Muslims and Gay Marriage: Is a Loving Commitment Between Two People Such a Bad Thing?

By Jack Fertig

In Canada and the US Muslims live as minority communities in pluralistic societies, so we meet people and vote on issues that we would not encounter in predominantly Muslim countries. More and more Muslims living in the West are confronted with images of homosexuality, meeting openly gay and lesbian people at work, and there are organizations now for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Muslims. We are even called upon to vote on issues or to consider candidates for office who are obliged to speak up on issues such as same-sex marriage.

Private sexual acts can and should be left in privacy, but marriage is a public act, a contract made before family and community. You take your husband to family events, and sign your wife as beneficiary for your insurance. A legal spouse is the first person consulted in medical decisions or funeral arrangements. And it is right that the person you love, the one who shares your life should be recognized as such. Gay people are demanding equal justice in having their life-partnerships recognized.

We are often taught as Muslims that this is sinful and impossible. But in some places Muslims are also told that women must be covered in burkas or "circumcised," or that men must never shave. (Of course men have it easier!) Especially in immigrant communities—and this is just as true among peoples of different religions—transplanted local traditions and attitudes get identified strongly with religious rules. It is too often easy to use Islam to justify personal and cultural prejudices rather than to challenge them as we should.

There have been any number of critical studies of both the New and Old Testaments of the Bible stripping away layers of mistranslation, and contextualizing references to sexual behaviors described—by proscription and otherwise—and recently Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle's essay in "Progressive Muslims" looks at the Qur'an in much the same way casting some doubt on the traditional laws against homosexuality as having a Qur'anic basis.

Many quotations from scripture are very contextual. The Sodomites raped and robbed travelers. Of course this is a horrible crime. In the Christian epistles Paul condemns temple prostitution, particularly of boys, etc. But when the Roman centurion seeks Jesus and asks for healing for his servant (the servant is called "pais" in the original Greek, indicating a sexual relationship) Jesus grants the healing with no comment to the relationship between the two men.

When someone says homosexuality is a false desire, I am left wondering how incredibly wise and sensitive the speaker must be to judge the authenticity of desire in everybody's heart. I lack such wisdom and can only know what people tell me. I've heard from people who are homosexual and tried to cure themselves in heterosexual marriages, living a lie that hurts everyone involved. This is the false desire of living a lie, trying to be something you're not and denying the truth, making the most intimate act a mechanical charade. And what of the spouse who learns that every act of love was a lie?

Homosexual activity has been observed in a great many animal species and nearly every human society. In species that are monogamous, monogamous homosexual pair-bonding has been noted. In human cultures there are often contextual situations in which—as with heterosexual activity—homosexual relations are either condoned or condemned, so the condemnation is also highly contextual and specific. In any case this is far too ubiquitous to be written off as "unnatural." We have a variety of skin colors, eye colors, physical characteristics, personality traits, left- or right-handedness, two principal genders (and more children born sexually intermediate than we're generally aware of) so science observes that diversity of sexual orientation is just another dimension to our diversity. Granted, just because animals and other people do it does not clear away religious objections, but neither does it support a judgment that it is unnatural.

Homosexuality is present everywhere and more visibly so in western cultures where sexuality of all kinds is exploited commercially in so many ways, from strip clubs to rock videos to beer ads and shampoo commercials. (And all these endeavors build on sexual alienation and unrealistic expectations which cause so much more damage than two guys or two women who truly love each other. Is scapegoating homosexuals just an easy way to avoid dealing with the more ubiquitous and deep-seated problems?) Now that gay people are being recognized as a market that can be exploited we're seeing more of that on TV, and all too often seeing the worst of it. If we were to judge heterosexuality only from observing bordellos and rock videos it would be easy to come up with the same sense of revulsion.

When personal loving relationships are not supported, but rather (as with two men or two women) are regarded as a crime or a sin, it becomes a justification for harassment, blackmail, and violence. As benign as we may be in saying, oh, those people are just plain wrong, but still we wouldn't want them hurt or persecuted... Excuse me, but where else have Muslims in the West heard that before? And we have seen where it inevitably leads.

In Europe and North America at least, sex is almost always easy for single people to find. If anyone just wants to indulge in sexual escapades, why get married? You've probably heard the old joke: "A wedding ring is like a tourniquet because it cuts off the circulation." Making the commitment to another person, whatever the gender or orientation is a commitment that love is indeed more important than sex. When a man and a woman are married, they appear together as a couple at public and family affairs, and this reinforces their relationship. Moreover nobody with any brains and manners would dream of making assumptions, let alone snide remarks about their sex life. Two men or two women are pressured to deny each other, and if they appear together, it seems to be open season for filthy minded people to make lewd speculations. And yet the person making nasty jokes and assumptions manages to pose as a protector of morality while the subject of his speculation is regarded as a debased pervert. A man and a woman together are honored and supported. And anyone who has endured marital difficulties knows how important that support can be. If two men or two women are scorned and ridiculed, denied the support that heterosexual couples take for granted, their relationships will suffer for it.

Then if a committed loving partnership is made so difficult that it inevitably fails, what is left but illicit encounters? For any group of people it makes obvious sense that if you are concerned about promiscuity and spreading disease you should support and encourage marriage.

These are largely scientific, sociological, and logical arguments. They may not apply to religion. Some may still say that as Muslims we cannot recognize or endorse same-sex marriages. But nonetheless, homosexuality is all around us. And if "there is no compulsion in religion" we cannot force others to be heterosexual any more than we can force them to abstain from pork and alcohol.

Perhaps there is no place in Islam for same sex marriage—I leave that argument to religious scholars. Nonetheless, in our civic life we have an opportunity to discourage promiscuity, to prevent the spread of disease, and to respect the equal rights of others as we would want to be respected. In the name of The One who is Compassionate and All-Merciful we should be compassionate and merciful enough to allow that, in a society where homosexuality is already widely overt, it is in everybody's best interest to allow civil marriage for same-sex couples.