Sexual Differential

Today the internet told a story of an eminent entertainer (female) in a photograph story with her wife (female).  They refer to each other as my wife.  The exchange in the story is not of concern for the meaning of this Page.  In this instance language has changed in that a female has a wife and that wife also refers to the other person as my wife.  We are troubled about the meaning of gender; how world culture may be going; how to avoid serious conflict in genders identity even for biology; and, how the people will be able to keep meaning both in nature (biology in this instance) and in spirituality (the meaning of creation in nature needed for family.).  Until well into the latter half of the twentieth century the male (who may choose to be a husband) has been well identified not only in the nature of sexual organs, but in the context of make-up of body, psyche, interests, genitals and a variety of other characteristics including even body hair.  The female (who may choose to be a wife) is identified in her gender characteristics as unique from the male as the male is to her.  The two might choose to join themselves so to express the specifics of physical identity in the generation of children.  From time immemorial, the meaning of all this related to marriage and the fulfillment of the physical and emotional joining of two genders needing each other in both their own distinctions and the needs of community.  The matter was settled in the ability of one to generate living fetus replications and the other to nourish and bear them as living persons in nature’s gender evidence.  The logic of it all, built on irrefutable evidence is now set aside. Definitions contradict.

The attraction of one gender to a member of the same gender is natural and admirable.  It has been known as friendship, divinely ordered, without sexual or gender meaning.  I have had close friendships with men throughout my lifetime, as I have also had those friendships with persons of the opposite sex.  The friendship experience, carried out in the spirit of Jesus with the Disciples, or like David and Jonathan, includes what family includes, what relationships between brothers and sisters include – all deep and like marriage in its ideals, but not related to physical intimacy, understood in life extension in children.  Physical intimacy between two members of the same family is interpreted as incest, but not bonded friendship (as noted in Scripture) is to yield to physical passion carried into emotions, and confusion about meaning.  I would be appalled to be identified as having sexual relationship with only a friend, but in recent years the beauty of a David and Jonathan or Mary, Martha, Lazarus (Jesus included) relationship is sullied by innuendo that it may have been a homosexual liaison.  It is offensive to morality.  For several years after my retirement from professional life of my collegiate career I was engaged in business with a friend.  We became close friends, traveled together, and stayed in the same hotel rooms together.  Neither of us ever engaged in physical intimacy.  Neither ever saw the other unclothed.  Never was the relationship anything but circumspect, but neither of us would hesitate to care for the other at any cost to ourselves.  Both of us were not only faithful to our wives and children, but to God who defines it all.

Same sex marriage takes away some gender equality/specificity in a definition that gender sets wife and the other is the husband – to generations.  A secular world holding high opinion of evidence as means for conclusion, may find fault with those who by faith incorporate God into their lives because there is for them no specific physical evidence (in their views) for God.  These have now decided that husband and wife can be redefined against the physical evidence.  Same sex marriage is a matter of humanistic faith, without biological facts.  The concepts are clear in scriptural terms as to the meaning of marriage and friendship, of oneness in humanity found in two genders, in the witness of the faithful family and genuine friendship – so the story fleshes out.  Common violations of the marriage pact, a pact offered to mankind by God, are not arguments against the institution.  For biblical Christians the greatest violation in homosexuality relates to divine meaning, not to human experience that is confused by it.  If asked about the redemptive plan of God needed by all human beings as applied to same sex intimacy in place of friendship, leaving matters of judgment with Christ.  We look for friendly terns with nature and Scripture.  We are for God’s morality. Governments can respect that without loss.  The bond slave of Scripture is for unbroken friendship.