From: eshepard@orion.oac.uci.edu (Ed Shepard)
Subject: Re: Homosexuality and Christianity
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Date: 16 Nov 92 21:38:09 GMT

Hi,
Here is an article published in a local gay newsletter.
Hope it helps those who want to know more about this issue.



		   There are no homosexuals in the Bible.

	Ruth and Naomi were no lesbians.  David and Jonathan weren't gay.
	Neither were Jesus and John, the men of Sodom, cult prostitutes,
	slave boys and their masters, nor call boys and their customers.



			THE BIBLE IS AN EMPTY CLOSET



"The issues about Homosexuality are very complex and are not understood 
by most members of the Christian Church," according to Bernard Ramm of 
The American Baptist Seminary of the West. This evangelical 
authority on biblical interpretation says that, "To them, it is a vile 
form of sexual perversion condemned in both the Old and New Testaments." 
But as Calvin  Theological Seminary Old Testament scholar 
Marten H. Woudstra says: "There is nothing in the Old Testament that 
corresponds to Homosexuality as we understand it today" and as 
SMU New Testament scholar Victor Paul Fumish says: "There is no text on 
homosexual orientation in the Bible." Says Robin Scroggs of Union Seminary: 
"Biblical judgments against Homosexuality are not relevant to today's debate. 
They should no longer be used . . . not because the Bible is not authoritative, 
but simply because it does not address the issues involved. . . . No single 
New Testament author considers [Homosexuality] important enough to write his
own sentence about it." Evangelical theologian Helmut Thielicke states:
"Homosexuality . . . can be discussed at all only in the framework of that 
freedom which is given to us by the insight that even the New Testament does 
not provide us with an evident, normative dictum with regard to this question. 
Even the kind of question which we have arrived at . . . must for purely 
historical reasons be alien to the New Testament."
    Ideas and understandings of sexuality have changed greatly over the 
centuries. People in biblical times did not share our knowledge of
customs of sexuality; we do not share their experience. In those days there 
was no romantic dating as we know it today; marriages were arranged by fathers.
The ancients, as MlT's David Halperin notes: "conceived of 'sexuality'
in non-sexual terms: What was fundamental to their experience of sex was not 
anything _we_ would regard as essentially sexual: rather, it was something 
essentially social --- namely, the modality of power relations that informed 
and structured the sexual act." In the ancient world, sex was "not 
intrinsically relational or collaborative in character; it is, further, a 
deeply polarizing experience: It serves to divide, to classify, and to 
distribute its participants into distinct and radically dissimilar categories. 
Sex possesses this valence, apparently because it is conceived to center 
essentially on, and to define itself around, an asymmetrical gesture, that of
the penetration of the body of one person by the body, and, specifically, by 
the phallus of another.  The proper targets of [a citizen's] sexual desire 
include, specifically, women, boys, foreigners, and slaves --- all of them 
persons who do not enjoy the same legal and political rights and privileges 
that he does." In studies of sex in history, Stanford classics professor John
Winkler warns against "reading contemporary concerns and politics into texts 
and artifacts removed from their social context." This, of course, is a basic 
principle of biblical hermeneutics.  In spite of all of this, some preachers 
continue to use certain Bible verses to clobber lesbians and gay men today. 
Let's take a closer look at these texts.


GENESIS 1:27

"God created people in His own image.  In the image of God he created them;
 He created male and female."

This text celebrates God's deliberate and equal creation of persons who are 
male and persons who are female. Such a sense of equal creation was not typical 
in the ancient world.  According to Eastern Baptist Seminary professor Douglas
J. Miller: "Crude natural law ideas are . . . read into . . . the early 
chapters of Genesis....This view [supports] the 'physicalist' ethical model 
upon which heterosexism is built....This view of creation is based upon the 
obvious anachronism of reading 13th century definitions of nature into ancient 
Hebrew texts." Those who use Genesis 1:27 against homosexuals should note 
Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28 in which he is emphatic that there is now 
no theological significance to the heterosexual pair "male and female." 
According to evangelical Pauline scholar F. F. Bruce: "Paul states the 
basic principle here; if restrictions on it are found elsewhere . . . they 
are to be understood in relation to Galatians 3:28, and not vice versa."



GENESIS 19 (cf. 18:20)

The story of Sodom and Lot's duty of hospitality to his guests.

According to evangelical Bible scholar William Brownlee: "'sodomy' (so-called) 
in Genesis is basically oppression of the weak and helpless; and the oppression 
of the stranger is the basic element of Genesis 19:1-9." Yale's John Boswell 
notes that "Sodom is used as a symbol of evil in dozens of places [in the Bible]
but not in a single instance is the sin of the Sodomites specified as Homo-
sexuality." Listen to the prophet Ezekiel (16:48-49) on the sin of Sodom: 
"As I live, says the Lord God, . . . This was the sin of your sister city of 
Sodom: she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, 
but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this 
was abominable in my eyes." (Cf. Matthew 10:15) The men of Sodom tried to
dominate the strangers at Lot's house by subjecting them to sexual abuse. 
Such attempted gang-rape is about humiliation and violence, not same-sex 
affection.


DEUTERONOMY 23:17-18

"You shall not lie with men as with woman: it is abomination."

"Abomination" (TO'EBAH) is a technical cultic term for what is ritually unclean,
such as mixed cloth, pork, and intercourse with menstruating women. It's not 
about a moral or ethical issue. This Holiness Code (chapters 17 - 26) 
proscribes men "lying the lyings of women." Such mixing of sex roles was thought
to be polluting. But both Jesus and Paul rejected all such ritual distinctions 
(cf. Mark 7:17-23; Romans 14:14,20). The Fundamentalist Journal admits that this
Code condemns "idolatrous practices" and "ceremonial uncleaness" and concludes: 
"We are not bound by these commands today."


LEVITICUS 18:22 (20:13)

"There shall be no female cult prostitute of the daughters of Israel nor 
 a male cult prostitute of the sons of Israel."

These terms, KEDESHA and KADESH, literally mean "holy" or "sacred." There is no 
Hebrew derivative of the word "Sodom" in this passage; the King James Bible 
supplied it erroneously. The Hebrew words here are references to the "holy" 
female and eunuch priest-prostitutes of the Canaanite fertility cults, of which 
Israel was to have no part. Moreover, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary Bible 
scholar George R. Edwards notes that "No prophet uses the noun for male cult 
prostitute or discusses the activity such a person pursued. The prophets, in 
fact, are as silent on the subject of homosexual acts as is the whole tradition 
of the New Testament teaching of Jesus. This is," he says, "a very significant 
silence."


ROMANS 1:26-27

Pagan "women exchange natural use for unnatural and also the [pagan] men, 
leaving the natural use of women, lust in their desire for each other, males
working shame with males, and receiving within themselves the penalty of
their error."

Furnish gives us perspective in turning to the writings of Paul. "Since Paul 
offered no direct teaching to his own churches on the subject of homosexual 
conduct," says Furnish, "his letters certainly cannot yield any specific 
answers to the questions being faced in the modern church.... For Paul neither 
homosexual practice nor heterosexual promiscuity nor any other specific vice is 
identified as such with 'sin.' In his view the fundamental sin from which all 
particular evils derive is idolatry, worshiping what is created rather than the 
Creator, be that a wooden idol, an ideology, a religious system, or some 
particular moral code."
In Romans 1, Paul is ridiculing pagan religious rebellion, saying that the 
pagans knew God but worshiped idols instead of God. To build his case, which 
he'll turn against judgmental Jews in chapter 2 --- he refers to typical 
practices of the fertility cults involving sex among priestesses and between 
men and eunuch prostitutes such as served Aphrodite at Corinth, from where he 
was writing this letter to the Romans. Their self-castration rites resulted in
a bodily "penalty." Catherine Krueger comments in the Journal of the Evangelical
Theological Society that "Men wore veils and long hair as signs of their 
dedication to the god, while women used the unveiling and shorn hair to 
indicate their devotion. Men masqueraded as women, and in a rare vase painting 
from Corinth a woman is dressed in satyr pants equipped with the male organ. 
Thus she dances before Dionysus, a deity who had been raised as a girl and was
himself called male-female and 'sham man.'" Krueger continues: "The sex 
exchange that characterized the cults of such great goddesses as Cybele 
[Aphrodite, Ishtar, etc.] the Syrian goddess, and Artemis of Ephesus was more 
grisly. Males voluntarily castrated themselves and assumed women's garments. 
A relief from Rome shows a high priest of Cybele. The castrated priest wears 
veil, necklaces, earrings and feminine dress. He is considered to have 
exchanged his sexual identity and to have become a she-priest." As such, these
religious prostitutes would engage in same-sex orgies in the pagan temples all
along the coasts of Paul's missionary journeys. "Paul's conception of 
Homosexuality," as Thielicke points out, "was one which was affected by the 
intellectual atmosphere surrounding the struggle with Greek paganism." Says 
Scroggs: "The illustrations are secondary to [Paul's] basic theological 
structure" (Cf 3:22b-23, Paul's own summary), and Furnish adds: "homosexual 
practice as such is not the topic under discussion." Doesn't what Paul says in
the beginning of Romans better describe these pagan orgies he meant to 
ridicule than it does the mutual love and support in the domestic life of 
lesbian and gay male couples today?


I CORINTHIANS 6:9 & TIMOTHY 1:10

Paul's reference to malakoi and arsenokoitai.

Evangelical New Testament scholar Gordon D. Fee of Regent College says that
these two terms are "difficult." The Fundamentalist journal admits: "These 
words are difficult to translate." Of arsenokoitai, Fee says: "This is 
its first appearance in preserved literature, and subsequent authors are 
reluctant to use it, especially when describing homosexual activity." Scroggs 
explains that "Paul is thinking only about pederasty, . . . There was no other 
form of male Homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world which could come to mind." 
Ancient sources indicate that the malakoi were "effeminate call boys." Though 
Paul seems to have coined arsenokoitai, it refers, perhaps, to the call boys'
customers, although nobody knows for sure. Paul's main point, however, is 
clear: Christians who slander and sue each other in pagan courts are just as 
shameful as robbers, drunkards, the greedy, and the malakoi and arsenokoitai 
(whatever they were). The other kind of pederasty in Paul's day was that of the 
slave "pet boys" who were sexually exploited by adult male owners. The desired
boys were prepubescent or at least without beards so that they seemed like 
females. These men had wives for dowries, procreation and the rearing of heirs.
They had "pet boys" for sex - hardly the picture of gay relationships today.
   The Bible is an empty closet. It has nothing specific to say about 
Homosexuality as such. But the Bible has plenty to say about God's grace to 
all people and God's call to justice and mercy. Jesus summarized God's law in 
these words of scripture: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart 
and with all your soul and with all your mind . . . [and] you shall love your 
neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:37-39).


SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY: 

John Boswell "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality"
(University of Chicago, 1980); 

George R. Edwards "Gay/Lesbian Liberation : A Biblical Perspective"
(Pilgrim, 1984); 

Victor Paul "Furnish The Moral Teaching of Paul"
(Rev. ed. Abingdon, 1985); 

David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, Froma I. Zeitlin (Eds.) "Before Sexuality:
The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World"
(Princeton, 1989); 

David M. Halperin "One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on 
Greek Love" (Routledge, 1990); 

Donald J. Miller and Robert E. Romanelli, "Heterosexism and the Golden Rule,"
Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 1 (4) 1991; 

Robin Scroggs "The New Testament and Homosexuality"
(Fortress, 1983); 

John J. Winkler "The Constraints of Desire. The Anthropology of Sex and Gender
in Ancient Greece" (Routledge, 1990).

If you would like to learn more, write to Dr. Ralph Blair, 311 E. 72 Street, 
New York, NY 10021. He is the founder of Evangelicals Concerned, a national 
organization dedicated to assisting lesbian and gay men and churches better 
understand Homosexuality and the good news of God's grace and peace. Dr. Blair 
is the editor of a quarterly literature review on religion and Homosexuality 
which will be sent to you free upon request.