From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Homosexuality and Christianity
Summary: end of discussion for now
Date: 14 Apr 92 04:10:55 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T

It is more than a bit obscene to pretend to discuss rarified points of
exegesis in the aftermath of a note like Jack Carroll's; your exegesis
is the very buttress of the hatred (violent, destructive, self-righteous
evil, all "in the name of Christ") he and many others have faced.  It
matters very little whether some exegete mildly protests that such parents
(and churches and schools and peers and doctors and landlords and employers
and ...) may be going a bit further than the exegete "intended" (but I am
not at all sure about the intentions of some of these vicious people).

The "rules" Jack gives should be carved on the hearts of supposed Christians
-- these hearts that Jeremiah calls desperately corrupt and wicked above
all things.  The central one is this:

	if your actions are those of an enemy, your talk of love is a sham

That said, I will still offer a few comments and then refrain from anything
more on this topic for a while -- at the very least till I have had time
to look at some more of the scholarly material offered as relevant.

In article <1992Apr13.233934.25498@athena.cs.uga.edu>, hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu
(Paul Hudson Jr) writes:

> I have heard that usury was always interpretted as any interest at all,
> untill Martin Luther said that it meant "excessive interest."  But

The history of the topic is long and complex.  Basically, what we mean
today in discussions of interest (as in basic real interest rates in our
economy) deals with a concept and a context (modern market economies)
that DID NOT EXIST in ancient times -- and ancient difficulties with loans
and interest (with consequent debt-slavery and potential for massive
social harms because of the dependence of peasants [like Southern share-
croppers, in the most recent US instance of a similar systematic form of
oppression] on yearly renewed capital investment or else starvation.)

Luther was not alone (certainly not the first) in trying to redefine this;
the matter became part of what Max Weber sweeps up together in his study
of _The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_.  What I have to
urge on you is that we are NOW in the midst of a similar transformation.
Your side of this discussion generally ignores (probably because you can't
quite fathom that we are serious about it) our REPEATED statements that
what we are talking about is NEW -- "homosexuality" did not exist, in any
thing like the form we are trying to talk about, until the word was coined
about a century ago.  Many feelings, activities, predilections, etc, that
we NOW construe as part of "being gay" were in the past not seen together
at all -- only fragments seen in OTHER contexts.

The principle "other context" was that of the married man "cheating" on
his wife -- whether the cheating was with whores, other mens' wives or
boys/men.  That is NOT the context I am addressing, although there is
some relevance to the problems of transition between the older context
and the modern gay context.

The reconstruction of what an economy *is* and how it *has* to function
that troubled the waters in the Reform/Catholic split strikes me as an
extremely close parallel to what is going on (and has been since the end
of Victorian times) in social structures (which, indeed are likely enough
an outgrowth of the social structures that generated and embodied the
capitalist revolution.  People really should read more Marx, and take
him seriously as Max Weber did, even if rejecting some of the ideology.)

If you can bring yourself to take interest from your bank, or IRA or
whatever (well, you kids may not yet be in any position to do this, but
imagine ...) you have just undercut your ground for condemning modern
homosexual movements.  Whatever it is you THINK you are inveighing
against is EITHER not what we mean, OR not what Paul meant.

> Homosexuality is somehthing different.  The tradition was not manufactured.
> It is found in Scripture.

No it is not.  Your claim that it is DEPENDS on your misreading OLDER
conceptions as if the terms were the same as in the modern case.  They
are no more to be identified than interest and usury.  Until you can show
an honest familiarity with ancient society, the differences between that
and modern society AND a sense of how the structures of these have been
changing over time, you are simply in NO POSITION to have an opinion on
these matters -- no matter WHAT your preachers tell you (as they are in
all likeliehood EQUALLY ignorant.)

> I don't understand how my reasonling forbids the use of alcohol.  How

If there is doubt, you said, about whether an action is sin then one must
forgo it.  Paul says that drinkers (with no qualification) will not inherit
the Kingdom.  Ergo, one must not drink.  If you cannot see the parallel,
I have to despair of your capacity to engage in critical thought -- which
is essential to exegesis.

> does it?  I don't drink personally, but Jesus obviously drank alcohol, 
> and the Corinthian church obviously used wine in their communion services

should give you pause, eh what?

> If you are not familiar with the passage of Romans 1, here it is,

Would you PLEASE do me the favor of believing what I say about having
engaged in careful reading of the cited verses?  As I say, they are few,
and are not explict in the way you would need them to be for your
desired conclusions to hold.  Citing the most frequently abused passage
at me is NOT a move calculated to endear your argument to me.  And you
go on to show what is WRONG with the typical citations of it:

> I think it is rather clear.  Look at verse 27.  It describes homosex
> between men as driven by a burning lust, and unseemly.  Verse

Which, therefore, unless you are arguing in blissful circularity MUST
fail to be a description of love between men (or between women) which
is NOT "driven by a burning lust" or "unseemly."  What you are, in
effect, doing here is the equivalent of going up to a Christian couple
celebrating their 50th wedding anniversay and saying (without its being
any kind of shared joke) "I hope you two are past the age of lust and
rutting with each other and don't do anything unseemly any more ..."
It is LONG past forgiving my brother 7 times, or 70 times 7, or even
700 times 7 when I am confronted with this yet again.  It grows very
hard to forgive.

It is "clear" enough (insofar as such things can be clear, which it
would be well not to overestimate) that Paul had it in for SOME kinds
of homosexual activity.  What these were, and what their context was,
we simply DO NOT KNOW.  The one most overwhelmingly OBVIOUS form of
homosexual activity in Paul's world was the homosexual rape of slave
boys (or other dependents) as a way of *avoiding* loving congress with
a wife (or possibly, as the usual charge goes, but I would hesitate
being too credulous about this, because of "burning lust" that is not
"slaked" with "normal" sex.)  Until you have delved a bit into the odd
sexual notions of the ancient world, you are simply NOT QUALIFIED to
have a respectable opinion on the degree to which the practices Paul
disliked were or were not similar to what gay men engage in as our
right.

FURTHERMORE, even if Paul would have (from Levitical background, from
personal taste, or whatever) formulated a *general* "prohibition" of
homosexual activity [and I repeat that nothing he wrote, note even
what you have typed in at me *is* such a general prohibition, even if
you are eager to *derive* such a thing from it] -- it is not at all
clear to me whether his opinion, formed in a world very different from
mine, is APPLICABLE.

Whereas, the command to love God and our neighbor is everywhere and at
all times applicable.  And if I strive to obey THAT, then I have the
assurance of both Jesus and Paul that I am indeed obeying that on which
*all* law depends.

> guilty) as a sin worthy of death.  If you hold that Paul was an inspired
> agent and that this text is reasonalbly accurate, then wouldn't you
> agree that the prohibitions against homosex are not fabricated traditions?

I would agree that anything which disturbed Paul so much deserved careful
thought.  I would also admit that my careful thought, like ALL human
thought, is open to critical objections on the basis of bias and self-
interest -- will YOU admit as much?  I do not, on this or on ANY matter
regard Paul's mere word as sufficient; if his words stand validated in
my own mind by the Holy Spirit, then I will indeed heed them.  If not,
then what do you expect?  Paul was NOT God, for God's sake! Stop trying
to make his words into the basic structure of the universe.  Paul is 
the great instructor in the scope and meaning of salvation, and its move
from a community of limited, Jewish observance to the wider world.  He
was at least as perplexed as I am about many things -- for example about
the relation to "salvation history" of Jews who did NOT accept Jesus.

It is INCREDIBLY dangerous to take odd bits of his working out of his
thoughts as if they were mandates for human oppression -- does not the
loathsome history of Christian anti-Semitism teach us ANYTHING?
 
> Celebacy is not the only option.  There is also marriage.

You are a fool. (Yes, I know the stricture in Matthew; I ask you to
reread Jack Carroll's note about suicide -- the NEXT stage of the
hateful is to "suggest" that we marry.  It is with great difficulty
that I refrain from DAMNING you for the suggestion -- what I bind
and loose on earth may be bound or loosed in heaven.)  It is the world
in which all or most were FORCED to marry that GENERATED the occasion
for sin (as in betraying a wife one *could not* be a proper husband to)
that the self-righteous then used to condemn men who were not yet aware
of the POSSIBILITY of being homosexual.

> can't have sex untill I get married without offending God.  I am not
> even allowed to lust.  Why would it be any different for a homosexual?

You say "until" and still look me in the face with this?  Go back again
to what I said before -- you are binding on me a burden YOU WILL NOT BEAR.

> >If that makes me a stumbling block (Greek _skandalon_) to you, well
> >I had years of practice of effacing myself so as not to cause weaker 
> >brethren (like you?) to stumble 

> Your words will not cause me to go out and have homosex.  Don't worry

I don't.  That is not what my closeting myself "protected" my weaker
brethen from.  All that they missed (and I myself in hiding my light
under a basket) was Truth.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."