Homosexuality and Religion
Nov. 20th, 2007 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleWhen I was chatting to Alec last night he told me about what he'd been up to that day, most of which had been spent preparing for a youth group he's leading this evening. he took a long time preparing it because he hasn't met this youth group before and because he was given a topic rather than a Bible verse. His topic is freedom and he's going to be studying the song of Zechariah, prophesies about what the messiah would be like and Paul's explanation of what the messiah was. Part of the song of Zechariah talks about being able to serve G@d without fear so Alec was looking through examples of people who were in some way not respectable who approached Jesus i.e. the Samaritan woman. One of the people he was looking at was the centurion who asked for healing for his son/slave/servant/friend/lover (isn't Greek a wonderfully ambiguous language).
This lead Alec into reading lots of online exegesis claiming that this story said showed the Jesus didn't think gay sex was wrong. There seem to be a number of problems with this exegesis:
1) It's not clear from the text that the centurion is actually in a gay relationship. The word used to describe their relationship could mean servant or slave or friend. It could mean boyfriend but it could not.
2) Even if the sick man were the in a sexual relationship with the centurion what does Jesus healing him show? That Jesus thought people shouldn't be excluded from medical care because they've had gay sex? I hope even the most conservative of Christians would agree with this. The Gospels describe Jesus healing lots of people, all of whom were sinners. This doesn't imply that he tacitly approved of all of their sins.
I think this points to a wider problem with a lot of Christian and Jewish justifications for why gay sex is allowed even though the Bible might seem to say that it isn't. I have heard several of these explanations put forward again and again:
1) Before {pick date of your choice between 0CE and today} there were no consensual, mutual homosexual relationships. All homosexual relationships in that time were abusive and about domination so when the Bible says 'don't lie with a man' it means 'don't have an abusive relationship with a man'.
There a couple of problems with this. Firstly, what evidence is there that mutual consensual gay relationships were invented at {insert date here}. Call me a hopeless romantic but I think it's quite likely that there have been consensual mutual gay relationships since time immemorial. Just look at the story of David and Jonathan. You can't have them as the poster boys of 'G@d loves gays' and then claim that Paul disapproved of gay sex because it was always abusive. Secondly, what about heterosexual relationships? Surely they have always been far more likely than gay relationships to be abusive because the scriptures were written in patriarchal and sexist societies. If G@d was so concerned about power imbalances, why prohibit gay sex but not heterosexual sex? Surely that's the wrong way around unless we're willing to say that the Bible is pretty much saying it's OK to rape women but not men because women are in some way second class citizens.
2) When the piece of scripture was written, gay prostitution was a really common way of worshipping the pagan gods so when it says 'don't lie with a man' it means 'don't engage in elaborate idolatrous rituals that just happen to involve ritualistic gay sex'.
This seems to be a slightly better line of attack. There are quite a few Torah prohibitions which seem to possibly be trying to prevent practices associated with idolatry, e.g. cooking a kid goat in it's mothers milk, marking the skin with tattoos or scars. However, even if we think that's might be the root of them, most Jews err on the safe side and still don't get tattoos or boils kid goats in their mother's milk because there may be other reasons for these commands that still hold today, such as compassion for animals and acknowledgment that one's body belongs to G@d. This line of attack works better for Christians who quite happily pick and choose which bits of the Torah apply to them and which don't. A greater problem is again, is there any evidence that big gay orgies were a regular part of religious practice in Ancient Egypt or Palestine. I have heard this claim again and again from religious liberals but never from and Egyptologist. Surely if you discovered evidence of the big gay orgy cult you'd be write some nice salacious popular history books about it and definitely get a Channel 4 documentary with tasteful, not at all for titillation, reconstructions of said gay orgies.
3) If we love each other and it doesn't hurt anyone else then it must be good.
I know I'm on slippery ground with this one as I'm dating someone my co-religionists would definitely say I shouldn't be in a relationship with and it would be quite easy to interpret Paul to say that Alec shouldn't be dating me. However, let's just look at the logical consequences of this idea. There are an awful lot of prohibited sexual relationships in Judaism some of which are retained by Christianity. Under the 'mutual love is enough' argument we would allow: cohenim marrying converts and divorcees, mumzirim marrying non-mumzer Jews by birth, marrying out, and incest. Depending upon what stream you're in you might be OK with some of those relationships but I've yet to hear a liberal Christian or Jew advocate tolerance of incest. If 'love is enough' what argument is there against incest that doesn't amount to 'urgh, it's just wrong innit' or depend upon eugenic arguments.
I'm not saying that I think gay sex is wrong. I'm saying could we please come up with some better justifications that aren't full of more holes than a swiss cheese.
This lead Alec into reading lots of online exegesis claiming that this story said showed the Jesus didn't think gay sex was wrong. There seem to be a number of problems with this exegesis:
1) It's not clear from the text that the centurion is actually in a gay relationship. The word used to describe their relationship could mean servant or slave or friend. It could mean boyfriend but it could not.
2) Even if the sick man were the in a sexual relationship with the centurion what does Jesus healing him show? That Jesus thought people shouldn't be excluded from medical care because they've had gay sex? I hope even the most conservative of Christians would agree with this. The Gospels describe Jesus healing lots of people, all of whom were sinners. This doesn't imply that he tacitly approved of all of their sins.
I think this points to a wider problem with a lot of Christian and Jewish justifications for why gay sex is allowed even though the Bible might seem to say that it isn't. I have heard several of these explanations put forward again and again:
1) Before {pick date of your choice between 0CE and today} there were no consensual, mutual homosexual relationships. All homosexual relationships in that time were abusive and about domination so when the Bible says 'don't lie with a man' it means 'don't have an abusive relationship with a man'.
There a couple of problems with this. Firstly, what evidence is there that mutual consensual gay relationships were invented at {insert date here}. Call me a hopeless romantic but I think it's quite likely that there have been consensual mutual gay relationships since time immemorial. Just look at the story of David and Jonathan. You can't have them as the poster boys of 'G@d loves gays' and then claim that Paul disapproved of gay sex because it was always abusive. Secondly, what about heterosexual relationships? Surely they have always been far more likely than gay relationships to be abusive because the scriptures were written in patriarchal and sexist societies. If G@d was so concerned about power imbalances, why prohibit gay sex but not heterosexual sex? Surely that's the wrong way around unless we're willing to say that the Bible is pretty much saying it's OK to rape women but not men because women are in some way second class citizens.
2) When the piece of scripture was written, gay prostitution was a really common way of worshipping the pagan gods so when it says 'don't lie with a man' it means 'don't engage in elaborate idolatrous rituals that just happen to involve ritualistic gay sex'.
This seems to be a slightly better line of attack. There are quite a few Torah prohibitions which seem to possibly be trying to prevent practices associated with idolatry, e.g. cooking a kid goat in it's mothers milk, marking the skin with tattoos or scars. However, even if we think that's might be the root of them, most Jews err on the safe side and still don't get tattoos or boils kid goats in their mother's milk because there may be other reasons for these commands that still hold today, such as compassion for animals and acknowledgment that one's body belongs to G@d. This line of attack works better for Christians who quite happily pick and choose which bits of the Torah apply to them and which don't. A greater problem is again, is there any evidence that big gay orgies were a regular part of religious practice in Ancient Egypt or Palestine. I have heard this claim again and again from religious liberals but never from and Egyptologist. Surely if you discovered evidence of the big gay orgy cult you'd be write some nice salacious popular history books about it and definitely get a Channel 4 documentary with tasteful, not at all for titillation, reconstructions of said gay orgies.
3) If we love each other and it doesn't hurt anyone else then it must be good.
I know I'm on slippery ground with this one as I'm dating someone my co-religionists would definitely say I shouldn't be in a relationship with and it would be quite easy to interpret Paul to say that Alec shouldn't be dating me. However, let's just look at the logical consequences of this idea. There are an awful lot of prohibited sexual relationships in Judaism some of which are retained by Christianity. Under the 'mutual love is enough' argument we would allow: cohenim marrying converts and divorcees, mumzirim marrying non-mumzer Jews by birth, marrying out, and incest. Depending upon what stream you're in you might be OK with some of those relationships but I've yet to hear a liberal Christian or Jew advocate tolerance of incest. If 'love is enough' what argument is there against incest that doesn't amount to 'urgh, it's just wrong innit' or depend upon eugenic arguments.
I'm not saying that I think gay sex is wrong. I'm saying could we please come up with some better justifications that aren't full of more holes than a swiss cheese.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 10:53 am (UTC)The rules about what sort of Jew certain sorts of Jew might marry - I don't really understand them, but if someone in one of those categories were to say "stuff this, I'm going to marry this Hindu that I am in love with" would they be chucked out of "being Jewish" or would they just have some sort of rank taken away from them? Is there really some argument that in order to properly shepherd your Jewish 'congregation' you need to be married to someone else who is going to help with that (and what's up with converts not being Jewish enough?).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 12:21 pm (UTC)The rules in Judaism aren't enforced, you follow them because you think they are the Right Thing to Do. As with anything, there may be informal social sanctions if you don't follow the rules but, depending upon what jewish communities you move in, even those can be pretty weak and can be avoided by keeping what you're doing secret. For most Christians and Jews there isn't much of a Big Brother (other than G@d) checking what they're doing. For example, no one's checking whether Alec and I have sex, most of our friends probably think we're already at it like rabbits, but it's important to Alec to try to work out whether G@d wants him to have sex. Similarly, many gay Christians and Jews want to come to an honest opinion about whether G@d wants them to have sex and try to follow it. I think this is something that non-religious people sometimes have trouble understanding.
This isn't so true with clergy. Currently CofE clergy have to agree to follow the Windsor report that says that clergy are allowed to have same sex partners as long as the a celebate (a leave exactly what that means open to interpretation). CofE clergy are allowed to have non-Christian partners but have to get special permissio to marry a divorcee.
Currently there are no rabbinic colleges that will accept candidates with non-Jewish partners. Generally most rabbinic colleges expect their students to abide by roughly what their movement thinks a Good Jew should be doing, presumably because their supposed to be setting an example.
I think you've got mixed up between rabbis and cohenim. Rabbis are the people shepherding congregations. Cohenim are the people who would be preists in the temple if we still had a temple. I think the rules about who cohens can marry are mainly based upon some kind of idea that cohens should only marry virgins and divorcees and converts are assumed to not be virgins.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 12:26 pm (UTC)Ah, yes I was. Whups - thanks for explaining.
It's all very complicated, I'm glad I don't think I need to follow such rules; obviously you have to make your own personal choice about whether you follow those rules - I only get annoyed about them when people tell me *I* should follow them too.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 04:53 pm (UTC)Why don't the Jews build a new temple, and isn't it fairly important that they have a temple (which they haven't had for quite a long time)?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 06:20 pm (UTC)In more extended form, since the destruction of the second temple Jews hae never been in control of the land that the temple has to stand on (temple mount), or at least never been in enough of control of it to be able to do what they wanted with it without causing a huge war that would kill a sizable chunk of the world Jewish population. Even if we did control the land and could build on it without upsetting a few billion people, I think a lot of the details about how exactly to build the temple and run things within it, have been lost in the mists of time. Due to these problems, most Jews who believe that the temple will be rebuilt think that it will only be rebuilt when the messiah comes, there's world peace and everyone realises that we were right all along so they don't mind us rebuilding the temple.
We've managed quite well for nearly two millenia without a temple. Quite a lot of Jews aren't actually that keen on having another one, particularly if it involves animal sacrifices.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 06:58 pm (UTC)Why can't you build it elsewhere? Wouldn't a temple elsewhere be better than no temple at all?
What are the worst case consequences of not having the temple?
The animal sacrifices thing is odd, surely if you're commanded to do so by your deity you ought to do it, and you ought to consider such sacrifices to be morally OK.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 09:22 pm (UTC)Deuteronomy is heavily in favour (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy%2012;&version=31;) of centralised worship. The Davidic dynasty invested a lot of effort in making the place of that centralisation Jerusalem. After centuries of this, it became unthinkable for it to be anywhere else; it's one of the four holy cities of Judaism.
What are the worst case consequences of not having the temple?
Business as usual. :o) Whilst it's important to Orthodox Judaism that there is a Temple, there are also injunctions in the Talmud against trying to reverse the Exile and bringing the Messiah (both of which are linked with the building of the Temple) by force. (Historically, this was because the last time the Jews had tried to do so, in the Bar Kochba revolt, it had resulted in hundreds of thousands of Jews being killed, and vast numbers more being carried off into slavery by the Romans; however, Judaism subsequently retconned theological reasons for not forcing the end of days.)
The animal sacrifices thing is odd, surely if you're commanded to do so by your deity you ought to do it, and you ought to consider such sacrifices to be morally OK.
The thing is, some Jews, including the notable mediaeval commentator Maimonides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides), consider that sacrifices were never necessary to the worship of G-d, but were rather a sop to a people not ready for a religion without. Now religion based on prayer rather than sacrifices is normal, to reinstate them would be a backward step.
But in any case, Judaism is not, and has never been, bound by the literal word of the Bible. The Torah, for example, mandates capital punishment; but the rabbis of antiquity legislated it out of effective existence. As Rabbi Jeremy Gordon puts it, they were passionately in favour of the existence of the death penalty, and passionately against its practice.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-20 09:30 pm (UTC)Or even if you become the Bishop of Birmingham. :o)
I think the rules about who cohens can marry are mainly based upon some kind of idea that cohens should only marry virgins and divorcees and converts are assumed to not be virgins.
Cohanim can marry converts; it's only the Cohen Gadol who can't. (Also, cohanim are not forbidden from marrying non-virgins, but זוֹנוֹת—a distinction of more than theoretical interest to me (and which I shan't lecture you about any more, since you were sitting next to me at the appropriate talk (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/123785.html) :o)).)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-21 08:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-21 09:05 pm (UTC)The problem with the prohibition of Jewish intermarriage is often that reason that the Rabbi's are concerned that the person who intermarries looses his/her identity. If the mother is not Jewish or does not convert her children won't be Jewish. The mother is more important as you can be sure who gave birth to the child but not who gave the sperm.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-22 10:53 am (UTC)HOWEVER:
1)you could have you DNA screened for such dangerous genes.
2)you could just not have children
3)non-incestuous couples can still share recessive genes
The point about the children of a non-Jewish mother not being considered Jewish is one that goes some way to explaining why certain Jewish men must marry Jewish women - that does make some sense.