Ruth Institute Blog

Being married to “the other” isn’t easy.
Thanks for being part of the culture of support!

Being in any long-term and committed relationship is not easy. It takes patience, sacrifice, love, compromise, communication and a continued reminder of why you fell in love in the first place plus a consideration of the promises made to one another to stick together through thick and thin, sickness and health, rich or poor, etc. But it’s so worth it. My partner and I have been together for over five years now. Our love is no longer the 24/7 excitement and romantic adventure it was when we first fell in love. We have responsibilities now, a toddler that requires our constant devotion and energy, aging parents and grandparents who need our time and support, and we often find that our relationship comes in last place once all of the other demands are met. But we simply need to talk about that first night we danced, how it felt like destiny when we realized we were falling in love, and consider our beautiful home and family that we have built together to remember why are committed to one another for the rest of our lives. If some of you could only understand that we (LGBT people) have much more in common with you than we have differences. I am grateful every day of my life that God gave me this beautiful, kind, compassionate and amazing woman to love and with whom to share my life. He really knew what he was doing when he brought us together. It’s not always easy, and there are days when we can’t stand being around each other, but we both stay focused on the love that we share and the life we have built together, and it all works out. I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else.

@Heidi
There is a conflict between two parties in Genesis 2 and 3.
God said, “From every fruit of the garden you may surely eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die.”
The serpent said, “You shall not be doomed to die. For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become as gods knowing good and evil.”
Who was lying, and who was telling the truth?

“So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another.” (Romans 14:1-13)

@nerdygirl
[7] And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? [8] I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18

“Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. 1 Samuel 2:3

@nerdygirl
And continuing in 1 Samuel 2,
“9 He will guard the feet of his saints,
but the wicked will be silenced in darkness.
“It is not by strength that one prevails;

10 those who oppose the LORD will be shattered.
He will thunder against them from heaven;
the LORD will judge the ends of the earth.

My question for Heidi remains unanswered.

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven” Luke 6:37

“There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” James 4:12

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Galatians 5:14

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” I Corinthians 13:8

Ruth, I feel sad for you. By condemning others, you miss out on the beauty and grace that God freely provides to all. I know that you cannot understand the love that I share with my partner and for that I am sorry, but please do not belittle or patronize me with your misunderstanding of religious text. By the way, did you know that the myth of the garden of Eden predates the ancient Israelites and was actually adapted from an ancient Sumerian creation myth, the writing of which predates the writing of Genesis by 1,000 years? Do your homework, it’s really interesting! Of course, it will reveal that the stories in Genesis are merely recycled myths of older civilizations (including the story of Noah and the great flood), but don’t let those facts shake your belief that the Bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God. We wouldn’t want truth to get in the way of a good story.

Love does not encourage another to sin,
and Truth always trumps a good story.

Heidi: Well put.

Ruth: “Love does not encourage another to sin, and Truth always trumps a good story”
I couldn’t agree with you more, except homosexuality is NOT a sin. But, bearing false witness is. Read more, please.

When we choose to do things God says not to do, we put ourselves in the place of God. We become “as gods”, deciding what is good and what is evil based on the way it feels to us.
“There is pleasure in sin for a season”, but “sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”

Ruth: but God doesn’t say homosexuality is a sin. The Levitical laws were in reference to priest practices and ceremonial prostitution. There is nothing in the Bible against the current same sex marriages. There are some texts against marriage in general but these are mainly from Paul.

@Heidi
You say “your partner”. The whole idea behind marriage is to put a legal and moral binding upon that relationship that the two spouses can lean on when times get rough. When I married my wife, I swore a vow before her, God, the state, and a whole bunch of witnesses. I would have to think very long and hard before breaking that! What holds a “hooked up” couple together – even with, or especially with – kids? Love? What most people have when they get married isn’t love, it’s hormones. Love grows after decades of putting up with each other in close quarters. (For a good dissertation on this, go and see the play “Fiddler on the Roof”).

@Heidi
I’m getting really tired of people using these verses out of context. When Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery that he didn’t condemn her and that her sins were forgiven, he concluded with “now go and sin no more.” He didn’t whitewash over the adultery, He didn’t say that it was now ok, He didn’t give her permission to keep on doing it! He expected her to stop it immediately and follow Him. Read through Paul’s letter to the Romans – especially Chapter 13. See also 1 Corinthians 6:12 ‘”Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial.’ There is nothing that is condemned so heavily as sexual immorality – which, to the early Church as for us, means any sex outside of a heterosexual marriage.

If you truly love someone it does not mean that you accept them just as they are. It means that you want what is best for them and will help them to be the best that they can be, and help them to receive the best things. If you love your children, you do not give them unlimited candy simply because they like it; neither does God set us free simply to indulge all of our childish whims. Occasionally, I had to say to my children: “Sorry, you simply can’t do that.” I said this because I loved them, not because I hated them or didn’t care.

@Mark
Er, yes it is. Nothing is condemned more heavily – see previous posting. I really don’t know where people get this idea that God can bless homosexual relationships when practically half the books in the New Testament condemn sexual immorality explicitly, and the other half implicitly.

No, Paul, what is condemned most heavily is a failure to care for the poor. Read your Bible again. There are over 2000 verses condemning those who would turn their backs on those in need. Being in a loving and committed same-sex relationship is not sexual immorality. Sorry, but it just isn’t.

@Mark
“The Levitical laws were in reference to priest practices and ceremonial prostitution.”

Yes, the first sixteen chapters of Leviticus deal with the Priestly Code, but then…

Leviticus 17 (NIV for all quotes)

1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them: ‘This is what the LORD has commanded…”

And the beginning of the eighteenth chapter also states explicitly that God is addressing all of Israel.

Leviticus 18

1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them…”

Then follows a long list of prohibitions that culminates with these three verses:

Leviticus 18:21-23

23 Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

BTW: You will notice that homosexual behavior is listed between burning one’s children alive as a sacrifice to idols and bestiality. So exactly how is one supposed to conclude that “…God doesn’t say homosexuality is a sin…” from that, Mark?

Oh, and Paul, my “partner” and I would LOVE to put a LEGAL binding upon our relationship (we already have the moral one, thank you very much). It’s just that too many hateful people who would deny us the same civil rights they enjoy keep getting in the way. Why are so many folks unable to make the distinction between religious belief and civil law? Did they fail government class? Were they home sick when their teachers taught about constitutional rights? Maybe they never learned at all how our system works–which would not surprise me since our public education has been underfunded for decades in this country.

I could go round and round and round in circles with some of you arguing about religious doctrine and what is and is not moral. But that is useless, because there will always be some who understand the love and light of God and there will always be more who do not, and who instead try to force others to live as they believe–religious coercion and abuse. The only relevant question in the argument over civil rights in a society based on the rule of civil, not religious, law is whether one group of citizens may deny another group of citizens the same rights they take for granted simply because the first group disapproves of the second group. And the answer to that question under any sane interpretation of the guarantees provided by our Constitution and under the concepts of liberty and justice is a resounding no. We are all equal citizens under the law. Bigotry should not be the basis by which laws are made or continued. Grow up and meet me in the 21st century already, would you?

“We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams