Sacred Origins of Profound Things, page 45
First we find:
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination. (Lev. 18:22)
It is worth noting that that unambiguous sentence is surrounded by hundreds of equally clear don’ts, including Don’t eat pork, Don’t touch any item touched by a menstruating woman, and Don’t sit in a chair that a menstruating woman sat in.
Indeed, if merely the injunctions regarding menstruating women were followed to the letter, every husband and child who believed in a literal reading of the Bible would have to move out of the house for seven days each month.
The second quotation is blunt and carries a death sentence:
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed. (Lev. 20:13)
That is quite an explicit condemnation and punishment. But the lines of text that immediately precede and follow the death sentence for homosexuality condemn heterosexuals of many varieties:
Anyone who curses his father or mother shall be put to death. (Lev. 20:9)
If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. (Lev. 20:10)
If a man disgraces his father by lying with his father’s wife, both the man and his stepmother shall be put to death. (Lev. 20: 11)
If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death. (Lev. 20: 12)
If a man marries a woman and her mother also, the man and the two women as well shall be burned to death. (Lev. 20:14)
If a man lies in sexual intercourse with a woman during her menstrual period, both of them shall be cut off from their people. (Lev. 20:18)
If a man marries his brother’s wife and thus disgraces his brother, they shall be childless. (Lev. 20:21)
The list of penalties is long and brutal. Many otherwise decent men and women of modern times would be put to death if the Bible were taken literally. The so-called Holiness Code of Scripture, which includes the bans on homosexuality, also strictly prohibits:
• Eating raw meat (no big loss here except for the somewhat passé steak tartare);
• Planting two different kinds of seeds in the same bed (no more herbaceous borders);
• Wearing clothes made of two different kinds of yarn (this could ruin Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, and outlaw the fancier vestments of the pope);
• Body tattoos (there go the bikers, the sailors, and a significant number of musicians and teenagers).
Anyone claiming to read the Bible literally must of necessity be applying a “pick-and-choose” mind-set.
Biblical quotations selectively plucked out of context and given narrow literal readings can encourage people to act upon their fears rather than their virtues. The Bible was misused for centuries by the advocates of slavery to “prove” blacks were inferior. Until modern times, the same Scriptures were used to keep women silent in church and subservient at home.
Fundamentalists and literalists fear that if Scripture is “wrongly interpreted,” it will deprive them of values they dearly cherish. But that fear is really grounded in the realization that such values often are not explicitly spelled out in Scripture; rather, one’s values are derived from how Scripture is understood.
Just as the U.S. Constitution, written some two hundred years ago, has had to be continually interpreted to address issues and situations the Founding Fathers could not foresee, so, too, everyone has to interpret Scripture to some degree. No one, despite his or her intent, could possibly be a true literalist. Peter Gomes, professor of Christian morals at Harvard and himself a Baptist minister, asks the relevant questions concerning biblical text: “By what principle of interpretation do we proceed, and by what means do we reconcile ‘what it meant then’ to ‘what it means now’?”
SODOM AND GOMORRAH: BOOK OF GENESIS 19
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah plays a pivotal role in the religious view of homosexuality. The name of the city of Sodom, and the name of its people, Sodomites, became synonymous with homosexuals and with taboo sexual practices both homosexual and heterosexual.
Most countries have sodomy laws relating to: (1) gay sex, (2) anal intercourse between any two people, (3) bestiality, and (4) a number of sexual activities ranging from hand-genital contact with minors to mouth-genital contact between a husband and wife.
How did a poor small town on the banks of the Dead Sea come to lend its name to such a range of activities?
THE HISTORY. The infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are believed to lie beneath the shallow waters south of al-Lisan, a peninsula near the southern end of the Dead Sea in Israel. Along with the cities of Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah constituted the five biblical “cities of the plain.”
Supposedly destroyed by “brimstone and fire” because of their wickedness, Sodom and Gomorrah actually were devastated around 1900 B.C.E. by an earthquake that struck the Great Rift Valley, an extensive rift extending from the Jordan River Valley in Israel to the Zambezi River system in East Africa. The quake occurred at most five hundred years before the biblical tale of Sodom was written down, that is, during the time of Abraham.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the soil in this area was richly fertile during the Middle Bronze Age, about 2000 B.C.E., and would have supported agriculture—which is probably what made the land appeal to Lot, the nephew of Hebrew patriarch Abraham, who settled in the region.
The spectacle of “brimstone and fire” most likely came from an ignition of petroleum and gases beneath the rift, released by the catastrophic quake. It is not surprising that the upheaval and destruction of the region during the period of the Hebrew patriarchs certainly would be remembered in story.
The flight of Lot, his wife, and daughters: “The Lord rained brimstone and fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah.”
THE STORY. Genesis, chapter 19, spins the bizarre saga of the town of Sodom, itself named for Mount Sodom (Har Sedom in Hebrew) at the southwest end of the Dead Sea.
In Sodom, a mob of men demand sex with two males who have visited the humble home of Lot. The visitors, who are actually angels of the Lord, strike the mob blind and God destroys the town with fire and brimstone.
According to three prominent biblical figures—the prophet Ezekiel, the Gospel writer Luke, and Jesus Christ—the story of Sodom is not about sexual perversion and homosexuality. It is about two other issues entirely: inhospitality, as Luke tells us (Luke 10:10–13), and failure to care for the poor, as Ezekiel makes clear:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness within her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezek. 16:49–50)
As professor and minister Peter Gomes writes: “To suggest that Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexual sex is an analysis of about as much worth as suggesting that the story of Jonah and the whale is a treatise on fishing.” We’ll shortly get to Christ’s own interpretation of the story.
THE EVIDENCE. There are many disturbing elements to the story that have nothing to do with homosexuality. The two angels enter Lot’s house and the rowdy townsmen surround the place demanding:
“Bring them out that we may abuse them.” Lot went out to the men, and shut the door behind him, and said, “I entreat you, brethren, do not act wickedly. I have two daughters who have not known man. Let me bring them out to you; do as you please with them.” (Gen. 19:5–8)
A father offers his virgin daughters to a horny pack of heavy breathers—is this not a sin in itself? A worse sin perhaps than male-on-male rape? If indeed that is what the townsmen were about to do to the angels.
What did the angry mob want from the visitors?
The Douay Bible says the men wanted to “abuse them.” The King James Version says: “Bring them out that we may know them.” Linguistically, the evidence is that “know them” refers to “know who the two strangers are.” Know their identity.
WORD ORIGIN. Contrary to popular opinion, the Hebrew verb “to know” is very rarely used in the sexual sense in the Bible. In fact, in only 10 of its 943 occurrences in the Old Testament does it carry the meaning of “carnal knowledge.” Furthermore, the passage on Sodom is the only place in the Old Testament where the verb “to know” has been given a gay sex spin.
And, too, one cannot overlook Jesus’ own interpretation of the story: Christ, speaking some two thousand years after the earthquake that devastated Sodom, claims that the city was destroyed for the sin of inhospitality:
And whoever does not receive you, or listen to your words—go forth outside that house or town, and shake off the dust from your feet. Amen I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that town. (Matt. 10:14–15; also in Luke 10:11–12)
God had sent two angels to investigate the general wickedness of the town of Sodom and the angels are rudely, inhospitably received. To appease the rowdy mob, Lot tries to bribe the men by offering his virgin daughters—and begs of them: “Only do nothing to these men [the angels], for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
PROSTITUTION AND INCEST—THE TALE CONTINUES. Lot, his wife, and two daughters flee Sodom before its destruction, but Lot’s curious spouse glances back and is “sodiumized”—turned into a pillar of sodium chloride, or salt. The destitute father and his virgin daughters visit the city of Zoar, but are unable to afford lodging there, and take up residence in a cave, where the teenage girls soon grow restless.
The older complains to the younger: “There is no man in the land to marry us as is the custom everywhere. Let us give our father wine to drink, then lie with him, that we may have offspring by our father.”
They seduce their father. The older daughter gives birth to a son, Moab, who becomes progenitor of the Moabites. The younger daughter produces a son named Ben-ammi, who sires the Ammonites. Thus, these clans, both enemies of the Jews, were allegedly conceived (according to the Jews) through the crime of incest.
The origins of the words “Moab” and “Ben-ammi” are uncertain. “Moab” may mean “from [my own] father,” whereas “Ben-ammi” may mean “son of my [own] people.” So linguists conjecture. It makes sense historically: for centuries after the Israelite conquest of Canaan, the Moabites and the Ammonites remained perennial enemies of the Jews. Thus, the writers of Genesis were only too pleased to pen the folktale of their enemies’ scandalous origins through incest.
No careful reader of the Hebrew text can see this bizarre Sodom and Gomorrah escapade—involving two angels in the night, a man offering up his virgin daughters, and subsequent conniving daughter-father incest—as a seminal condemnation of homosexuality. Homosexuality, in fact, is not even directly implied—while heterosexual prostitution and incest are stated explicitly.
Yet, today, many Christians overlook Lot’s offering of his daughters to the mob, conveniently forget the daughters’ seduction of their father, and see the destruction of Sodom as punishment for homosexual conduct.
Some argue that the girls, believing the world had ended, seduced their father only to continue the species. But the girls had visited Zoar, and knew the city had been spared; furthermore, the wine used to get their father drunk had to have come from somewhere; they’d left Sodom empty-handed.
EARLY CHRISTIANS REINTERPRET THE STORY. The interpretation of the story of Sodom as the inhospitality of Sodomites to messengers from the Lord persisted in some circles well into the Middle Ages.
The homosexual spin to the story originated with early Christian moralists who were bent on sexual purity—for heterosexuals as well as homosexuals—and only centuries later emerged as the predominant theme.
To give this story an even more bizarre twist: according to one Jewish legend, both the men and women of Sodom were sexually licentious, and it was the women, in a worshipful wanton frenzy, who demanded sex with the two male angels at Lot’s house—and got it.
No one for a long time seriously believed the story of Sodom, written about 1400 B.C.E., had anything to do with homosexuality; not the ancient Jews; not even Jesus Christ himself. The people who developed that belief were early Christians. In Judaism, it is post-biblical literature that sees a homosexual element in the Sodomites’ attitude toward Lot’s male guests.
Not surprisingly, once Christianity became the predominant religion of the Mediterranean region, the homosexual version of the story became prevalent, and “sodom” and “sodomite” became synonymous with homosexuals and their behavior.
NO DRAG One of the early official pronouncements against male cross-dressing was issued by Saint Asterius, the fourth-century bishop of Amasia, in what is now Italy, when he condemned the men in his diocese who celebrated New Year’s Eve by dressing in female attire. He called their drag an “abomination to the Lord.” He meant their sex acts, too.
HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT: ROMANS, CORINTHIANS, TIMOTHY; FIRST CENTURY C.E.
There is no mention of homosexual sex in the four Gospels. Not a word. The moral teachings of Jesus are not concerned with the subject. Apparently, homosexual sex never crossed Christ’s mind. Or if it did, the subject didn’t trouble him. At least not enough to comment upon.
In fact, Jesus showed a special love and concern for outcasts; he enjoyed being in their company, even when he was despised for it. As one contemporary author writes: “Jesus was surrounded, day and night, by publicans and prostitutes, the lame, the sick, the lepers; and he touched them all with his healing hands. His closeness to these marginal people was the great parable of his mission.”
Paul, though, does have something to say on the matter of homosexual conduct. Writing in the decades after Christ’s death, Paul becomes the primary source of New Testament homosexual proscriptions. Three references are usually cited.
ROMANS 1, C. 58 C.E. Here Paul scolds homosexuals, but he’s equally harsh on idolaters, which is to say all non-Christians who worship their own religions’ god or gods. This summary condemnation lumps homosexuals into the same category as Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, and the like. All are equally wicked in God’s eyes, says Paul.
Of homosexual coupling, he says:
Paul scolds adulterers, thieves, drunkards, gossips, effeminate men, and sodomites.
Having abandoned the natural use of women, [men] have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men doing shameless things and receiving in themselves the fitting recompense of their perversity. (1:27)
1 CORINTHIANS 6:9–11, C. 56 C.E. Here Paul slips homosexuals into a fairly comprehensive list of undesirables:
Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor the evil-tongued, nor the greedy will possess the kingdom of God.
Many Christian Churches selectively extract from the above the word “sodomites” to condemn homosexuality. Clearly, though, the quotation would ban from Heaven much of modern society: evil-tongued gossips, greedy Wall Street brokers, any covetous neighbor, all effeminate priests, every cheating husband and wife.
Some biblical scholars contend that by the word “sodomites” Paul was condemning not adult homosexuality but pederasty—from the Greek paiderastes, meaning “lover of boys” (paid-, “boy” + erasthai, “to love”). Because in the first-century Greco-Roman world, it was quite common for an older, wealthy, educated married man—often a scholar or military man—to take a prepubescent boy under his wing. The boy received gifts, a free education, and was expected to submit passively to further education of a carnal nature, though not typically anal sex, as is often assumed, but rather rubbing of the man’s penis between the boy’s thighs.
The third often-used reference to condemn homosexuality:
1 TIMOTHY 1:10, C. 64 C.E. This is where Paul discusses the role of law in everyday life:
We know that the Law is good, if a man uses it rightly … for the unjust and rebellious … for parricides and matricides [for killing Dad and Mom], for murderers, for immoral people, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers …
CONSIDER THE SOURCE. Saint Paul was, before his Damascus conversion, a sexually sinning Jew named Saul from Tarsus. Saul, once he changed his name and cleaned up his immoral ways, was against lust, sensuality, and sexuality in everyone—both heterosexual and homosexual. For Paul, anyone who put himself or his desires ahead of God was condemned.
After Christ’s death, Paul expected the world to end in a short time. Thus, he advocated celibacy for everyone, since continuation of the species was moot. As for those hot-blooded men and women who could not abstain, Paul issued his famous epigram: “Better to marry than to burn.”
The full quotation is found in the seventh chapter of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians:
It is good for a man not to touch a woman…. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I [chaste]. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
Paul viewed Heaven as a hierarchy. At the time of the Last Judgment, as we saw in an earlier chapter, Heaven’s upper echelon would be for virgins. In fact, lifelong virgins would be the first saved, followed by convert celibates like himself; last would be the folk who had succumbed to the temptation of marriage.
Paul believed Ecclesiastes: “Woman is the origin of all sin and it is through her that we all die.”
Paul’s real problem with homosexuality was this: in Greco-Roman culture, homosexuality represented a purely secular sensuality, which was contrary to his Jewish-Christian spiritual idealism. With the end of the world imminent, if husbands and wives were to strive for chastity in marriage, certainly anyone outside of marriage should remain chaste.
For Saint Paul, and Saint Augustine, two of the most powerful figures in early Christianity, the body was a beast to be tamed.
