The UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Campus Resource Center — which is apparently part of the UCLA administration, and not just a student group — provides the material quoted below on its Web site. Readers of this blog are likely aware that I have no moral objections to homosexuality; and I sympathize with the desire to make students who might be troubled by their sexual orientation feel more comfortable with it. But the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause caselaw (whether it’s right or wrong) makes clear that government agencies may not endorse any particular religious viewpoint (with a narrow exception for firmly established traditions, see Marsh v. Chambers (1983)), even in the service in the best of public policy goals; see the majority opinion in County of Allegheny v. ACLU (1989):
[T]he prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion “preclude[s] government from conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.” Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S., at 70 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment) (emphasis added). Accord, Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S., at 27, 28 (separate opinion concurring in judgment) (reaffirming that “government may not favor religious belief over disbelief” or adopt a “preference for the dissemination of religious ideas”); Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S., at 593 (“preference” for particular religious beliefs constitutes an endorsement of religion); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 305 (1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring) (“The fullest realization of true religious liberty requires that government . . . effect no favoritism among sects or between religion and nonreligion”). Moreover, the term “endorsement” is closely linked to the term “promotion,” . . . and this Court long since has held that government “may not . . . promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite,” Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 104 (1968). . . .
Whether the key word is “endorsement,” “favoritism,” or “promotion,” the essential principle remains the same. The Establishment Clause, at the very least, prohibits government from appearing to take a position on questions of religious belief or from “making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community.” Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S., at 687 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring).
So this statement by a public institution seems like a pretty clear violation to me:
Homosexuality and Religion
All of God’s promises are intended for every human being, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. How tragic it is that many religious institutions have excluded and persecuted people who are not heterosexual.
We are all created with powerful needs for personal relationships. Our quality of life depends upon the love we share with others, whether family or friends, partners or peers. Yet lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people facing hostile attitudes in society often are denied access to healthy relationships. We are called upon to find ultimate meaning in life through our spiritual selves as well as our physical and emotional selves, which can bring healing and strength to all of our relationships.
“The issues about homosexuality are very complex and not understood by most members of” religious organizations, according to Bernard Ramm of the American Baptist Seminary of the West. This evangelical authority on biblical interpretation says that, “To them, it is a vile form of sexual perversion condemned in both the Old and New Testaments.” But as Calvin Theological Seminary Old Testament scholar Marten H. Woudstra says, “There is nothing in the Old Testament that corresponds to homosexuality as we understand it today” and as Southern Methodist University New Testament Scholar Victor Paul Furnish says, “There is no text on homosexual orientation in the Bible.” Says Robin Scroggs of Union Seminary, “Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today’s debate. They should no longer be used…not because the Bible is not authoritative, but simply because it does not address the issues involved…No single New testament author considers homosexuality important enough to write his/her own sentence about it.” Evangelical theologian Helmut Thielicke states, “Homosexuality…can be discussed at all only in the framework of that freedom which is given to us by the insight that even the New testament does not provide us with an evident, normative dictum with regard to this question. Even the kind of question which we have arrived at … must for purely historical reasons be alien to the New testament.”
Ideas and understandings of sexuality have changed greatly over the centuries. People in biblical times did not share our knowledge or customs of sexuality; we do not share their experience. In those days there was no romantic dating as we know it today; marriages were arranged by fathers. The ancients, as MIT’s David Halperin notes “conceived of ‘sexuality’ in non-sexual terms: what was fundamental to their experience of sex was not anything we would regard as essentially sexual. Rather, it was something essentially social – namely, the modality of power relations that informed and structured the sexual act.” In the ancient world, sex was “not intrinsically relational or collaborative in character, it is, further, a deeply polarizing experience: It serves to divide, to classify, and to distribute its participants into distinct and radically dissimilar categories. Sex possesses this valence, apparently, because it is conceived to center essentially on, and to define itself around, an asymmetrical gesture, that of the penetration of the body of one person by the body, and specifically, by the phallus, of another … The proper targets of sexual desire include, specifically, women, boys, foreigners, and slaves – all of them persons who do not enjoy the same legal and political rights and privileges that (the perpetrator) does.”
And yet in spite of all this, some preachers continue to use certain Biblical verses to foster and maintain discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. There are two verses that refer to male homosexuality – Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. “Abomination (TO’EBAH) is a technical cultic term for what is ritually unclean, such as mixed cloth, pork, and intercourse with menstruating women. It’s not about a moral or ethical issue. This Holiness Code (Chapters 17-22) proscribes men “lying the lyings of women.” Such mixing of sex roles was thought to be polluting. But both Jesus and Paul rejected all such ritual distinctions (Mark 7:17-23; Romans 14:14,20). The Fundamentalist Journal admits that this Code condemns “idolatrous practices” and “ceremonial uncleanness” and concludes: “We are not bound by these commands today.”
These commands, of course, included eating sheep, goats, rabbit, pork, lobster, scallops, and shrimp; short hair on men, wearing two kinds of materials; and demanded circumcision on all male babies who were eight days old.
Other Biblical Issues no longer relevant include:
A stubborn or rebellious son shall be brought to the authorities and stoned to death (Deut. 20:11)
The citizens of cities which surrendered during wartime are to be made slaves (Deut. 20:11
If a man marries a woman and discovers she is not a virgin, she is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13)
An unmarried man who sleeps with an unbetrothed virgin must marry her (Deut. 22:28)
Wives must obey their husbands (Eph 5:22)
People who divorce, then remarry, commit adultery (Matt 5:3, 19:9, and Mark 10:11)
Slaves will always be slaves (Lev 25:44)
Slaves must obey their masters (1 Peter 2:18)
Slave
s should remain slaves, and not be bothered by their condition (1 Corinthians 7:21)The Bible has nothing specific to say about homosexuality. Surely, if homosexuality were so important, Jesus would have said something about it. But he did not. However, the Bible has plenty to say about God’s grace to all people and God’s call to justice and mercy. People of God are called upon by God to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Perhaps it is that sense of self-love that needs to be sought before one condemns another.
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