Is homosexuality an excommunicable offense in Christianity?
Last Updated: 16.06.2025 03:08
One, there is an entire laundry list of sexual sin. Yet the pews of churches are full of single mothers and fathers. They are filled with promiscuous and adulterous members who remain in good standing. There are sexual abusers in the pews, and even in the ranks of clergy. Yet these men were transferred rather than excommunicated. This had predictable consequences when it came to light. The damage inflicted by these ethical failures, both material and spiritual, was vast. It is not rectified by the zealous persecution of minor sexual sin in just one instance.
Five, all of the sexual activity is sin. Only sex in a marriage is ‘acceptable’. Even then, intent matters. Spousal rape is right out (yet was tolerated for quite some time). Spousal rape is a MORTAL sin. At best, homosexuality is a venial or minor sin. It is certainly not an abomination. Many churches treat mortal sexual sin as venial because they remain mired in the lower law. They either mistake mortal violations as minor offenses to be treated with penance or they ascribe behavior not explicitly condemned as a minor offense (i.e. was there a goat present?). This is errant.
Three, there is the lower law (Deuteronomy) and the higher law (Christ). The lower law is meant as instructional ethics for people learning how to be ethical. It is a legal approach, i.e., rules that, if broken, should be punished, and proscriptive laws on how one is to behave. For example, it states, "Don’t lie, and be truthful." In terms of sex? These rules point the way toward the higher law. Do we need to produce an exhaustive list of things that men should not have sex with, only to have the lawyers among us find loopholes regarding third cousins, twice removed, so long as a goat is present? Or could we just use principle based guidance? Do not sin sexually.
How can that be?
Four, we have already made the delineation between mortal and venial sin. This is commonly recognized as ‘degrees of sin.’ Murder carries more damage than a lie (in most cases). Even in violence, we recognize that soldiers engaged in the barbarity of war are not committing sin. Yet when they return home, if they kill an innocent? It is murder. Context is important. The same applies to sex. How exactly is a predatory pedophile who is repentant acceptable? Given penance and transferred to pray again and again and again? That is a failure of the higher law. It is a failure to note the danger and damage of sexual exploitation of children. It is a grievous MORTAL sin. How does a celibate gay man find himself … worse? An abomination? A married homosexual couple? Yet the same pews have promiscuous men and women everywhere? Yet the married couple is the abomination?
No.
I would start out by saying that there are definitively churches that say that it is and do practice excommunication for all homosexuals, regardless of actual conduct. They are wrong.
Seven, all of this comes from purpose. God created us so that he may revel in us and we, in turn, may revel in a relationship with him. God knows that we are not perfect, so he sent Christ and gave us, all of us, the Atonement. Those who deny this and seek to inject themselves into a relationship between God and his creation are, themselves, committing sin. The older I get, the more pronounced my awareness of sexual sin and its ubiquity becomes. Rare, exceedingly so, are those who can exist without ever committing sexual sin. So when we insist that one, and only one, sexual sin is mortal? Well, recent history shows us the consequences of this wrong approach.
Two, the Atonement and Covenant exist to provide a means of redress for minor sins. Lay members give an accounting against the Ten Commandments, and communion absolves those confessed sins. Most churches that condemn homosexuality with zeal allow minor sexual sin to be covered by this process. Yet they excommunicate even celibate homosexuals?
Is it true that Jehovah's witnesses once thought the world would end in 1975?
Six, you can see this yourself. I happened to run across members of churches that welcome homosexuals. I would recommend a visit. In these churches, you can see what happens to men and women who have been called evil abominations their entire lives. You can see the wounds this castigation creates. You see self loathing this creates and the struggle of humans trying to be other than they are. What you see are human beings in terrible pain. Then you see what happens when a gay minister or bishop, married and fathers or morthers, (or even straight members of the clergy) who look at these men and tell them, “You are seen, and you are loved.” And then you watch men and women who have struggled so long break, the release of agony and hatred and the healing power of compassion. The moment a man treated as an abomination realizes that he and all his agony are seen? And loved? That is God’s healing power. Those who deny it and continue to demand suffering for veniality? They have missed the divine.