Genesis 2:18 and the Case Against Queer Celibacy

Adam and Eve Driven From Paradise, James Tissot

Why do some Latter-day Saints accept forced celibacy as a solution to queerness in our community?

Because when God said "It is not good that the man should be alone," they didn't carry that declaration through to its logical conclusion.

That statement wasn't just talking about Adam. It was a statement about all human kind. It is against our very nature to be alone. To the extent that we can take any of the Genesis creation story as literal, this statement should get precedent before many others.

God did not declare the creation of humanity good, as was declared with everything else on earth, until Adam was no longer alone.

For some reason, our people don't consider forced celibacy for queer people a rejection of God and scripture, the denial of human nature as it was divinely created in the beginning. And we should!

If we're going to talk about the eternal nature of humans that should govern all relationships here on earth, removing isolation should take a higher priority than matching genitalia together.

Our species needs gender complements to reproduce, which is crucial to the species' survival. That is true. But it was the elimination of loneliness that spiritually completed Adam and Eve. That is the strictest interpretation of Genesis 2:18. Because of loneliness, Adam and Eve were created. To end loneliness, they gave birth to the rest of the human race. To end loneliness for one another is the most sacred charge, the fullest measure of our creation.

So to prescribe celibacy to anyone as a solution to homosexuality is a contradiction and an absurdity that shouldn't be attributed to God.

It's the faulty logic of barely literate theology, the position of the Biblically unsound. Those who insist on it imagine a meanness for others and favoritism in God for themselves that doesn't exist. Perpetuating it does not serve God.