Celeste J. Heery

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE BIBLE

Obviously this is a highly contentious issue. It has been difficult
for me, because as a relatively new Christian (2006), I was taught
to take the Bible literally. The church I initially went to has a firm
stance on the issue -- it is wrong. As for men and women, “The
parts fit.” That’s the central basis of their argument. I contend
that my God is a loving one, and is more concerned with us not
being motivated by lust and engaging in prostitution than He is
same-sex relationships. I also take into consideration the fact
that much of the Bible is antiquated, contains the bias of the
authors who wrote the respective books, and some parts are no
longer relevant to today’s culture. In addition, personally, I don’t
believe that everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
Obviously some parts were written to illustrate a point. What
follows below is a discussion of the parts of the Bible that refer to
homosexuality and possible interpretations.

First, some things to consider:

FIRST PREMISE: Jesus says nothing about homosexuality, and
neither do the Jewish prophets. Only six or seven of the Bible’s
one MILLION verses refer to same-sex behavior in any way, and
even when they do, they are not in the manner that is applicable
to homosexuality as it is understood today. Most people just take
it on another person’s word that homosexuality is condemned.

SECOND PREMISE: People’s misinterpretation of the Bible in
general has led to suffering, bloodshed, and death. The Bible has
been used to support slavery, segregation, and even used to
“back” reprehensible behavior, the worst among them Hitler and
the Holocaust. These practices were based on the claims that
God supported their actions and used this as an intimidation
tactic. Shakespeare said, “Even the Devil can cite Scripture for his
purpose.” People have often chosen a particular passage in the
Bible to support murdering gays and lesbians, without taking the
whole meaning into context.

THIRD PREMISE: We must be open to new truth from Scripture.
The apostle Paul’s mind was changed about certain Hebrew texts.
So, even the authors of the books of the Bible can change their
mind. Our understanding of Biblical text is not perfect. We are
all fallible.

FOURTH PREMISE: The Bible is a book about God, not about
homosexuality. It is the story about God’s love. In fact, the Bible
accepts certain practices that we now condemn.

For example,

DEUTERONOMY 22:13–21
If is it discovered that a bride is not a virgin, the Bible commands
that she be stoned to death.

DEUTERONOMY 22:22
If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife,
both are commanded to be stoned to death.

DEUTERONOMY 25:11-12
If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife tries to
help him by grabbing the other man’s genitals, her hand will be
cut off and no pity will be shown her.

MARK 10:1-12
Divorce is strictly forbidden as is remarriage of anyone who has
been divorced.

MARK 12:18-27
If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered to have sex with
each of his brothers in turn until she gives her deceased husband
an heir.

LEVITICUS 18:19
The Bible forbids a married couple to have sex while a woman is
having her period. If they do, they will be cut off from their
people.

There are more examples, such as allowing men to have
concubines, being allowed to marry children, etc. Views of this
sort need to be put in historical context. For one specific
example, consider Matthew 5. Jesus says, “…I tell you that
anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin,
gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one
part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

FIFTH PREMISE: We miss what the passages say about God
when we focus on what they say about sex. We need to ask
ourselves, in the passages which mention homosexuality, what
does the text say that we might be missing? What is the text
really saying?

SIXTH PREMISE: The biblical authors are silent about
homosexual orientation as we know it today. They neither
approve it or condemn it.

The Bible is silent on homosexual orientation. Homosexual
orientation wasn’t even discovered until the 19th century. Old
Testament authors and Paul assumed that we were all born
heterosexual, just as they believed the Earth was flat. The
German social scientist Heinrich Ulrichs was the first to claim that
homosexuals were a distinct class of people. In his studies,
homosexuals are a class of people whose drive to same-sex
intimacy is at the very core of their being from the beginning of
their lives. According to Dr. Ulrichs, what may have appeared
“unnatural” to Moses and Paul was in fact “natural” to
homosexuals.

The authors of the Bible should be considered the authorities on
faith, but not on sexual orientation.

SEVENTH PREMISE: Jesus and other Biblical authors say nothing
about homosexual orientation but they are clear about one thing:
“Love one another.”

Jesus, when asked, said the most important commandment is to
“Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to
love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

In all matters, including homosexuality, our job is to seek the
truth. There is a growing body of evidence from science,
psychology, history, psychiatry, medicine, and personal experience
that leads to a clear verdict: Homosexuality is neither a sickness
nor a sin. Unfortunately, the church has always been slow, if not
the last institution on earth, to accept new truth.

In 1632 the scientist Galileo (who was a man of faith) dared to
support the radical 15th-century idea of Copernicus that all
planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun. Immediately,
Galileo was proclaimed a heretic by the Pope who quoted
Scriptures in his attempt to disprove what science was proving.
The Pope said something we must never forget: "Recent historical
studies enable us to state that this sad misunderstanding now
belongs to the past." Unfortunately, the apology came too late to
relieve Galileo of his suffering. Imagine the suffering that could
be avoided if the church could say this to their lesbian, gay,
bisexual and trans-gender children: "We don't understand your
views about sexual orientation, but we love and trust you. As long
as you love God and seek God's will in your life, you are welcome
here.

PASSAGES IN THE BIBLE REFERRING TO HOMOSEXUALITY

GENESIS 2:21-25: Adam and Eve

Protesters often carry signs that say “It’s Adam and Eve, Not
Adam and Steve.” The creation story, however, is applicable to
not only heterosexuals, but homosexuals as well. The creation
story is about showing the power of God. Because the story of
creation indicates that it is natural for a man to be with a woman
to procreate, some interpret this as meaning that gay or lesbian
couples are “unnatural.” Considering that the purpose of creating
a man and woman was to procreate, what about these situations
that the Bible is also silent on?:

-        couples who are unable to have children
-        couples who are too old to have children
-        couples who choose not to have children
-        people who are single and decide not to adopt, etc.

GENESIS 19:1-14: The Story of Sodom

Jesus and the five Old Testament prophets all speak of the sins
that led to the destruction of Sodom – none of them mentions
homosexuality.

Ezekial 16:48-49 says, “This is the sin 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 God’s eyes.” Sodom was destroyed
because its people didn’t take God seriously about caring for the
poor, the hungry, the homeless, or the outcast.

Also, it was common for soldiers, thieves, and bullies to rape a
fallen enemy, asserting their victory by dehumanizing and
demeaning the vanquished. The act of rape is about power and
revenge, not about orientation. The sexual act wished by the
soldiers was of Lot’s guest being requested for rape. Lot then
offered up his daughter to them.

LEVITICUS 18:22 AND 20:13: The Heavy Hitters

Leviticus 18:6 reads: “You shall not lie with a man as one lies
with a woman. It is detestable.” A similar verse is conveyed in
Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a
woman both of them have done what is detestable. They must be
put to death…”

Leviticus is a holiness code written 3,000 years ago. This code
includes many of the sexual laws mentioned above, and a lot
more, such as those pertaining to tattoos, working on the
Sabbath, round haircuts, attending dances, etc. A holiness code
is simply a list of those things that people AT THE APPLICABLE
PLACE AND TIME find detestable. A code is not a law, and the
things which are part of the code are not part of the Ten
Commandments. Jesus came to overthrow a more legalistic model
of religion and give us freedom to access God ourselves, and part
of that is that the holiness codes, sacrifices, and religious laws
are not what's life-giving about being faithful, but rather a
commitment to justice, mercy, love, and peace. With Paul, again,
it's a central theme (or trajectory), that Jews and Gentiles, men
and women, slave and free become one in Jesus. We don't have
to live out of the holiness codes of the Hebrew Scriptures, but we
have freedom in Christ to live according to our conscience and the
call of the Spirit.

Simply put, the passages in Leviticus do not apply to
homosexuality as we understand it today.

ROMANS 1:26-27: Natural and Unnatural

In Romans 1:26-27, the apostle Paul describes non-Jewish women
who exchange “natural relations for unnatural ones”, and non-
Jewish men who “also abandoned natural relations with women
and were inflamed with lust for one another.”

Let’s put this in historical context.

Paul is writing this letter to Rome after his missionary tour of the
Mediterranean. On his journey Paul had seen great temples built
to honor Aphrodite, Diana, and other fertility gods and goddesses
of sex and passion instead of the one true God the apostle
honors. Apparently, these priests and priestesses engaged in
some odd sexual behaviors -- including castrating themselves,
carrying on drunken sexual orgies, and even having sex with young
temple prostitutes (male and female) -- all to honor the gods of
sex and pleasure.

The Bible is clear that sexuality is a gift from God. Our Creator
celebrates our passion. But the Bible is also clear that when
passion gets control of our lives, we're in deep trouble.

When we live for pleasure, when we forget that we are God's
children and that God has great dreams for our lives, we may end
up serving the false gods of sex and passion, just as they did in
Paul's time. In our obsession with pleasure, we may even walk
away from the God who created us -- and in the process we may
cause God to abandon all the great dreams God has for our lives.

Did these priests and priestesses get into these behaviors
because they were lesbian or gay? I don't think so. Did God
abandon them because they were practicing homosexuals? No.

The Reverend Dr. Louis Smedes claims,“The homosexuals that I
know have not given up heterosexual passions for homosexual
lusts. They have been homosexual from the moment of their
earliest sexual stirrings. They did not change from one orientation
to another; they just discovered that they were homosexual. It
would be unnatural for most homosexuals to have heterosexual
sex. And the homosexual people I know do not lust after each
other any more than heterosexual people do... their love for one
another is likely to be just as spiritual and personal as any
heterosexual love can be."

Romans 2 begins with "Therefore, [referring to Romans 1], you
have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in
passing judgment on another you condemn yourself..." Even after
he describes the disturbing practices he has seen, Paul warns us
that judging others is God's business, not ours.

Also, how do you explain homosexuality in nature? If God created
it, and they are operating on instinct, why does he condemn it?

1 CORINTHIANS 6:9 AND 1 TIMOTHY 1:10: Jewish Law

The Jewish law was created by God to help regulate human
behavior. To remind the churches in Corinth and Ephesus how God
wants us to treat one another, Paul recites examples from the
Jewish law first. Don't kill one another. Don't sleep with a person
who is married to someone else. Don't lie or cheat or steal. The
list goes on to include admonitions against fornication, idolatry,
whoremongering, perjury, drunkenness, revelry, and extortion. He
also includes "malokois" and "arsenokoitai."

Here's where the confusion begins. What's a malokois? What's an
arsenokoitai? Actually, those two Greek words have confused
scholars to this very day. We'll say more about them later, when
we ask what the texts say about sex. But first let's see what the
texts say about God.

After quoting from the Jewish law, Paul reminds the Christians in
Corinth that they are under a new law: the law of Jesus, a law of
love that requires us to do more than just avoid murder, adultery,
lying, cheating, and stealing. Paul tells them what God wants is
not strict adherence to a list of laws, but a pure heart, a good
conscience, and a faith that isn't phony.

That's the lesson we all need to learn from these texts. God
doesn't want us squabbling over who is "in" and who is "out." God
wants us to love one another. It's God's task to judge us. It is
NOT our task to judge one another.

So what do these two texts say about homosexuality? Are gays
and lesbians on that list of sinners in the Jewish law that Paul
quotes to make an entirely different point?

Greek scholars say that in first century the Greek word malaokois
probably meant "effeminate call boys." The New Revised Standard
Version says "male prostitutes."

As for arsenokoitai, Greek scholars don't know exactly what it
means -- and the fact that we don't know is a big part of this
tragic debate. Some scholars believe Paul was coining a name to
refer to the customers of "the effeminate call boys." So,
prostitution was the real problem.

In 1958, for the first time in history, a person translating that
mysterious Greek word into English decided it meant
homosexuals, even though there is, in fact, no such word in Greek
or Hebrew. But that translator made the decision for all of us that
placed the word homosexual in the English-language Bible for the
very first time.

In the past, people used Paul's writings to support slavery,
segregation, and apartheid. People still use Paul's writings to
oppress women and limit their role in the home, in church, and in
society.

Now we have to ask ourselves, "Is it happening again?" Is a word
in Greek that has no clear definition being used to reflect society's
prejudice and condemn God's gay children?

We all need to look more closely at that mysterious Greek word
arsenokoitai in its original context. Paul is condemning the
married men who hired hairless young boys (malakois) for sexual
pleasure just as they hired smooth-skinned young girls for that
purpose.

Responsible homosexuals would join Paul in condemning anyone
who uses children for sex, just as we would join anyone else in
condemning the threatened gang rape in Sodom or the behavior of
the sex-crazed priests and priestesses in Rome. So, once again,
this passage says a lot about God, but nothing about
homosexuality as we understand it today.

For more information contact Rev. Mel White, Soulforce.