An Investigation into the Bible and Homosexuality
Most protagonists against the gay experience begin with a simple premise:
Gay people are miserable, whether they know it or not; the life style(s)
of gay people run the gamut of everything that is tawdry, seamy and nefarious;
and most gay people live lives of quiet desperation. Sad to say, this
is sometimes true, but it is by no means universal or anywhere near a
majority. That it is at all true can be and usually is ascribed to the
social environment in which those of us who happen to be gay were nurtured.
When the weight of society ranges against you and your innermost desires,
is it any wonder that negative self-esteem is the end result? A life of
promiscuous sexuality and the debauchery that attaches thereto is not
a mystery when viewed in this light. Where in this society are gay relationships
or gay sexuality supported? Of course, the answer is obvious, else we
wouldn’t be presenting this study. The point is just that. It is
a catch twenty-two situation. There would be less promiscuity and debauchery
if there were more support; there cannot be more support because society,
through its dependence on the traditions of historic Judeo-Christianity,
refuses to offer such support; therefore, since gay sexuality has been
largely driven underground, there will be promiscuous sexuality and debauchery.
When a man or woman surfaces, however briefly, from a life of debasement,
be it drugs or alcohol, bathhouse/public park/bookstore promiscuity, sadomasochistic
behavior, etc., it is no wonder that many will begin a search for answers
to the ensuing depression? The superficial response of the Church is to
offer mystical bandages to real-life emotional hemorrhages. Through insensitive
application of biblical injunctions, seen through the lens of tradition,
hurting and vulnerable people are exhorted to "come out" of
the lifestyle, without regard to the human being behind the behavior.
"If only you just stop doing what you’re doing, you’ll
be on the road to recovery," is often the admonition. But it isn’t
quite that simple. While the Gospel is so simple that little children
can understand, the principles of Christian living are not so simplistic.
Ex-gay ministries are quick to proffer their statistics of their "success"
stories, of conversions from gay to straight, or at least, to the uninvolved
middle ground, asexuality. What they do not report is the number of human
tragedies they are responsible for those who attempted to change, or at
least be subjugated to the change ethic, only to heap failure upon failure.
And they most definitely do not report the chilling statistics of the
number of suicides, especially among the young, who out of sheer desperation
after longing for release, can no longer face the prospect of their inability
to harmonize their unchangeable orientation with the desired spirituality.
"In the Beginning..."
The starting point in the path toward "evangelical" understanding
of homosexuality begins where it all began, the Garden of Eden. It is
a given that God, in His act of human creation, created one human male
and one human female. Further, He created them in such a manner as to
preclude any alternative other than that they be for each other. However,
to extrapolate from Adam and Eve and their circumstance to a blueprint
for each and every human man and woman ignores a very important fact:
These ancestors of the human race, by an exercise of the free will God
had given them, caused to enter into that perfect Garden the evil of willful
disobedience. This in turn began the deterioration of creation which numbered
the days of the creation. As the human race progressed, more and more
results of sin became manifest. First, Cain committed fratricide. It only
got worse after that, until eventually, God felt compelled to destroy
almost the entire human race, save eight souls. But this did not eliminate
the results of sin. And to this day, we see its results around us. Sickness,
deformity, warfare, cruelty, murder, strife. All that is wrong with this
world can be laid at the foot of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil. God’s Perfect Plan for His creation, as far as its human inhabitants
were concerned, was clear. Sin put an asterisk in that plan. As study
after study is completed, the genetic/biological component for the predilection
for homosexuality becomes increasingly more certain. We may decry this
information, but we can no longer deny it. Even Jesus, when instructing
his disciples, told them, "Not everyone can accept this word, but
only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they
were born that way; others were made that way by men and others have renounced
marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this
should accept it." (Matt. 19:12 NIV, emphasis added) A thinking,
open-minded person might be inclined to say that the possibilities are
very interesting.
The "Sin" of Sodom
The next stop in the panoply of the evangelical argument is Sodom. Yes,
the men of Sodom attempted to sexually violate the "male" strangers
Lot was boarding. Much is made of the Hebrew word, "yadha" which
is translated "know." The word occurs 943 times in the Hebrew
Scriptures, and in only ten occurrences is it used to indicate some kind
of sexual intercourse. The context would indicate that something other
than social information is being sough in this case. This would have,
if successful, resulted in gang rape by anal penetration. This was a practice
by, among others, middle eastern people to totally humiliate those males
they desired to subjugate, be they captives, slaves, or, in this instance,
strangers. Without doubt, this was a wanton act of gross inhospitality,
and no amount of evangelical waffling on this issue will color it differently.
Holding that this single verse clearly demonstrates that every male resident
of Sodom (forget about Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain for
the moment) was a homosexual as the term is understood today is a stretch
of biblical proportions. If Sodom was destroyed because of rampant homosexuality,
where is the evidence of it. No mention of Lesbianism amongst the female
residents. And what of the children. If all the males were gay, they crossed
the line, and often. Lot offered his daughters in lieu of the strangers,
something that would hardly have made much of an impact on males inclined
to sexual behavior with other males, but certainly would have relevance
to a mob bent on rape!
Always allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture, here is what the prophet
Ezekiel has to say about the matter "Now this was the sin of your
sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned,
they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable
things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."
(Eze. 16:49,50, NIV)
Further, Ezekiel is telling the Jews that they are doing more detestable
things than even the Sodomites did, yet no one has ever claimed that all
the Jews at the time were actively homosexual. It is obvious that what
ever the sin of Sodom was, universal homosexuality was most definitely
not it. The Authorized Version translators of the Bible notwithstanding,"Sodomy"
is not a legitimate English word to describe the sin of Sodom as equivalent
to homosexuality.
"It Is an Abomination"
Next we come to the Law Code of Leviticus. This will pose several problems
for us, mistranslation being not the only one. First, the Hebrew. Two
words are involved: "toevah" and "kadesh." In Lev.
19:22, the KJV has, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind:
it is abomination." The NIV translators have it "detestable."
The word "toevah" does not usually signify something intrinsically
evil, like rape or theft, but something which is ritually unclean for
Jews, involving ethnic contamination or idolatry (John Boswell, Christianity,
Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, pg. 100). In Lev. 20:13, the proscription
against "man lying with a man as one lies with a woman" appears,
on the surface to be a blanket condemnation of homosexual behavior, until
one views the verse in the context, not only of the Law Code, but the
cultural environment as well.
The Lord God called the Hebrews (the Children of Jacob/Israel) out from
among the indigenous population of Canaanitic peoples, which were worshippers
of other gods and rituals. The Decalogue stated that they were to have
no other gods before them, and that was first and foremost. In Deuteronomy
23:18, we read, "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the
price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even
both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God." "The price
of a dog" refers to the Hebrew "keleb, keh’-leb"
from an unused root meaning to yelp, or else to attack, a dog, hence (by
euphemism) a, male prostitute. In 1 Kings 15:12, we read, "And he
took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that
his fathers had made." The Hebrew word the translators ascribed "sodomites"
to, is "qadesh," a (quasi) sacred person, i.e. (techn.) a (male)
devotee (by prostitution) to licentious idolatry, unclean.
Among the practices of the Canaanites, temple prostitution, male and female,
was part and parcel of ecstatic worship. It is difficult in the extreme
for we products of 20th Century civilization to envisage sexual intercourse
as part of ritualistic acts of worship, but for many centuries, mankind
believed that in the transmission of the "seed" coupled with
fertility mysticism, good thing were bound to happen. But the behavior
was in conjunction with "other gods" and so was to be proscribed.
No doubt that male homosexual behavior received a less than favorable
acceptance in the patriarchal society of the Hebrews. However, the so-called
"blanket condemnation of all forms of homosexual behavior that is
crystal clear to our understanding" is not borne out in the texts
in question. They are specific and direct, dealing only with ritual prostitution
used in conjunction with worship of the divine, and not to be tolerated
because of the idolatrous aspects. That is the only thing certain.
David and Jonathan
I want to say something in passing regarding David and Jonathan. I am
not here making a case for either David’s or Jonathan’s orientation
as being homosexual. Since constitutional homosexuality was not even conceptualized
until the late 1800’s, pre-exhilic Hebrews and other middle eastern
peoples cannot be faulted if they didn’t have hard and fast concepts
of sexuality. That there was a lack of cultural stigma against male-to-male
sexual behavior (in a non-ritualistic sense) can be claimed as the result
of anthropological investigation into the behaviors and mores of the times.
Could David and Jonathan have had an erotic relationship conjointly with
their intensely stated love for each other that surpassed that of the
love of a woman (2 Sam. 1:26) Only myopic evangelicals and Orthodox Jews
insist that there could not have been any eroticism between them, because
they would not have violated God’s commands. Yet, David’s
life is replete with willful disobedience in other areas, so why not here
as well, assuming that they had the same view towards Leviticus as contemporary
evangelicals do. Rather, if we see that male-to-male non-ritualistic eroticism
could be considered apart from the Levitical Code, David and Jonathan’s
possible sexual liaisons become possible and understandable. This takes
nothing away from David’s later escapades with Bathsheba and others.
"Malokoi and Arsenokoitai"
The remainder of the Biblical record revolves around the Apostle Paul
and his thoughts and pronouncements. I will first deal with 1 Corinthians/l
Timothy, and then deal with the first chapter of Romans.
The cultural environment of the Greek world of the 1st Century, as far
as homosexual behavior was concerned dealt with two major areas. First,
there was the refined temple prostitution activity. Only now, it had taken
on a significant self-mutilation aspect that made it particular detestable.
In the course of ritual worship, temple prostitutes, male and female,
would have sexual intercourse with worshippers during drunken orgiastic
excesses, often including self-emasculation. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus
was notorious for such practices, and Paul, first as a Pharisee of the
Pharisees and then as the Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ to the gentile
world, would have been utterly appalled at such spectacles. Paul spent
some considerable time in Ephesus and Corinth, also a center of Grecian
temple worship, including the afore mentioned prostitution. Secondly,
Hellenistic society practiced the institution of male mentorship of older
established man to younger protege. This often included anal intercourse
by the older upon the younger, usually until the young boy reached puberty.
It was not unheard of for the relationship to continue beyond puberty,
but this did not receive universal social approval. In fact, many of the
leaders of Athens wrote extensively against the practice, out of a sense
of the betrayal of the younger man’s right to progress into a proper
manhood.
This practice was called "paiderastes," from which we get the
word identifying anal intercourse, "pederasty," losing to some
degree the identification with children, except in the term, "pederast"
or "pedophile."
Paul would have certainly known of the "paiderastes" and would
no doubt not have approved, in view of the problems with adult/child power
inequities. But he failed to mention this in any of his letters. What
he did mention, on two occasions, was "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai,"
which were enigmatic for the Church for the first 400 years. "Malakoi,"
meaning soft, in fabric or morality, is not as clear in meaning in the
vice lists Paul includes in his letters to the Corinthian Church or to
his star pupil, Timothy. There has been much speculation as to his exact
meaning, but there is no positive evidence to indicate his meaning beyond
this speculation. He could have meant the morally lax or the sexually
impure, but anyone’s guess is as good as anyone else’s.
"Arsenokoitai" poses a slightly different problem. It is a compound
word, composed of the roots "arsen," man or male, and "koitai,"
beds, usually the marriage bed, from which the English word "coitus"
is derived. Since there existed a better descriptive word, "paiderastes"
to describe more general homosexual behavior, Paul must have had something
else in mind. In view of his attitudes toward the ritualistic practices
in the temples, including the prostitution, this could have been what
he had in mind, there being no specific word in existence to describe
it. An alternative may be indicated by the fact that the compound word
itself is in the plural form. It may mean nothing more complex than "male
sexual beds" and be Paul’s coining of a word signifying a promiscuous
heterosexual male. We cannot know for certain, but what it most definitely
doesn’t mean is "homosexuals" which many modem English
Bible translations make it mean. This is not some hopeless, wild-eyed
attempt at Scripture-twisting to suit the homosexually committed justify
their Biblical approval, or at the least, non-condemnation. It is rather
an honest attempt to understand the "clear" intent and meaning
of Biblical passages in light of the culture and environment of the 1st
Century.
It is interesting to note that Paul further admonishes that "so were
some of you." Since in another part he plainly states that all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the "some" is not
meant to be exclusionary of others. Rather, Paul is indicating that the
unregenerate will not inherit the kingdom, and he gives examples. The
malakoi and arsenokoitai were placed in the same category as thieves,
the greedy or covetous, drunkards, slanderers or revilers and swindlers.
Since Paul was a precise writer, does it stand to reason that he would
strain at the gnat of a rather insignificant portion of the population,
the homosexuals, and ignore the much more populous heterosexually promiscuous?
Against Nature
Next, we come to Paul’s letter to the Roman Churches. It is considered
to be the best and most concise compendium of Christian theology ever
done by one man and published in one work.
And as such, Paul goes to great lengths to lay out the ground work for
his system of theology. Naturally, just as John does when he describes
Jesus Christ as the Word Incarnate, Paul begins by describing the state
of humankind, from the creation to the incarnation. In view of the fact
that Paul’s Bible was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
the Septuagint, which contained the Apocrypha, and he, being a trained
Pharisee in the law and Scriptures, he would have been very familiar with
the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, especially the 13th and 14th chapters
which have close parallels to the 1st chapter of Romans. Keeping in mind
that Paul is not far away from the consciousness of the real world he
resides in, his basic understanding of the human condition is one of idolatry,
and all human moral activity revolves around the worship of the gods.
Paul is not writing about human beings, in their rebellion and wickedness,
willfully and voluntarily converting themselves from heterosexuals into
homosexuals; rather, he is talking about idolatrous ritual worship practices
in the temples of the civilized world he knows only too well. He is most
certainly not condemning an innate homosexual orientation that he could
not have conceived. He probably would not have approved of "paiderastes,"
but we do not have his thoughts on the subject. We don’t know what
he would have thought about homosexuality as it is understood by most
of the medical and psychological practitioners of today, other than those
who are also evangelicals and wear permanent blinders.
The Bottom Line
Finally, there is the small matter of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Son of
the Most High God and the Perfect, unblemished Lamb of God, Who takes
away the sin of the world. He came, not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill
the Law. But what does that mean? Are we above the Law? As Paul said,
"Absolutely not!" (Rom. 6:15 7:7) Rather, he said that we would
not have known what sin was except for the Law it pointed the way. But
it could never produce righteousness or salvation it took the atoning
sacrifice of the Lamb to provide for salvation. We are absolved from the
penalty for transgressing the Law, which we cannot help doing. The Law
leads to only one destiny death.
Jesus
Christ fulfilled the Law by taking our place in death as the penalty for
sin. Each and every one of us, man and woman, black and white, Jew and
Gentile, gay and straight, fail to hit the mark of God’s perfect
standard ("hamartia"), even willfully missing the mark! God
doesn’t demand perfection of us prior to our becoming His adopted
children. Jesus’s righteousness covers us. Our lives are records
of our path to perfection, as God purifies us for His presence through
trials and testings. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and
the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6,
NIV) Paul told us how to achieve it when he wrote, "That if you confess
with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your
heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that
you confess and are saved." (Rom. 10:9,10, NIV)
Evangelical Christians spend so much time and energy trying to find ways
how to exclude people from the "koinonia" (fellowship) of the
Church, yet Jesus ate and fellowshipped with outcasts and sinners: lepers,
tax collectors, prostitutes and (yeech!) Samaritans! He even had kind
words to say for eunuchs made that way from birth (eunuchs were more than
men without testicles, but men incapable of marriage and/or fathering
children). Will the Church ever pull its head out of the traditional sands
of ignorance? I fear, with the wagon train mentality of "us v. them,"
the answer is not favorable. I plead for tolerance and openness, for understanding
and an end to hatred. And some are even daring to practice true agape
love, bereft of the hatred and fear that comes from an inability to divorce
"hating the sin" from the sinner. In the meantime, hundreds
of thousands of gay men and women are rushing into an eternity without
the knowledge of the Savior. They will pay the ultimate price for unbelief,
but can the Church avoid censure and sanction for their willful disobedience?
I submit that the answer is in the negative.
P.S. This is by no means an exhaustive study of
the Biblical record regarding the "clear" condemnation of homosexuality.
For further study, consult the attached bibliography.