What does the Bible really say about being gay?
Read sections of a paper written on Homosexuality and the Bible.
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Just being Gay......
Sodom & Gomorrah
Levitical Law
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The critical fact generally unknown to or overlooked by heterosexuals is that homosexuality is something quite distinct from homosexual behaviour and even from homosexual desires or lust. Homosexuality is an emotional and affectional orientation towards people of the same sex. It may or may not involve sexual acts, though of course it usually does. On the other hand, homosexual acts can be and are performed by both homosexuals AND heterosexuals, and homosexual desire or lust is probably experienced by most heterosexuals. (The most common instances of extensive homosexual behaviour by hetersexuals ofccur in those situations such as prisons where heterosexual partners are unavailable.) This is why those who possess this same-sex emotional orientation abjure the term homosexual and call themselves by their own slang word, Gay. The word homosexual for them overemphasizes the specifically sexual element in their feelings. Because it was coined by the scientific community to label them, it also carries overtones of clinical pathology which they reject. Since 1974 the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have both officially disavowed this implication of the label, but the Gay community continues to reject the word. So even in general usages "gay" is replacing "homosexual" just as "black" or "Afro-American" has replaced "Negro". Most people grow up to want and seek an intimate and loving relationship with a person of the opposite sex. Gay people on the other hand are those who have discovered that they want and seek such a relationship with a person of the same sex. Why and how this variant occurs is not now and probably never will be the subject of any pat explanation because it is the consequence of a wide range of factors, some of which are environmental and some possibly hereditary or physical. What is imporant, though, from the point of view of sin is that most Gay people have no conscious recollection of ever having chosen this orientation any more than the ordinary hetersexual ever consciously chose to want the opposite sex. It is simply a given in their emotional make-up, an integral part of the personality. And they sense that nothing on earth will ever change this, just as the ordinary heterosexual cannot imagine changing into a homosexual.The reason therefore why Gay people seek out others of their own sex and engage in sexual behaviour with them is not that they are incapable of bridling their lusts or are perversely determined to disobey God but simply because the option open to the rest of humankind - a hetersoexual relationship and specifically marriage to a prtner of the opposite sex - is not open to them. Legally of course it is open, but emotionally it is not. It would for them be living a lie - a sin against their partner as well as themselves. Such a relationship does not perform for them the function it is meant to perform - to satisfy, to recreate, to replenish. Unlike the heterosexual they feel completed only by a person of the same sex.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 and 19 has traditionally in Christianity been thought to demonstrate God's condemnation of homosexual behaviour. All this because the Hewbrew word meaning "to know" in Gensis 19:5 has been interpreted to mean "have sexual intercourse with." "They [the townsmen of Sodom] called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to use, that we may know them.' " In the story God informs Abraham that these two cities will be destroyed because of their great wickedness, but the wickedness is never specified. Abraham persuades God to spare the cities if even ten righteous men can be found in them. Two angels them come to Sodom to investigate and are given hospitality by Abraham's nephew Lot. All the townsmen both young and old surround the house and demand to "know" the two strangers, but Lot refuses to surrended them up and offers instead his two virgin daughters. When this offer is rejected, the angels pull Lot inside and shut the door, striking the townsmen blind so that they grope about in darkness. The angels then urge Lot and his household to flee the city to escape its destruction. Actually in the Bible this Hebrew word "to know" rarely means sexual intercourse. Apart from this story and the counterpart tale in Judges 19, it has that meaning in only about fifteen instances out of more than 900, and in all those few instances it denotes hetersoexual coitus as, for instance, in Genesis 19:8). Some scholars believe that here, because of the circumstances, it has only its usual meaning of "become aquainted with." Lot himself was a resident alien in Sodom, and for such a person to harbor two other foreigners within the city's gates could well rouse suspicion that they were spies looking for weaknesses in its defenses that a potential enemy could exploit. The townsmen therefore had a perfectly justifiable excuse for demanding that the two strangers show themselves so that their indentities and the purpose of their visit could be ascertained. Lot's reaction however indicates that there was some serious mischief afoot, and his offering the townsmen intercourse with his two virgin daughters to kepe them from doing anything to his guests does seem to support the notion that the mischief was specifically sexual. Even if the sexual interpretation is corect, the sin of Sodom does not necessarily lie in homosexuality or homosexual behaviour. Rather, this wicked thing that Lot enjoins the townsmen not to do is rape pure and simple, and gang rape at that. Rape is not a sin peculiar to homosexuality; it occurs far more often in a heterosexual ontext. Its sinfulness lies not in the context, whether heterosexual or homosexual, but in the victimisation of the nonconsenting partner. In our reading today of this story we overlook a little known fact - that the entire ancient Near East hospitality to sojourners and travellers was not seen to be, as with us, a merely a voluntary option but rather was a sacred religious duty. See Leviticus 19:33-34; Matthew 25:35, 38, and 43. Thus whatever the townsmen intended, any kind of mistreatment or indignity inflicted on Lot's guests would be a sin. It would violate the sacred obligation of hospitality. And indeed this latter is the sin or wrong Lot's own words indicate in verse 8 - "Don't do anything to these men, for you know they have come under the shelter of my roof." This interpretation is further buttressed by the fact that the story presents in such marked contrast to the behaviour of the Sodomites the elaborate hospitality shown the angelic visitors by Abraham and Lot. Finally it is worth noting for future reference that sexual intercourse between humans and angels - two different orders of creation - would in itself have been wrong in the eyes of the Jews, who would remember that in Genesis 6:1-8 the disaster of the Great Flood comes hard on the heels of a charge that the "sons of God" (presumably angels) took to wife the daughters of men. The idea that the Sodom story is not an indictment of homosexuality is no new-fangled interpretation. Most later Jewish commentary on it both inside and outside of the Bible does not make out the sin of these cities to be homosexuality or homosexual behaviour. According to Isaiah 1:9 and 3:9, it was a lack of social justice; according to Ezekiel 16:46-52 it was disregard for the poor; and according to Jeremiah 23:14 it was general immorality. Though ancient Rabbinical literature - the Talmud and Midrashim - often refers to Sodom in connections with sins of pride, arrogance and inhospitality, it contains only one mention of anything homosexual, namely a midrash emphasising rape and robbery of strangers. ("The Sodomites made an agreement among themselves whenever a stranger visited them they should force him to sodomy and rob him of his money.") It is primarily among Philo of Alexandria and Joesphus, that we find the homosexual interpretation, and it is probably from Josephus that the interpretation eventually found its way into the Christian Church.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 enjoin the men of Israel not to "lie with a male as with a woman," for which the latter verse invokes the death penalty. It is state to be to'ebah. This Hebrew word, generally translated as abomination in English, is used in the Old Testament to refer to idolatry and to practices associated with idolatry. And in deed the whole context of these injunctions is a polemic against the Israelites imitating the defiling practices of the Canaanites whom they displaced in Palestine. Thus again, the prohibition is probably directed against the practice of ritual homosexual prostitution as found in the Canaanite fertility cult. In any event the intent cannot be to condemn all homosexuality and homosexual behaviour because there is no prohibition whatever in Leviticus against women having sexual relations with other women. This can hardly be explained as an oversight or on the basis that what women do is never of any consequence, because these chapters do contain explicit prohibitions against both male and female intercourse with an animal. So if homosexual behaviour is supposedly such an evil in God's sigh, why does Leviticus forbid it only to males and not to females ? Apart from the association of male homosexual acts with Canaanite idolatry, the answer probably lies mainly in a concern for the "seed" of life rather than a concern about homosexuality per se. The Hebrews like other ancient peoples had no accurate knowledge of conception. They did not know that women produce eggs which the man's sperm fertilizes, but apparently thought that the seed came solely from the man; when "sowed" in a woman it would grow into a new being just as a seed from from plants will sprout and grow when sowed in the earth. They likewise did not know that matings between different species are sterile. Thus men must not expend their seed in other males where it would be unproductive, or in animals where it might result in a "confusion" such as a centaur. Women are forbidden to receive seed from an animal for the same reason, but because presumably they have no seed, what they do among themselves is inconsequential.
