In the inimitable headline-stealing style, the United Church has forged over the years, in a mixture of accident and design, delegates to the recent London Conference took a few moments to examine human relationships from a Biblical perspective. But instead of Adam and Eve, delegates tried to decide if marriages should be solemnized if the couple were named Adam and Steve.
No way, says London Conference, in a recommendation to the church's General Council. Part of the reason for the decision was that the United Church is still bleeding from the self-inflicted wounds of the ordination-of-homosexuals debate.
One spokesman called for a closer adherence to Scripture from the perspective of bowing to its authority, rather than a more personal interpretation. Figuring out precisely how to apply that magnificient, sometimes contradictory document to modern life and ethics, is a minefield best left to churches as faith communities, and they will no doubt come up with a variety of interpretations.
There's no law that says churches have to be on the cutting edge of social change. That's why we've got the New Democratic Party.
But there ought to be some mechanism in civil law for the solemnization of same-sex unions. Recent behavioural research from a biological perspective indicates that homosexuality is not a learned behaviour, not a choice, but rather an inherent predisposition, much in the same way heterosexuality is in inherent, rather than a learned choice. Certain areas of brain function in homosexuals - the ability to perceive and manipulate objects in three-dimensional space, for instance - tends to fall on a scale somewhere between where heterosexual men and women score, for instance. That sort of burgeoning scientific evidence refutes the idea that being homosexual is a free choice. And for those who don't like science, there is conventional wisdom - why would anyone in their right mind make the choice to be homosexual, given that to choose homosexuality is to choose a lifetime of discrimination and derision from the less sensible members of society.
Homosexuals don't have a biological choice. Heterosexuals do have a choice. They can choose whether to allow the age-old fear of anyone different from the majority to be an excuse for prejudice. Or they can choose acceptance.
The churches will find their own way to a variety of truths. That is their right. But in the 1990's, it seems clear that our government ought to make same-sex unions legal under civil law. Love and commitment are always valuable commodities in short supply; why deny their existence among those whose biological imperatives are a little different than that of the majority?
