I am delighted at this surprisingly civil and thoughtful discussion. Hopefully I can contribute yet another dimension to an altogether tricky debate. I truly believe that living into the Holy Spirit and living by this breath of God requires an embrace of the dynamism of the individual’s self-hood as participant in community. We find life in relationship, we grasp life by relationship—as daughter, as sister, as lover, as friend, as a member of a larger people. For this reason, both the breadth and depth conversation is altogether encouraging!

I hope that the safety and respect of the conversation thus far continues as I make some statements about the lenses through which I see life. In the nature of full disclosure, I want to come out and say that I am a lesbian who went to Seminary and works in health services. Regardless of the debate on the civil implications in being denied full access to the entire legal system, including contracts of marriage, (a different issue in which I’ve already betrayed my hopes), I hope and believe that the stories and insights of lesbians and gays can benefit the entire conversation regarding what marriage and commitment “meanâ€, both theologically and personally. I hope that my experiences of sexuality and sexual expression are not dismissed here as invalid but taken as further nuance to the issues of sexuality and sexual expression. In that vein, I simply offer my two cents (or 25, considering how wordy I am, today) on the article referenced in this blog and the issues in the blog, itself:

1.	Observation: The correlation between the assumed female partner in marriage and child-rearing in the article/blog/comments has been striking! Particularly overwhelming was the following quote from the article: “...[Christian women] risk the real possibility that, in holding out for a godly, chaste, uncommon man, she will wait a lot longer than she would like. Plenty will wait so long as to put their fertility in jeopardy. By that time, the pool of available men is hardly the cream of the crop—and rarely chaste.â€ While this correlation appears throughout history, most particularly in recent US history the church has placed an undue amount of emphasis on *female* purity and spirituality. I suspect there are at least these two reasons for this emphasis:
	a.Industrialization: As labor became more factory-intensive and far less agriculturally oriented (and thus home-oriented), gender roles changed. Women’s exclusion from political and economic society (the men’s new societal realm) thereby consigned cultivation of “godly cultureâ€ to women’s duties. Women, while still excluded from traditional leadership roles, were provided other modes of participation—most notably, rearing children in bible study and theology. (B. Welter’s “Feminization of American Religionâ€ is a great resource for further reading)
	b.Fertility: Women, as we know, carry babies. I fear, though, that we’ve hypersexualized women, thus ensuring that young women's perceptions of themselves are inseparable from their bodies, and that their ability to be Christ-like or otherwise moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. I’m encouraged, then, by the author’s move to discuss male spirituality and sexuality. I do wish, though, that male sexuality would be given its full measure of discussion, burden, and responsibility rather than assuming that “boys will be boysâ€.

2.	Perhaps one of the reasons the conversation around sex and marriage is so contentious and complex is that we confine our understandings of sexual expression to the ways that individuals position bodies with respect to other bodies (whether that interaction happens inside or outside of a marriage covenant).  Perhaps if we were less focused on the “dosâ€ and “don’tsâ€ of “appropriateâ€ sex, our respective churches and denominations could work on fleshing out a full-bodied (pardon the pun) theology that supports healthy and life-giving sex interactions. I propose that sexuality has more to do with relationship than with sex, has more to do with giving life than giving birth, has more to do with that which is generative in our experience than with the positions of individual bodies. I propose that expressions of sexuality are an outgrowth of creation’s deep desire to participate in a loving, creative God. The command to “be fruitful and multiply,â€ then, may well be read alongside the Great Commission. If I might conflate the two: Go ye therefore and multiply life in all nations; Go ye therefore and let these lives and yours be fruitful! Suddenly, the notion sexuality is somehow wrapped up in the Body of Christ. Suddenly, this command is a call for each individual to carve out in the world new space for that which is life-giving, to cultivate relationships that allow the flourishing of each participant, to generate new possibilities for life. If a potential marriage is not cultivating this flourishing, then I’m not sure it should be promoted. If sex is not cultivating these ideals, then it is inappropriate regardless of whether it takes place inside or outside of marriage.