Pastorally, he affirms that the church is not resistant to privately gay people or couples. Some problems associated with Noll s arguments 1. He looks to Scripture as a rule book, a source of timeless, uninterpreted truths and thus dismisses those who seek to understand the words of the text as revelatory of the Word, Jesus Christ, living in our time. He gives no acknowledgment of the human limitations of the text. Nor does he address himself to the ways in which the Gospels call into question the OT purity codes.
Marriage is a social institution which varies widely over time, place, culture.
Is no where acknowledged in Noll s passionate defense of marriage as an unchanging gift of the Creator. Even human desire , which Noll understands to be rooted in changeless biology is socially shaped for sex is in the head . Though these views are widely held by the public, especially by religious persons, the work of social scientists, e.g. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble , of indubitably orthodox theologians such as Frederick Borsch, Bishop of Los Angeles, Richard Holloway, Primate of Scotland, and in fact the attitudes and behaviors of our children and the popular culture have abandoned essentialism in a search for respectful and equilibrated relationships. Sex and Gender are increasingly understood to be fluid and performative in terms of behavior and dress. We do need a new theology of marriage which will substitute relationship for genital acts as the focus of our ethical reflections.