On lust, love, and 100 guests.

July 13, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

We had dinner last night with friends—a couple for whom I performed the marriage ceremony last summer. Although they have been together for something like 14 years, they will celebrate their first anniversary of legal marriage in a few weeks.

Of course we got to talking about the significance of the California Supreme Court’s decision to allow Proposition 8 to stand (therefore, same-sex marriages are not valid nor recognized) but affirming that Proposition 8 does not nullify the 18,000+ couples same-sex marriages in 2008 (therefore both valid and recognized).

Even if the Roman Catholic Church has eliminated Limbo as a place between heaven and hell, the California Supreme Court has recreated Limbo as the place to consign already-married same-sex couples.

And even while we’re watching the early skirmishes in federal court over both

Proposition 8 and DOMA, it looks as if the outcome of neither of those cases could possibly affect the 36,000 + of us who are legally marriage lesbian or gay couples. Limbo.

For some crazy reason, my mind ratcheted back to a conversation with another friend 25 years ago. He had come out to his (Lutheran) pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, and even though the man was kind and not harshly judgmental, his view was that there is no such thing as genuine love between two persons of the same gender. Only lust. Therefore, this pastor could argue that St. Paul’s condemnation of lust (Romans 1:24, tied to his condemnation of same-sex passion several verses later) could withstand any arguments from his own writings in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere about the supremacy of love. Yes, the Bible upholds love and Christian ethics based on love, but since homosexual desire is merely lust, it is not entitled to any “loophole.” At least so goes the argument as I remember it being relayed to me.

Mostly I just shake my head in sadness that anti-gay critics will go to such lengths to rationalize their rejection of us and our different expression of love. Real speak: in the minds of some heterosexuals same-sex love couldn’t possible be love because they can’t imagine loving someone of the same sex. But call it lust and the necessary rationalizations fall neatly into place so that they reject lesbians and gay men.

According to www.dictionary.com:

lust

–noun

1. intense sexual desire or appetite.

2. uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.

3. a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually fol. by for): a lust for power.

4. ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.

5. Obsolete. a. pleasure or delight. b. desire; inclination; wish. 

–verb (used without object)

6. to have intense sexual desire.

7. to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often fol. by for or after).

Thinking about my own life and my spouse of 33 years and that of our friends—spouses for 14 years— it seems ludicrous to dismiss these lifelong relationships as “lust.” Between us, we’ve lived through major life changes, serious illnesses and injuries, change or loss of jobs, the AIDS pandemic, elder care, financial catastrophes, and an awakening consciousness of our own mortality. We have been through what many couples go through, and whether you want to use the “love” word or not, in God’s truth these lives are about fidelity, trust, sacrifice, commitment and constancy. No, the word “lust” just doesn’t fit any of that.

Lust, it seems to me, is a distracting hunger for something you don’t have and would sure like to get. Lust applies more to a televangelist or a politician who takes strange measures to arrange for tricks or affairs–even the Jimmy Carter variety (see the Playboy interview, 1976). At its lower levels lust is an energizer that lures most of us in our youth to play the dating and mating game. We hunger for acceptance, touch, warmth, companionship, fun and flesh. Lust dims with age, if it is not completely extinguished by the reality of having to get up early in the morning and needing to get a decent night’s sleep.

Yes, lust can become a preoccupation, an obsession, that drives some people to make bad judgments, to “hike the Appalachian Trail” or for some tragic individuals to power a mid-life crisis speeding down the road, and maybe to crash into a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. Yes, lust exists, but no, the gender of one’s life partner does not really have anything to do with it.

Back at the restaurant table last night, we got to reminiscing about our friends wedding last July. One of them got a little weepy remembering not so much the vows they exchanged as a couple, but the questions which I had asked the 100 guests.

“Families, friends, and all who are gathered here with Name and Name, will you support and care for them, sustain them in times of trouble, give thanks with them in times of joy, honor the bonds of their covenant, and affirm the love of God reflected in their life together? If so, answer, ‘We will.’

“And, in your many different paths of life, I ask each of you to reflect and to offer your pledge: will you promise to spread tolerance and acceptance, peace and goodwill among all people, so that you help to make the world safe for love, for diversity, for courage, and for commitment you witness here today? If so, answer, ‘We will.’”

It was the loud “We will!” responses that these men heard from their families and friends that brought some tears last night.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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