Balanced Investigation

The Christian view of homosexual intercourse is sharply divided – on the one hand we have the view of the framers of monastic Penitentials, who regarded such intercourse as a sin much on the level with adultery, and whose discipline was tempered with charity and common sense; on the other hand, the heavy-handed zealots, who believe that such intercourse provoked the special wrath of God, citing invariably as an instance the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah. Dr Bailey’s scholarly and superbly balanced investigation no more than skirts the tangled and subjective field of ethical judgment and psychological justification; he wisely restricts himself to an analysis of the opinions expressed historically in Scripture, in Roman Law, in Church teaching and legislature, and in Norman England, with a brief discussion of the situation in modern English law. His findings are extraordinarily valuable, and should help to stabilise modern Church opinion, both privately and publicly, in a greater tolerance.

It emerges clearly from his analysis of the Hebrew texts that the focus of the Sodom story is not homosexual, as popularly supposed by the Church Fathers and ourselves; that it turns instead on the breach of hospitality to angelic visitors (the Greek legend of Baucis and Philemon is the nearest pagan parallel). He further establishes beyond dispute that the Church, while enjoining repentance, constantly protected its homosexual members from the rigour of Roman Law from the time of Justinian onwards. He does not find any support for the extreme Puritan view that the practising homosexual is automatically excluded from Church membership.

Dr Bailey makes the important point that a homosexual temperament cannot be regarded, on Christian grounds, as morally reprehensible. His broom sweeps clean in an area much cluttered with traditional prejudice and misapprehensions. His work provides a valuable corrective to the false pride ofpage 266 the heterosexual ‘normal’ man in dealings with his homosexual brother, and a firm basis from which Christians can attempt to cope with the problems of homosexuality in themselves and others, and may help to bring nearer the repeal of our barbarous laws.

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