and intergenerational homoeroticism for centuries; and gender-variant deities and sex/gender transformations of worshipers have been documented in the religions of 28 African tribes. Yet it is common for African religious and political leaders to assert that homosexuality and transgenderism are white vices unknown to their people until colonialization by Euro-Americans. They are telling the truth as they see it: There is no "gayness" as it is currently constructed in the Western world. Anglican bishops from East and West cannot hope to achieve intelligent conversation about the ethics of sex and gender until awareness of their social construction undergirds the discourse.

Perhaps it is time for American Christians to deconstruct our binary gender rules and reconstruct an omnigender attitude that affirms the efforts of every person to become all that he or she or s/he was meant to be. Certainly it is necessary to take transgender experience seriously in our ethical concerns. Just as racism is not adequately described by a stark contrast of black vs. white, the ethical waterfront is not covered by binaries like male vs. female, gay vs. straight. As Mary Hunt implies, opening the moral terrain to transgender issues will be as difficult for many homosexuals as for many heterosexuals. But our ethical discourse must concern itself with what makes sex good and with creative grateful response to the gender diversities within us and among us, giving the Spirit elbow room to shape us as She will.

"For freedom Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). And, as Sweet Honey in the Rock sings, "We who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes."l

Statements made in this editorial will be fully documented in Mollenkott’s forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Gender Diversities: A Christian and Trans-Religious Approach to Omnigender.