More on the Bible and gay sex

This post was written in response to a comment that I received on my last post. I’ve attempted to clarify some of the points that I made in that post, as well as going more in-depth into the issue of homosexuality in the Bible, and directly responding to the criticisms offered in that comment. For reference, please refer to zacattack4781’s comment on my post “Salvation Army does something awesome.”

I’m actually really glad that you brought up those two Bible passages! The first you mentioned, from Romans 1:26-27, is actually what I was talking about when I said, “many of the passages in the Bible that talk about men having sex with men refer to idolatry or other acts that weren’t allowed for those who practiced Judaism.” If you read that passage from where it begins on verse 18, you see that according to St. Paul, these men actually began having sex with other men and women with other women as a result of practicing idolatry. He was basically equating homosexual sex with paganism or other religions outside Judaism/early Christianity—as I mentioned when I said that homosexual sex in the Bible was usually equated with other things that are prohibited for Christians or Jews, because they are practiced by other religions. While this of course doesn’t necessarily let gay sex “off the hook,” so to speak, it’s a very different reading than the simple, “Gay sex is bad” that people come away with than they simply read Romans 1:26-27 on its own.

I’m also very familiar with the passage from Genesis 18:16-19:29 (Sodom and Gomorrah). Interestingly, the notes in my Bible say, “Israelite tradition was unanimous in ascribing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the wickedness of these cities, but tradition varied in regard to the nature of this wickedness. According to the present account of the Yahwist, the sin of Sodom was homosexuality (Gn 19), which is therefore also known as sodomy; but according to Isaiah (1, 9; 3, 9), it was a lack of social justice; Ezekiel (16:46-51) described it as a disregard for the poor, whereas Jeremiah (23:f14) saw it as general immorality” (The New American Bible). Furthermore, I’d direct you to Judges 19:22-29. You might find that the story is shockingly familiar: corrupt men of the city surround the house and demand for the male stranger to be sent out, while the owner of the house offers a woman instead. However, in this story, the men accept the woman, and “rape and abuse” her until she dies. How does that play into the “The men were gay, and that’s why they wanted to rape the male visitors” theory? I don’t mean that facetiously, but as an actual question. I would argue instead that just as men who rape other men in prison aren’t necessarily gay, these men weren’t necessarily “gay,” but attempting to use sex as a method of gaining power over another. Of course, this is considered morally wrong in all circumstances, regardless of the sex of the two partners.

As far as whether or not the concept of being gay existed in Biblical times, I wasn’t quite talking about the social construction of what is gay (like your examples of having a lisp or caring about fashion), though of course I agree that those stereotypes didn’t exist yet. What I meant is more that the idea of being gay didn’t exist. There may have been men who had sex with men or women who had sex with women, but that didn’t describe what they were, it just described who they had sex with. In other words, there weren’t really men or women participating in loving, monogamous relationships with people of the same sex in Biblical times. Therefore, there was no standard of a potentially healthy relationship to compare it to—all they saw was people having wild, passionate affairs similar to those that the pagans practiced, as opposed to the Scripturally-acceptable unions that men and women shared. It’s also interesting to think about how our ideas of those unions have changed since then—in the Old Testament, the same people decrying gay sex were often the same ones who had multiple wives, something we find totally unacceptable today.

On that note, I can sit here and attempt to point out alternate ways of reading and interpreting Scripture all day, but some of the passages there’s just no getting around. There are plenty of things in the Bible that today’s Christians have not only phased out of their religious and personal beliefs, but believe are flat-out morally wrong. There is slavery in the Bible. There is polygamy in the Bible. The Bible contains stories of concubines and sanctioned vengeance-murders. We are perfectly willing to accept that these things were part of a different culture and a different time, and set them aside. So why is it so impossible to accept the possibility that the same might be true of gay sex, especially when, as I’ve said before, “homosexuality” as a monogamous, loving state didn’t exist then?

Salvation Army does something awesome

So, I found this awesome thing on the Salvation Army website. It’s a “Code of Conduct” for men, and includes not just things like “I WILL NOT abuse my wife or partner,” but also things that get more at the roots of patriarchy, like “I WILL INTERVENE when my male colleagues, friends, or family belittle or degrade women” and “I REJECT all forms of sexual harrassment, including wolf whistling, sexual insinuations, and unauthorized physical contact,” and even includes a pledge to spread this code to their friends, family and children.

I always get into little debates with myself over things like this. I know the Salvation Army is among the group of Christians who claim that “same-sex orientation [is not] blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching” (Salvation Army). Of course, for gay people, that means total celibacy never to be in a loving sexual relationship, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

The thing that confuses me about this is that the reasoning beyond their logic is that same-sex relationships are prohibited in Scripture. Well, I’m a feminist, so don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure that there is a lot of support in the Bible for treating women as inferiors. I could also probably show you a dozen places in the Bible where it says to treat everyone equally, and to respect women.

Problem is, it’s the same thing with homosexuality. For every reference that says something about a man lying with another man, I could come up with a passage talking about the sanctity of love. Yes, it’s kind of hard to find a Scripture passage that says “There’s nothing wrong with being gay!” But that logic doesn’t fly. The Bible doesn’t talk about “gay people” or “homosexuality,” because it didn’t exist then the way that we understand it now. It just talks about men and women running around having sex with random people. The Bible says that’s wrong for everybody! People talk about the importance of chastity, because Scripture never sanctions having random sex outside marriage. But they don’t claim that those prohibitions for resisting random sex mean you shouldn’t be straight. Plus, when looked at in context, many of the passages in the Bible that talk about men having sex with men refer to idolatry or other acts that weren’t allowed for those who practiced Judaism (most of the “anti-gay” passages in the Bible come from the Old Testament. And Jesus never mentions it.) It was all part of a very strict code of conduct followed by the ancient Hebrews, like keeping Kosher and not wearing mixed fibers.

So while I’m obviously not advocating for treating women poorly, it just seems like a little bit of a contradiction to me. I think it’s super awesome that this group is getting behind equality and trying to break down the patriarchy that tends to be especially prevelant in religion. I’m just kind of bewildered as to how they make their choices about what to follow in Scripture and what not to follow.

The thing is, if I judge them solely by “the gay issue,” I’m as bad as the people who say Planned Parenthood is evil because they perform abortions. Those people totally ignore all the other stuff–affordable health care of all kinds, including cancer screenings, etc.–that Planned Parenthood does. Right? I mean, I’ve been to a Salvation Army store before. They didn’t say a word to me about hating the gays, or even about God (plus, I have nothing against God. Just people who use God as an excuse to tell people not to be in love). So If I refuse to donate my clothes to Salvation Army, does it hurt them, or does it hurt the people who don’t have afordable clothing options?

Either way, this whole code of conduct thing is awesome. Maybe Salvation Army will just have to join the ranks of things that are great, except for when they suck (a statement that is true of most things, and was originally stated in reference to Callie from Battlestar Galactica).

Also, if you’re interested in reading more in-depth about some of the arguments I was discussing about homosexuality in the Bible, I’d look into The God Box and Thinking Straight. Both are YA fiction novels, the first much more “fluff” than the second, which is a more intellectual novel.