Isn't giving women access to all offices and roles a simple matter of justice that even our society recognizes?

We are aware that increasingly the question is being posed in terms of justice. For example, Nicholas Wolterstorff says, "The question that women in the church are raising is a question of justice. . . . Women are not asking for handouts of charity from us men. They are asking that in the church - in the church of all places - they receive their due. They are asking why gender is relevant for assigning tasks and roles and offices and responsibilities and opportunities in the church."

Clearly, we think gender is relevant for determining the justice of roles and responsibilities. Perhaps the best way to show why is to cite an article from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune from March 7, 1989 (p. 11A), entitled, "Gay Adults Should Not be Denied the Benefits of Marriage." The author, Thomas B. Stoddard, told the story of two lesbians, Karen Thompson and Sharon Kowalski, of Minnesota. "Thompson and Kowalski are spouses in every respect," he writes, "except the legal." (Every jurisdiction in the United States refuses to permit two individuals of the same sex to marry.) "They exchanged vows and rings; they lived together until Nov. 13, 1983 - when Kowalski was severely injured when her car was struck by a drunk driver. She lost the capacity to walk or to speak more than several words at a time, and needs constant care. Thompson sought a court ruling granting her guardianship over her partner, but Kowalski's parents opposed the petition and obtained sole guardianship. They moved Kowalski to a nursing home 300 miles away from Thompson and forbade all visits."

Stoddard uses this story to illustrate the painful effects of the "monstrous injustice" of "depriving millions of gay American adults the marriages of their choice." His argument is that gay marriages "create families and promote social stability. In an increasingly loveless world, those who wish to commit themselves to a relationship founded upon devotion should be encouraged, not scorned. Government has no legitimate interest in how that love is expressed."

This raises a very fundamental question: How does natural existence relate to moral duty? Or: What moral constraints does our birth as male or female put upon us? Does God intend that our maleness confront us with any moral demands that are different from the moral demands with which God confronts a woman by virtue of her femaleness?

The answer is not simple. On the one hand we would cry, No! The Ten Commandments apply equally to man and woman with no distinctions. But on the other hand, most of us would also cry, Yes! It is a sin for a man to marry a man. But it is not a sin for a woman to marry a man (Romans 1:26-27). If this is so, we cannot say that what we are by nature (gender) is unimportant in determining our moral duty in relation to other people.

When a man stands before a woman, the moral duty that confronts him is not identical with his duty when he stands before a man. God has ordained that the natural and moral world intersect, among other places, at the point of our sexuality.

Until the recent emergence of gay pride, scarcely anyone would have accused God of discriminating against woman by giving only to men the right to marry women. Historically, it did not seem unjust that solely on the basis of gender God would exclude half the human race as lawful spouses for women. It seemed "fitting" and "natural" and "right" ("just") that a large array of marital feelings and actions should be denied to women and men in their relations to half the human race.

The reason there was no worldwide revolt against this enormous limitation of our freedom was probably that it squared with what most of us felt was appropriate and desirable anyway. In His mercy God has not allowed the inner voice of nature to be so distorted as to leave the world with no sense of moral fitness in this affair.

It may be that evangelical feminists would say that gender is relevant in defining justice in regard to marriage because nature teaches by the anatomy and physiology of man and woman what is just and right. But we ask, Is that really the only basis in nature for marriage? Are we left only with anatomical differences as the ground of heterosexual marriage? One of the theses of this book is that the natural fitness of man and woman for each other in marriage is rooted in something more than anatomy. There is a profound female or male personhood portrayed in our differing bodies. As Emil Brunner put it:

Our sexuality penetrates to the deepest metaphysical ground of our personality. As a result, the physical differences between the man and the woman are a parable of psychical and spiritual differences of a more ultimate nature.

Or as Otto Piper said, "Though [the difference between the sexes] has a sexual basis, its actuality covers all aspects of personal life."

Perhaps, if evangelical feminists, who do not endorse the justice of homosexual marriages, would agree that the basis of their position is not mere anatomy but also the deeper differences of manhood and womanhood, then they could at least understand why we are hesitant to jettison such deeper differences when thinking through the nature of justice in other relational issues besides who may marry whom. The point of our book is that Scripture and nature teach that personal manhood and womanhood are indeed relevant in deciding not only whom to marry but also who gives primary leadership in the relationship.