Homosexuality and the Bible

by Ken (CompuServe Account 72735,1743)
[May be freely reproduced as long as this attribution is retained.]

Religion and homosexuality have gotten a lot of attention in the various denominations during recent annual or biannual national meetings. It has happened primarily because there have been "avowed" homosexuals who have sought ordination. Those requests caused the church(es) to become more intentional in their understandings of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. Denominations and individuals have renewed their studies in the realm of biblical sexuality. To be sure, there is not a concensus as to the "truth" in biblical interpretation on this issue.

Some interpreters can come to no other conclusion but to say that homosexuality is a horrible sin in God's sight. Their belief is based on the notion that the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexuality. The Bible does mention homosexual behavior in extremely negative terms in a handful of widely scattered verses, but modern research has turned up considerable evidence casting doubt on the traditional interpretation of these passages--an interpretation that has borne tragic consequences for homosexuals through almost the whole of Christian history.

It is hoped that the following messages can examine this evidence, together with some of the light science has shed on the subject of psychosexual development, in the hope that there can be a more informed appraisal. Gays of faith need to know the issues of faith, the content of scriptures, and the possibilities of interpretation that are open to them.

The critical fact generally unknown to or overlooked by heterosexuals is that homosexuality is something quite distinct from homosexual behavior and even from homosexual desires or lust. Homosexuality is an emotional and affectional orientation towards people of the same sex. It may or may not involve sexual acts, though of course it usually does. On the other hand, homosexual acts can be and are performed by both homosexuals and heterosexuals, and homosexual desire or lust is probably experienced occasionally by most heterosexuals. Most people, though, don't grow up to want and seek an intimate and loving relationship with a person of the same sex. Why and how this variant occurs is not now and probably never will be the subject of any pat explanation because it is the consequence of a wide range of factors, some of which are envirmonmental and some possibly hereditary or physical.

What is important, though, from the point of view of sin is that most gay people have no conscious recollection of ever having chosen this orentation any more than the ordinary heterosexual ever consciously chose to want the opposite sex. In fact, many homosexuals have tried in vain to chose a heterosexual orientation.

The reason why gay people seek out others of their own sex and engage in sexual behavior with them is not that they are incapable of bridling their lusts or are perversely determined to disobey God, but simply because the option open to the rest of humankind (a heterosexual relationship and marriage to a partner of the opposite sex) is not open to them. It would for them be living a lie--a sin against their partner as well as themselves. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform, to satisfy, recreate, to replenish. Unlike the heterosexual, they feel completed only by a person of the same sex.

In order for anything to be a sin there must be a possibility of moral choice. Where there is no choice there can be no sin. So if one's sexual orientation is not a matter of choice (note: orientation - NOT activity) it cannot be a sin to be a homosexual. True, one does have the choice of committing or not committing homosexual acts. But this boils down to saying that whether or not the orientation is a sin, homosexual behavior invariably is.

The cruelty of this position is that it leaves only one option open to gay people who take their relationship to God seriously--the option of total and complete lifelong celibacy. But the Church would never dream of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Even the Roman Catholic church which requires celibacy of its priests has always admitted this to be a special calling for those select few to whom God has given the ability to accept it. It is not for everyone. Heterosexual Christians should beware of doing like the Pharisees, laying on the backs of other people a yoke they themselves would find impossible to bear.

Now (finally) to the Bible. The Bible appears unequivocally to condemn only three things: (1) homosexual rape; (2) the ritual homosexual prostitution that was part of the Canaanite fertility cult and at one time apparently taken over into Jewish practice as well; and (3) homosexual lust and behavior on the part of heterosexuals. On the subject of homosexuality as an orientation, and on consensual behavior by people who possess that orientation, it is wholly silent. In fact, Jesus in the New Testament and the prophets in the Old Testament had absolutely NOTHING to say about homosexuality. If it really were a sin in God's sight, surely he or they or both would have inveighed against it.

Sodom and Gomorrah

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 and 19 has traditionally in Christianity been thought to demonstrate God's condemnation of homosexual behavior. All this because the Hebrew word meaning "to know" (yadah) in Genesis 19:5 has been interpreted to mean "have sexual intercourse with." "They (the townsmen of Sodom) called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.'" In the story God informs Abraham that these two cities will be destoyed because of their great wickedness, but the wickedness is never specified. [However, the sin of inhospitality is certainly implied, for instance, in Matthew 10:14-15--"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say to you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgement, than for that city."]

It would be hard to deny that the men of Sodom had at least a double intention when they asked to "know" Lot's visitors--meaning both to find out who they were, and probably to abuse them sexually. And that is part of their wickedness--BOTH inhospitality and RAPE. Rape is not a sin peculiar to homosexuality. It occurs far more often in a heterosexual context. Its sinfulness lies in the victimization of the nonconsenting partner.

We overlook in our interpretation that in the entire ancient Near East hospitality to sojourners and travellers was not seen to be, as with us, merely a voluntary option but was a sacred religious duty. (See verse 8, "Don't do anything to these men, for you know they have come under the shelter of my roof.")

It is worth noting, too, that sexual intercourse between humans and angels (the visitors) would in itself have been wrong in the eyes of Jews, who remember that in Genesis 6:1-8 the disaster of the Great Flood comes hard on the heels of a charge that the "sons of God" (angels) took to wife the daughters of men.

The idea that the Sodom story is not an indictment of homosexuality is no new-fangled interpretation. Most later Jewish commentary on it both inside and outside the Bible does not make out the sin of these cities to be homosexuality or homosexual behavior. According to Isaiah 1:9ff. and 3:9, it was a lack of social justice. According to Ezek. 16:46-52 it was disregard for the poor. And according to Jer. 23:14 it was general immorality. The "homosexual interpretation" appears after the influence of Greek and Roman culture.

Sodom and Gomorrah is mentioned in the New Testament in II Peter 2:4-9 and Jude 6-7. II Peter refers to the townsmen of Sodom as licentious or "unprincipled in their lust," and Jude says that they gave themselves to fornication and went after different flesh. It is important to bear in mind that both authors may have been thinking NOT of homosexual intercourse but of intercourse between different orders of creation (humans and angels). Both authors refer to God having likewise judged the angels who sinned, and Peter refers to the story of the Flood. Both were probably reiterating the view found in some Jewish writings from the same general period that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the order of nature by running after angels just as the angels had been cursed at the Flood for having gone after the daughters of men.

Even if the original intent of the townsmen of Sodom was homosexual rape, it was about heterosexual males who indulge in it as a sport. Otherwise the offer in both stories of females as a diversionary sexual object makes no sense. To extend such an offer to homosexual males would be pointless because it would hold no interest for them.

Other Old Testament References

In Deut. 23:17-18, I Kings 14:24, 15:12 and 22:46, II Kings 23:7, and in Job 36:14, there are references to kadesh (singular) or kedeshim (plural), which literally mean "holy man" and "holy men". Some translations of the Bible render these terms by the english word sodomite(s). The passage in Deuteronomy forbids Israelite men to become such, and also forbids an Israelite woman to become a kedeshah, the same word in the feminine gender. Modern Bible scholars believe these terms refer to priests and priestesses of the Canaanite fertility cult, and evidence outside the Bible supports the inference that both types of worship leaders engage in sexual intercourse with male worshippers as part of the ritual. A better translation of kadesh/kedeshim would be "male cult prostitute(s)".

It is important to know this when looking at Leviticus in relation to homosexuality in the Bible. In Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 the men are not to "lie with a male as with a woman." It is stated to be to'ebah, generally translated as abomination and used in the Old Testament to refer to idolatry and to practices associated with idolatry. The context of Leviticus is an argument against the Israelites imitating the defiling practices of the Canaanites (religiously that is) whom they displaced in Palestine.

The prohibition is directed against the practice of ritual homosexual prostitution as found in the Canaanite fertility cult. In any event, the intent cannot be to condemn all homosexuality and homosexual behavior because there is no prohibition in Leviticus against women having sexual relations with other women. (Note later that there are prohibitions against both male and female intercourse with an animal.

[An aside not basic to biblical interpretation: Even if these Levitical injunctions are to be read as an absolute against males engaging in homosexual behavior under any and all circumstances, it is worth asking why this should be deemed binding on Christians when so many other injuctions of the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) are not. For instance, these same chapters of Leviticus make punishable by banishment the sin of a man having intercourse with his wife during her menstrual period, and forbids the wearing of cloth made of two different kinds of fibers, say, cotton and polyester!]

New Testament References

There are only three remaining Biblical passages that conceivably touch on homosexual behavior: I Cor. 6:9, I Tim. 1:10, and Romans 18:18-32.

In I Cor. 6:9, Paul asks, "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" and then proceeds to list certain categories of people as examples of those who will not inherit the kingdom. In this list two of the Greek words, malakoi and arsenokoitai, have usually been translated by a single word such as "homosexuals," "sodomites," "sexual perverts," or "homosexual perverts." I Tim. 1:8-11 also uses the word arsenokoitai. But in neither case is it known for sure what is meant by those words, and there is no elaboration.

It is interesting to discover that the Greek world did have common words for people who indulged in homosexual intercourse: paiderastes, palakos, kinaidos, arrenomanes, and paidophthoros. The Greek words in the Bible are simply not common Greek words.

Malakoi is the plural of malakos which literally means "soft". It has also been suggested that it means "weak-spined", more of a moral (rather than sexual) term meaning "loose," "dissolute," "morally weak," or "lacking in self control."

Arsenokoitai is also an ambiguous word and is relatively rare. It is a compound word koitai literally meaning those who engage in sexual intercourse, and arseno literally meaninject then it would mean "males for sex" or male prostitutes. (It is translated male concubines in the latin St. Jerome version of the late 4th century [the Vulgate].) If arseno refers to the object of intercourse, then the meaning is "those who have sexual intercourse with males." But it is odd that the early Greek "fathers" such as St. John Chrysostom did not so interpret these terms. They found no reference to homosexual behavior in this passage of I Corinthians. These passages, then, can hardly supply a reliable basis for condemning all gay people as sinners.

Paul does speak definitely about homosexual behavior in the first chapter of Romans. But here he is not primarily addressing himself to that subject but to the sin of idolatry and its consequences. He says that because people exchanged the glory of God for idols, they were delivered up by God in their lusts to unclean practices and disgraceful passions. "Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and the men gave up natural intercourse with women and burned with lust for one another. Men did shameful things with men, and thus received in their own persons the penalty for their perversity. They did not see fit to acknowledge God, so God delivered them up to their own depraved sense to do what is unseemly."

In the case of men, the plain meaning is a reference to heterosexuals giving up intercourse with the opposite sex and turning in perverseness to homosexual lust and behavior. The passage says nothing about people whose orientation is homosexual and who therefore are in no way perverting their nature as they perceive it. Most homosexual people discover their orientation in childhood before they know it has a name or that the adult world considers it to be a moral issue. It is simply not a question of turning to perverseness.

Indeed valiant attempts to turn to heterosexual orientation for reasons of "faith" or with the intent of being more faithful are met with disappointment, frustration, and failure.

In the case of the women, this passage, which is the only one in the entire Bible that could conceivably refer to sexual relations between women, does not clearly bring homosexual intercourse within its understanding. The statement that "their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural" does not necessarily refer to homosexual intercourse. It may just mean that the women exchanged coitus for heterosexual fellatio or anal intercourse. There is no way of knowing what Paul considered to be "natural" or "unnatural" in the way of heterosexual behavior. Even if it is assumed the meaning is that women exchanged sexual relations with men for women (heterosexual for homosexual), it says nothing about lesbians who have always been and felt they were lesbians.

Note also that Paul says it is unnatural and dishonorable for a man to wear his hair long (I Cor. 11:14), but few would conclude that men who wear their hair long are sinning. (Nor would Samson and other Hebrew Nazirites.)

Even if we take for granted that Paul considered homosexuality and homosexual behavior a sin, one must still consider whether this was Paul's attitude or God's or whether it may not be more the result of the cultural conditioning of his time and place in history together with his own personal predilections and prejudices, like his attitude towards long hair on men. This question is especially needed because when dealing with this subject it is easy to forget that there are other attitudes of Paul which many Christians today are convinced did not come from God.

Although he consistently denied that anyone who chooses to marry is thereby sinning, he says that those who choose not to marry do better, and that it diverts attention from the business of the Lord to the pleasing of the spouse (I Cor. 7:25-40). In this he admits he has no command from Jesus, but he still asserts he thinks he has the Spirit of God. Even allowing for Paul's belief that the end of the world was near, these statements betray to us today a real lack of appreciation of the benefits and blessings of marriage which is hardly an antidote to the temptation to fornicate, is a bag of troubles, or is a hindrance rather than a help in serving the Lord.

Conclusion

Heterosexual Christians, who are and certainly will always remain by far the great majority in the church, need to ponder whether on this question of sin the two-by-four may not be in their own eye and only a speck of sawdust in the eye of their homosexual brothers and sisters. If they must insist that homosexual genital acts are a sin for themselves, let them do so. They have some Biblical warrant for that. But who are they to judge homosexual acts to be a sin for homosexuals--people whose emotional make-up and whose inner struggles they know nothing about? Leave the judging to God. God's own Spirit within each of us is capable of doing whatever convicting of sin needs to be done. As long as heterosexual Christians keep on asserting that they know all there is to know about God's will in this matter, they will only succeed in accomplishing two things for sure--fanning the flames of persecution and driving more and more people away from Jesus Christ.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following is a list of various sources both religious and secular for more reading:

Homosexuality and the Bible, An Interpretation by Walter Barnett Pendle Hill (1979)

Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? by Scanzoni & Mollenkott Harper and Row (1980)

Gay Fathers by Gay Fathers of Toronto P.O. Box 187, Station F Toronto, Canada M4Y 2L5 (1983)

The Two of Us (Affirming, Celebrating and Symbolizing Gay and Lesbian Relationships) by Larry J. Uhrig Alyson y People by Thomas B. Stoddard, et. al. Bantam Books (1983)

The New Testament and Homosexuality by Robin Scroggs Fortress Press (1983)

Hot Under the Collar (Self-Portrait of a Gay Pastor) by Johannes W. DiMaria-Kuiper Mercury Press (1983)

Human Sexuality (New Direction in American Catholic Thought) by Anthony Kosnik, et. al. Doubleday & Company, Inc. (1979)

When I am attacked by the Falwells and others who call themselves Christians, I always think of the following two passages from the Gospels.

John 15:12 "This is my commandment, that you should love one another, as I have loved you."

and

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