Life In Technicolor: Gay Christians and the Bible
By: Joe Forrest
Tags: Religion, Justice, Christianity, Bible, LGBTQ

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

The writer of more than a quarter of the New Testament, the apostle Paul helped shape the direction of Christianity as it spread across the Mediterranean in the First Century. And he remains one of the most polarizing and influential figuresin Western Civilization.

The writings of Paul have been used to justify slavery and the oppression of women for centuries. They’ve also been used to spearhead abolitionist movements and fight for racial and gender equality.

And, it’s from Paul that we get all of our direct references to homosexuality in the New Testament. Therefore, it’s vital we grapple with what homosexuality looked liked two thousands years ago.

In Paul’s immediate context, one of the most common forms of homosexuality was pedastry, a socially accepted sexual relationship between an adult male and a younger, lower-class male.

The younger male would take on the role of a deliciae, or “pet” (from which we get our word delicious), and would exist to gratify the sexual whims of his male master.

In the 2nd-Century poem “The Boy Muse,” the author graphically describes his sexual desire for prepubescent boys:

“I enjoy twelve-year-olds at the height of their beauty. But a thirteen-year-old is even more desirable. And the one passing through his fourteenth year is a sweeter blossom of the love deities. More enjoyable is the one who’s barely fifteen. Sixteen is the gods’ year.”

While shocking to modern sensibilities, pedophilia wasn’t a punishable offense in the Roman world, and it wasn’t unheard of for young boys to be kidnapped and sold as sex slaves for higher-class Roman citizens.

In Paul Among the People, Biblical translator Sarah Ruden writes,

“It was, for example, normal for a [Roman] family of any standing to dedicate one slave to a son’s protection, especially on the otherwise unsupervised walk to and from school.”

Poor and lower-class families would even be petitioned (and paid) to let their son become a deliciae in hopes that he would have a better life among the high-class citizenry. To put it lightly, this was rarely the outcome.

Once the boy began showing signs of puberty, he would often be discarded and forced to work in a brothel, carrying with him the residual shame associated with passive homosexuality for the rest of his life. In some cases, a deliciae would be castrated prior to the onset of puberty in an effort to preserve his prepubescent features.

Another form of socially acceptable homosexuality included a male master sleeping with a male slave. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote that a slave “must remain awake throughout the night, dividing his time between his master’s drunkenness and his lust.”

High-ranking soldiers would bring young boys (squires) on lengthly military campaigns to help alleviate their sexual urges while away from home. And the raping of one’s enemy after defeating them in battle was considered the ultimate act of dominance (and still is in many parts of the world today).

Some Greek and Romans even believed homosexual rape to be a divinely sanctioned act. Priapus was a god of sexual aggression, and was portrayed in idol form as a scarecrow with an oversized penis. Priapus, it was said, would rape intruders and enemy combatants.

It’s also vital that we take into account the political climate and decadent behavior of Rome’s leaders. During the time Paul was penning his letters, Nero was the Emperor of Rome, who was both detested and revered for his shameless lack of self control and sexual overindulgences.

In a one shocking act of public spectacle, Nero “married” a man and let himself be sexually penetrated by his groom in front of his party guests. In the words of Tacitus, a Roman historian who witnessed the event, “everything was public which even in natural union was veiled by night.”

Additionally, after beating one of his wives to death, Nero castrated and married a young boy named Sporus, who was said to have resembled the murdered wife.

In 64 AD, Nero blamed the Great Fire of Rome on the burgeoning Christian community in the city. Nero’s accusation instigated the first wave of Christian persecution in recorded history. According to Tacitus, Christians were arrested and brutally executed by “being thrown to the beasts, crucified, and burned alive.”

Taking all this into account, Paul’s grouping of “men who sleep with men” with slave traders and murders in his letter to Timothy snaps into sharper focus, and the opening of his letter to the Christians in Rome carries a visceral historical weight.

According to the Roman law Lex Scantini, men of wealth and status could enjoy sex with other men without compromising their masculinity or honor as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. As a result, same-sex behavior rarely occurred between partners of equal status — it almost always involved a higher-class male subjugating a lower-class male.

In regards to Paul’s mention of “women exchanging natural relations for those contrary to nature” in the first chapter of Romans — the only mention of same-sex sexual activity between women alluded to in the Bible — the verses should be read in light of the verses that preceded it, which appear to frame the behavior within the context of idolatrous worship.

The Roman and Greek temples of Artemis, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Astarte (among other pagan “sex cults”) were common fixtures in the metropolitan port cities that Paul visited during his missionary travels. Some of these temples featured ritualistic sex practices in which women priestess would engage in anal or oral sex with male parishoners and castrated priests or penetrative sex with other women — sexual behavior that would’ve been deemed “unnatural” because it didn’t lend itself toward procreation and put women in a position of sexual dominance over men.

In short, Paul was condemning a culture of flagrant dehumanization, sexual overindulgence, pagan worship, and brutal exploitation — who also happened to be the same people violently persecuting the early Church (and who would eventually execute Paul).

As Christianity spread through the Greek and Roman Empire, 2nd-Century historian Celsus described it as a “pathetic religion of slaves, women, and children.”

Slaves.

Women.

Children.

While Paul is frequently portrayed as a bigot by his modern critics, it’s possible Paul’s teachings on sexual ethics were readily embraced by the early Church because they offered dignity and protection to the most vulnerable in society from the most decadent and privileged members of Greco-Roman society.