Here, whether you are aware of it or not, you are actually asking Christianity's oldest question - should good Christians have sexual relationships or not? You have to understand that other than the begrudging "it is better to marry than burn" and some practicalities (such as a deacon being "husband of one wife"), there is minimal sanction even for heterosexual romance in the New Testament (plenty in the old, of course.)

St. Paul assures us the world will soon end and it is far better not to marry. This ethos led not only to the (supposedly) celibate catholic clergy and the formation of the monastic system, but also to the common early-christian ideal of "spiritual marriage," heterosexual marriage without sex. (This is extensively written up in Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, 1994, by John Boswell, Villard Books; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boswell).

You yourself have repeated one of the main justifications for celibate clergy and monks: Jesus never married. Nor did several notable early Christians including disciples and scripture writers.

In modern times we have few monks and nuns, few celibate clergy, and rampant heterosexual rutting in almost all honestly entered marriages. Have we made a colossal error? Have descended from purity to merely barely not burning? Perhaps we have, if you take St. Paul's ethos seriously as an accurate expression of the sole legitimate Christian ideal of love.

On the other hand, if you take the viewpoint of many biblical scholars that Paul had a mistaken idea the rapture was going to arrive in a few years, and that people should hold off in purity until then, marriage in the 21st century seems much easier to justify.

The idea that Jesus himself would personally model all acceptable loving behaviour seems a very poor candidate to be considered reasonable, though. Certainly, if heterosexuals followed his example, in a few years they would forever negate his 'commandment' to "allow the little children to come to me." Americans should be aware that one powerful religious movement, the Shakers, did in fact 'celibatize' themselves out of existence, taking their interpretation of scripture with them.

The bottom line is: don't marshal any arguments against same-sex relationships that could be made in equal force, under Christianity, against opposite-sex relationships. This really then reduces us back to that same small list of relentlessly quoted scriptures.

One more thing about Jesus, though. Though he's not known to have had sex (unless you credit the stuff dug up in that buried jar of gnostic gospels a few years ago), he IS known to have had a young man or a teenboy, the beloved disciple, snuggled up against his chest at the Last Supper (see many renaissance paintings where a beardless boy is always shown). So if you are into Jesus as a role model, you may certainly have a beloved boy or young man snuggled up under your arm with his head on your chest while you are relaxing. Who may, in effect, be treated as an in-law in times of crisis ("mother, this is your new son"). [In fact, I recently visited the sanctified building in Ephesus, western Turkey, where Mary and the beloved John are traditionally said to have moved to after the s--t hit the fan about Christianity in Judaea, and it was very touching to imagine the life they'd had there, Jesus's beloved boy in his lifelong caring for Jesus's mom].

The argument for making the most of your loving potential really comes from two sources. These sources, though are not explicit in scripture and I am reading between the lines, in a way I feel is with the spirit, but you be the judge.

One is the motivation for marital fidelity. Here we have a similar question to the one you can pose about homosexuality: is Jesus's 'recommendation' of marital fidelity (putting an end to the concubine system of traditional Judaism) based on an inexplicable divine regulation, or does it have something to do with love that we can understand? If it has to do with love, then the whole of sexual politics enters in - "what's wrong with having some pre-marital or extramarital sex, bla bla bla, what if one partner is incapacitated, etc." If you search around for ANY other argument than "God just inexplicably said so, so there," (which I admit satisfies many people, as they love being hugged by rules and would rather not have to deal with the rules having reasons), then I would challenge you to find any better argument than "you COULD do all those other things, but what really WORKS best for you in a true marriage [excluding any marriage where one partner was never actually attracted to or enamoured of the other]is to be faithful to each other and to cherish each other as unique partners in love, and not to pollute that special attraction with whims, diversions, subterfuges and the failings of age." In other words, marital fidelity may be a means of maximizing the love in a sexual relationship.

The other idea supporting this is a very broad context: the laws of Moses. The way to understand the many seemingly bizarre laws given in the Mosaic code is to appreciate that Israel was coming into a Canaanite nation that consisted of inveterate sensualists - worshipping by having sex with temple prostitutes, serving a new idol God for every whim and occasion, and in general giving in to all their cravings. Some of the excess then led to fear and to violent propitiation of the idol deities, such as the infamous "passing of children through fire to Molech."

The Mosaic law basically says, if you read through it piece by piece: you only need one thing for each category of needs, and that thing is the best, the ideal. OK, maybe one very high level alternate. Meat - domestic ungulates (cows, sheep), or ok, maybe deer or antelope. Fowl - Gallinae (chickens and relatives), ok, also doves. Edible insects? - Grasshoppers/locusts, ok, also crickets. (Try and preach a sermon on that one.) Clothing? - one type of thread only. Agriculture? No mixtures, one crop per field. Marriage? One wife, ok, maybe a concubine or two. Sexuality? If you lie with women, don't lie with men too, one sex is enough for you. [or the traditional typological interpretation, male archetype, only lie with female archetype, no homosexuality]. And the capper. Religion? One god. Though shalt have no other gods before me.

Anyone who adheres very well to these onenesses is a nazarite, an especially pure person.

So an interesting question, dear Magnet55, is, what is the Mosaic ideal for your life? What is your One Best? If you interpret yourself not as the yourself you know, but typologically as Man, then you could say "one wife" since surely reproduction requires male participation. But if you take stock of who you really are , instead of looking at yourself as a Type, then what can really bring your own love to full flower and hold it up in its glory and usefulness and loveliness and sanctity?

Could you become "one flesh" with a woman? Look at our friend Cat having his face slapped with that flesh, to his primal horror. Yet, perhaps in some way he did the right thing for himself by marrying, only God knows. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't have that nightmare (http://cblf.org/messages/53133.htm).

But again, what about you? If you pare all mixed and excessive and experimental and diversionary impulses back and become your nazarite self, ready to make the absolute best of what God gave you, where can you maximize your holy and life-supporting love?

If there is an equivalent of marriage compatible with your sexuality, it may be there. That's the course I have taken. There's no question I have poured more pure love into the world this way than I would have as a falsified and trapped pseudo-heterosexual. And then there's the "or", as in the mosaic laws: perhaps celibacy. Some bl's do remain celibate but have one or more YFs whom they love and mentor without sex ever entering the picture. As a long shot, some bl's, unlike standard-issue gay men, do eventually run into a tomboyish girl who is suitable to approximate the boy experience with them in a marriage.

In any case, as you can see, I believe that same-sex marriage is consistent not only with Christianity but also with orthodox Judaism. Only human limitation has prevented us from seeing that clearly. Once you have seen same-sex relationships full of love for many years, there is no going back to the world of desperate pseudo-heterosexuality or pointlessly lonely celibacy.

Celibacy, by the way, should only be undertaken under necessity or under religious devotion - as a chosen secular option, if it becomes a source of loneliness, it can be very hard to live with (I mean, it may lead to suicide; I have seen this happen). We are not well designed to be alone. And God in God's mercy may have made a help-meet for you as was done with the archetypal Adam in the Garden of Eden, and it may be your religious duty to be the loving help-meet of that person, when you find him (or her). And if you know your King James English, you'll recognize that in the "meet" of "help-meet," there is the idea of "truly appropriate for you."