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w56 10/1 p.591 par.20 Marriage Obligations and Divorce***
Sodomy (or the unnatural intercourse of one male with another male as with a female), Lesbianism (or the homosexual relations between women), and bestiality (or the unnatural sexual relations by man or woman with an animal) are not Scriptural grounds for divorce. They are filthy, they are unclean, and God’s law to Israel condemned to death those committing such misdeeds, thus drastically putting these out of God’s congregation. But such acts are not adultery with the opposite sex, making the unclean person one flesh with another of the opposite sex. (Rom. 1:26-32) Yet there is a penalty of disfellowshiping attached to them. They will keep a Christian out of the heavenly kingdom and out of God’s new world, and that means being destroyed like beasts from all future life. "The minding of the flesh means death," it "means enmity with God, for it is not under subjection to the law of God, nor, in fact, can it be. So those who are in harmony with the flesh cannot please God." They cannot gain the prize of everlasting life from him. (Rom. 8:6-8; 1 Cor. 6:9, 10; Gal. 5:19-21) Such filthy things by a mate may make life unbearable for the clean married person and are grounds for separation only, though some courts grant a divorce on such grounds. Such separation does not free one to remarry and enter thus into adultery. Writes Paul: "To the married people I give instructions, yet not I but the Lord, that a wife should not depart from her husband; but if she should actually depart, let her remain single or else make up again with her husband; and a husband should not leave his wife." (1 Cor. 7:10, 11, NW) Only if one of the separated couple committed adultery under the stress of the separation would there be Scriptural basis for the innocent to procure a divorce and be free to remarry.