What The Bible Really Says About Homosexuality
by Rev. Colin Bossen, October 11, 2009*
This should be a very brief sermon. The answer to today's rhetorical question is actually delightfully short. To the query "What does the Bible say about homosexuality?" one should respond nothing. Unfortunately, the confusion that some people have over what the Bible says and the subsequent way that they use their confusion to try to oppress members of the GLBT community requires a longer response.
Homosexuality as we understand it is a contemporary phenomena derived from the development of the psychological understanding of sexual orientation in mid-19th and early 20th century. The word homosexual itself only dates to the 1860s. It is inaccurate to claim that the Bible, a collection of texts written between 1,900 to 3,000 years ago, has something to say about so contemporary a subject.
The texts that make up the Bible were created by a diverse set of communities all bound by their own particular cultural locations. The texts were written for members of those communities to preserve their sacred traditions and histories and to make rhetorical points about the pressing issues of the day. Viewed from the distance of several thousand years some of the issues that the biblical texts address are of no concern to us and others remain quite important.
Generally speaking there are two ways to read the Bible. The first, favored by our fundamentalist friends, might be called the literalist approach. This strategy calls for taking each word of the Bible as literally true. Whatever the Bible means to 21st century eyes, in whatever language it is encountered, must be what it has meant for all time. The will of God, Biblical literalists argue, is unchanging and the truths set down in the texts are eternal. Jesus's words to his disciples meant the same thing to them as they do to us.
There are a myriad of problems with this approach. For one thing, texts are the products of particular cultures at particular moments in time. Those cultures concerns may or may not be ours. Categories of being, such as homosexuality, may exist in one culture but not another. Technology, social organization and economic structures all vary greatly across time. A text describing the experiences of a peasant leader 2,000 years ago meant something different to the people who wrote than it does to us today.
Additionally, most biblical literalists do not read the biblical texts in their original Hebrew and Greek. Therefore, their understanding of what the text literally means is greatly mediated by the choices of the text's translator. Many words from Greek or Hebrew have no exact equivalent in English. This point was dear to the heart of many of our Unitarian ancestors. They argued against the Trinity partially by claiming that some of the biblical passages that supported the doctrine were mistranslations.
Broadly speaking the alternative to biblical literalism is historical critical scholarship. This school of thought believes that in order to understand any text in the Bible one must first understand the historical context from which it emerged. Nuances of language should be acknowledged and attempts to read into the texts 21st century values, perspectives or issues are irresponsible acts of revisionism.
Approaching biblical texts from the historical critical perspective does not necessarily mean rejecting the idea that the texts contain the voice of God. There are plenty of biblical scholars who take a historical critical approach and treat the texts as sacred. The technique just asks the reader to figure out what the text meant in its original context before trying to discern what the text is calling one to do today.
Those who argue that the Bible contains within it passages that condemn homosexuality most often fall into the literalist camp. Taking a few passages that either explicitly mention or appear to denigrate homogenital acts--that is same sex sexual acts--they extrapolate that biblical texts prove homosexuality to be sinful, wicked and unnatural. The problem with this is that the authors of the various biblical texts understood homogenital relations differently than we do. Indeed their understandings of human sexuality and human nature differ from ours.
This morning I want to explore a few key biblical texts that fundamentalists often use to claim that the Bible condemns homosexuals. In examining these texts from a historical critical perspective I hope to demonstrate that in each of them the key issue is neither homosexuality nor homogenital acts. Throughout the rest of the sermon I will refer primarily to homogenital acts rather than homosexuality. As I already mentioned homosexuality and the idea of sexual orientation are both fairly recent ideas. Homogenital acts, whether between women or between men, have been part of human life for thousands of years. Unlike homosexuality, homogenital acts do appear in biblical texts.
Let us begin with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the passage most often cited as a condemnation of homosexuality. As you recall in the passage, two angels visit the city of Sodom. They are met by Lot who offers them shelter in his house. After Lot has taken the angels into his home the other townspeople discover that there are strangers amongst them and demand that Lot turn the strangers over to them. The townspeople plan to sexually violate the strangers. Lot, in a move that seems troubling to these modern eyes, offers the townspeople two of his daughters in the strangers' stead. The townspeople grow irate and just before they attack Lot he is pulled to safety by the angels. The angels then blind their would-be-attackers with a flash of light.
God decided to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah before the angels arrived in Sodom. According to Genesis 18:20 God describes the "outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah...[as] great, and their sin...[as] grave." God had sent the angels to Sodom to determine whether or not there were enough innocent people within its bounds to justify sparing the city. The behavior of the townspeople confirms God's belief that the city is wicked and God decides to destroy both Sodom and Gomorrah in "sulfurous fire." That God's verdict on the city's wickedness occurs before the angels even visit the city should suggest that something other than homogenital acts is at stake.
Despite this biblical literalists like to focus on the desire of the townspeople to have sex with the angels. The issue is distorted. Rape is not the problem. Instead objection is made to only a dimension of the violence, the homogenital aspect. The problem, the biblical literalists believe, is not that the men of Sodom attempted to sexually violate their guests but that they wanted to engage in same sex relations.
A historical critical reading of the text suggests that the crucial issue was not homogenital acts. It was the treatment of outsiders by the people of Sodom. The treatment of strangers is a frequent biblical concern for as Exodus commands "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." For people of biblical times the issue of hospitality was important. As the scholar Daniel Helminiak argues, "In desert country, where Sodom lay, to stay outside to be exposed to the cold of the night could be fatal. So a cardinal rule of Lot's society was to offer hospitality to travelers...This rule was so strict that no one might harm even an enemy who had been offered shelter for the night." The failure of the people of Sodom to take in travelers was a grave one.
That the sin of Sodom was something other than homogenital acts is made clear in part by references to the city's destruction found within the Bible itself. For example in Ezekiel 16:49 we find the words "Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy." In this passage no mention of homogenital acts or even the threatened rape of the angels is made. Instead Sodom's sin is cast as not sharing its bounty with the poor and needy.
An examination of parallel texts contemporary to but from outside of the Bible support the claim that a key concern within the story of Sodom is hospitality. Ovid's Metamorphoses, to mention one example, contains a similar tale to the one found in Genesis. Two divine beings come to visit a community. The community is inhospitable to them and they have trouble finding lodging for the night. Each door that they knock on is closed in their faces. Finally they come upon the home of Baucis and Philemon. These two poor peasants take them in. In exchange for their hospitality the gods decide to spare the couple when they destroy the surrounding "wicked neighborhood."
In this reading the message of Sodom and Gomorrah is clear. We are to be hospitable to outsiders and, in the words of Ezekiel, "the poor and the needy." If the passage has anything to say about homosexuality it only does in the most general sense. It calls us to compassionate to members of the GLBT community to extent that they number among the marginalized.
We turn now from the story of Sodom to two other passages frequently cited as a condemnation of homosexuality. Both are found in Leviticus. The first one, 18:22 reads, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence." The second text, 20:13 states, "If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death--their bloodguilt is upon them."
These texts sound harsh and appear to be pretty straightforward. Unlike the story of Sodom here it is difficult to argue that the biblical text is concerned with something other than homogenital acts. But context is everything. The section of Leviticus in which these passages occur is known as a the Holiness Code. This is the part of Leviticus that contains most of the purity laws. These existed to keep the people of Israel separate from the surrounding peoples of Canaan. One of the ways it did this was by emphasizing that the mixing of kinds would result in impurity. Elsewhere in the Holiness Code, for example, it is related that "You shall not let your cattle mate with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; you shall not put on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of material."
The objection to homogenital acts is best understood in this light. The issue is the confusion of roles, specifically the sexual penetration of one man by another man. This transcends gender norms and mixes the role of a man with that of a woman. This what is meant by "as one lies with a woman." Interestingly, nowhere in this text is anything said about female homogenital acts. Apparently the issue is the confusion of male gender roles and the act of penetration itself. Same sex loving between women was apparently not a concern of the authors of the Hebrew Bible.
It is also worth noting that both references to male homogenital acts in Leviticus appear among long lists of sexual activities that are considered to be abhorrent. Many of these activities are mentioned elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible as prohibited. Adultery is forbidden in at least four instances outside of Leviticus. Incest at least three times and bestiality twice. Homogenital acts, however, are only prohibited within the Holiness Code. This implies that their prohibition is entirely due to the concerns of the section within which they appear, a section that opposes them because of the mixing of types. Therefore, Leviticus prohibits homogenital acts only for members of the tribe of Israel. The prohibition is so they can differentiate themselves from the surrounding tribes. The ultimate issue is of ritual and racial purity, neither of which concern us.
Before leaving the Hebrew Bible and moving on to discuss the Christian New Testament I want to briefly turn to one of the more interesting relationships in the Bible. It suggests the opinions held by the communities that wrote the Hebrew Bible on homogenital acts was more complicated than most biblical literalists care to admit. I refer to relationship between Jonathan and David.
Jonathan was the son of Saul, the first king of Israel. David was one of Saul's military champions. After Saul's death he became king of Israel. Some scholars argue that Jonathan and David were lovers. They base their argument on several passages. 1 Samuel 18:1-5 reads, in part, "Jonathan's soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as himself...Jonathan and David made a pact, because [Jonathan] loved him as himself." Another passage, 2 Samuel 1:26, relates David's reaction to the death of Jonathan. It reads: "I grieve for you, / My brother Jonathan, / You were most dear to me. / Your love was wonderful to me / More than the love of women."
The claim that Jonathan and David were lovers is further bolstered by the fact that during biblical times in many cultures noble male military leaders took close male allies as lovers. Such relationships were the norm throughout the ancient near east. If David and Jonathan were lovers the authors of the biblical texts might not have thought that that aspect of their relationship was worthy of note.
The possibility that Jonathan and David were lovers complicates the Hebrew Bible's overall verdict on homogenital acts. David is one of the great heroes of the Hebrew Bible. If it was acceptable for him to engage in homogenital acts then it would have been acceptable for anyone.
The Christian New Testament contains a small handful of texts that address homogenital acts. Only one of them, found in Romans, discusses same sex sexual relations at any length. It contains the only reference in either the Jewish or the Christian scriptures to female same sex relations. The text reads, in part, "As a result God has given them up to shameful passions. Among them women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and men too, giving up natural relations with women, burn with lust for one another; males behave indecently with males, and are paid in their own persons the fitting wage of such perversion."
Here, again, context is everything. Romans was written to the early community of Christ worshippers in Rome. The community was a mixture of Jews and Greeks. Like most mixed communities of Christ worshippers the two groups feuded over questions of ritual purity. The Jews thought it was necessary to follow Jewish law to be a member of the community. The Greeks did not.
The section in which Paul discusses homogenital acts is contained within a larger passage in which he paints the Greeks as fools for worshipping "an image shaped like mortal man" and generally not following the Jewish law. He does this to gain the confidence of the Jewish members of his audience. Having gained their trust he quickly turns the tables and in the next passage accuses them of dishonoring "God by breaking" the law. The intent is clear. It is not to single out homogenital behavior as immoral but rather to suggest to both groups that everyone in the community is living in a state of ritual impurity.
Paul is actually fine with ritual impurity. He described himself as the apostle to the Gentiles and believed that all could be "one body in Christ" regardless of an individual’s state of religious cleanliness. As he writes later in Romans 14:14, "All that I know of the Lord Jesus convinces me that nothing is impure in itself; only, if anyone considers something impure, then for him it is impure." In other words, God does not care about ritual purity--and in the case of the subject at hand, homogenital acts. Humans might care but that is a human matter. Do not let these human notions of ritual impurity get in the way of loving God, loving each other and building the beloved community.
It was also Paul who wrote in Galatians 3:28 "There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you all are one person in Christ Jesus." This is the true sentiment that animates many of the early texts of the Christian community. It is not a spirit of exclusion but a vision of radical inclusion, meant to sweep up all of the world's peoples into one community. It is a spirit that inspired our Christian Universalist ancestors to preach not hellfire and damnation but the love of a God who embraced all of humanity.
This is the spirit of which we should remind all of those who misread the Bible and claim that it is a weapon of exclusion. It is a spirit that challenges us not to build a world were some are persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity but where all instead are free to reach their full human potential. It is a spirit that calls us to work for marriage equality, full human rights for all and a world in which the poor and needy are taken in and fed, the stranger is sheltered and people learn that the human divisors like race, class, gender, sexual orientation and age are merely artificial barriers to building a beloved community.
May it be so and Amen.
* This sermon leans heavily on the book What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality by Daniel Helminiak and the work of my professor on Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School Tikva Frymer-Kensky for its scholarship.