“To be clear, our position is neither an endorsement nor rejection of homosexuality. Frankly, we do not care. How consenting adults choose to live their lives is none of our business.” (Jamaica Gleaner editorial, April 1, 2011)

To some the above sentiment of the editorial is progressive, politically correct and defensible. To me it is dangerous and disingenuous. I say the editorial’s posture is disingenuous because it seems to reflect a neutral position about homosexuality but this veneer of neutrality is blown to pieces by the realization that the position of the editorial is not neutrality but indictable moral ambivalence/indifference about homosexuality summed up in the words “…we do not care.” How can a responsible and prestigious media organization (which influences public opinion) claim it is none of its business “how consenting adults choose to live their lives…”?

The editorial’s posture is societally dangerous in that how people live their lives sexually is critical to the society’s health concerns and even continued existence. Mathew Staver is correct when he says “It is a truism frequently forgotten by large complex societies: only societies that reproduce survive.” (Same-Sex Marriage, 2004, p.8) Ponder the societal consequence of universalizing homosexuality as the sexual norm!

Can one be really socially responsible but ambivalent about consensual homosexual sex, consensual adultery, consensual incest, consensual sadomasochistic sex given the relational implications of such acts beyond even the health costs of dealing with AIDS and other STIs? Has the editor given thought to the social cost of pregnancies deemed ‘unwanted’ by putative parents and especially the impact of absentee father figures on the lives of our young men?

Let us get it clear in our minds, consensuality even along with privacy and age-maturity does not constitute adequate moral justification for sexual behavior, without more, as the lawyers would say. If we hold the view that a certain sexual behavior is morally defensible let’s have the moral courage to be upfront and say so and not hide behind a thin veneer of neutrality. Homosexuality may indeed need to be decriminalized and the buggery law expunged but the reasons for doing so must be more convincing than simply moral ambivalence or apathy about what consenting adults do sexually.

In the Jamaica Gleaner editorial of April 1, one aspect of the new proposed Constitutional Charter of Rights was given prominence; freedom from discrimination. There is much conceptual fuzziness about and thus an indefensible aversion to the term discrimination.

As I argued in my 1997 book A Matter of Principle, “[discrimination] is not necessarily a bad thing. For me the essence of the wrongness of racial or gender discrimination is not that people, on the basis of ethnic stock, color or gender are discriminated against but that they are demeaned and despised specifically on the basis of color, ethnic stock or gender…

One does, indeed one has to discriminate in selecting a spouse, employees, lecturers, students, journalists, columnists, speakers and others.

The criteria of discrimination may vary depending on what are considered vital qualifications in the minds of those doing the selection, but we do discriminate, that is, we preferentially select or choose not to do so.

As long as the individual or group being discriminated against is not thereby demeaned or despised, discrimination seems justifiable.”(p.78)

I would now modify the sentences with “demeaned and despised’ to read demeaned, despised or [economically] deprived of what is due and deserved…”

We need conceptual clarity in public discourse. In another piece I’ll raise definitional questions on the editorial’s use of ‘sexual orientation’, ‘homophobia’ and even the term ‘homosexuality’.

Christians and critics of Christianity alike have problems with some things in the Bible because they are ignorant of how to read the Bible properly.

A few persons responded to my letter in the Jamaica Gleaner (May 22, 2010, see  A Popular Misconception About Christianity) about killings in history by raising the issue of the God-commanded ‘slaughters in the Old Testament’ like the command to wipe out the nations of Canaan in Deuteronomy 7.1-5 and 20.15-18. Here is the stark offensive mandate of  Deuteronomy 20.16-17 “…you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them…” (New King James Version, hereafter NKJV)

How does this command square with God’s supposed holiness and justice?

The first line of clarification of this brutal command has been offered by William Brenton Greene who reminds/informs “These wars of extermination they were never allowed to regard as precedents. Even with the command to drive out and exterminate the Canaanites, they were given for their permanent rule: ‘If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shall love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.’ (Leviticus. 19:33-34). Thus were they taught the extraordinary nature of their commission. They were not to expect that even God would call on them again for this strange work of judgment.” (‘The Ethics of the Old Testament’ in Classical Evangelical Essays, edited by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., 1972, 222).

In a nutshell the command to exterminate was unusual in the Old Testament.

The second line of clarification, again from Greene is that the exterminated peoples were “…not cut off without notice. On the contrary, abundant opportunity for repentance was afforded. When the day of vengeance came, “Forty years had passed since the news of the passage of the Red Sea, and of the wonders in Egypt, had proclaimed the greatness of [Yahweh] above all gods. The recent conquest of the kings of Gilead and Bashan had no less vividly shown that a mighty invincible Power fought on the side of Israel, and rightfully claimed universal homage. Rahab in Jericho [an old city of Canaan] had heard of these judgments [Josh. 2.10-14], and, doubtless, the conviction of the people at large through the land, however they may have stifled reflection, was the same as hers…” (p. 220) Kaiser supports the notion of warning before judgment by saying “Every forecast or prophecy of doom, like any prophetic word about the future…had a suppressed ‘unless’ attached to them (sic.). At what moment that nation turns from its evil way and repents then at that time the Lord would relent and cease to bring the threatened harm (Jer. 18:7-10).” (Toward Old Testament Ethics, 1991, 268).

The Jeremiah text (NKJV) says,

⁷ The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, ⁸ if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. ⁹ And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, ¹⁰ if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.

So then the command to exterminate was after prior warning.

The final line of clarification of the command to exterminate has to do with justice: the fact that the designated nations were very wicked and deserving of divine punishment. This is the view in Deut. 9.4 and 5 and Leviticus 18.21-24; Leviticus 20:3, Leviticus 20:16-18; Leviticus 18:.25, Leviticus 18:27-30.  Extermination was the divine judgment on a uniquely wicked and abominable group of nations that would have corrupted Israel and other nations had they been allowed to exist further.

This act of divine judgment is therefore as justified or as indictable as God’s punishment of a sinful world by a flood in Noah’s day or the destruction of the five cities of the plain (including Sodom and Gomorrah) or Pharaoh’s army or the threat of hell to unrepentant individuals ultimately.

So then, far from the command to exterminate certain nations in the Old Testament being ethically indefensible, it was an unusual outworking of divine justice on evil after prior warning to repent.