I went over to the city last week and by the city I mean theee city, San Francisco. When you say the city in the Bay area or in Central California for that matter, it’s basically an interchangeable term for San Francisco. No other details needed. And while I’m at it, it would be ever so helpful if you folks would make note of this so I don’t need to go over it again with you in the future. Much appreciated. Thanks.

Okay, so I went over to the city to meet up with Jim, my first boy crush when I was all of sixteen years old. Do you want to know how he made me giddy with puppy love? Oh please. Let me tell you. He chased me screaming like a girl (because I was one) through the dining hall at church camp with a piece of raw chicken skin dangling in his hand that he had convinced me was actually a dead unhatched baby chicken from a freshly cracked egg. I’ve always been a sucker for romance. I was in fact so smitten by his charming ways that a decade later we ventured into the world of dating. Oh wait. Did I mention he’s gay too? Oh please. Stop laughing. It’s not as if we’re the only gay man and woman to delve into that quirky area.  Anyway, today we have the kind of friendship that no matter how many months or years pass between sightings it always feels comfortable and easy to be together again. And we laugh. We always laugh.

So for an hour or two the other day we sat on a pier bench in the city (refer to your notes from above) overlooking the Bay sipping on the brewed nectar of some mellow brown beans from Blue Bottle Coffee, and catching up on each others lives with the conversation coming back around time and again to snippets of faith and grace, God and worship.

Jim and I have a long shared history beyond that of the chicken fat episode. We were raised within the same denomination, went to the same church camp every summer, attended the same regional youth gatherings and eventually both found our way to the same Bible College. It was only years later when we were both in the same congregation where I was serving in ministry that we ventured from long time friends into a romantic relationship and then back to friends again, and through most of those years I knew Jim was gay because he’d been honest with me. I also knew Jim’s same-sex attraction had caused him tremendous internal conflict for a number of years and because of the conflict between the reality of his life, the teachings of his church, and his desire to be right before God he made a genuine effort time after time to abandon those attractions. I never really knew the lengths to which Jim went to try and “change”, I only knew he went through more than a few dark nights of the soul, and when I finally saw the conflict he had lived under for so long begin to melt away under an ever-deepening encounter with God’s grace, no one was more happy than me. You see, somewhere in the middle of all those years Jim was struggling to reconcile his faith with his sexuality, I came to the self-awareness of my own sexuality, but unlike Jim it didn’t take years or even months for me to come to peace as a gay Christian. It took a few short weeks and while I rejoiced in the peace of God that came so quickly to me, I ached for the day when Jim would know it too.

And I couldn’t help but wonder given all Jim and I shared in terms of our faith tradition and upbringing why the journey to God’s peace took him years when my own struggle toward reconciliation could be counted in days. All my wondering led me to an all too obvious conclusion; that despite all the similarities in our backgrounds and faith, we both had to arrive at peace in God’s grace in our own way and in our own time. I told you it was nose-on-the-face obvious.

Over the years I’ve extended that same wondering to all those who have written to share their ongoing and seemingly unending struggle to reconcile their faith and sexuality. And now I extend it to include you. Why is it that you continue day after day to remain troubled in your heart over your sexuality? Why do you continue to wander lost in a spiritual desert where you question God’s love for you because you’re attracted to the same sex or because the gender your body reflects doesn’t match the true gender you know that you really are? Why is it that you can’t accept once and for all that your very life, including your sexuality or true gender is a glorious gift designed and crafted by the hand of God? Why can’t you finally recognize that God’s thumbprint is all over you and that the very capacity your heart holds to love another of the same sex springs directly out of the wellspring of God’s love?

Take in whatever you can in what I’m about to say. You don’t continue to struggle because you lack faith. It’s not because you don’t love God enough, fail to trust enough, or haven’t sought God earnestly enough. It’s not because you’re less spiritual than the Christian next to you or that your relationship with God isn’t quite up to par with those who have already reconciled their faith and sexuality. You’re not a slow learner. The reason that you are where you are today in all this is for no other reason than that you can only travel the path that you’re on. You can’t travel mine. You can’t travel hers. Or his. God created you uniquely you. You think differently, feel differently, understand differently than anyone else and so the path you travel will be unique to you. Your journey is your journey alone, and while we don’t get to choose what path to God’s peace our lives will travel, we have the choice of whether we’ll continue to travel down the road or give up. We get to say with determination “I will continue on until I have an answer from God,” or cry out “Uncle!” in resignation and defeat. Oh, the courage, faith, and commitment it takes to continue on a journey when so many obstacles have been laid in the path.  You my friend, honor yourself and you honor God with your perseverance. I applaud you as I am humbled by you.

The path to reconcile your faith and sexuality is a hard one and in the most difficult moments it can seem less a path than a ledge that leaves you dangling over an abyss of uncertainty and fear. Just hold on and keep walking. Keep looking ahead because the peace of God is just up there on the horizon and even now the grace of God is coming to meet you where you are. I don’t know how much longer it will take for you to arrive at the place you’ve been earnestly seeking. I only know that it will take as long as it takes and that in God’s time there’s always enough time to get there. And remember, please remember, you aren’t walking alone. God’s Spirit is within you, the Risen Christ walks besides you, and even now there are countless GLBTQ Christians and friends who are praying that you feel their encouragement and support along the way.

May you know the peace of God that surpasses all understanding and may it by God’s grace be sooner than later.

In recent days many of us have heard reports from a study conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden that used MRI and PET scans to compare the brains of 90 people (25 straight men, 25 straight women, 20 gay men, 20 gay women), and found that the brains of gay men were more like those of straight women than of straight men and that brains of gay women tend to be more like straight men than straight women. The areas of similarity involved the size of various portions of the brain, and how a particular section of the brain (the amygdala) was connected to other regions of the brain; in gay men and straight women the connectors are more strongly tied to areas involving emotions; for gay women and straight men the strong connectors lead to the part of the brain that controls motor functions. I think it’s interesting but not all that important in the faith-based conversations of homosexuality.

Whenever homosexuality is the topic among people of faith, whether in friendly conversation or in heated debate, you can anticipate that at some point the question of choice will bounce to the top often in some variation of “Does a person choose to be gay or are they born that way?” While conservative Christians argue that gays and lesbians have chosen a sinful homosexual lifestyle, most gay and lesbian Christians answer back that being gay was never a choice for them. The conflict breaks down to pitting biology against choice. If homosexuality is genetic then same-sex attraction could be understood as an intrinsic and natural characteristic for a certain percentage of humans and thus an argument could be made that homosexuality is a matter of biology rather than moral choice or sin. On the other hand, if homosexuality is a deliberate, or even unconscious choice, then the line of reasoning goes that what can be chosen can be un-chosen, leading some gay and lesbian Christians into ex-gay ministries that for far too many set in motion the soul-wrenching hamster wheel of gay/ex-gay/ex-ex-gay and tragically there are times when the wheel doesn’t stop spinning until someone is ex-alive. We’ve lost so many good and young lives because they were led to believe that which they’d never chosen could be unchosen, leading them to try time and again to be what they were never meant to be in the first place.

There are things each of us know about ourselves that are unquestionable truths of our lives. One of those absolute facts, like day follows night, is that I never made a deliberate choice to be gay. That’s not to say I had no choice at all in the matter. I did. I made a long list of choices. I chose to trust my relationship with God. I chose to believe there was another way to understand the few Scriptures that were being used to condemn homosexuality. I chose to not see myself as sick or sinful but as beloved and holy. I chose to place my assurance in God and not in those who claimed to speak for God. I chose to love. I chose to live boldly. I chose to live openly as a Christian and a lesbian. These are the choices I’m accountable for and the ones I gladly take full responsibility for having made.

That’s my story and I’m sticking by it, but it’s my story and not necessarily shared by every other queer roaming the planet. In fact, I know it’s not because there are plenty of queer people who claim choice in their sexual orientation. This can be problematic for those GLBTQ Christians who’ve made the “it wasn’t a choice” line of reasoning a key component to their discourse on homosexuality and religion. I would have had a hard time of it myself in the early days of my own reconciliation journey had I heard there were gays and lesbians who actually chose to be gay and lesbian. *

As I realize how true what I’m about to say is, I can catch a glimpse of how far I’ve come in digging through the onion layers of my own internalized homophobia, and what I’m going to say is this; it no longer matters to me whether sexual orientation is rooted in nature or nurture, whether it’s genetic or environmental, learned or innate. It no longer matters to me because I don’t believe a person’s sexual orientation matters one iota to God anymore than it matters to God whether we’re left-handed or right-handed. Where I believe it matters to God is how we choose to use our left or right hand to bring either harm or healing to another human being. The action of our dominant hand, regardless of which hand it might be, is where God pays close attention. In the same way, whether we’re gay, straight, or bi, God’s interest isn’t in the object of our affection but in the expression of our affection. God cares about our motives and intentions and how we tend to the well-being and wholeness of others and that includes in sexually intimate relationships.

So what are your thoughts on all the whole nature-nurture, choice or non-choice rigmarole?  I wait expectantly. In the meantime, this seems to be leading us toward the bigger conversation around the much requested topic of queer Christian sexual ethics but give me a day or two to pull that puppy together!

—-

*Afterword:

Despite having no personal experience in choosing my sexual orientation, I can readily accept the claim of others to have chosen theirs in light of the variances between being exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual [Refer to my post on Fluidity and the Sexuality Scale]. The large space in between allows for the possibility that these individuals could maintain choice in self-identifying and then living as gay, just as it allows for those individuals who maintain they were once gay and now choose to self-identify and live as straight or in their terminology, now identify as “ex-gay.” I don’t believe however that someone who is exclusively heterosexually-attracted can choose to be gay anymore than someone who is exclusively homosexually-attracted can choose to be straight, unless that choice is made with a willingness to settle for a painfully conflicted life where external actions and internal inclinations are at continually odds with one another.

This cartoon is from Bizarroartist

This far-reaching hodgepodge of Bibles speaks to our deep desire as humans for its stories and words to relate to us in the place where we live and as the people we are, whether we’re addicts in recovery, carpool-weary moms or university undergraduates. This yearning is magnified for those who are told that not only is a positive word of their kind non-existent in the Bible but that within it’s pages only condemnation and rejection of their unique identity is to be found. Additionally there appears on first read or sixtieth to be no LGBTQ people in the Biblical narrative and the Gospel accounts lack any mention of homosexuality by Jesus or show him encountering any LGBTQ people in his ministry. For these reasons and others, many queer folk shy aware from thinking the Bible has anything to do with them or can ever speak to their lives and struggles. In this belief, the Scriptures as the Word of God are words only for heterosexuals. No others need apply.

But here’s the question. If you as an LGBTQ Christian can’t find meaning in the Scriptures for your own life then who will you empower to tell you what its words mean to you? Who will be the person you entrust to decide whether or not your story is found within its pages?

One of the greatest obstacles to our faith as GLBT Christians is forgetting what we know. Or at least what we once knew before we knew we were gay. Before we knew of our sexual orientation we knew God loved us and we knew who we were in Christ. We heard it from our parents, and learned it from our Sunday School teachers and church camp leaders. We memorized verses that affirmed God’s love for us. We sang hymns, choruses, and praise music that were filled with messages of the love of God for the human race in general and for each of us in particular. You. Me. Us.

For those struggling to reconcile their faith and sexuality I encourage you to remember who you are (Romans 8:15, Ephesians 2:8-10, Hebrews 10:10, I John 3:1, Galatians 4:7, Ephesians 1:4-5), how much you’re loved (Psalm 139:14-17, Romans 8:31-39), and for what you were created (Ephesians 5:1-2, Philippians 2:1-5, Micah 6:8, Colossians 2:6-7). Don’t give anyone else the power to tell you who you are in Christ and just how deep the love of God is for you. And if you think your story isn’t in the Bible, if you can’t hear your voice within its pages, then find it again because as LGBTQ people:

• We are the children of Israel seeking freedom from the bondage of oppression
• We are Lazarus called by Jesus to come out into new life
• We are Jeremiah speaking the truth of God in love though we are ridiculed and mocked
• We are Esther stepping out in courage to declare who we are so that others might be saved from future suffering
• We are Jacob wrestling with God through the night and holding onto to our faith and our God
• We are the beloved Disciple, placing our head on the shoulder of Jesus to seek a moment of intimacy and closeness with the one we love above all others.

I’m only telling you what the Bible says…

The Bible couldn’t be more clear in its condemnation of homosexuality.

This isn’t my view, it’s Gods.

Homosexuality is a sin. God said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Any of these sound familiar? Did you hear them from a family member? A friend? A pastor? The view being expressed in all these statements is that the Bible speaks, we listen, and receive the truth. When we don’t hear the same thing as the person making these statements then it can only mean one of three things to them. We either know they’re right and we’re just lying, we’ve been deceived to believe a lie, or we’re simply denying what we really know to be true in our hearts in an attempt to justify our sins. They’re right because they’re just saying what the Bible says and we are wrong because we’re living a life in opposition to what the Bible says (to them).

Simple. Case closed.

Let’s be really clear about something. The Bible doesn’t say anything. The Bible doesn’t mean anything. The Bible, like all books sacred and secular, divinely-inspired or humanly-composed contain words; a body of text we read, study, ponder, and ultimately interpret, giving the words of the text meaning.

In and of itself the text doesn’t have meaning but gains its meaning through the process of interpretation. All text is interpreted, none is “taken literally just as it says.” How we as humans interpret and thus find particular meaning in Scripture is influenced by a number of factors; we don’t come as empty vessels. We’re socialized to find certain meaning in the scriptures. We have pre-existing ideas, convictions and prejudices. No one reads the Bible and finds it’s meaning without bias. We’re influenced by our upbringing, by the people who comprise our social circle, by our political leanings, by our social location, race and ethnicity.

Even when we come to the scriptures with a whole set of biblical study methods and tools in place we still come with us and that includes those who claim a literal reading of the Scriptures. People will make a text mean what they want it to mean even when they’re unaware they’re doing it and all of us do it. Individual people and entire churches will see in the text what they want to believe because they already believe it.

We look at the text and see our own reflection. And that includes GLBTQ Christians just as it includes those who oppose homosexuality. We need to acknowledge that in reading the Scriptures and finding meaning there we read it not only having been influenced by our evangelical and conservative leanings (if that’s our background), but that we read the scriptures now as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. It’s that double-perspective that creates the struggle for so many of us.

Why is this important to acknowledge? Because it’s honest. I’m a particular race, class, gender, sexual orientation and all of those contribute to the meaning I find in Scripture. This isn’t a bad thing. Without bringing ourselves to our reading of the Scriptures, the Word is flat and without life. If we don’t engage with the Living Word through our own lives and experiences then it’s only a book. But just as we acknowledge this truth for ourselves, we recognize the same is true for everyone else. No one has a less bias reading of the Scriptures and therefore no one can offer you a “more accurate” interpretation of what a passage means. This is why you need engage personally with the Scriptures by going into its pages for yourself. Don’t base your life on anyone else’s interpretation of Scripture. Trust that you have just as much possibility for knowing truth that will guide your life as you would to any of the other voices attempting to tell you what the Bible is really saying. It’s more than about trusting yourself. It’s about trusting the presence of God’s spirit within you; the same Spirit of God that lived in Jesus is now alive in you and will guide you in all truth (John 6:12).

I encourage you to listen with an open heart to the collective wisdom of others and to weigh honestly all that you bring into your understanding of the Scriptures, but in the end there’s one voice alone to consider when it comes to your life and that’s the voice of the Spirit of God dwelling within you. No other voice, no matter how convincing the words, will bring you certain peace and direction for where you go from here.

[Recommended Reading: Sex and the Single Savior by Dale Martin, Chapter 1: The Myth of Textual Agency]

Sexual issues are tearing our churches apart today as never before. The issue of homosexuality threatens to fracture whole denominations, as the issue of slavery did a hundred and fifty years ago. We naturally turn to the Bible for guidance, and find ourselves mired in interpretative quicksand. Is the Bible able to speak to our confusion on this issue?

The debate over homosexuality is a remarkable opportunity, because it raises in an especially acute way how we interpret the Bible, not in this case only, but in numerous others as well. The real issue here, then, is not simply homosexuality, but how Scripture informs our lives today.

Some passages that have been advanced as pertinent to the issue of homosexuality are, in fact, irrelevant. One is the attempted gang rape in Sodom (Gen. 19:1-29). That was a case of ostensibly heterosexual males intent on humiliating strangers by treating them “like women,” thus demasculinizing them. (This is also the case in a similar account in Judges 19-21.) Their brutal behavior has nothing to do with the problem of whether genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same sex is legitimate or not. Likewise Deut. 23:17-18 must be pruned from the list, since it most likely refers to a heterosexual prostitute involved in Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship; the King James Version inaccurately labeled him a “sodomite.”

Several other texts are ambiguous. It is not clear whether 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 refer to the “passive” and “active” partners in homosexual relationships, or to homosexual and heterosexual male prostitutes. In short, it is unclear whether the issue is homosexuality alone, or promiscuity and “sex-for-hire.”

Unequivocal Condemnations

Putting these texts to the side, we are left with three references, all of which unequivocally condemn homosexual behavior. Lev. 18:22 states the principle: “You [masculine] shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (NRSV). The second (Lev. 20:13) adds the penalty: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

Such an act was regarded as an “abomination” for several reasons. The Hebrew prescientific understanding was that male semen contained the whole of nascent life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the woman provided only the incubating space. Hence the spilling of semen for any nonprocreative purpose–in coitus interruptus (Gen. 38:1-11), male homosexual acts, or male masturbation–was considered tantamount to abortion or murder. (Female homosexual acts were consequently not so seriously regarded, and are not mentioned at all in the Old Testament (but see Rom. 1:26). One can appreciate how a tribe struggling to populate a country in which its people were outnumbered would value procreation highly, but such values are rendered questionable in a world facing uncontrolled overpopulation.

In addition, when a man acted like a woman sexually, male dignity was compromised. It was a degradation, not only in regard to himself, but for every other male. The patriarchalism of Hebrew culture shows its hand in the very formulation of the commandment, since no similar stricture was formulated to forbid homosexual acts between females. And the repugnance felt toward homosexuality was not just that it was deemed unnatural but also that it was considered unJewish, representing yet one more incursion of pagan civilization into Jewish life. On top of that is the more universal repugnance heterosexuals tend to feel for acts and orientations foreign to them. (Left-handedness has evoked something of the same response in many cultures.)

Whatever the rationale for their formulation, however, the texts leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of Scripture. The meaning is clear: anyone who wishes to base his or her beliefs on the witness of the Old Testament must be completely consistent and demand the death penalty for everyone who performs homosexual acts. (That may seem extreme, but there actually are some Christians urging this very thing today.) It is unlikely that any American court will ever again condemn a homosexual to death, even though Scripture clearly commands it.

Old Testament texts have to be weighed against the New. Consequently, Paul’s unambiguous condemnation of homosexual behavior in Rom. 1:26-27 must be the centerpiece of any discussion.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. He seemed to assume that those whom he condemned were heterosexuals who were acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up,” or “exchanging” their regular sexual orientation for that which was foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psycho-sexual understanding of homosexuals as persons whose orientation is fixed early in life, or perhaps even genetically in some cases. For such persons, having heterosexual relations would be acting contrary to nature, “leaving,” “giving up” or “exchanging” their natural sexual orientation for one that was unnatural to them.

In other words, Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were “straight,” and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul believed that everyone was straight. He had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. There are people that are genuinely homosexual by nature (whether genetically or as a result of upbringing no one really knows, and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex.

Likewise, the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships between consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple. That was something Paul simply could not envision. Some people assume today that venereal disease and AIDS are divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, homosexual and heterosexual. In fact, the vast majority of people with AIDS the world around are heterosexuals. We can scarcely label AIDS a divine punishment, since nonpromiscuous lesbians are at almost no risk.

And Paul believes that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species. We cannot, of course, decide human ethical conduct solely on the basis of animal behavior or the human sciences, but Paul here is arguing from nature, as he himself says, and new knowledge of what is “natural” is therefore relevant to the case.

Hebrew Sexual Mores

Nevertheless, the Bible quite clearly takes a negative view of homosexual activity, in those few instances where it is mentioned at all. But this conclusion does not solve the problem of how we are to interpret Scripture today. For there are other sexual attitudes, practices and restrictions which are normative in Scripture but which we no longer accept as normative:

1. Old Testament law strictly forbids sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period (Lev. 18:19; 15:19-24), and anyone in violation was to be “extirpated” or “cut off from their people” (kareth, Lev. 18:29, a term referring to execution by stoning, burning, strangling, or to flogging or expulsion; Lev. 15:24 omits this penalty). Today many people on occasion have intercourse during menstruation and think nothing of it. Should they be “extirpated”? The Bible says they should.

2. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning for both the man and the woman (Deut. 22:22), but here adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman. In the Old Testament, a man could not commit adultery against his own wife; he could only commit adultery against another man by sexually using the other’s wife. And a bride who is found not to be a virgin is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), but male virginity at marriage is never even mentioned. It is one of the curiosities of the current debate on sexuality that adultery, which creates far more social havoc, is considered less “sinful” than homosexual activity. Perhaps this is because there are far more adulterers in our churches. Yet no one, to my knowledge, is calling for their stoning, despite the clear command of Scripture. And we ordain adulterers.

3. Nudity, the characteristic of paradise, was regarded in Judaism as reprehensible (2 Sam. 6:20; 10:4; Isa. 20:2-4; 47:3). When one of Noah’s sons beheld his father naked, he was cursed (Gen. 9:20-27). To a great extent this nudity taboo probably even inhibited the sexual intimacy of husbands and wives (this is still true of a surprising number of people reared in the Judeo-Christian tradition). We may not be prepared for nude beaches, but are we prepared to regard nudity in the locker room or at the old swimming hole or in the privacy of one’s home as an accursed sin? The Bible does.

4. Polygamy (many wives) and concubinage (a woman living with a man to whom she is not married) were regularly practiced in the Old Testament. Neither is ever condemned by the New Testament (with the questionable exceptions of 1 Tim. 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6). Jesus’ teaching about marital union in Mark 10:6-8 is no exception, since he quotes Gen. 2:24 as his authority (the man and the woman will become “one flesh”), and this text was never understood in Israel as excluding polygamy. A man could become “one flesh” with more than one woman, through the act of sexual intercourse. We know from Jewish sources that polygamy continued to be practiced within Judaism for centuries following the New Testament period. So if the Bible allowed polygamy and concubinage, why don’t we?

5. A form of polygamy was the levirate marriage. When a married man in Israel died childless, his widow was to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bore him a male heir. Jesus mentions this custom without criticism (Mark 12:18-27 par.). I am not aware of any Christians who still obey this unambiguous commandment of Scripture. Why is this law ignored, and the one against homosexual behavior preserved?

6. The Old Testament nowhere explicitly prohibits sexual relations between unmarried consenting heterosexual adults, as long as the woman’s economic value (bride price) is not compromised, that is to say, as long as she is not a virgin. There are poems in the Song of Songs that eulogize a love affair between two unmarried persons, though commentators have often conspired to cover up the fact with heavy layers of allegorical interpretation. In various parts of the Christian world, quite different attitudes have prevailed about sexual intercourse before marriage. In some Christian communities, proof of fertility (that is, pregnancy) was required for marriage. This was especially the case in farming areas where the inability to produce children-workers could mean economic hardship. Today, many single adults, the widowed, and the divorced are reverting to “biblical” practice, while others believe that sexual intercourse belongs only within marriage. Both views are Scriptural. Which is right?

7. The Bible virtually lacks terms for the sexual organs, being content with such euphemisms as “foot” or “thigh” for the genitals, and using other euphemisms to describe coitus, such as “he knew her.” Today most of us regard such language as “puritanical” and contrary to a proper regard for the goodness of creation. In short, we don’t follow Biblical practice.

8. Semen and menstrual blood rendered all who touched them unclean (Lev. 15:16-24). Intercourse rendered one unclean until sundown; menstruation rendered the woman unclean for seven days. Today most people would regard semen and menstrual fluid as completely natural and only at times “messy,” not “unclean.”

9. Social regulations regarding adultery, incest, rape and prostitution are, in the Old Testament, determined largely by considerations of the males’ property rights over women. Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary as a safeguard of the virginity of the unmarried and the property rights of husbands (Gen. 38:12-19; Josh. 2:1-7). A man was not guilty of sin for visiting a prostitute, though the prostitute herself was regarded as a sinner. Paul must appeal to reason in attacking prostitution (1 Cor. 6:12-20); he cannot lump it in the category of adultery (vs. 9).

Today we are moving, with great social turbulence and at a high but necessary cost, toward a more equitable, non-patriarchal set of social arrangements in which women are no longer regarded as the chattel of men. We are also trying to move beyond the double standard. Love, fidelity and mutual respect replace property rights. We have, as yet, made very little progress in changing the double standard in regard to prostitution. As we leave behind patriarchal gender relations, what will we do with the patriarchalism in the Bible?

10. Jews were supposed to practice endogamy–that is, marriage within the twelve tribes of Israel. Until recently a similar rule prevailed in the American South, in laws against interracial marriage (miscegenation). We have witnessed, within the lifetime of many of us, the nonviolent struggle to nullify state laws against intermarriage and the gradual change in social attitudes toward interracial relationships. Sexual mores can alter quite radically even in a single lifetime.

11. The law of Moses allowed for divorce (Deut. 24:1-4); Jesus categorically forbids it (Mark 10:1-12; Matt. 19:9 softens his severity). Yet many Christians, in clear violation of a command of Jesus, have been divorced. Why, then, do some of these very people consider themselves eligible for baptism, church membership, communion, and ordination, but not homosexuals? What makes the one so much greater a sin than the other, especially considering the fact that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality but explicitly condemned divorce? Yet we ordain divorcees. Why not homosexuals?

12. The Old Testament regarded celibacy as abnormal, and 1 Tim. 4:1-3 calls compulsory celibacy a heresy. Yet the Catholic Church has made it mandatory for priests and nuns. Some Christian ethicists demand celibacy of homosexuals, whether they have a vocation for celibacy or not. But this legislates celibacy by category, not by divine calling. Others argue that since God made men and women for each other in order to be fruitful and multiply, homosexuals reject God’s intent in creation. But this would mean that childless couples, single persons, priests and nuns would be in violation of God’s intention in their creation. Those who argue thus must explain why the apostle Paul never married. And are they prepared to charge Jesus with violating the will of God by remaining single?

Certainly heterosexual marriage is normal, else the race would die out. But it is not normative. God can bless the world through people who are married and through people who are single, and it is false to generalize from the marriage of most people to the marriage of everyone. In 1 Cor. 7:7 Paul goes so far as to call marriage a “charisma,” or divine gift, to which not everyone is called. He preferred that people remain as he was–unmarried. In an age of overpopulation, perhaps a gay orientation is especially sound ecologically!

13. In many other ways we have developed different norms from those explicitly laid down by the Bible. For example, “If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity” (Deut. 25:11f.). We, on the contrary, might very well applaud her for trying to save her husband’s life!

14. The Old and New Testaments both regarded slavery as normal and nowhere categorically condemned it. Part of that heritage was the use of female slaves, concubines and captives as sexual toys, breeding machines, or involuntary wives by their male owners, which 2 Sam. 5:13, Judges 19-21 and Num. 31:18 permitted–and as many American slave owners did some 150 years ago, citing these and numerous other Scripture passages as their justification.

The Problem of Authority

These cases are relevant to our attitude toward the authority of Scripture. They are not cultic prohibitions from the Holiness Code that are clearly superseded in Christianity, such as rules about eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of two different materials. They are rules concerning sexual behavior, and they fall among the moral commandments of Scripture. Clearly we regard certain rules, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is our principle of selection here?

For example, virtually all modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, exogamy (marriage with non-Jews), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this), birth control (some Christians still forbid this).

And the Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean, which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13).

And while the Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it. In short, of the sexual mores mentioned here, we only agree with the Bible on four of them, and disagree with it on sixteen!

Surely no one today would recommend reviving the levirate marriage. So why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture in the case of homosexuality alone, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding most other sexual practices? Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary. Mormon polygamy was outlawed in this country, despite the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, because it violated the sensibilities of the dominant Christian culture. Yet no explicit biblical prohibition against polygamy exists.

If we insist on placing ourselves under the old law, as Paul reminds us, we are obligated to keep every commandment of the law (Gal. 5:3). But if Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), if we have been discharged from the law to serve, not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (Rom. 7:6), then all of these biblical sexual mores come under the authority of the Spirit. We cannot then take even what Paul himself says as a new Law. Christians reserve the right to pick and choose which sexual mores they will observe, though they seldom admit to doing just that. And this is as true of evangelicals and fundamentalists as it is of liberals and mainliners.

Judge for Yourselves

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.

The very notion of a “sex ethic” reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is “ethical” in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person’s life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witnessed the shift from the ideal of preserving one’s virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.

I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Defining such a love ethic is not complicated. It is non-exploitative (hence no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this in his inspired phrase, “Love God, and do as you please.”

Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus’ love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn’t mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus’ love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole.

Christian morality, after all, is not a iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God. It is the attempt to discover a manner of living that is consistent with who God created us to be. For those of same-sex orientation, as for heterosexuals, being moral means rejecting sexual mores that violate their own integrity and that of others, and attempting to discover what it would mean to live by the love ethic of Jesus.

Morton Kelsey goes so far as to argue that homosexual orientation has nothing to do with morality, any more than left-handedness. It is simply the way some people’s sexuality is configured. Morality enters the picture when that predisposition is enacted. If we saw it as a God-given gift to those for whom it is normal, we could get beyond the acrimony and brutality that have so often characterized the unchristian behavior of Christians toward gays.

Approached from the point of view of love rather than that of law, the issue is at once transformed. Now the question is not “What is permitted?” but rather “What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor?” Approached from the point of view of faith rather than works, the question ceases to be “What constitutes a breach of divine law in the sexual realm?” and becomes instead “What constitutes integrity before the God revealed in the cosmic lover, Jesus Christ?” Approached from the point of view of the Spirit rather than the letter, the question ceases to be “What does Scripture command?” and becomes “What is the Word that the Spirit speaks to the churches now, in the light of Scripture, tradition, theology, and, yes, psychology, genetics, anthropology, and biology?” We can’t continue to build ethics on the basis of bad science.

In a little-remembered statement, Jesus said, “Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:57 NRSV). Such sovereign freedom strikes terror in the hearts of many Christians; they would rather be under law and be told what is right. Yet Paul himself echoes Jesus’ sentiment when he says, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life!” (1 Cor. 6:3 RSV). The last thing Paul would want is for people to respond to his ethical advice as a new law engraved on tablets of stone. He is himself trying to “judge for himself what is right.” If now new evidence is in on the phenomenon of homosexuality, are we not obligated–no, free–to re-evaluate the whole issue in the light of all the available data and decide what is right, under God, for ourselves? Is this not the radical freedom for obedience in which the gospel establishes us?

Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified? One hundred and fifty years ago, when the debate over slavery was raging, the Bible seemed to be clearly on the slaveholders’ side. Abolitionists were hard pressed to justify their opposition to slavery on biblical grounds. Yet today, if you were to ask Christians in the South whether the Bible sanctions slavery, virtually everyone would agree that it does not. How do we account for such a monumental shift?

What happened is that the churches were finally driven to penetrate beyond the legal tenor of Scripture to an even deeper tenor, articulated by Israel out of the experience of the Exodus and the prophets and brought to sublime embodiment in Jesus’ identification with harlots, tax collectors, the diseased and maimed and outcast and poor. It is that God sides with the powerless. God liberates the oppressed. God suffers with the suffering and groans toward the reconciliation of all things. In the light of that supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospel’s imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear.

In the same way, women are pressing us to acknowledge the sexism and patriarchalism that pervades Scripture and has alienated so many women from the church. The way out, however, is not to deny the sexism in Scripture, but to develop an interpretive theory that judges even Scripture in the light of the revelation in Jesus. What Jesus gives us is a critique of domination in all its forms, a critique that can be turned on the Bible itself. The Bible thus contains the principles of its own correction. We are freed from bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. It is restored to its proper place as witness to the Word of God. And that word is a Person, not a book.

With the interpretive grid provided by a critique of domination, we are able to filter out the sexism, patriarchalism, violence, and homophobia that are very much a part of the Bible, thus liberating it to reveal to us in fresh ways the inbreaking, in our time, of God’s domination-free order.

An Appeal for Tolerance

What most saddens me in this whole raucous debate in the churches is how sub-Christian most of it has been. It is characteristic of our time that the issues most difficult to assess, and which have generated the greatest degree of animosity, are issues on which the Bible can be interpreted as supporting either side. I am referring to abortion and homosexuality.

We need to take a few steps back and be honest with ourselves. I am deeply convinced of the rightness of what I have said in this essay. But I must acknowledge that it is not an air tight case. You can find weaknesses in it, just as I can in others’. The truth is, we are not given unequivocal guidance in either area, abortion or homosexuality.

Rather than tearing at each others’s throats, therefore, we should humbly admit our limitations. How do I know I am correctly interpreting God’s word for us today? How do you? Wouldn’t it be wiser for Christians to lower the decibels by 95 percent and quietly present our beliefs, knowing full well that we might be wrong?

I know of a couple, both well known Christian authors in their own right, who have both spoken out on the issue of homosexuality. She supports gays, passionately; he opposes their behavior, strenuously. So far as I can tell, this couple still enjoy each other’s company, eat at the same table, and, for all I know, sleep in the same bed.

We in the church need to get our priorities straight. We have not reached a consensus about who is right on the issue of homosexuality. But what is clear, utterly clear, is that we are commanded to love one another. Love not just our gay sisters and brothers who are often sitting beside us, unacknowledged, in church, but all of us who are involved in this debate. These are issues about which we should amiably agree to disagree. We don’t have to tear whole denominations to shreds in order to air our differences on this point. If that couple I mentioned can continue to embrace across this divide, surely we can do so as well.

The creation story is used in opposition to gays and lesbians in several ways. According to the creation story (and we would be more accurate to say stories since there are two separate accounts given in these chapters) God created them Eve from Adam’s side to be his helpmate, the woman being a complimentary to the man. Thus the argument goes that God made woman for man and man for woman and therefore same-sex relationships are in violation of this divine order.

The second argument is that God gave Adam and Eve clear direction that they were to “go forth and multiply” and because same-sex couples aren’t able to procreate they are again unable to fulfill this divine directive.

In responding to the first argument, Peter Gomes writes in “The Good Book,”

”The authors of Genesis were intent upon answering the question, ‘Where do we come from?’ Then, as now, the only plausible answer is from the union of a man and a woman…The creation story in Genesis does not pretend to be a history of anthropology or of every social relationship. It does not mention friendship, for example, and yet we do not assume that friendship is condemned or abnormal. It does not mention the single state, and yet we know that singleness is not condemned, and that in certain religious circumstances it is held in very high esteem.”

While we recognize that heterosexual coupling is the norm in human relationships (and since we’re all here aren’t we glad about that?!) there’s nothing in the Creation story to suggest that heterosexual relationships are normative or exclusionary. Genesis doesn’t elevate them as such or set them as the ideal relationship for all humanity. Because Genesis is concerned with explaining how the world, including its population, came into being it’s only reasonable that the first family would begin with a male-female relationship, yet that doesn’t come at the cost of excluding, minimizing or denying all other varieties and combinations of human relationships from friendships to partnerships. Were male-female relationships the Divine ideal for all humanity (one man + one woman = one marriage) then one has to contend with Paul’s negative view of marriage and a single Savior. After all, wouldn’t Jesus have followed God’s divine order if marriage were the ideal?

An argument against homosexuality based on the inability for child-bearing is all the more problematic for those who wish to defend it given the vast number of marriages that never lead to procreation. Couples marry at ages when childbirth is no longer an option. Other couples are childless because of impotence, infertility, health restrictions, or genetic concerns. Still others opt to not have children for a variety of reasons. The lack of children doesn’t invalid these relationships nor does it devalue them. Neither should it for gay or lesbian couples.

We’ve heard it all before, that “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” but what Genesis makes abundantly clear is that all creation came forth from God, including Adam and Eve, Sara and Lisa, Frank and Diane, Linda, Bob, Terrance, and all who are God’s children, each and every one.

If church tradition is to be part of what shapes our Christian theology then we need to recognize that church tradition and the understanding of earlier Christian theologians doesn’t support the more recent translations that have placed the word homosexuals or practicing homosexuals within the context of I Corinthians 6 or I Timothy 1. At different times within church history there have been varying understandings of these passages and their exact meaning has changed from one generation to the next, and now in our present time these two separate words have been collapsed into one to mean homosexual. Along with this acknowledgment, it seems both helpful and honest to recognize that what often finds it’s way into current biblical interpretation is not a more informed understanding of the biblical text based on years of accumulative knowledge but on imposing our own culture, complete with its prejudices into the interpretative work. What else would explain the shift in meaning and the narrowing of focus in the interpretation of these two passages over the last fifty years?

IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME

The first appearance of the word arsenokoitai in any ancient Greek literature is found in I Corinthians 6:9. While it might have been a word common in Paul’s time, it hasn’t been located in any other material predating or contemporary to Paul’s use of it in these two passages. It only begins to make its appearance in literature following Paul. An important tool in discovering the meaning of a word is to trace how it’s used within context. Were I to ask you to give me the definition to an unfamiliar word, you would most likely ask, “Use it for me in a sentence.” The problem with arsenokoitai is that prior to Paul’s usage we have no record of it’s use and in Paul’s case the word is used independently within a long list which offers no insight into its meaning.

The times arsenokoitai does appear following Paul yet it’s usage seems dependent on Paul’s usage of the word. In the Latin Vulgate that follows Paul some 500 years later, Jerome translates it as a male concubine although nothing in the word specifies whether the concubine was involved with a same-sex or opposite-sex individual. What we do know is at the time Paul was writing there were terms common for persons involved in homoeroticism and Paul chose to not use those words but to instead use a word that remains mysterious to us. What this means is that Greek scholars and theologians come to arsenokoitai with no previous context for understanding it’s meaning and so the best that anyone, whether pro-gay or anti-gay can reason is a guess.

In the early work the “New Testament and Homosexuality,” Robin Scroggs comes to an understanding of arsenokoitai by looking at the two separate words it combines; arseno (men) and koitai (bed). From this Scroggs concluded that the literal meaning of arsenokoitai was male bed which he understood as descriptive of the active male (penetrator) in same-sex intercourse. The problem with this method of interpretation can be seen with examples in English like lady-killer, manhole or butterfly. You don’t arrive at the true meaning of the word butterfly by defining and then combining the words butter and fly anymore than it’s possible to define the accurate meaning of arsenokoitai by combining and defining male and bed. Again, the very best anyone can do is hazard a guess at what arsenkoitai might mean but a guess is a fragile thread especially when lives hang in the balance.

Malakoi, on the other hand was a common word in the Greek language and there’s a long history of its recorded use both before and after Paul uses it in I Corinthians 6 and I Timothy 1. Jesus is recorded as using the word malakoi when speaking of “a man dressed in soft (malakoi) raiment” (Matthew 11:8). While historically, church tradition has often understood malakoi to imply a moral weakness, it was repeatedly used within ancient Greek culture to define those who were considered effeminate. It was occasionally used as a descriptive word for eromenos; eromenos being the passive partner in a relationship between an older mentor and the younger boy or the beloved (Refer to pederasty). Malakoi was also used in a much broader sense than exclusive to a homoerotic relationship but was used as well to describe those men who had too much sex with women for in ancient Rome, the effeminate looking man often presented himself that way to attract women rather than men since effeminate men were looked down upon by the male culture.

In the ancient world being effeminate had a much broader definition than in our time and included such behavior as bathing frequently, shaving, frequent dancing or laughing, wearing cologne, eating too much or wearing fine undergarments! Effeminate is the best understanding of the word and in its cultural context was threatening to the whole structure of society by crossing the fragile line between man and woman in a world where to be male was to be superior and to be woman was to be intrinsically inferior. Clearly, the times have changed and the chances of a preacher condemning aftershave and silk boxers from the pulpit are slim to none.

MALAKOI and ARSENOKOITAI ON THE MAP

Some scholars would argue that where malakoi and arsenokoitai are located in these passages should be considered when attempting to understand their meaning. I Corinthians 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1: 9-10 are lists of vices. Vice lists appear through Paul’s writings (Romans 1:29-31, Galatians 5:19-23, Colossians 3:18-4:1, Ephesians 5:21-6:9 and 2 Timothy 3:15) and was a common literary style in both Greco-Roman and Jewish literature (Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, page 113). Rather than being a random tossing together of sins, vice lists often appear to be in a categorical order as would seem apparent in both I Corinthians 6 and I Timothy 1.

I Corinthians 6 orders the vices as: fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, malakoi, arsenokoitai, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners.

I Timothy 1 orders the vices as: murderers, manslayers, whoremongers, arsenokoitai, menstealers (slave traders), liars, perjurers.

In the essay Arsenokoites and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences, included in Sex and the Single Savior, Dale Martin proposes that most vice lists, both in the Christian Testament and in ancient contemporary writings, separate vices in three categories: sexual sins, sins of violence and economic or injustice sins and he proposes that with this in mind, arsenokoitai, if referring to homosexuality doesn’t normally appear in the category of sexual sins but is in, or on the edge of, the economic category. Though uncertain as to the date of this particular oracle, Martin provides a reading from Sibylline Oracle 2.70-77 that is labeled under the heading “On Justice.”

“(Never accept in your hand a gift which derives from unjust deeds.) Do not steal seeds. Whoever takes for himself is accursed (to generations of generations, to the scattering of life.) (Do not arskenokoitein, do not betray information, do not murder.) Give one who has labored his wage. Do not oppress a poor man. Take heed of your speech. Keep a secret matter in your heart. (Make provision for orphans and widows and those in need.) Do not be willing to act unjustly, and therefore do not give leave to one who is acting unjustly.” (page 120).

No sexual sin is listed in the above writing but all the sins are of economic injustice, whether through the oppression of the poor, the withholding of wages or accepting gifts from unjust deeds. It seems a possibility that in this context arskenokoitein refers to money earned through sexual behavior, which would also appear to make sense in that it follows prostitution (whoremongers, pornos) in I Timothy. Perhaps it has nothing to do with sex. It remains uncertain. Whether arsenokoitai is defined by this source in the same way as defined by Paul is equally uncertain. What is certain is that there seems sufficient evidence, or the lack thereof, to leave this word and it’s appearance in I Corinthians 6 and I Timothy 1 as ambiguous in meaning. With so much uncertainty surrounding these words it’s of painful concern that it’s been used by some within the church with absolute rigidity to condemn gays and lesbians.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?” Romans I

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve received emails from strangers who upon finding this ministry online have included a cut and paste of Romans 1:26-27 in the body of the email, as if that’s all they need to say to prove their view that the Bible condemns homosexuality. I would suspect that those four verses have been quoted to nearly after GLBTQ Christian from once to a thousand times. There’s little question these two verses don’t sound particularly favorable concerning sexual relations between people of the same gender, and they aren’t favorable but for reasons that hinge on the world view at the time of Paul’s writing around human sexuality and gender roles which is another world, literally, from that of our own.

But even before looking at those verses we need to recognize that 1:26-27 don’t stand alone and when people quote them as though it’s the definitive word on a biblical condemnation of homosexuality then they’re engaging in the practice of proof-texting. Simply, proof-texting is when an individual scripture or selection of scriptures is used to support a position without regard for the context that held the scripture, often giving the words of the scripture different meaning than was the original intent of the writer. To use any scripture to support ones own ideology without consideration of the context in which it’s placed and the intent of the writer dishonors the scripture as a whole.

Intention and Context of Romans 1

Christianity had begun to grow in Rome and was comprised of both Gentile and Jewish believers. Though Paul had never been to the church in Rome, he mentions in the opening that while he has intended many times to come to them, he expresses hope that he might visit them soon. In the meantime, Paul sends this letter to the church in Rome that lays out Paul’s theology and the great themes of the Gospel. Most would consider the Book of Romans to be Paul’s most complete theological statement.

In the first three chapters Paul makes a strong case for the need of all people, both Jew and Gentile, to establish their faith in Jesus Christ. In Chapter 1 Paul speaks to the Jews of the sin of the Gentiles which they seem to have initially reported to him that resulted in this reply. In Chapter 2 Paul turns on the Jews and highlights their sin. In Chapter 3 Paul reaches the conclusion that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (vs. 23, 24). This would seem to be Paul’s ultimate intention; to assert the need of all people to experience salvation by the Gospel message and the availability that Gospel to all, Gentile or Jew, male or female, slave or free.

Paul was writing to a specific people in a specific time. There’s no indication anywhere in Paul’s own words that as he wrote it was the entire world and with all time in mind. Paul was clueless than thousands of years later Christians would be reading his words, much less that they would be held within a canon along side the Torah. Paul’s focus was on the church in Rome and grounding them in the Gospel. In Romans 1 Paul is writing to a primarily Jewish audience (seen in his references to the Gentiles as they and them) and addresses the cause of the Gentiles ethnic impurity which is idolatry. Romans 1 is a story about the origin and consequences of idolatry.

In committing idolatry the Gentile people had dishonored God and in response God turns them over to dishonor themselves. The people actively chose to engage in one sin, that being idolatry, but from that point on it was God who gave them over to other sins as a penalty for the original great offense. Before jumping into the eye of the storm (verses 26-27) take a minute to read verses 21 through 31 as I’ve provided here so you can more clearly see the pattern included in the text.

The Sin: For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. (verses 21-23)

The Penalty: Therefore (on account of) God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. (verse 24)

The Sin: because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. (verse 25)

The Penalty: For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (verses 26-27)

The Sin: And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God…(verse 28a)

The Penalty: God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (verses 28b-31)

Returning again to verses 26-27, we need to be honest enough to say we don’t know exactly what Paul meant or what Paul might have thought concerning our current day understanding of homosexuality. We know however that Paul was a Jew and that the emphasis on purity in Leviticus were part of Paul’s thinking, as was the Greco-Roman world view in which he lived. Paul’s understanding about sexuality didn’t stand outside of all that but was greatly shaped by all that surrounded him. It seems more than evident that in verses 26-27 Paul has a negative view of homoeroticism and while we can’t know with any precision what Paul meant, we can make several general assumptions:

• Unnatural (para physin) is better understood as that which is out of the ordinary or beyond the ordinary rather than as perversion.
• Sex was for the purpose of procreation and had to include a dominant partner (male) and a passive partner (female). Anything that didn’t meet that normative form was para physin.
• One of the men in a same-sex encounter would dishonor himself by assuming the role of the passive partner and lowering his status to that of a woman. The other man brought dishonor on himself by allowing his kinsman to assume the role of the passive partner.
• Paul, as his contemporaries, saw all passions as uncontrolled and negative. As a result passion was always dishonorable and would obviously result in being consumed by it. The passion that a husband might have for his wife would be seen as equally negative. Paul’s not so much interested in condemning homo-erotic behavior but uncontrolled passions and lack of moderation.
• In the ancient world there was no understanding of a homosexual orientation or a heterosexual orientation for that matter. Paul saw idolatry as the cause of same-sex eroticism rather than a person’s sexual orientation or even as a human choice. It was a penalty exacted by God on the idolatrous Gentiles.
• Unnatural relations for women could refer to any sexual activity where procreation wasn’t a possibility. This could include sex during menstruation, anal sex or homoeroticism. Unnatural relationship for women could also refer to any sexual activity that was beyond the ordinary. Because women were expected in every sexual encounter to be the passive partner it would be against nature for a woman to be the aggressor in a heterosexual encounter or to take the dominant role in sex with another woman.

IN CONCLUSION

There are those who use this chapter to condemn homosexuality but in doing so they’re choosing to emphasize wrongly one portion of a progressive descent into sin by a particular people whose original sin was idolatry. Remember that everything that follows their adulterous practices are a direct result of God giving them up to behaviors that would cause them to dishonor themselves. Their deliberate choice was to practice idolatry but the rest was punishment imposed on them by God.

I would propose that this passage does not speak of gay men and lesbians within our culture but to the Gentile idolaters located in Rome. If anyone uses this passage as a blanket condemnation of homosexuality within our current world, believing that Paul is addressing the universal fall of humanity and homosexuality in particular then they must accept the full argument, which would include the following:

• There was a time when the entire world was monothestistic and one set moment in time when polythesim and idolatry came into the world.
• That up until that one moment there was no such thing as homo-erotic attraction or same-sex sexual relations.
• That there was no homosexual activity or attraction among the Jewish people since the Jews were set outside of those to whom Paul was speaking of in Romans 1.
• That were there to be no idolatry in the world, all homosexuality would disappear since idolatry is the cause and homosexuality a consequence.
• Everyone who is gay or lesbian is that way because God made them to be homosexual because of the sin of idolatry. Homosexuality at this point ceases to be either a sexual orientation OR a choice.
• Everyone who is gay and lesbian is without faith and hates God, including those who proclaim Jesus as their Savior, whether they are practicing homosexuals or living as celibates within the church community.

For those of you who are gay and lesbian and continue to struggle with this passage I’d encourage you to consider these three points explicitly stated in Romans One and ask yourself some questions to see if Paul is referring to you in this writing.

• Did you practice idolatry prior to your first awareness of your homosexuality?
• Do you remember a fixed moment in time when you felt your heterosexuality (an exclusive attraction to the opposite sex) was replaced with homosexuality (an exclusive attraction to the same sex)?
• Are you filled with hate for God? Do you manifest the following in your life: wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, gossip, slanderer, insolent, haughty and boastfulness? Are you an inventor of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless and ruthless?
• Would you describe your relationship with the person you love as centered solely in uncontrolled passions and lust?

For this passage to be speaking of all gays and lesbians and more specifically of you, you have to be able to answer in the affirmative to every question. If you answer no to any or all of them then perhaps it’s time to let go of this passage as being what stands between reconciling your faith and sexuality. While there’s a clearly negative word here regarding homoeroticism, it’s exclusively a punishment of God for idolaters in Paul’s understanding and so remains an empty closet for those of us today who are gay and lesbian and continue to worship God and God alone.

[If you're interested in a more in-depth and long-winded response to Romans 1, you're invited to read my original writing on Romans 1. Fully-leaded coffee is recommended.]

Within the very nature of any group of individuals is the necessity to define itself in a way that describes those who belong while separating itself from those who don’t belong. Boundaries of distinction are used to separate the “us” from “them” and more often than not this boundary language describes the other in negative terms, negative terms that are most often exaggerated or completely false to the actual reality of the other. In ancient Israel, to be a Jew meant to belong to a particular people and while the same could be said of other nations at the time Israel stood out among them in the degree to which it separated itself from other nations through it’s distinctive traditions and avoidance of the traditions and behaviors of foreign nations.

The Scriptures recorded Israel’s distinctive faith and culture, and no where is this more true than in the books that dealt with the law, including Leviticus. These basic laws and prohibitions governed not only their religious life but their daily lives in the family and in community, and in all areas of life Israel had three major concerns, all of which potentially contributed to the prohibition of homo-erotic sex:

Pagans

When Israel had been slaves in Egypt, keeping their unique identity hadn’t been an issue. They were slaves. The boundaries between the people of Israel and the people of Egypt had been clearly drawn. Following the exile this all changed, and as the people moved out into foreign lands among other nations and began to deal on a daily basis with Gentiles keeping a strong identity mattered for the sake of their survival as a nation. Separation and distinctiveness in matters of religion were all the more vital and the opening and closing words of Leviticus 18 and the closing words of Leviticus 20 suggests that at least some of the prohibitions in these sections are prohibited for the very reason that they were being practiced by the Gentile nations.

While there’s no condemnation of homosexual acts in the Torah outside the Holiness Code; Deuteronomy forbids Israel from giving it’s children, male and female to serve as cult prostitutes (23:18-19). In all probability there were both male and female cult prostitutes which would explain the prohibition of homosexual acts in Leviticus 18 – 20, and therefore were a male to lie with a man as with a woman the lines of distinction between the practices of the Gentile nations and the nation of Israel would be blurred. The issue wasn’t about homo-erotic behavior in and of itself in this regard but about abstaining from anything that could appear to mirror Canaanite rituals dedicated to gods other than the God of Israel.

Purity and Holiness

The laws in Leviticus are concerned with how to maintain purity, or more specifically how to avoid impurity. Impurity equates to being dirty and according to the cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas “dirt is essentially disorder or matter out of place” (Dirt, Greed and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their Implications for Today, by William Countryman). Countryman illustrates the difference between purity (cleanliness) and impurity (uncleanness) through the example that

“The coffee in a cup is clean, but the pair of pants I spill the coffee on is dirty. The coffee in the cup and the coffee spilled on the pants is the same coffee and yet when the coffee is where it’s suppose to be it’s clean and when it’s out of place it’s dirty.” (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 13).

Even as small children we learn that food spilled on your clothes is no longer food but has been somehow transformed into dirt, something that’s unclean because it’s out of place. When your shirt was covered with peanut butter you’d hear “Change your shirt Honey. It’s dirty.” So uncleanness is disorder, things out of place, things not as they’re suppose to be or usually are.

Purity also means to be whole or complete. In antiquity there was an ideal for every species in creation. When a member of a species met the ideal it was considered pure or whole. The ideal for land animals was that they have cloven hoofs and this meant that while ox, sheep and goats were clean, pigs and camels were considered unclean. A blemish on an animal prevented it from being offered as a sacrifice because the blemish rendered the animal outside of the ideal since all members of that species didn’t have a blemish. Equally, there was an ideal of what constituted cleanliness or uncleanness in humanity and a fascinating example of this is in Leviticus 13:12-13 that deals with leprosy. If a priest suffered from leprosy so that only portions of his skin were affected then he was unclean but if the leprosy covered all his body, he was pronounced clean. What sounds illogical to us makes sense with an ancient worldview where cleanliness was determined by wholeness. With all the skin turned the same color by the leprosy, the person with the leprosy was rendered whole but if there were only blotches there was incompleteness and so he was unclean.

Purity is wholeness which, according to Mary Douglas demands two things:

“first, that every individual should be a complete and self-contained specimen of its kind, and second, that there should be no mixing of kinds.”

This would explain many of the prohibitions of Leviticus and other passages referring to the purity laws.

• A menstruating woman was unclean, not because of hygienic considerations but because she was losing something that belonged to her wholeness. The same was true for a hemorrhaging woman or a woman in childbirth. Something from their wholeness was being lost and therefore they were less whole or impure.
• Mixing two kinds of fabric, planting two seeds in the same field, and mixing species of animals for breeding (Leviticus 19:19) was the blending of two wholes that were complete in themselves. This mixing brought about confusion and disorder and was therefore unclean and prohibited.
• Bestiality is prohibited because of the confusion that results in trying to mix two complete but unrelated kinds together.
• Crossing-dressing (Deuteronomy 22:5) whether by a woman wearing that which pertained to a man or a man wearing that which pertained to a woman was perceived as the mixing of two wholes which created disorder.
• A man will not lie with a man “as with a woman” again is prohibited expressly because in antiquity sex was always understood as being between a naturally dominant partner (male) and a naturally passive partner (female). As in similar prohibitions, one man was seen as assuming the role of the passive partner and in doing so was mixing male and female within himself creating confusion and disorder.
• A relationship between equals had no place in antiquity so for a man to have sex with a man required that one take on the role of the woman and in doing so one of the men was making himself a combination of kinds (male and female) and was therefore unclean. The other man was unclean for coming in contact with what was unclean.

The prohibition of male homo-erotic behavior wasn’t exclusively concerned with preventing a man from mixing two wholes (male and female) within himself, but he was also viewed as degrading his God-given status as a male. Israel’s hierarchy considered the male gender as being made in the image of God and therefore a superior being, while the female gender was intrinsically inferior to men and more prone to impurity. As evidence, a mother who gave birth to a girl was considered impure 3 to 4 times longer than had she given birth to a boy. It was therefore considered a slap in God’s face for a man to give up his position as man to assume the role of a woman. He was degrading both God and himself, and his partner was equally guilty in that he was participating in the degrading of another superior male. This is why both, rather than just the one assuming the female role, were to be put to death.

Property Laws

In ancient Israel, a man owned everything and everyone within his household. He owned the barn, the house, the livestock, the wife, the children, and the slaves. The wife and children were viewed as his property and this is painfully evidenced in Leviticus 18 in a long list of sexual prohibitions.

• Do not have sexual relationship with your father’s wife; that would dishonor your father (v.8). The prohibition doesn’t concern itself with the fact that the man would be having sex with his mother but emphasizing that in doing so he would be dishonoring his father because she is his property.
• Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father’s wife, born to your father; she is your sister (v.11). The prohibition doesn’t focus on a brother violating his sister but on a father being dishonored by having sexual relations with his daughter.
• D0 not dishonor your father’s brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations; she is your aunt (v. 14) and again, having sex with the aunt would violate the uncle.

The list of prohibitions reads on, “do not have sexual relationship with your father’s sister, with your son’s wife, with your brother’s wife, with her son’s daughter, your neighbor’s wife. Though the list seems exhaustive at the end, only one combination for a sexual relation is missing (outside of that of husband and wife) and that is between a daughter and father. There is no prohibition against a father having sexual relations with his daughter because again, the concern in this portion of the law is concerned with property laws as they pertained to sexual relations.

The importance this all has to understanding the prohibition concerning male homo-erotic acts is that it highlights the degraded status of women to the extent that they were viewed not as their own persons but as the property of the man of the household which helps to clarify how detestable it would have been in the ancient worldview for a man to willing assume the role of a woman in a sexual encounter with another man.

In conclusion, it should be noted that in both Leviticus passages that prohibit male homo-erotic behavior sin language is absent. Instead male-male sexual relations are referred to it as a disgusting thing (abomination) that render the action and the individuals involved in the action unclean. In the Leviticus 20 passage they’re to be put to death, not because they’re guilty of a “sin” worthy of death but because individuals judged unclean had to be utterly removed from the people or the entire nation would be rendered unclean.