What Does God Really Think About Sex?

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Nor are many others. The Episcopal convention will debate a conservative counterblast from 60 bishops, led by William Frey, dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambler, Pa. The proposal would amend canon law to place all clergy "under the obligation to abstain from sexual relations outside of Holy Matrimony." Observes Frey: "Many of us believe that the sexual revolution has run its course, leaving in its wake thousands of broken marriages, a sharp rise in teenage pregnancies, millions of convenience- motivated abortions, a multibillion-dollar pornography industry and a mushrooming AIDS epidemic. What could be better news than the proclamation that there is a better way?" Bishop Hunt predicts a close vote.

METHODISTS

+ The church's panel on homosexuality is stirring a ruckus even before its report is written. James Holsinger, medical director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, quit the study committee last February because he felt certain its conclusions would follow liberal lines. But "nothing is fixed," says the Rev. Nancy Yamasaki of Spokane, the committee chair, who is publicly noncommittal. The panel's recommendations will undergo administrative review before reaching next year's nationwide General Conference.

Any revolutionary Methodist proposal is likely to rely on the thinking of Victor Paul Furnish of Southern Methodist University and other liberal Bible scholars. According to their various reinterpretations, the Old Testament forbids homosexual behavior as part of a code, including laws and rituals, that Christians no longer observe. As for New Testament abjurations against the practice, particularly St. Paul's strong injunctions, revisionist scholars claim that the prohibitions were aimed only against pederasty and homosexual acts by persons who were naturally heterosexual. In any event, the argument runs, the apostle would have been more understanding if he knew as much about human sexual variance as moderns do.

Holsinger thinks Methodism could lose millions of members if an upheaval in church policy is ever approved. But Julian Rush of Denver, a pioneer gay Methodist minister, says, "I don't expect any change in my lifetime. The church won't lead the way on gays. It has to come from society into the church."

The debate over sexual morality is least strident in the nation's growing Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches, in which literalist interpretations of the Bible are embraced and heterosexual marriage is the only state in which sex is without sin. Nonetheless, these groups are taking part in the debate from the sidelines. Two weeks ago, the 15 million-member Southern Baptist Convention pleaded for "all Christians to uphold the biblical standard of human sexuality against all onslaughts."