God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage

by Gene Robinson

From the IX Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church, the first openly gay person elected  to the episcopate and the world’s leading religious spokesperson for gay rights and gay marriage—a groundbreaking book that persuasively makes the case for same-sex marriage using a commonsense, reasoned, religious argument.

Robinson holds the religious text of the Bible to be holy and sacred and the ensuing two millennia of church history to be relevant to the discussion. He is equally familiar with the secular and political debate about gay marriage going on in America today, and is someone for whom same-sex marriage is a personal issue; Robinson was married to a woman for fourteen years and is a father of two children and has been married to a man for the last four years of a twenty-five-year relationship.
 
Robinson has a knack for taking complex and controversial issues and addressing them in plain direct language, without using polemics or ideology, putting forth his argument for gay marriage, and bringing together sacred and secular points of view.

• ISBN10: 0307957888
• ISBN13: 9780307957887
• Publish Date: 18 September 2012
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 8 August 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Alfred A. Knopf
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 208
• Language: English

Reviews

[Beth C.]

While I am already a firm believer in gay marriage, I saw Mr. Robinson on The Daily Show, and was so impressed by how kind and funny he seemed. I was curious about his book once he mentioned that he specifically discusses the Bible verses often used to mark homosexuality as evil and wrong. After checking it out from the library, I am thinking I may have to get a copy to keep.

Robinson, as most know, is the first openly gay Bishop of any faith in the United States. As such, he does have an underlying desire to see gay marriage become commonplace and DOMA disappear. And he makes no bones about how being gay and not allowed to wed for so long affected his life. However, he does get into scholarly research, as well as many explanations with regards to the history of the Bible and those within it. It was interesting to read many things I never knew, and how important context is to even the words of Jesus himself.

The only downside to the book is that Robinson does tend to repeat himself a little more than I would like, but I'm guessing it has to do with how the book was put together. Each chapter is about one main argument/question, and his rebuttal/answer. So naturally, some of the answers will tend to overlap a little bit.

For me, the mark of a good nonfiction book is whether it makes me ask more questions, and gives me the desire to do more research myself. This book did that. Again, I'm all for gay marriage, and I agree with the fact that it is a civil rights issue NOT a religion issue. Or shouldn't be, anyway. It was the history and the context he used during his arguments that had me fascinated and wanting to learn more.

This is a book well worth reading, regardless of where you stand. He makes rational, thought-out arguments, that at the very least might make you think a bit more. I want to have a copy on hand so I can go back to the conversation when words fail me in the future :)