“It is not enough just to say that a given command is ‘The Word of God’ … in questions of the civil use of law … each case has to be argued individually …. The fundamental concern of the civil use of the law is for the care of the social order . . . What the law enjoins is love of and service to the neighbor. That is its fundamental and ineradicable content.”[1]
“In our deliberations, the wisdom of Scripture and the tradition cannot be cited as ‘God’s answer’ to the matter, but neither ought that wisdom be summarily dismissed as irrelevant or outdated.”[2]
[1]Forde, “Law and Sexual Behavior,” LQ 9:1 [Spring, 1995] 8-9, 18.
[2] Don Juel, “Homosexuality and Church Tradition,” Word & World 10:2 (Spring 1990) 168-69.