In December, Michael Vasey's long-awaited book on homosexual morality was published to a storm of protest. Here Dr. David Wright of Edinburgh University reviews the issues and the book.
What Michael Vasey seeks is a 'reconciliation' between the church, especially the evangelical church, and gay people. This would involve on the church's side a full acceptance of the 'gay public identity' within its fold. Nothing is said about what it might entail for gay men and women. Vasey's ideal is that the church should ensure that relationships are conducted in a responsible, respectful and affirming environment and leave the details of sexual practice to be worked out by those involved, without outside interference.
Vasey writes as someone who knows the world of gaydom and the new discipline of gay studies like an insider. He presents a largely attractive and uncritical picture of the gay movement, which he believes is here to stay. He even claims that gay culture 'represents a form of resistance to the values and 'gods' that underlie the social disintegration of Western industrial society', and that its acceptance by the churches would help them to distance themselves from the idols of the modern world and to become forces of communal re-integration.
