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 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)