Only in taking time with each other, in mutual recognition and trust, can partners learn they are far more than passive instruments and that sexual joy is more than the basic physicalities of sexual intimacy.  This is what Williams regards as the body’s grace and it is here that sexual faithfulness becomes not avoidance of risk but openness to creativity, where it discovers its true potential.  He does note, however, regarding sexual fidelity, that it would be entirely detrimental ‘to legalise it in such a way that it stands quite apart from the ventures and dangers of growth and is simply a public bond, enforceable by religious sanctions.’      

Commitment and faithfulness remain central for understanding the full potential and grace of sexual union.  What damages a perception of its efficacy for relationships are socio-religious demands and assumptions that it can only be real if confined to a certain pattern, for example, the insistence of heterosexual marriage being the only ideal.  The irony of this is inescapable, as Williams points out, ‘an enormous number of sanctioned unions are a framework for violence and human destructiveness on a disturbing scale.’  Sexual union is not freed from moral danger or ambiguity merely by satisfying formalised socio-religious criteria.  Similarly, a view of the body as being separate from the essential person, thus something to be either subdued or mollified with immediate gratification, is a major cause of sexual oppression within which desire is bound up with fear and hostility.  However, while we need to acknowledge that sexual disorder is prevalent in a range of human dysfunctions, it should not be assumed to be the basis for all human pathologies.

Reflection on human sexuality further raises the question of why so much religious and social anxiety exists concerning same-sex relationships and where this anxiety originates.  Ironically, while mainstream churches hold that same-sex relations are a problem because of the language of creation and redemption; more liberal and inclusive churches would say that same-sex relations should not be a problem precisely because of such language.  Williams wonders whether the problem might be to do with the fact that same-sex relations necessitate thinking directly about bodily actions and sexuality in a way that heterosexual unions do not.  As the effervescent Quentin Crisp pointed out, ‘When heterosexuals think about homosexuals and what they do in bed, they can imagine themselves doing it - and they don’t like it!’    I would suggest this is simply a reflection of a heteronormativity so deeply ingrained and so surely anchored that consideration of anything outside of it must, by default, be viewed with contempt and suspicion.  Certainly it is fair to say that the church’s teaching and guidance on heterosexual activity is weak at best, throw homosexual activity into the mix and it is met with something between total confusion and apoplexy.

Comic and tragic aspects of sex and its general embarrassments necessitates (for some) having an ultimate goal for its justification.  For heterosexual partners the greater purpose behind which to hide, if so chosen, is procreation, enabling direct thought about sexual desire to be circumvented.  With same-sex relations there is only the confrontation of the reality of desire, pleasure and joy for their own sake, without any ‘greater purpose.’  Yet precisely this meaning - of something other than procreation - is used as a major motif for sexual metaphor in the Bible when referring to God’s relationship with humanity.  For example, in Hosea, God is portrayed as a tormented and humiliated lover concerning unfaithful Israel; sexual attraction is favoured over procreation in 1 Samuel 1:8, when Elkanah (Samuel’s father), says to his barren wife Hannah, “Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?"  The Second Testament also refers to marital sex without use of procreation as its primary purpose.  Paul, for example, speaks of partners surrendering individual ownership of their bodies (1 Cor 7: 4); and points out that, “…in loving his wife a man loves himself” (Eph 5: 28-29), encouraging relational elements and creativity in the partnership. 
We frequently speak of God as love, but are afraid to speak of God as lover.  We sing the chorus ‘I am my beloved’s and he is mine, and his banner over me is love,’ from the passionate and highly erotic Song of Songs, yet fail to recognise God as lover.  As Sallie McFague astutely observes in her work, Models of God, ‘But a God who relates to all that is, not distantly and bloodlessly but intimately and passionately, is appropriately called lover.  God as lover is the moving power of love in the universe, the desire for unity with all the beloved, the passionate embrace. . . that draws us into each other’s arms.’ 

Irrefutably, there is a great deal found in the Bible to move us away from assuming reproductive sex is the norm for a Christian sexual ethic.  When portraying the costly relationship between God and humankind some biblical writers use sexuality to describe the intricacies, intimacies and difficulties encountered.  Therefore, those who refuse to consider the reality of same-sex love because it necessitates thinking about physical and bodily desire and joy for their own sake should be slower to claim that Scripture legitimises procreative heterosexuality as the only norm.  In the same vein, when some Christians opine that same-sex couples do not procreate, and this is why they cannot be of God, they are automatically dismissing those heterosexual couples who do not want or cannot have children, and more elderly men and women who choose to marry and are beyond child-bearing age.