Arthur C. Clarke once commented that it is quite amazing how we fight for and defend the country or religion or culture of our birth, considering that by and large the circumstances of birth are somewhat accidental.  But for the grace of God, we might be fighting just as vigorously on the other side.  The same might be said of gender.  We divide all too readily into male and female camps, striving for domination or equality, sometimes just for recognition.

In both cases life is not black and white.  Qualities such as love and compassion bridge any artificial divide, and physical attributes are neither wholly male nor wholly female.  And throughout history boundaries have changed, whether geographical, political, religious or those defined by attitude.

The Christian church wrestles with such dilemmas: fighting for one’s country; killing the enemy; accepting homosexuality.  One would have more sympathy for schisms such as those caused by the appointment of gay bishops if the interpretation of God’s word was a beacon for us all to follow, but usually the Church falls in line behind social change

The irony is that in the bigger picture the issue is a minor temporal anomaly.  In the philosophy of Arthur C. Clarke we used to live in the sea; soon we will live in space; meanwhile, we cope with the conditions of temporarily living on land.  And if we go back far enough we probably had no gender.  The Old Testament version of history doesn’t cover this aspect, which is why religions based on the Old Testament struggled for so long to embrace science, but many cultures have myths or religions based on evolution from very primitive cells.  And many more contain stories of gods and heroes who were androgynous, hermaphrodite, or could change gender at will.  So if we can accept that Genesis contains truths, rather than represents the absolute truth, there is no reason why we should not treat Leviticus in the same way.

So if gender is a recent innovation is it here to stay, or like all borders, will it simply make way for something else?  Science, as always, has the answer, although no doubt the answer will be modified a few times before it comes to pass.  Apparently, that aggressive old Y-chromosome is unstable and unable to heal itself.  Damage built up over millennia means that one day it will become extinct.  It doesn’t pose the same urgent threat that we recognise in terrorism and global warming, so the human race has to solve many other problems first, but in perhaps 5,000 generations no more males will be born.

Long before then we will be able to produce babies (female ones, of course) without any need for males, Y-chromosomes, sperm, or any other messy device traditionally associated with reproduction, so it might not be the end of the world; just the end of the world as we know it.  It might even be a better world, for had we learnt how to do without males a bit sooner we might not now be facing the threats of global warming and terrorism.

Be that as it may, do we really want to get all hot and bothered about whether or not a bishop is male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, sea-dweller or space-man?  The old advice is: only worry about the big stuff; and by the way, there is no big stuff; certainly, not passing phases like sexual orientation or gender.