I’m due to be a bit of a bore, as my dissertation was on a similar subect (‘church responses to couples who cohabit’).

my own study leads me to conclude that, Biblically, sex is part of making a marriage – that and being a public couple. to be married wasn’t about documents (paper licenses – when BC?!!) – it was about making a life together, and being responsible for one another.

In such a patriarchal society, the Bible’s view on marriage offers stunning rights for women – men are just not allowed to have sex with a woman and leave her unmarriable (which would make her poor and destiture unless from an extremely rich and understanding family), and he couldn’t get a woman pregnant without being responsible for her forever. there was no ‘free love’! but no legal marriage either – biblical marriage isn’t about state law.

Indeed, until 1753, marriage in the UK only really involved legality if people were rich enough to have inheritance to worry about. The ‘clandestine marriage act’ of 1753 was brought in to make sure that someone couldn’t be raped and then claimed as a wife; and to make sure that someone couldn’t secretly marry someone and claim inheritance rights or stop a marriage which was previously planned.

I get quite irritated when people say, ‘sex before marriage is against the bible’ – sex is a major part of making marriage – so one can’t really (biblically) literally have pre-marital or extra-marital sex – it’s all marriage-making (if consensual).

that’s why the bible is not okay with casual sex or prostitution – any sex which can’t be part of making a life together with someone, is out of God’s line. Hence, a man is married to any woman he has sex with, even if he already has a wife.

And that’s why Jesus is so rough about divorce – because casual divorce left women without financial support for themselves and any children they had, and left them pretty much unable to marry again, so they were destitute and vulnerable. Jesus is way ahead on sticking up for the rights of women, and children.

Brrr!! I’m going on! sorry!!

Very glad I found your blog and will be passing on the link to several friends who I suspect will be pleased to have found it too! Thanks!

So please, keep coming around here and do some more reading to see if anything here speaks to you and your concerns.

I’m not a lesbian, but I’m not so sure I’m ‘heterosexual’ either. In all my years of being alive, sex with a man seems.. eh, bothersome to me. It seems pointless. To be honest, I’m disgusted by the very sight of a penis. So, what brings me here is this.

Almost four years ago I met and fell in love with a woman named Audrey. We were together for two years, and then we broke up. I have not talked to her for almost three years, and I’m still so deeply in love with her that it hurts, and that I’ve given up dating completely because I know the only person I’d be happy with is her.

I used to fantasize about growing up and moving to Canada where gay marriage isn’t illegal, and marrying her. I used to fantasize about the kind of wedding dress I’d wear, and the songs we’d play at the wedding, and just being with her forever. I can honestly say that, in all my life, I have never, EVER loved one human being as much as I loved her.

I can recall a time she was in a coma in a hospital. You couldn’t believe how hard I cried and cried and cried. I prayed to God that if he could take my life, to just do it and take me in her place.

Our relationship ended soon after that because of my Christian religion. I still miss her. I remember thinking, “Why should I be a Christian? God hates homosexuals. Why should I worship a man that hates me? Why would I want to associate with such a creature?” or “God made me like this. He knew homosexuals would exist. How could I worship someone so cruel and uncaring that he’d force so many people to suffer just for being attracted to a person they loved?”

So, to shorten this up, what do I do? How can I live? If I live without being near Audrey again, I’ll go crazy. I’ll be a miserable, wretched creature. How can I be happy and still try to be a good christian?

I appreciate your arguments against gays having to be celibate; this is a much needed discussion. I also think your discussion about what a marriage is (in another post) is very needed. I think the Bible sets sex within the boundary of marriage for very good reasons; I just think there are also good reasons to expand the definition of marriage today to include same sex marriage.

I really think I look at the Bible with an objective eye. I’ve had lots of revelations about scripture since studying it for so many years, and they’ve sometimes been surprising and hard-to-accept ones. I say this to say that I don’t think I’m closing a blind eye to SofS … if I am, may my mind be opened! But for now, I think my scholarship has to conclude that there is no sex outside marriage in that book. When he calls her his bride, I think there’s every reason to believe it literally.

Funny. A lot of other people had never read it, either. It was quite a discussion for a few weeks in the adult Sunday school classes. So far as I can tell, the revelations were all for the good.

Great post. Good luck to you all.