The Christian Century

James Alison, Catholic priest and theologian, recalls two iconic images that appeared almost in the same week in 2004. The one pictured Private Lynndie England holding a leashed dog with a pile of humiliated male prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The other image is of two women walking down the steps of the Boston city hall waving a marriage certificate. Alison asks, "To which of these two images does the biblical category of 'Sodom' rightly apply?" It is a category mistake to use the language of wayward behavior to categorize people who are attracted both emotionally and erotically to persons of their own gender, he says. This is just the way these people are, neither by choice nor circumstances, and it is becoming clear that they are capable of "full-heartedness of love for each other," which "is not just lust nor a defect," but in fact is "a gift from, and an access to, God" (Broken Hearts and New Creations, Continuum).