Subject: Biblical arguments and homosexuality

From: [email-masked] (James Alan Hall)
Date: 6 Nov 91 06:50:33 GMT

The following is a document that goes through and analyses each quote
from the bible that concerns homosexuality. It's rather long but worth
the read.             

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Homosexuality and the Bible, 
An Interpretation

by
Walter Barnett



About the author:

A native of Texas Walter barnett graduated summa cum laude from Yale
University, where he was president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
He earned his Doctor of Jurisprudence at the University of Texas and his Master
of Laws at Columbia University. He was also a Fullbright Scholar at the 
College of Europe in Belgium. After a brief period of law practive in Texas
he served for four years on the staff of the Legal Adviser of the U.S 
department of State in Washington, and then taught for ten years in the law
schools of the Universities of Miami, New Mexico and Texas and at Hastings
College of Law at the University of California. He also worked for nearly two
years as Program Interpreter for the Friends Committee on Legislation of
California and is a member of the San Francisco Monthly meeting of the
Religious Society of Friends. Since the beginning of 1979 he has been living
with the Catholic Workers, first in Los Angeles and now in Redwood City,
California.
	His interest in the subject of this pamphlet goes back to 1969
when he became involved in the struggle for civil rights of Gay people.
This culminated in his first book, Sexual Freedom and the Constitution -
An Inquiry into the Constitutionality of Repressive Sex Laws (University
of new Mexico Press, 1973). He is also the author of Jesus - the Story of His
Life (Nelson-Hall, Inc., 1976). He was moved to write this pamphlet as a
result of the recent efforts of Anita Bryant in Florida and John Briggs in
California to marshall Christian support for their campaigns against the
rights of homosexuals.
	Request for permission to quote or to translate should be addressed to 
Pendle Hill Publications, Wallingford, PA 19086. USA.

ISBN 0-87574-226-2



	Most Christians are still uneasy about homosexuality. Even Gay 
Christians themselves often share this uneasiness, because we have all
been brought up in the same Christian tradition. There are many causes for 
the uneasiness; but the one cause which seems most important in the minds
of all is the conviction that the Bible condemns homosexuality, in itself
and in all its manifestations.
	In recent years a slow change has begun to occur in Christian
attitudes towards homosexuality and homosexual persons. Some Christians
while maintaining the traditional attitude for themselves, have become prepared
to admit that it is not necessary in secular society to punish homosexuals for 
behaviour which is permissible to heterosexuals. On this basis, most which is 
Christian churches have now made formal statements supporting the right
of homosexual people ot protection against discrimination.
	Some Christians have gone further and acknowledge that the 
particular virulence with which some people have attached and condemned 
homosexual acts and homosexual persons is totally unjustified, if a caring
person weighs the relative importance given to homosexual behavior in the
Bible, and especially if he or she respects the attitudes appropriate
for a Christian when dealing with fellow human beings. Some theologians
and a number of Gay Christians, working from a growing understanding of
the biblical texts, have come to the conclusion that the Bible does not
exclude homosexual people form the Christian Fellowship, within bounds
analogous to those applied to heterosexuals.
	The Bible does mention homosexual behavior in extremely negative
terms in a handful of widely scattered verses, but modern research has turned 
up considerable evidence casting doubt on the traditional interpretation of
these passages - an interpretation that has borne tragic consqeuences for
homosexuals throughout almost the whole of Christian history. The purpose
here is to examine this evidence, together with some of the light science has
shed on the subject of psychosexual development, in the hope that it will lead
to a more informed appraisal.
	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 hetersexuals,
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 feeligns. 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.
	Some people are truely bisexual; they find both sexes equally
interesting and attractive. These however are few and far between. The 
orientation of the great majority is fixed and definite, towards either
the opposite sex or their own. This is not to deny that many people
engage in some experimentation on both sides of the fence before they know
for sure which side is home, but it is a mistake to conclude from this fact
that all people are basically bisexual. It is equally a mistake to conclude
that all people are basically heterosexual and a few are lured away into
homosexuality by seduction. The truth rather seems to be that human 
sexuality is initially free-floating and unattached, that an emotional
interest develops very early in life, and that this interest then comes
increasingly to the fore as puberty and adolescence bring on explicitly
sexual fantasies and behaviour.
	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.
	This is not to say that Gay people are incapable of heterosexual
behaviour. Many can perform heterosexual coitus just as many heterosexual
people are capable of engaging in homosexual acts. But if given the choice
they will prefer a partner of the same sex, not out of mere perversity but
because it is only a partner of the same sex who satisfies them emotionally.
	Now in order for anything to be a sin there must be a possibility
of moral choice. Where there is no choice there can be no sin. So if one's 
sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, it cannot be a sin to be a
homosexual. True, it may be admitted, but one does have the choice of
committing or not homosexual acts. This boils down to saying that whether
or not homosexuality - the orientation - is a sin, homosexual behaviour
invariably is.
	The cruelty of this position is that it leaves only one option open
to Gay people who take their relationship to God seriously - the option of
total and complete life long celibacy. Because as already noted the option
open to the rest of the world - heterosexual marriage - is immoral and
unethical, yes sinful, for a Gay person. But the church would never dream
of imposing such a burden on heterosexuals. Even the Roman Catholic Church
which requires celibacy of its priests has always admitted this to be a
special calling for those select few to whom God has given the ability
to accept it; it is not for everyone. Heterosexual Christians should beware
of doing like the Pharisees of old, laying down on the backs of other people 
a yoke they themselves would find impossible to bear.
	Actually the Bible appears unequivocally to condemn only three things:
(1) homosexual rape; (2) the ritual homosexual prostitution that was part of 
the Canaanite fertility cult and at one time apprently taken over into
Jewish practive as well; and (3) homosexual lust and behaviour of the part
of heterosexuals. On the subject of homosexuality as an orientation, and
on consensual behaviour by people who possess that orientation, it is wholly 
silent. The orientation as such was apprently unknown to or at least 
unrecognised by the Biblical authors. If we may assume that the Biblical
authors were themselves all heterosexual this would not be at all 
suprising. For that matter it has only been since about 1890 that the science
of psychology began to recognise homosexuality as a distinct entity.
	In the first place homoexuality and homosexual behaviour are
never anywhere in the Bible mentioned either by Jesus Christ himself
or any of the Old Testament prophets. If it really were a sin in God's
sight surely he or they or both would have inveighed against it. This fact
should be of cardinal important to the thinking of any person who purports
to follow jesus.
	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
9as, 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 ff. 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.
	In the New Testament two passages - II Peter 2:4-9 and Jude 6-7 -
refer to Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of God's judgement on the wicked in
such terms as apparently to adopt a sexual interpretation . The former refers
to the townsmen of Sodom as licentious or "unprincipled in their lusts," and
the latter says that ehy gave themselves to fornication and went after
different flesh. Neither passage contributes anything more on the subject.
But it is important to bear in mind that both authors may have been thinking
not of homosexual intercourse but of intercourse between different orders of
creation (humans and angels). Both authors refer to God having likewise judged
the angels who sinned, and Peter refers to the story of the Flood. Consequently
both were probably only reiterating the view found in some Jewish writings
from the same general period, namely the Testament of Naphtali 2:4-5, and
the Book of Jubilees 7:20-22, 16:5-6, and 20:5-6. The view found in these
other writings is that the Sodomites were cursed for having changed the order 
of nature by runnin after angels just as the angels have been cursed at the
flood for having gone a-whoring after the daughters of men.
	jesus himself mentions Sodom and Gomorrah but only to say that they
will be judged less severely than the towns that rejected his disciples or
refused to repent even after witnessing the works he performed (Matthew 
10:14-15, and 11:20-24, Luke 10:10-12, and 17:28-29). None of these passages
tells us his interpretation of the Sodom story, though the fact that  
he linked the name of Sodom with refusal to welcome his disciples may give
us a hint. And the parallel to the Sodom story reported in Luke 9:51-56
in which James and John the sons of Zebedee beseech Jesus to call down from 
heaven destruction by fire on an inhospitable Samaritan town provides
at least some confirmation that Jesus and his disciples held to the more
prevalent view within Jewish tradition that the sin depicted in the 
Sodom story was inhospitable treatment of travellers rather than homosexuality
or homosexual behaviour.

	The story in Judges 19 of the outrage at Gibeah is very similar
to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, and some scholars consider the one derived
from the other. Here again the Hebrew word "to know" is used (Judges 19:22)
and the host's offer of two females as diversion implies that it is to be
taken in a sexual sense. In this story, however, the male guest pushes
his concubine out the door, and the townsmen of Gibeah "know" and abuse
her all night long, as a result of which she dies. yet this story goes on to 
say explicitly (Judges 20:4-5) that the townsmen's intention was to kill
the male guest. So the mischief that was afoot here was not merely sexual,
even homosexual rape; it was murder. And it ended in a heterosexual gang rape
that took the womans life.
	Even if the original intent of both the townsmen of Sodom and those
of Gibeah was homosexual rape, obviously both stories are about heterosexual
males who indulge in it as a sport. Otherwise the offer in both stories
of females as a diversionary sexual object makes no sense. To extend such an
offer to homosexual males would be pointless because it would hold no
interest for them.
	In Deuteronomy 23:17-18, in I Kings 14:24, 15:12, and 22:46, in
II Kings 23:7, and in Job 36:14, there are references to a kadesh (singular)
or to kedeshim (plural), which literally mean "holy man" and "holy men".
Some translations of the Bible render these terms by the English word 
sodomite(s). The passage in Deuteronomy forbids Israelite men to become
such, and likewise forbids an Israelite woman to become a kedeshah - the
same word for the femenine gender. Modern Bible Scholars believe these terms
refer to priests and priestesses of the Canaanite fertility cult, and 
evidence outside the Bible supports the inference that both types of
functionaries engage in sexual intercourse with male worshippers as part
of the ritual. Indeed the Deuteronomy passage by poetic parallelism
appears to equate kedeshah with the hebrew word for a female prostitute
(zonah). The 38th chapter of Genesis and Hosea 4:12-14 also support this
equation. Thus the better translation of kadeshikedeshim would be 
"male cult prostitute(s)."
	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.
	Also, in the patriarchal society of the ancient Hebrews the status 
and dignity of the male was held to be inviolable, so much so that even the
women of the house must be sacrificed to preserve if need be, as in the Sodom
and Gibeah stories. In the ancient Near East it was not uncommon for the
victors in war to rape vanquished kings or warriors as a mark of utter 
subjection and contempt. The Hebrews unlike the Greeks may thus have
associated male homosexuality with disrespect and debasement of the male
sex and viewed it as intolerable for that reason. Moreover, any society that
exalts the male sex over the female may tend to associate male homosexuality
with effiminacy. It therefore becomes tabooed to keep the dominant sex from
being assimiliated to the status of women.
	Even if these Levitical injunctions are to be read as an absolute
prohibition against males engaging in homosexual behaviour under any and all
circumstances, it is worth asking why this should be deemed binding on
Christians when so many other injunctions of the Pentateuch are not. For 
instance these same chapters of leviticus make punishable by banishment
the sin of a man having intercourse with his wife during menstrual period
(Leviticus 18:19 and 20:18). Leviticus also forbids the wearing of cloth
made of two different kinds of fibers, say for instance cotton and polyester
(Leviticus 19:19). And what about Exodus 22:18, requiring that witches be
put to death?
	The only three remaining Biblical passages that conceivably touch on
homosexual behaviour are found in I Corinthians 6:9, I Timothy 1:10, and
Romans 1:18-32.
	In I Corinthians 6:9 Paul asks his readers, "Do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God ?" He then proceeds to list
certain catergories of people as examples of those who will not inherit the
kingdom. In this list two of the Greek words, namely malakoi and arsenokoitai,
have usually been rendered in English translation by a single term such as
"homosexuals," "sodomites," "sexual perverts," pr "homosexual perverts."
And in I Timothy 1:8-11 Paul says that the Law is not laid down for the just 
but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the 
unholy and profane, and he then proceeds to list specific examples. In this
list again appears the Greek word arsenokoitai. Actually in neither case
dow we know whom Paul meant by these terms, because he does not elaborate.
	There was no Greek word corresponding to the English word
"homosexuals," because as a rule ancient Greeks who practiced homosexual
intercourse were at the same time married and therefore heterosexually
involved as well. Ancient Greek did have common words for such people who
in homosexual itnercourse - for instance, paiderastes, palakos, kinaidos,
arrenomanes, and paidophthoros. If Paul had really intended to refer to such
people he would probably have used one of those terms, but he did not. Instead
he used two terms that are not plain references to such people.
	The word malakoi is the plural of malakos which literally means
"soft." In the moral context malakoi would therefore signify people who
were "loose,", "dissolute," "morally weak," or "lacking in self control,"
and this is the sense accorded this word in the King James Version and in
J. B. Phillips's and Edgar J. Goodspeed's translations. (The word 
"effeminate" in the King James Version did not mean to English-speaking
people in 1600 what it means to us today.) Some have claimed that there is
support in ancient Greek literature for applying this term to the passive
partner in sexual intercourse between males - hence the Jerusalem Bible's
translation "catamites." As already noted we have no way of knowing for sure
which of these two possible meanings Paul intended, because he does not
elaborate.
	What Paul meant by the term arsenokoitai is even more difficult to
ascertain. It is a relatively rare and obscure word - a compound of 
koitai (literally, "those who engage in sexual intercourse") and arseno
(literally, "male" or "masculine"). We do not know whether the prefix
arseno refers to the subject or the object of the intercourse. If the
subject, then the meaning is "males for sex," that is, male prostitutes.
And this rendering ("male concubines") is the one given this word by
the most scholarly ancient translator - St. Jerome - in his translation
into Latin of the late 4th Century A.D. known as the Vulgate. If on the
other hand arseno refers to the object of the intercourse, then the meaning
is "those who have sexual intercourse with males." Modern lexicons refer to
some usages in ancient Greek that support the meaning "the active partner
in anal intercourse." Thus they conclude that Paul used malakoi and
arsenokoitai to denote, respectively, the passive and active partners
in homosexual anal intercourse (hence the Jerusalem Bible's rendering
"catamites" and "sodomites"). But if this be the case it is odd that the
early Greek fathers of the Church such as St. John Chrysostom did not so
interpret these terms. They found no reference to homosexual behaviour
in this passage of I Corinthians.
	Whatever Paul meant by these terms they are in no event either
so clear or so all-inclusive as to encompass the entire class of people
we describe today by the English word "homosexual" or the slang word
"Gay." These two passages can therefore hardly supply a reliable basis
for condemning all such people as sinners.
	Paul does speak definitely about homosexual behaviour in the first
chapter of Romans. But here he is not primarily addressing himself to
that subject but to the sin of idolatry and its consequences. He states
that because men exchanged the glory of the immortal God for idols, they
were delivered up by God in their lusts to unclean practices and
disgraceful passions. "Their women exchanged natural intercourse for 
unnatural, and the men gave up natural intercourse with women and burned
with lust for one another. Men did shameful things with men, and thus
received in their own persons the penalty for their perversity. They did
not see fit to acknowledge God, so God delivered them up to their own
depraved sense to do what is unseemly" (Romans 1:26-28).
	in the case of the men, the plain meaning is a reference to
heterosexuals giving up intercourse with the opposite sex and turning in
perverseness to homosexual lust and behaviour. The passage says nothing 
about people whose orientation is homosexual and who therefore are in no
wise perverting their nature as they perceive it. (In this connection
it bears noting tha tmost such people discover their orientation in
childhood, before they know it has a name or that the adult world considers
it to be a moral issue. And many of these were then and still are deeply
religious. To hold that this passage in Romans was meant to include all
such people is to give it a coverage that the thoughts, language, and
context will not bear.)
	In the case of the women, this passage, which is the only one in the 
entire Bible that could conceivably refer to sexual relations between
women, does not clearly bring homosexual intercourse within its purview.
The statement that "their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural"
does not necessarily refer to homosexual intercourse. It may just mean that
the women exchanged coitus for hetersoexual fellatio or anal intercourse.
We have no way of knowing what Paul considered to be "natural" or
"unnatural" in the way of heterosexual behaviour. Only on the supposition
that the statement about woman was intended by Paul as a shorthand parallel
to the more explicit statement about men is sexual intercourse between
women included. And even if it is included, the plain meaning of the passage
is that the women exchanged one for the other (heterosexual for homosexual).
It therefore says nothing about lesbians - those women who like the Greek 
poet Sappho see beauty and desirability only in other women and have always
felt that way.
	It is worth noting that the adjectives Paul uses when he is speaking
of these sexual consequences of idolatry are "unclean," "degrading," 
"disgraceful," "shameful," and "unseemly." It is only when he gets to the
nonsexual consequences such as greed, envy, murder, deceit, gossip, slander,
isolence, boastfulness, and mercilessness tha the uses the word "wickedness"
and "evil." Which is some indication that in his mind een the sexual
perversion he is describing is more properly classified as a disorder than 
as a sin. He likewise states that is is unnatural and dishonourable for a 
man to wear his hair long (I Corinthians 11:14), but few today would
conclude therefrom that men who wear their hair long are sinning. Nor would
Samson and other ancient Hebrew Nazirites.
	Finally, even if we take it for granted that Paul considered
homosexuality and homosexual behaviour a sin, we cannot avoid asking
whther this attitude of his is God's own or whether it may not be merely
the result of the cultural conditioning of his time and place in history
together with his own personal predilections and prejudices, like his
attitude towards long hair on men. This question is especially needed
because when dealing with the subject it is easy to forget that there are
other attitudes of Paul which many Christians today are convinced did not
come from God.
	let us look at Paul's view oof marriage first. Although he 
consistently denied that anyone who chooses to marry is thereby sinning, he
says that those who choose not to marry do better; that marriage brings 
troubles, which he would spare his readers; and that it diverts attention from
the business of the Lord to the pleasing of the spouse (I Corinthians 7:25-40.
See also I Timothy 4:1-3, where the forbidding of marriage is called
a demon-inspired doctrine.) In this he admits (verse 25) that he has no
command from Jesus, but he still asserts he thinks he has the Spirit of God
in these counsels. Though he says that sexual intercourse is the right and
duty of both parties to a marriage (verses 3-5) he prefaces this with the
remark that "it is good for a man not to touch a woman" but because of the
temptation to immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her
own husband 9verses 1-2). And he follows it in verses 8-9 with the counsel
that the unmarried would do well to follow his own example in remaining
single if they can do so without burning up with passion. Even allowing Paul's
belief that the end of the world was imminent, these statements betray to the 
modern reader a real lack of appreciation of the enormous benefits and 
blessings if marriage. Few Christians today would agree with Paul that
marriage is merely or even primarily an antidote to the temptation to
fornicate, is a bag of troubles, or is a hindrance rather than a help in
serving the Lord. And most would reverse his assertion about touching
so that it would read instead, "It is good for a man to touch a woman and
vice versa!"
	Paul often seems to equate sin with obediene to the body's desires.
See Romans 6:12, 7:21-25, 8:13, and 13:14. He expressly inveighs against
fornication or otherwise refers to it as a sin no less that seven times in
his letters (I Corinthians 6:9, 12-20; I Corinthians 10:8; II Corinthians
12:21; I Thessalonians 4:2-8; Ephesians 5:3-5; Colossians 3:5-7; and 
I Timothy 1:10).
	Jesus on the other hand had very little say about sex. Matthew 
makes it appear that Jesus, like Paul, urged celibacy for those who could
manage it. In Matthew 19:1-12, in response to his disciple's comment
that it is better not to marry if in God's sight marriage is indissoluble,
jesus is reported to have said that "not all men can receive this precept,
but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been
so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men,
and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of
the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it."
But neither of the other synoptic gospels mentions this saying, though both
recount Jesus's teachings about divorce of which Matthew makes it a part.
See Mark 10:1-12, and Luke 16:!8. And Paul, who is plainly aware of Jesus's
teaching on divorce (see I Corinthians 7:10-11), seems unaware that Jesus ever
urged celibacy on anybody. See I Corinthians 7:25.
	For Hesus the word "sin" does not appear to have had, as it seems
to have for us today, a primarily sexual connotation. He himself was accused
of having been the product of fornication (see John 8:41), and he mentions
fornication only once, including it along with adultery in a list or
catalog of various sins to illustrate that what defiles a person are the
things that proceed from the heart rather than those that enter the stomach
(Matthew 15:19; Mark 7:21). Apart from this catalog, he touches upon the
sin of adultery in only three contexts, and in all three his primary concern
is not with adultery itself but with something else that he must have felt
was much more important. In one, the Episode of the woman caught in adultery,
he save sthe "sinner" from being stoned to death by reminding her accusers that
they, being sinners too, have no right to judge her (John 8:2-11). In another
his concern is with divorce. He undermines the entire practice of divorce by,
in effectm forbiddign as adultery any remarriage of either party (Matthew 
5:31-32, and 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12; and Luke 16:18). In the third context
his concern is with those who pride themselves on their own righteousness
by pretending that sin lies solely in acts and behaviour rather than in the
attitudes of the heart. He says in effect that the man who looks at another
woman with heart full of lust is just as guilty of adultery as the one who
goes to bed with her (Matthew 5:27-28).
	Christians sometimes seem to think and act as if sexuality were
not one of God's most glorious gifts to us but a snare and a trap. They
seldom stop to ask themselves how a good God could make us so sexual and
sexual activity so pleasurable and then condemn us for enjoying it.
	Another are in which Paul's attitudes and emphases are 
rejected by many Christians today is that status of women. His assertations 
about women speak for themselves. In I Corinthians 11:3-15 he says that 
woman's head is her husband; that man is the image of God, whereas woman
reflects the glory of man; and that man was not created for woman's sake,
but woman was for the sake of man. Again elsewhere he adheres to the notion 
that marriage is a subordination of the woman to the man in all things rather
than an equal partnership (Ephesians 5:22-23; Colossians 3:18-19; Titus 2:5). 
Finally, in I Corinthians 14:34-35 he says that women are to keep quiet in 
all the congregations, that they are not permitted to speak, and that it is
shameful for a woman to speak in church. This attitude is repeated in 
I Timothy 2:11-15: "A woman must be a learner, listening quietly and with
due submission. I do not permit a woman to be a teacher, nor must a woman
domineer over man; she should be quiet. For Adam was cteated first, and Eve
afterward; and it was not Adam who was deceived; it was the woman who,
yielding to deception, fell into sin. yet she will be saved through
motherhood. . . ."
	Paul expresses no inkling of the enormous evil of human slavery.
Instead of urging Christian masters to free their slaves, he only counseled 
them to reat their slaves fairly and the slaves to obey willingly and not to
seek their freedom (Colossians 3:22-4:1; Ephesians 6:5-9; I Timothy 6:1-2;
Titus 2:9-10; and Philemon). Yet there is perhaps no Christian alive today
who does not believe human slavery to be absolutely and fundamentally
opposed to the will of God at all times and in all places.
	A last example is Paul's attitude to civil authority. He tells 
Christians to submit to the authority of the staae, for there is no authority 
except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. So that
whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and will 
incur judgement. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad
(Romans 13:1-7). See also Titus 3:1. All this rings hollow to people who
in the 20th Century saw Hitler and his Third Reich inflict the Holocaust
on millions of hapless Jews, Gays, Gypsies and others and the Second World
War on countless millions more of innocent victims. jesus on the other hand was
under no such illusions about the power of the state. He realised that
political power is in the Devil's keeping (Matthew 4:8-10; Luke 4:5-8).
	To some people all analysis of the Biblical texts relative to
homosexual behaviour is pointless. For them it is plain as day that God made
people male and female, and for good reason. In the oldest account of
creation - the Yahwist - the purpose is said to be companionship; God creates
woman to be a helper fit for man (Gensis 2:18-25). In the later Priestly
account (Genesis 1:26-28), the purpose of reproduction is emphasised.
In any event, so the argument goes, God intended each sex for God's plan
for the creation and ipso facto sinful. This is a point of view that must
be faced, but before doing so it is necessary at least to show that the
Biblical passages that touch explicitly upon homosexual behaviour do not,
except by special prejudicial interpretation, condemn either homosexuality
or consensual sexual behaviour between Gay people.
	What then of the view that God made male and female for each other ?
As someone crudely put it, if God had intended homosexuality to be normal
we would have had Adam and Bruce instead of Adam and Eve. This misses
the whole point. The point is not to deny that God had a plan in making people
into males and females. The point is that it does not follow from this that
homosexuality is a sin. God may very well have intended the male-female
relationship to be the general plan without at the same time meaning
to condemn as sin every variation from that plan found in nature.
	Nature as it actually exists is full of variations from the apparent
overall design. Some people are midgets. Some are albinos. Some are sterile.
Some have peculiar allergies that the rest do not have. Some are left handed.
It used to be commonplace before the advent of modern science to attribute
all usch extraordinary conditions to sin, as in the gospel story of
the man born blind (John 9:1-2).
	In the sexual sphere itself one has only to read a scientific
treatise like John Money's and Anke Ehrhardt's Man and Woman, Boy and Girl
to discover that there are quite a few people in this world who are neither
male nor female but somewhere in between. Yet surely these intersexes are
not condemned to choose between celibacy and sin merely because they do not
fit into the male-female dichotomy. Some such anomalies occur because of
unusual genetic combinations that arise in nature like an XXY or an XO sex
chromosone rather than the usual XX (female) or XY (male). Others occur
because of hormonal imbalances during the period of gestation.
	Robert Stoller's Sex and Gender depicts yet another variation
in psychosexual development - transsexualism. The transsexual is a person who 
physically is a normal male or normal female but who through an unusual
early childhood environment develops the self-image or identity of the 
opposite sex. Once this gender identity becomes fixed, usually about the 
age language is aquired, it is well nigh irreversible. If these people are
then compelled by society or by the medical profession's devotion to
"natural law" to live as the sex their physical make-up dictates, they suffer
untold and unending anguish. Thank God human compassion is now leading many 
doctors to throw all their preconceived notions of what is natural to the
winds and change the body to fit the mind!
	The point is that homosexuality, like hermaphroditism and 
transsexualism, is and always will be a minority variation in sexual
development, physical and emotional. So far as we can ascertain, none of
these variations is unique to our own culture or to our day and age;
rather, they are universal. They occur not because of sin or the fallen
condition of humanity but simply because nature is not uniform. Moreover,
sexual orientation like gender identity is a component of personality
universally acquired in the process of growing up. Once so acquired, it is
extremely difficult if not impossible to alter, because nobody can go back
and re-live that growing-up process differently. What has occurred is similar
to the phenomenon of "imprinting" that we observe in birds and animals.
	So to assert that homosexuality is normal means only that it is
a variation universally found in nature, like left-handedness. Unfortunately
many people confuse the word "normal" with the word "normative"; they 
interpret the asssertion to mean that everybody should be Gay, that
homosexuality is competing with heterosexuality for everyone's allegiance,
which is nonsense.
	The norms of conduct found in the Bible are addressed to the
generality of humankind. Its failure to address the specific situation
and problems of many minorities does not mean that those minorities are
excluded from God's Kingdom unless and until they somehow conform. This is
obvious in the case of left-handedness or albinism. Nobody pretends that these
minorities are abhorred by God simply because they run counter to the general
pattern and the Bible does not recognise their existence. But what of the 
minority who are sexually sterile ? They certainly disobey the commandment
of Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply and there is plenty of evidence
that in Biblical times this was taken as cause for reproach. See, for example
Luke 1:25. Today, largely because science has taught us that sterility just
happens and because in an overpopulated world we no longer see much need
for procreation, the judgement of Christians is more compassionate. We do
not consider sterility a sin nor do we condemn sterile people to a life of
celibacy. And the judgement should be the same in the case of homosexuals.
And perhaps would be, if homosexual behaviour and desire were confined
to the catergory "homosexuals." The fact that it is not so confined accounts
for what little the Bible has to say on the subject and likewise muddies
people's perceptions considerably, to the extent that many refuse even to
admit there is such a catergory. They see in every practitioner of homosexual
acts only a willfully perverted heterosexual.
	It would be far more in keeping with the spirit of jesus to open our
eyes to the diversity in the world around us and rejoice in it rather than
decry it. Sure God does not condemn anybody merely fore being different from 
the majority. God takes each of us as we are and, in the framework of who
and what we are, then calls each of us to renounce evil and live a life full
of goodness and love. And it is just as possible for a person to be Gay or
transsexual or an intersex and to follow in this pathway of Jesus Christ as
for the ordinary male or female heterosexual. None is required to give up sex
in order to qualify, though any one can choose voluntarily to do so.
	The lack of specific Biblical norms addressed to the homosexual
minority does not mean that Gay Christians, unlike heterosexual Christians,
are free from all ethical constraints on their sexual behaviour. What those
constraints are in view of the absence of the institution of marriage is a
whole issue in itself. The purpose here is only to reappraise the traditional
view that homosexual genital acts are always and for all people everywhere
a sin.
	Some have argued that although Jesus was silent on the subject
of homosexuality and homosexual behaviour he nevertheless implicitly
condemned it. They point to his teaching that God from the beginning made
people male and female and for this reason a man shall leave his father and 
mother and be joined to his wife and two shall become one flesh (Matthew
19:3-9; Mark 10:2-9). This, they say, together with his disapproval of
fornication and adultery, confines sex to the relationship between husband and
wife thus outlawing homosexuality. But this is building a very important
case - condemnation of homosexuality - on a very slim reed. In the one 
teaching all Jesus was doing was quoting the Genesis accounts of creation as
proof texts for his assertion that marriage is indissoluble. And in both
it and the others he is actually talking only about heterosexual relationships.
To use them as evidence of another intent - to disapprove homosexuality -
is stretching a point too far, because it is quite possible for any person,
including jesus, to hold to these teachings of his about hetersexual 
relationships and still be convinced that homosexual acts are not a sin
for homosexuals.
	In fact Jesus plainly states that heterosexual pairing is not an
integral part of the spiritual order. In response to a riddle of the
Sadducees designed to show up the foolishness of belief in the 
resurrection, he says flatly that in the resurrection people neither marry
nor are given in marriage. And if his answer was intended to be responsive
to the circumstances posed in the question, it also means that marriages 
contracted in this life do not carry over into the life hereafter (Matthew
22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40).
	The Sadducees' riddle points up a significant contrast between
Judaism and Christianity. There was a strong emphasis in Judaism on 
immortality through procreation. A man lives on after death through his 
children, grandchildren, and other descendants. Thus in Deuteronomy 25:5-10
the law of Levirate marriage to which their riddle refers prescribed that if a 
man died childless his brother must take the dead man's wife as his own and
produce a son for him to bear his name, so that the dead man's name would not
be blotted out of Israel. Jesus's answer to the riddle as Luke reports it shows
that even in his mind the institution of marriage exists because of human
mortality, so that with the absence of death the need for it will disappear
(Luke 20:36). Barrenness was viewed as such a curse that any male whose
testicles had been crushed or whose penis cut off was excluded from the 
assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:1). Yet Isaiah prophesised, "thus
says the Lord: To the eunuchs who . .  hold fast my covenant, I will give in
my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and
daughters . . . an everlasting name which shall not be cut off" (Isaiah
56:4-5). With the coming of Jesus Christ personal immortality through the
resurrection replaced immortality through procreation, and Isaiah's
prophecy was fulfilled as God's Spirit reached out through Philip to
bring the Ethiopian eunuch into the kingdom (Acts 8:26-40).
	The last verse of Isaiah's prophecy reads, "Thus says the
Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather yet others to
him besides those alrady gathered" (Isaiah 56:8). Is it not possible that today
God's spirit is reaching out again in fulfillment of the prophecy, this time
to gather into the kingdom another outcast - the homosexual - who like the
eunuch was previously excluded for sexual reasons ? The two are in fact close
kin. For both, sexual intercourse is inherently nonprocreative, and eunuchs
in the ancient world were widely associated with homosexual activity.
	Implicit in all the discussion so far is the assumption that sin and
evil are synonymous, that evil is what is hurtful to others or to oneself,
and that therefore nothing is a sin which hurts nobody. Consensual homosexual 
acts between Gay people are therefore not sinful because they hurt no one.
The basis for these premises is Jesus's own assertion that the Law and the
Prophets can be summed up in one command - always treat others as you would
like them to treat you (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31).
	On the subject of Jesus one other matter deserves attention. There
is no evidence whatever in the New Testament that Jesus had a sexual
relationship with anybody, male or female. But it is incontestable that he
experienced deep love for a member of the same sex. The whole Gospel of
John purports to emobdy the recollections of an eye witness who is referred
to only as "the disciple jesus loved" (John 21:20-24). Church tradition has
inferred that this disciple was John the son of Zebedee, but the gospel itself
makes no such identification. Whoever he was, he was a man, and the clear
implication is that he was especially beloved by Jesus, because the same
gospel states that Jesus also loved his other disciples very much, for instance
Martha and mary and Lazarus (John 11:5) and those present at the Last Supper
(John 13:34, and 15:9, 12-13).
	Other indications in the Gospel of John bear this out. At the Last
Supper this disciple is lying close beside Jesus, and when Jesus announces
that one of the disciples will betray him Simon Peter, instead of querying
Jesus himself, signals to this disciple to ask Jesus who is meant. It is
stated then that this disciple leaned back against Jesus's chest and asked 
"Lord, who is it ?" and Jesus vouchsafed the asnwer only to him (John 13:21-30)
The incident makes clear that an emotional relationship existed between Jesus
and the disciple closer than that which existed between him and any other,
including Peter.
	On the cross Jesus sees his mother standing nearby together with other
women and this disciple he loved. He tells his mother that the disciple is her
son, and the disciple that she is his mother, almost as if to say that this
man now stands in his stead. And the gospel states that from that time 
onward the disciple took her into his care (John 19:25-27).
	That Jesus should entrust his mother to the care of this disciple
is particularly noteworthy when it is remembered that he had brothers and
sisters, any one of whom to our minds would seem a more likely candidate.
Indeed, these brothers together with his mother apparently were part of
the believing community in Jerusalem after the Ascension (Acts 1:14),
and one of them - James - later became its president and remained so
until his martyrdom about 62 A.D.
	This disciple Jesus loved is the first to reach the empty
tomb upon Mary Magdelene's report and the first to believe in the 
Resurrection (John 20:1-10). He is also the first to recognise the risen
Jesus in the appearance at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1-7). Indeed it came
to be believed that Jesus had wanted this disciple to live on until he
came again and had therefore in effect predicted that this disciple would
not die, so that the resulting misapprehension had to be laid to rest by
a careful explanation of the incident that gave rise to it (John 21:20-23,
All this presumably because the disciple had in fact died by the time the
Gospel of John was published.)
	All this is said not to argue, as some have done, that Jesus was
himself homosexual. We do not know enough either to affirm or deny such a
statement with certainty. But this we can say : he is universal - not
the exclusive property of any group. Rather, the purpose is to make two
much more important points. The first is that anybody who, like him,
has openly and deeply loved another person of the same sex, cannot possibly
lack sympathy for and understanding and acceptance of homosexuals. He would
be bound to know and comprehend their plight. Any among them then who seeks
a true friend can be sure of finding one in the greatest friend of all - 
Jesus Christ.
	The second point is that he calls us all to a life of love - love
blocked or bounded by no barriers of any kind, whether of nation, race,
religion, social status, or sex. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek,
neither slave nor free, neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28). We are
commanded even to love our enemies. In the light of this gospel of Jesus
Christ - the supreme Prophet of Love, the Messiah who demonstrated that
God IS love - how can we, any of us, shut ourselves off from loving 
others of the same sex through fear of being branded homosexual ? For many
people in our culture do precisely that, especially men. In this as in
everything else, Jesus points the way through the example of his own life
to the ideal humanity towards which we are all called. He plainly loved people
of the same sex as well as people of the opposite sex. Gender was no barrier
for him. It should not be the same for us either. And if for some people
loving others of the same sex carries a sexual component, there should be
no cause for reproach. It is just a consequence of the God-given diversity of
humankind.
	In any case, it is no exaggeration to say that the persecution
of Gay people that has been characteristic of Western culture almost since
the time of Constantine must be laid directly at the door of the Christian
Church, and that this evil record of malevolence and bigotry is hardly 
compatible with the life and teaching of the one that Church claims as 
Lord and Saviour. He was a friend to those who were despised by all the nice
decent people of his day, namely the prostitutes and tax collectors.
The gospels say that this was because it is the sick (sinners) who need a
physician (Jesus), but it seems also likely that he consorted with them 
because he preferred their company to that of people like the lawyers
and Pharisees who reduced the righteousness God requires to a little rule
book of "Do this" and "Don't dare do that!", thus consigning to obvlivion
goodness and love and honesty and justice and mercy and generosity and
kindness. It was for Pharisaism and legalism that Jesus reserved his
righteous indignation. According to him justice and loving kindness are the
"test" fruits of the Spirit of God, not propriety and conformity. So stop
and think about it. What on earth do goodness and love and honesty and
justice and mercy and generosity and kindness have to do with whether
or not a person prefers the opposite sex or his or her own ?
	Few heterosexuals who do not have a Gay friend or relative have
any comprehension of what it is like to grow up Gay in America. Imagine
how it would feel to be constantly despised and jeered at by your peers
and told by both church and society that your desire for love is sick
and a sin and a crime. With such pervasive stigme to face, most Gay
people end up hiding their orientation for years. They absorb the
hurt and the pain rather than be honest and risk exposure. Many do their
best to turn themselves into heterosexuals, even going to the extreme
of marrying a person of the opposite sex and having children, only to 
discover that the experience changed them not one whit and succeeded only 
in spoiling other people's lives as well as their own. Many have spent
countless hours and dollars in fruitless efforts to change themselves
through psychotherapy. The assertion that all these people are deliberately
bucking the current and choosing to be Gay is just not credible.
	If the Church of Jesus Christ were really seeking to follow his 
leading it would see that its traditional stance on homosexuality has 
caused and is still causing far more evil and suffering for homosexuals
than they through their supposed sinning have ever caused, and would
stop hurting them and set out instead to relieve their suffering and right 
their wrongs. Since 1969 more and more Gay people in America have stopped
lying and come out of the closet and taken up the struggle to obtain
legal safeguards for the basic human rights denied them for two
thousand years - the right to life, to liberty, to love and enjoy each other
to employment, to housing, and so on. The Church is faced with a choice. 
Either it will seek to make amends for the evil it has done them in the past
or it will continue to encourage those who would hound and persecute
them in the name of God. This is exactly what the Church's traditional
stance on the sin question does. It supplies the persecutors with
precisely the fuel they need for their fires, because nothing
strengthens prejudice so much as having some way to ascribe it to God. It
also forces Gay Christians to lie and hide in order to remain within the
Church.
	Heterosexual Christians, who are and certainly will always remain
by far the great majority in the Church, need to ponder whether on this
question of sin the two-by-four may not be in their own eye and a speck of
sawdust in the eye of their homosexual brothers and sisters. If they must
insist that homosexual genital acts are a sin for themselves, let them
do so. They have some Biblical warrant for that. But who are they to judge
homosexual acts to be a sin for homosexuals - people whose emotional
make-up and whose inner struggles they know nothing about ? Leave the
judging to God. God's own Spirit within each of us is capable of doing 
whatever convicting of sin needs to be done. As long as heterosexual
Christians keep on asserting that they know all there is to know about
God's will in this matter, they will only succeed in accomplishing
two things for sure - fanning the flames of persecution and driving
more and more people away from Jesus Christ.

-- 
  -  James Alan Hall                     [email-masked] 
  -  Mithrandir                          [email-masked]

Thence to Briton shall return,		If right prophetic rolls I learn,
Borne on victory's spreading plume,	His ancient sceptre to resume,
His knightly table to restore,		And brave the tournaments of yore.