'Science, Scripture, and Same-Sex Love' by Michael B. Regele

Science, Scripture, and Same-Sex Love by Michael B Regele

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author, Michael B. Regele, is a pastor and the father of a woman who happens to be a lesbian. I couldn't quite follow each and every one of his arguments - I am far from being a Christian Biblical scholar, although I am a veteran of Catholic schools - but I get the main ideas.

This book isn't perfect, but Regele at least understands some of its limitations. For one, he uses "homosexuality" as an umbrella term to include gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other queer people (pansexuals and polysexuals, for example - terms which Regele himself does not use). This focus on a term most commonly associated with gay men does an obvious disservice to the rest of the colors of the rainbow. (It's symptomatic of a society-wide concern with men's experience at the expense of the experiences of women and agender/third-gendered individuals.) But acknowledging the shortcoming is at least a start.

His main conclusion, summed up well in the book's second-to-last chapter, is that there is a Biblical basis for believing and acting as if loving, life-affirming, non-exploitative, long-term relationships between two people of the same sex can be moral. The arguments used in this book are scientific, Biblical, historical (acknowledging that the practice of same-sex sexuality was vastly culturally different in the Apostolic era than in our own), and ethical. Regele writes, "...one can conclude that the Bible is silent on the forms of committed same-sex relationships that are at the center of the modern discussion."

Did you hear that, Memories Pizza of Walkerton, Indiana? There is no Biblical basis for the belief that it would be morally wrong to cater a same-sex wedding. I'm a bisexual woman married to heterosexual man, and I like pizza - am I allowed to have a pizza or not?

While this book won't necessarily appeal to a general audience that doesn't specifically have a Christian worldview, many Christians will find it engaging food for thought.

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for this review, which represents my own honest opinion.