illustration by VanStensel Tony Campolo defended the typical Reformed stance on homo-sexuality while his wife preached that loving, same-sex marriages are acceptable.

The model of Tony and Peggy Campolo’s marriage is one that should be followed by churches everywhere, the Campolos said last Friday.

Tony Campolo, a well-known author and speaker who serves as a religious advisor to President Clinton, spoke with his wife about homosexuality to several hundred people at Central Reformed Church.

The Campolos take radically different stances on homosexuality, but say that their ability to remain in a loving marriage is something that should be emulated by the church as it seeks to reconcile differences on this issue.

Campolo began the discussion by presenting his point of view. He prefaced his speech by saying that homosexuality “has become one of the defining issues in Christianity, but it shouldn’t be.”

He then told the story of a gay classmate in high school who was taken naked into a locker room shower and urinated on by five students. A few days later Roger, the gay student, hanged himself.

“I knew I wasn’t a Christian because if I was a Christian I would have stood up for Roger,” Campolo said, even though he was not there in the locker room. “All of us who are Christians would agree that there is something humiliating about demeaning another human being.”

Campolo, a professor of sociology at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pa., interviewed over 300 gay men, and found a similar story coming from each of them; namely, that as they entered adolescence they found there was something different about them.

Based on the research he did with these men, Campolo concluded that there is no scientific evidence for homosexuality, — there is “no substantiation” for theories that homosexuality comes as a result of a bad gene or poor parenting, he said.

Hearing the hurt in these men’s stories, Campolo asked himself “whether the Bible was really clear on [homosexuality].”

Campolo referred to Romans 1:26,27, which speaks about men and women being inflamed with lust for members of the same sex as backing for his stance that homosexuality is not wrong, but practice of homosexuality is sin.

“I believe that the first chapter of Romans is where I rest my case, and that is that the Bible does not allow for same-sex marriages and same-sex eroticism,” he said.

He also based his argument upon the tradition maintained by the Christian church for 2,000 years, which univocally opposed erotic homosexual acts. On no other issue — not slavery or women in church leadership — has the Christian church ever spoken with one voice throughout history, Campolo said.

But no matter what one believes on the subject, the issue of homosexuality should be kept in perspective, he said.

“If we’re going to divide in the church, let’s divide over the issues that are of ultimate significance,” he stressed. “What’s at the top of [God’s] list are people who are ugly to those who are different than they are.”

“When you begin to deny gays and lesbians the rights to be human beings, I have to say, ‘No!’”

Peggy Campolo launched her side of the argument with a direct attack on her husband’s use of Romans 1. Romans, she said, was written in Corinth, where the citizens worshiped Aphrodite. As part of the ceremonial worship, believers had sex with same-sex temple prostitutes.

This in mind, she said, Romans 1 “cannot be applied to Christians who have a loving, monogamous homosexual marriage.”

Addressing Campolo’s reliance on the church tradition, she said, “Many of those [2,000] years disallowed women the right to be in church leadership.” Knowing this, an argument that relies on tradition cannot be used because tradition has been wrong before, she said.

Both she and her husband are sad about the lies about gays and lesbians being propagated by some church leaders, she said, and both of them are also opposed to a promiscuous lifestyle, whether it is led by a homosexual or a heterosexual. They also agree that a person does not choose a homosexual orientation any more than a heterosexual chooses his or her orientation.

But, she said, she identifies with gays and lesbians. There is something wrong “when you know who you are but don’t want to disappoint friends and relatives [by revealing that],” she said.

She shared several experiences where the experiences of gay people moved her to believe that a loving, same-sex relationship is acceptable. “As I listened to their stories, a rage began to build in me,” she said.

“Some of [the gay people she has spoken with] had heard such anti-gay statements from their own preachers that they knew they couldn’t go there for help,” she said, and this infuriated her. Through all of this, she developed her belief that a loving, monogamous gay relationship is biblically acceptable because it is based upon principles of love.

Tony Campolo then took back the microphone. “I am expressing my disapproval of a church who has forgotten how to love people that that Jesus never stopped loving,” he said.

“They are not sinners because of their homosexuality,” Peggy added.

Tony then mentioned his wish to see the church provide a support system for celibate homosexuals based on principles similar to that of the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

Several questioners then stepped forward, one relating that he was homosexual, another saying he had changed from homosexual to heterosexual — a possibility which Tony did not deny but called extremely improbable — and others challenging Tony’s views.

One questioner said he could not sleep the night before the presentation, knowing that Campolo would base his argument on Romans 1. “Romans 1 is not an ethical directive,” said the questioner, “but a portrait that shows paganism in its true colors.”

The evening came to a close with several statements from Tony Campolo. “It’s not homosexuals that want to get divorced — they want to get married,” he remarked when he discussed the argument that homosexuals are destroying the American family.

He ended by saying that he realized the possibility that he is wrong. “A lot of people claim more infallibility than the pope claims,” he said, and he did not want to be accused of that.

“I have to be open to the fact that I might be wrong,” he said.