Adam and Eve - Did God intend
to prohibit same sex marriages?

God made Adam and Eve - Not Adam and Steve!



We've all heard someone say that as if it should be engraved in stone.

Adam & Eve stained glass

That statement about Adam and Eve sums up the belief system of many Christians. They view Genesis 2:24 as God’s final answer on who can get married. The Adam & Eve marriage model, ‘one man with one woman’ is the only marriage model God will truly bless, according to some Christians.

They say "truly" because they know that God blesses gay marriages. By saying "truly," they intentionally denigrate gay marriages - gay marriages may be blessed by God but gay marriages are not truly blessed by God.

Their logic works like this. Since God only mentioned a heterosexual couple in Genesis 2, anti-gay Christians assume God intended to condemn homosexual couples because He did not specifically mention them in Genesis 2.

How will you answer
these important questions?

1. In the Adam-Eve story, did God or Moses give an explicit command that gay and lesbian partnerships are wrong?

2. In telling us about Adam & Eve, did God or Moses intend to prohibit all lesbian and gay relationships?

Anti-Gay Author
Tom Schmidt Answers No!

Thomas E. Schmidt, Ph.D.

Tom Schmidt is a conservative evangelical Christian author and college professor who believes all intimate same sex partnerships are sinful. Yet here is his surprising answer to our two questions (bold emphasis mine).

"So while it is true that the Genesis creation story does not provide explicit commands about sexuality, it provides a basis for biblical commands and for subsequent reflection on the part of those who wish to construct a sexual ethic to meet changing situations.

Applying this principle to our subject, it is fair to say that the human author of Genesis was not consciously prohibiting same-sex relations when he wrote the creation account, but it is appropriate for us to explore the relevance of biblical commands about marriage and to evaluate modern homosexuality in light of Genesis."

- From his book, Straight and Narrow?, Thomas E. Schmidt, Leicester: IVP, 1995, 240 pp.

Tom Schmidt admits -
the Complementarian argument
against gays is not scriptural.

If anti-gay Complementarian reasoning about Adam and Eve is valid, we could also conclude that God is against grandparents and aunts and uncles because none of them are mentioned in Genesis 2.

But of course, God is not against grandparents, aunts and uncles. It goes against our common sense to conclude that if God did not mention grandparents, aunts and uncles in Genesis 2, God must be against them.

In the same way, it also goes against our common sense to assume that because God did not mention gay couples or gay marriage in the Adam-Eve story, God must be against gay couples and gay marriage.

In reality, the traditional view of Genesis 2, believed by many Christians, distorts scripture by assuming facts not in evidence. Genesis is an explanation of origins. It is not a dissertation on marriage relationships. God asserts the importance of human relationships by observing:

“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” Genesis 2:18

(from the KJV - the most gay-friendly English Bible available today. "Meet" means fitting, suitable, appropriate for).

Why not accept the Adam and Eve story
at face value without reading into it
more than God actually says?

Adam was a one of a kind original. The animals had compatible companions but Adam was all alone. Here was Adam, a perfect man, alone and lonely because no other human beings existed and Eve had not yet been created.

Adam, the original, perfect man in a perfect world, had God as his intimate companion yet God knew His companionship was not enough for Adam. In the midst of fellowship with God, Adam still needed someone like himself - an orientation compatible partner - for emotional, physical and spiritual companionship.

Emotional, physical and spiritual companionship form the basis of all loving heterosexual and homosexual human relationships.

When God created Eve and presented her to Adam, Adam rejoiced because Eve was:

“bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Genesis 2:23.

3rd Century Fresco of Adam and Eve from Roman Italy.

In Genesis 2:23, Adam is adam and Eve is ishshah, the Hebrew words for man and woman. Adam is also referred to as 'iysh, meaning man, because Eve - ishshah was taken from the 'iysh-man's, side.

God's first stated reason
for creating Eve was
companionship for Adam.

Eve’s similarity to Adam allowed them to bond as a couple. Adam and Eve’s deep spiritual and emotional kinship modeled God’s first stated reason for marriage, which is companionship, not procreation. God said:

“It is not good that the man should be alone.” Genesis 2:18.

God includes the story of Adam and Eve in the Genesis historical record because God intended to populate the earth, not because God intended to forbid every marriage model different from the Adam and Eve model.

Just as the dyadic (two person) nature of Adam and Eve’s relationship was not used in Genesis to forbid polygamy, so the heterosexual nature of Adam and Eve’s relationship does not forbid homosexual unions for the small percentage of the human population who are homosexual.

Some Christians read far too much into God’s presumed silence concerning Adam and Eve and gay marriage. Here is another important question thoughtful Christians ask.

If same sex marriages are okay with God,
why aren’t same sex marriages
mentioned in scripture?

Adam and Eve leaving Eden.

The answer is that biblical marriage models reflect the ancient cultures in which they occurred. There were no grandparents or gay couples, in the beginning, with Adam and Eve, so there was no reason for God or Moses to mention grandparents or gay couples in the Genesis 2 account.

It should also be pointed out that there are gay people and gay couples mentioned in the Bible. Never be afraid to embrace truth, even when it is different than what you were brought up to believe.

Since loving gay marriages as we know them today, were relatively rare in the ancient biblical cultures, we rightly expect not to find much mention of gay couples in scripture.

Most people agree - the following
conclusions are illogical.

If the logic of Christians who condemn gay couples is valid, that since God did not mention other marriage models in Genesis, God must be against gay couples, we can use the same logic to prove any number of things which are not true. It sounds kind of silly but here is where such illogic takes us.

1. The Genesis 2 marriage model says nothing about wedding gifts therefore God must be against wedding gifts.

   Of course, no one believes that and no thinking person would draw that conclusion from Genesis 2.

2. The Genesis 2 marriage model says nothing about wedding rings therefore God must be against wedding rings.

   Would anyone with more than two functioning brain cells draw that conclusion from Genesis 2?

3. The Genesis 2 marriage model says nothing about getting married in church therefore, God must be against getting married in church.

   Really now, doesn't such a crazy conclusion assault our common sense?

4. The Genesis 2 marriage model says nothing about adopting children, therefore God must be against adopting children.

   No one believes God is against adopting children simply because adoption is not mentioned in Genesis 2.

5. The Genesis 2 marriage model says nothing about gay couples therefore God must be against gay couples.

That kind of reasoning does not make sense. It goes against the inborn common sense we have as human beings. Such arguments are called reductio ad falsum, reduction to the false or reductio ad ridiculum, reduction to the ridiculous. Such reasoning leads to false and ridiculous conclusions.

Reading into scripture, something scripture does not say and then teaching as doctrine, what scripture does not say, is false interpretation. It leads to wrong conclusions about God’s will for the human race and His purpose for creating Adam and Eve.

Links about Adam and Eve
and God's purpose.

Don't let anyone tell you gays and lesbians are not part of the bride of Christ.

Biblical Complementarity - What Did God Really Intend When He Gave Us The Story Of Adam and Eve?

Complementarian theory originated with an ancient Greek philosopher named Plato.

 Family Values in the OT.

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