Homosexuality and the Bible

"What is clear, always so clear, throughout the gospels, is that Jesus welcomes people that society deems outcasts."

--The Rev. Dr. Thomas D. Wintle

"I have looked out on everything I have made and behold it is very good."

--Genesis 1: 31

A few years back, when the issue of homosexuality was only just beginning to be openly discussed in religious circles, the Unitarian Universalist Association printed a pamphlet, the title page of which said, "What Jesus had to say about homosexuality." When you opened the pamphlet, it was blank.

That's right. Jesus Christ said absolutely nothing about homosexuality.

In the Bible as a whole, comprising 63 books and 1500 pages and hundreds of rules and regulations, there are only seven references to homosexuality (a couple of minor passages [in Jude and 2 Peter] condemn male sex slaves). As my colleague Suzanne Spencer has written ["What Does the Bible Really Say About Same-Sex Love?], this is "Many fewer [references] than on economic justice, many fewer than on love."

Suzanne, who is the Associate Minister at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Weston, continues:

Five of the seven passages are in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Two of the five are prohibitions against male temple prostitution--in Deuteronomy (Deut. 23: 17-18) and the First Book of Kings (1 Kings 14:24, see also 15:12 and 22:46). But these two don't really count, since the Bible takes a dim view of female prostitution, too. So now we're left with three. These consist of two verses in the "Holines Codes" of the Book of Leviticus, (Lev. 18:22 and 20:13), and also the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19: 1-20).

Soon after, a fundamentalist minister from Plainville wrote to chastise me with a line from Leviticus which appears a few verses later [20: 13; identical to 18: 22 except for the postscript death penalty]: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them." So much for compassion and understanding.

The passage may seem unequivocal, but it is not. Both of the passages from Leviticus which touch on homosexuality are part of a whole list of "abominations," all of which carry a penalty of death (whether the sentences were ever carried out, however, is questionable). Among other abominations: incest, adultery, and cursing one's mother and father.

In all, the Holiness Code contains over 600 laws, including those prohibiting males from trimming the hair around their temples [Lev. 19: 27] and having sexual contact with a woman during her menstrual period [Lev. 15: 19-24]; touching the skin of a dead pig [11: 6-8], eating shellfish [Lev. 11: 10], and working on the Sabbath [Exodus 35: 2] (the latter punishable by death); planting two different crops in the same field or wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread [Lev. 19: 19] (punishable by stoning to death); and sleeping with your in-laws [Lev. 20: 14] (punishable by burning to death).

The Holiness Code also affirms the legality of possessing slaves, provided they are from a foreign country [Lev. 25: 44]. (Exodus 21: 7 actually sanctions the selling of your daughter into slavery.)

And what of the infamous Sodom and Gomorrah [Gen. 19: 1-29]? This rather odd story centers around the attempted gang rape of Lot's guests, who are angels in disguise, by the men of the city of Sodom. It is hard to understand how this troubling act of violence can be construed as a stricture against loving and consensual homosexual relations. As Suzanne Spencer writes, "Like any rape, it has more to do with domination and control than with sexuality. In fact, homosexual rape is often committed by heterosexual men, most notoriously in prison."

And it is not clear at all that this incident is the real "sin of Sodom." The clearest definition of the sin of "sodomy" is actually found in the Book of Ezekial [Ezek. 16: 49]: "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy." (One wonders if construing the story as a stricture on same-sex relations was not just a way of diverting attention from the nearly universal sins of pride, gluttony, injustice and greed.) Another interpretation holds that the real sin of Sodom is inhospitality.

Obviously, those opposed to homosexuality solely on the basis of these Old Testament texts are being unfairly selective. But what of the New Testament? As noted already, Jesus says nothing directly about homosexuality. The New Testament references to homosexuality occur only in the writings of St. Paul (and in one of the letters of Timothy, apparently copied from Paul).

In 1 Cor. 6: 9-10, Paul includes "sodomites" in a list of those who "will not inherit the kingdom of God." (We've already considered the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and its questionable interpretation.)

In Romans 1: 26-27, Paul speaks critically of women and men who are "consumed with passion for one another." In a sermon entitled "Speaking Truth from One's Heart," George Hangen, former minister of the Belleville Congregational Church, wrote of this passage,

What's to make of all this from the Biblical perspective? My answer, as is the answer of many, is that scripture must be seen in context: context of [the] time it was written, context of where one finds themes among others. Obviously the concern for many in Old and New Testament times was for the expansion of the faith and this would not occur on one level if there were not families and children coming along to carry on the faith. Thus the outspokenness on homosexual relationships.

Indeed, it seems clear that the only homosexual behavior that Paul was aware of was exploitative. As Suzanne Spencer writes,

First of all, in Paul's world, there doesn't seem to have been any concept of homosexual orientation, or homosexual nature. Like all Biblical writers, he assumed that everyone was naturally heterosexual, and that same-sex behavior was "unnatural." Now we know differently. . . . Scholarship indicates that in the Greco-Roman world of the early church, there was only one basic model of homosexuality, and that was pederasty, the sexual use of boys by adult males.

St. Paul makes a very clear condemnation of homosexuality. But many scholars believe he is not speaking of homosexuality as we understand it today. Today many of us believe that homosexuality is something intrinsic to a person. St. Paul seems to understand homosexuality as a particular sexual transaction and not as an orientation. It shouldn't surprise us that St. Paul has a different understanding of the world than we do, Shaw continues. St. Paul also encourages the acceptance of slavery and expects women to take a secondary role in society and in the church. Why then would we condemn slavery and the discrimination of women in St. Paul's letters and yet see his understanding of homosexuality as critical to Christian morality?

What, then, are we to make of these few strictures against homosexuality that we find in the Bible? It is clear that the Bible can only be understood in the context of its own time and setting. In the case of the Hebrew Bible, context is everything. To quote Suzanne Spencer again,

The Holiness Codes were meant to address some very specific needs. The ancient Israelites were struggling to populate the land, so fertility was everything. They were also engaged in the task of nation building, and struggling to forge a distinct identity. In short, their situation was vastly different from ours. We can try to understand what these people were trying to do, without being bound by it ourselves.

The fact of the matter is, as biblical scholar Walter Wink has written, "The Bible doesn't really have a sexual ethic. What it has is a love ethic." That love ethic of the Bible is exceedingly more pervasive than those few strictures on homosexuality which are found within it. The love ethic is found throughout the Old and New Testaments, in Books and passages as diverse as The Song of Songs and the famous "love hymn" of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 13, but most powerfully in Jesus' summary of all "the Law and the Prophets" as love to God and love to one's neighbor.

I am personally saddened by all the rhetoric from American pulpits about "God loving the homosexual but hating the sin." I confess that I am perplexed about why the Catholic Church, with its extraordinary intellectual and humanistic tradition, which I greatly respect, and which includes advocacy of modern literary and historical criticism of the Bible, has chosen to align itself with Protestant Christian evangelicals and Biblical fundamentalists and, frankly, unrepentant bigots, on the issue of gay marriage, which is first and foremost, I believe, an issue of civil rights and only secondarily, as it must be in our religiously diverse country, one of any sacramental consequence. And I cannot imagine why any thinking person, in light of the sexual abuse scandal which has rocked the Catholic Church in recent years, would accept uncritically anything that that particular religious institution had to say touching on any aspect of human sexuality.

As my friend Suzanne concludes, "In its love ethic, [the Bible] speaks in one voice to all of us"--whether gay or bisexual or straight. Any relationship that is not based on love, we might say, falls outside of that ethic, and any one that is, falls within. Ironically, it was the same St. Paul who seemingly condemned homosexuality who wrote the wonderful words on which our concluding hymn is based: "Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the words to all inspire; and have not love, my words are vain, as sounding brass and hopeless gain." May we ever remain committed to seeking the truth with love, working to overcome every form discrimination, searching for wholeness in all of our relationships, in service of the highest and best that we know.

Come spirit come, our hearts control;
Our spirits long to be made whole;
Let inward love guide every deed:
By this we worship and are freed.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock

Readings: from "Bishop Shaw's Reflections Regarding Scripture and the New Hampshire Consecration" by Episcopal Bishop Thomas Shaw:

"Over the past months, some of you have asked me how Scripture informed my decision to support the ordination of the Rev. Canon Gene Robinson to the episcopate. My understanding of Scripture has been at the very heart of my decision. I have been praying and reflecting on Scripture twice a day for over 30 years. In the past several years I have continued my study of Scripture with a New Testament scholar who is also an Episcopal priest. Most of our work together has focused on the letters of Paul and the Gospels.

"As I read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I am struck again and again by our Lord's witness in reaching out to all who lived on the margins of society. In the stories of his ministry Jesus is always concerned with the people about whom nobody seems to care. He draws attention through his teaching and pastoral care to the forgotten poor, to the hungry, to lepers, to those who appear to be mentally ill, to women, to children, to those he experiences as living on the fringe of society.

"What the Gospels make very clear to us is that Jesus not only draws our attention to those outcasts but he invites them into the heart of his community of followers. The people on the margins are given a place at meals. Our Lord tells stories of how these people unrecognized by society are to be the first in the community of his followers. He points out the way in which the prevailing religious and societal definitions of purity and impurity placed some people outside of the reign of God. Jesus invites us to see that God's Kingdom is wider than we can imagine and is not limited by our ideas of who can approach God. No one is to be left out. All of us are invited to participate equally in the reign of God.

"We understand in our Anglican tradition that Scripture is to be studied by all of us, and that we are meant to prayerfully engage Scripture in the context of every human situation. When I look at our contemporary American culture I see that gay and lesbian people have been forced to live at the edge of our society. Homosexual men and women are the victims of vicious hate crimes. Gay and lesbian teenagers, because of the lack of acceptance in our society, have a rate of suicide much higher than in the heterosexual teenage population. From my reading of Scripture homosexual people share the identity of the outcast of Jesus' time and therefore in following our Savior I believe it is my Christian responsibility to invite gay and lesbian people into the very heart of our life. Jesus recognized that the outcasts of his time brought gifts and contributions that enhanced the witness of his followers. The outcasts of our day make the same contributions among those who follow Jesus in the church today. We have a richer, fuller life together because of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

from Dance in the Dark by Sydney Carter:

"The Bible is a precious book. But you can make an idol of it. You can make an idol out of anything, however good. You can make an idol out of God, or Jesus. You can make an idol out of Shakespeare or Karl Marx. And, as Zen Buddhists are well aware, you can make an idol of the Buddha. 'Walk in the Way. If the image of the Buddha rises up to block it, kill the Buddha.'

"Ikons, idols, images are necessary; but you have to use them in the proper way. They are fingers pointing (Zen again). The Bible is a forestful of fingers pointing. Worship what they point to, not the fingers."