Evangelicals Concerned Inc.
Erotic Justice: A liberating ethic of sexuality by Marvin M. Ellison (Westminster John Knox, 1996, 142 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Ellison goes on and on about how sexuality has gone bad in the hands of his villains: (who else?) white heterosexual male military-capitalist racist elitist Christians. He fails to see that it goes bad as well in the hands of his fellows (gays, lesbians, etc.). He faults Western capitalism for robbing people of "real power and control in their lives." But do the people have more real power and control in Communist China? He alleges that "control, coercion and rigidity are the legacies of racist patriarchal Christianity." Are control, coercion and rigidity in Saudi Arabia the legacy of Christianity? To Ellison, "racist patriarchy renders all women objects for male gazing and control." What about the multimillion dollar gay porn phenomena for gay "male gazing and control" of other men?
By stereotyping, reductionism, exaggeration, selective illustration, tired tautology and jargonizing, Ellison sets up one straw man after another. Failing to acknowledge that Christians are called the bride of Christ and regard marriage as a sacrament, Ellison pushes the overblown notion that conventional Christian moral discourse argues that "sexuality itself [is] the problem." It does not. And even though Ellison understands that sex abuse is dangerous, he objects to what he says is "the dominant Christian tradition [that] leads people to believe that sexuality is a dangerous, alien force" and that "if an activity feels good to them, they probably should not be doing it." There's plenty of Christian tradition that holds no such idea. Nonetheless, like other good things such as fire and water, creativity and tolerance, sexuality can be dangerously misused and have even unintended consequences. Even rape "feels good" to the rapist:
Unsurprisingly, Ellison has trouble with the m-word. He derides what he calls "compulsory monogamy" for "restrict[ing] the range and significance of other friendships" and for "weaken[ing] ties with the larger human community." He accepts unquestioningly "marriages [that in his words] make room for additional sexual partners." He dictates in advance that "the precise requirements of ... fidelity cannot be determined in advance." He flatly decrees: "The fact is that we simply do not need a specific ethical code to regulate whether, when, and with whom to touch genitals." Really? Says who? Says Ellison! Case closed? He attacks religious communities for their "shaming messages" against what he approves and yet asserts elsewhere that "shame is a valuable moral resource for men" who behave in ways he disapproves. When arguing that traditional categories of "normative, as well as transgressive, sexuality" be dumped, he cites Renita Weems' saying that "It adjures us ... not to impose on relationships our own biased preconceptions about what is appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior." But he dogmatically prescribes and harshly proscribes sexual behavior for others according to his own moral standards. Indeed this is his book's purpose. Complaining that "prevailing sexual moral discourse, in both its conservative and liberal guises [both of which he stereotypes] remains overwhelmingly judgmental," Ellison fills his book with self-righteous judgments. "Coming of age about sexuality," he insists, "requires" agreement with him.
His special pleading for a "constructionist" over an "essentialist" interpretation of sexuality is irrationally either/or. He caricatures both. Arguing as he does that essentialists as such are antigay and see homosexuality as unnatural overlooks all the progay writers who think there were "gay people" in the ancient world and in all cultures. Arguing as he does that constructionists as such are progay because they (and he) "emphasize that sexuality is a dynamic and malleable process" overlooks the fact that antigay "ex-gay" advocates make this same claim of malleability.
Ellison prefaces his book with Walt Whitman's advice to "re-examine all you have been told ... in any book [and] dismiss whatever insults your own soul." In this case, it's not only soul that's insulted.