Table of Contents | Right-wing Christians have been infamously vocal in condemning gay people and opposing their rights. The latest flare-up involves legislative attempts to pass a marriage amendment denying both marriage and spousal benefits to gay folk. A declining majority of Americans think that gay sex is immoral and an increasing majority think that gays and lesbians should have the same rights as anyone else. It would be possible to argue that gays have the same right to form unions and the same need for benefits. This is necessary but not sufficient. I think it would help to present a Christian position which says it is okay to be gay in contrast to the misuse and misinterpretation of the Bible by right-wing Christians. When you hear it is wrong to be "gay" or that the Bible condemns "homosexuals," it is clear that you are getting a message from your culture and that the Bible is being misused to confirm cultural beliefs. Neither term (gay or homosexual) existed before the nineteenth century so there is no way the Bible could oppose either as such. This is not just quibbling about words but an opening wedge into recognizing the profound differences between ancient and contemporary culture. The meaning of biblical passages is shaped by the history and culture out of which they came and cannot be applied directly to modern culture without interpretation. New Testament scholar Robin Scroggs concludes his story of St. Paul by saying that he has no idea what Paul would have said about contemporary non-exploitative gay love since it was quite beyond Paul's imagination and experience. Methodist founder John Wesley advocated supplementing the interpretation of scripture with tradition, reason and experience. The church, in its traditions and current thinking, struggles to interpret scripture bridging the gap between cultures old and new. Reason resonates with the latest scientific understandings, including the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses by the APA's (American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association). The powerful experience of gay love as godly cannot be denied or discounted. It is not the case that every scripture is equal in worth. One cannot simply cite a scripture as a "proof text" apart from its context in its portion of the Bible and in the Bible as a whole. Jesus taught that it is important to maintain a sense of proportion, to give more weight to weightier concerns for justice and mercy and faith rather than being distracted by minor matters (e.g., keeping laws about tithing spices). Jesus extracted and elevated the commandments to love God and neighbor as the greatest commandments and said that everything else in the Bible (the Law and the Prophets) is subordinate to these. God is love. God does not hate fags and neither should we. Whoever loves belongs to God. There are six biblical passages that are customarily used to slur gays: the Sodom story in Genesis; two laws in Leviticus condemning a man lying with a man as with a woman; two vice lists in letters linked to St. Paul mentioning something akin to homosexuality plus Paul citing unnatural same-sex sex as a symptom of Gentile idolatry in Romans. If you eliminatae repetition, all of this boils down to four passages. Not much. And not central. Two of the four passages come from the Old Testament, which is regarded by Christians as subordinate to the New Testament since the new covenant supercedes the old. One is a questionably relevant story about a minor character in the patriarchal saga; the other is part of an abandoned Holiness Code. The other two passages come from the letters of St. Paul in the New Testament, letters which Paul wrote to churches which needed his guidance or expected his arrival soon, letters which the church saved and canonized as scripture because they expressed the Christian gospel despite the limitations of the writer (which Paul himself notes when he wonders if he is right). The vice list in Corinthians is a stock list of vices and the criticism of the Gentiles in the prelude to Romans is an old standard chestnut; neither reflects Paul's distinctive thinking and both are tossed out without further development as Paul moves on to his central themes. What is the sin of Sodom? As a proverbial wicked Canaanitae city, Sodom is accused in subsequent scriptures of just about every sin imaginable -- idolatry, rebellion, murder, adultery, covetousness, greed, theft, lying, mistreating the poor, oppression, arrogance, pride, cruelty -- just about everything but the homosexuality we focus upon. Long before the heinous night in front of Lot's house, Sodom -- a city of less than ten good men -- had a reputation for wickedness, which is why God sent messengers to investigate. The men of Sodom sought to abuse these messengers. Jesus relates to this feature when he says it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for those who refused hospitality to the apostles he has sent out. Lot extended hospitality to his three visitors rescuing them from exposure in the public square and giving them the shelter of his roof while the Sodomites, full of hostility toward Lot the foreigner and the strangers he harbored, violently demanded that Lot turn over his guests to them so that they might "know" them. The Hebrew word of know, "yadah," rarely has a sexual meaning but, since Lot counters with an offer of his virgin daughters (who have not known man), it seems to have a sexual meaning here. Captured soldiers and stray foreigners were sometimes gang-raped in the ancient world to humiliate them as losers or intruders. That seems to be what the Sodomites had in mind. Gang rape is wrong, then and now. But to suggest that "all" the men in Sodom, great and small, were homosexual and sought to express their affection for Lot's guests sexually just doesn't fit at all. The Sodom story has nothing to say about gay love though it has a lot to say about those who are hostile and abusive to strangers. Perhaps the true Sodomites today are not gay people but their persecutors. A pair of laws in Leviticus condemns male-male sex among the ancient Hebrews as an abomination punishable by death. Sounds awful, doesn't it? Yet the Hebrew word "toevah," poorly translated "abomination," refers not to a moral fault but to a ritual impurity, being unclean. Concerned to avoid being contaminated by other peoples, the Hebrews came up with a whole catalogue of abominations. According to Leviticus, a menstrual discharge is dirty, a woman who menstruates is unclean for seven days and a man who has sex with her (before she atones for her discharge by sacrificing two turtledoves) becomes unclean. Likewise, a seminal discharge renders a man dirty but only for a day and other discharges from man or woman not only make them dirty but contaminate anyone who touches them, their beds, their clothes, their stools, their saddles or their spit. Leviticus spends two whole chapters distinguishing what forms of skin disease (called "leprosy" though not like modern leprosy) are clean or unclean depending on its extent and the color of hairs growing in the diseased patches. To have spots is unclean but, if your skin turns white, you are clean. To be all of one kind is clean but mixing is dirty. There are taboos against mixing crops in a field or fabrics in a garment or meat and dairy on the same plate. And there is a taboo against mixing up the roles of men and women in sex. Leviticus does not say it is wrong for men to have sex with each other; it says, literally, "With a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman." It finds male-male sex dirty, disgusting and abominable because it is confusing, because it involves in idolatrous religious rituals and because it is unJewish. The priestly regulations in Leviticus are designed to keep the Hebrews separate from the Gentiles among whom they live, a people who are holy and set apart, clean before the Lord. Other peoples have other gods but Hebrews shall put no other gods before Yahweh. Others have their fertility rituals, utilizing male-male sex and child sacrifice but Hebrews shall look to God instead for a plentiful harvest and offer God the first fruits in gratitude. Hebrews shall set themselves apart by their dietary laws and by circumcision but it is not wrong for other peoples not to keep a kosher kitchen or to be uncut. These laws of the Hebrews are for the Hebrews alone and not for everyone. When Christianity emerged out of Judaism, the Holiness Code of Leviticus was left behind, part of an old covenant superseded by the new. Jesus did not shun lepers as unclean, did not keep the sabbath clear of healing work, appealed to the legally lax "people of the land" and castigated the Pharisees ("the pure") as whited sepulchers, clean on the outside but full of dead bones inside. Jesus said that a person is not defiled by what goes into his mouth but by what comes out. Peter dreamed of eating non-kosher foods and was reassured that God had made them clean aand Paul prevailed in a struggle with the "Judaizers" in the early church with his view that Gentiles did not have to adopt Jewish customs (be circumcised) to become Christians. Far from maintaining the old view of holiness as clean and separate, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and the early church champion holiness in God and godly people as reaching out, redeeming not rejecting, getting down and dirty in sharing burdens, being all-inclusive in showering grace about. There may be an echo of Leviticus' male-male sex prohibition in Pauline writings. The obscure Greek word "arseno-koitos" (preceded by "malakos") appears in a vice list in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and is repeated solo in the Pauline epistle 1 Timothy (written in Pauline style but not by Paul). "Arseno-koitos" is a combination of "male" and "bed" so it means something like "man-bedder" or "man-lier" or "man lying" but it is not clear with whom a man is lying, male or female. One view has the term refer to men who make a living in bed, that is, male prostitutes who service men or women, perhaps even gigolos who pretend to love old women so they can inherit their estates. There is no known use of the term in Greek literature prior to Paul but the two parts of the term appear next to each other in the Greek translation of the Levitical passage condemning a "male lying" with a male as with a woman so the term could refer to male penetrator. "Malakos" means "soft." If "arseno-koitos" does not mean prostitute, "malakos" may refer to an effeminate call-boy used by "arseno-koitai." But "malakos" may just as well mean "loose" or "wanton" and not have an explicit sexual meaning, much less a homosexual one. One reason scriptures cannot stand alone is because they have to be translated. The terms "malakos" and "arseno-koitos" are a nightmare for translators and for those who have to live with their mistranslations. The King James Version did not do too badly with "effiminate" and (the rather vague) "abusers of themselves with mankind." But the Revised Standard Version egregiously presumes a pairing of the concepts and imports alien terminology when it covers both terms with the word "homosexuals" in the 1952 edition and "sexual perverts" in the 1997 edition. The Catholic Church's New American Bible imports even more of one side in the contemporary debate when it renders the pair "boy prostitutes and practicing homosexuals." The New Revised Standard Version (1989) speaks of "male prostitutes and sodomites," which is an improvement though it brings in the Sodom story in a way the text does not and leaves it up to the reader to import whatever sound or poor interpretation is at hand from inhospitable homophobes to would be gang-rapers to those who engage in anal intercourse (males or females) to faggots. "Malakos" has also appeared as "catamites (after Zeus' cup-bearer Ganymede) and "sissies" and "areseno-koitos" as "child molesters" or "persons of infamous habits." It is ironic that scholars and translators have spent so much time and energy trying to decipher words in vice lists that Paul may have thrown into his first letter to the Corinthians with little thought. Corinth was a city notorious for its sexual depravity and Paul is disappointed that in its church there is a man sleeping with his step-mother, folks suing each other and some men visiting female prostitutes. In the process of condemning these practices, Paul inserts three vice lists, each a little longer than the last with terms in no special order, terms repeated from one list to the others and duplicated in the same list (thief and robber), new terms added "malakos" and "arseno-koitos" appear only in the third list (and do not appear in a similar list in Paul's letter to the Galatians). In the hackneyed lists, which Paul pulls in from traditional sources, he uses phrases alien to his thought ("inheriting the kingdom of God") and does not expound on any of the vices which happen to crop up. By mentioning "malakos" aand "arseno-koitos" Paul does not seem to be condemning homosexuality in general or even widespread Greek man-boy mentoring and love but only abuses such as prostitution, exploitation and looseness. Paul does muster a whole sentence on the subject in the prelude to his final letter or his lettter to the Romans. Although Paul thinks that purity concerns rooted in Jewish law are obsolete for rhetorical purposes he brings in a standard Helenistic Jewish criticism of the shameful sexual practices of dirty Gentiles. This gives Jewish Christians in his Roman audience a false sense of superiority before he turns tables on them by exposing Jewish sins. Paul then declares that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God intended for them." All of this is just preliminary to Paul's main task of presenting a gospel of salvation for all through Jesus Christ. Women engage in unusual ("para physen") intercourse, perhaps with men during menstruation contrary to Jewish law or with each other using dildoes and, likewise, men give up customary ("physiken") intercourse with women and are consumed with passion for other men committing shameless ("aschemosyne") acts. Since there is no prohibition of lesbian sex in the Hebrew and hardly any note of it in Greco-Roman literature, it seems unlikely that Paul refers to it -- though he has a rhetorical need not to exempt Gentile women from condemnation and draws a parallel to male activity. Much has been made of homosexuality as "unnatural" citing Paul, even to the extent of holding that there is a "natural law" which says sex organs are made for procreation and must not be used otherwise. Paul had no such notions and, in light of the approaching end time, he does not favor marriage, much less procreation. "Para physen" need not be negative; "para" can mean "beyond" as well as "contrary to," and Paul says that God's grafting Gentiles onto the Jewish olive tree is "para physen," beyond nature (unexpected and marvelous). Paul implies something sordid when he labels whatever women are doing as "para physen" and male-male sex as not "physiken," but he does not use words of moral condemnation but speaks of acts which are "a-schemosyne" (not fitting the usual scheme or inappropriate) and passions which are "a-timias" (dishonorable), a word Paul uses of chamber pots and "unpresentable" genitals, which may evoke shame (but which also may be treated with greater honor). Paul does not criticize Gentile sexual practices in their own right but as symptoms of idolatry. It is because Gentiles knew God but did not honor God that God gave them up to degrading passions and strange sex as a result of this error. Paul does not predict some awful "penalty" resulting from sexual deviance but sees the deviance itself as "anti-misthos" (consequence) of the error of idolatry. Far more serious, God gave up these idolaters to a base mind and to all sorts of wickedness (a-dikia), which Paul lists (with no sexual sins) and sees as deserving death. Thus Paul disparages tahe male-male sex he saw practiced by Gentiles in his day (mainly man-boy love) as a minor dishonorable expression of idolatry in a trite rhetorical ploy, which contains purity concerns Paul himself does not share but which helps in passing to establish universal sinfulness as backdrop to the proclamation of the gospel. This is hardly a frontal attack on homosexuality and this passage plus three others (and duplicates) may have no relevance to contemporary man-man (or lesbian) lovers who practice hospitality and oppose gang-rape, who find ancient Hebrew purity concerns obsolete, who are not loose or exploitative and who honor the Creator who made them naturally as they are. Those who believe being gay is wrong and rummage through the Bible looking for ammunition have very slim pickings. St. Paul lived in a Greco-Roman culture rife with male-male love and sex. The classic Athenian ideal was a bi-sexual man having wife and children but directing his main erotic affection toward a youth whom he would mentor in school and cheer on in nude athletic contests. By Paul's day, there was plenty of male-male sex but it had become more decadent with aging perfumed effeminate call-boys on the streets looking for tricks and slaves exploited as unwilling sex objects and people kidnapped to make them sex slaves (kidnappers precedes "arseno-koitos" in the vice list in 1 Timothy). Paul may have had these kinds of situations in mind in his offhand references to same sex sex but he would have said a lot more if it had been a major concern. Those who troll the Bible for pro-gay passages also find little. Jesus had nothing to say directly on the subject. However, he healed the gay lover of a Roman centurion ("pals" could mean "child" but a Roman soldier stationed abroad would not have his family with him). Eunuchs were often gay and Jesus praised those who have become eunuchs (spending pearls of great price) for the kingdom of God. David's love for Jonathan exceeded his love for women and Ruth loved Naomi so much that she changed locality, nationality and religion; ironically, Ruth's song "Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God" is often sung at heterosexual weddings by some who would deny any union for gay/lesbian people. It is okay to be gay. It is neither wrong nor right. It simply is. God's creation underlies all and the promises of the gospel are for all. If you are gay, you should accept being gay as a gift from your creator. The Bible has nothing to say about homosexuality per se but lots to say to gay and straight alike about being human, loving, faithful and good. Misled by right-wing haters, the church has allowed itself to get distracted and has done more harm than good with regard to this issue; it should support an outcast minority needing justice instead of adding to discrimination. It should use the gifts of gay people openly instead of spurning them or using them secretly. We can hope that the church will outgrow traditions based on proof texts and misinterpretation of scripture and pre-scientific understandings and make more of its traditions emphasizing the centrality of love. We can rely on reason to pursue scientific inquiries that will give us a better grasp of sexual orientations. And as those who are not straight (whether gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) reflect positively on their experience as loving children of God and speak from that experience, we will know more of God's love and grace. This essay was penned by Jim Wolfe and is used with his consent as part of this web site. Thus, it is found in my "guest house" as an opinion piece. It was published in the Journal of the Peace and Justice Center of Indianapolis as "It's Okay to Be Gay." |