This post was submitted by corey

This is my first Easter in America since coming out – both as queer and as an agnostic – and I feel Christianity coming on pretty strong. Maybe it’s because my thesis, on changing Lutheran policies towards gay couples, was due last week. Maybe it’s because I reluctantly attend a Catholic university, and have almost a whole week off for this holiday and its associates (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Monday – oy.) But whatever the reason, I feel… surrounded.

Luckily, as part of my work on that thesis, I came to an interesting realization: the bible doesn’t say jack shit about gay couples. There are only seven references to any kind of same-sex sexual relations, and none of them speak directly towards gay couples in particular. Moses made clear that you’d better be goddamn nice to your parents (pun intended), but didn’t mention men who like other dudes. Jesus suggested that if you die rich, you’re gonna be spongebathing Anne Coulter in Hell, but didn’t seem opposed to cute old lesbians getting hitched in Iowa.

As a disclaimer, I’m not saying we should necessarily care what the bible has to say about sexuality, but for those who do it’s important to get it right. I’ve picked out every story or legal code that mentions same-sex sexual relations, as well as some general important passages on sexual ethics, and have broken down why they don’t condemn gay relationships. Just in time for Easter, Passover, and Tom Cruise’s monthly burnt offering, here’s your guide to telling your fundamentalist relatives to suck it. Literally. With God’s implicit approval.

1. Creation (Genesis 1-3)
I could write a whole post just about creation myths in popular Christianity and Judaism. Did you know that there isn’t one “creation account,” but two? That there is no Adam – “adam” just means “a man”? That there is no apple, just a mysterious fruit? In any event, the story of the creation of man and woman might be heteronormative, but it’s not homophobic. The Lutherans I’ve studied so much pointed out that the church doesn’t damn single people or married people without children for not following the model of the first man and woman, so the fact that it was a heterosexual couple isn’t necessarily important, either. Catholics have enshrined chastity and virginity as something to aspire to, so clearly they have rejected the whole man-and-woman thing when they’ve felt like it. The point of the creation account regarding sexuality seems to be, God has blessed people with the opportunity for love, so try not to fuck it up – not, every boy must be paired with a girl. (PS – why you’d want to use as your example two people who screwed up an eternity relaxing in a garden is beyond me.)

2. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)
If God really hated homos, she probably should have mentioned it the Big Ten, which is the basic legal code for Jews and Christians. Regarding sexuality, there is more herein about cheatin’ and lustin’ than on a country music record, but – alas – no mention of same-sex sexual relations. This is a common issue in many of the biblical passages, mostly because people didn’t understand sexual orientation back then and it wasn’t a big issue. Of course, when we learn knew things, it is not unreasonable to change the way we understand morality. People didn’t used to know that drinking whilst pregnant was harmful to the baby, but if you get smashed while with child today, you’re not viewed as in tune with traditional family values. You’re a baby killer. Anyway, our message here seems to be: stay loyal to your partner, and don’t lust after someone else’s. In light of this, denying marriage rights to gay men and women seems to be kind of stepping on God’s toes.

3. Sodom & Gomorrah / Gibeah (Genesis 19:1-11 and Judges 19:16-30)
Sodom and Gomorrah is like the Joe the Plumber card of the homosexuality debate: it’s irrelevant, it’s overused, and it makes me think of ass cracks. Gibeah is its lesser known but equally forced-same-sex-rape-related companion tale. The stories are so similar, in fact, that many scholars believe they are different versions of the same myth. It should be noted that God condemns the people of both cities, not because they end up having same-sex intercourse, but because they treated guests inhospitably. In the case of Gibeah, they also raped and killed a young woman who was offered to them instead of the male visitors (a fact that apparently doesn’t upset Evangelicals nearly as much as the butt sex factor). In S&G, the male visitors happened to be angels, another oft-left-out fact that seems to add a reason as to why God would get pissy. And again, none of these people were considered to be “homosexuals” – they were men who normally had sexual relations with women, but who tried to rape a few male visitors to their town. Slightly different scenario than Ellen and Portia’s adorable wedding.

4. Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13)
The legal code which also forbids cotton blends and pig-skin footballs has two passages (18:22 and 20:13) that forbid men to sleep with other men as they would a woman. Most modern-day Christians and Jews ignore 99% of Leviticus, but some of the crazies feel the need to call out homos on these grounds. The fact is that Leviticus was supposed to be a legal code for the Hebrew people; it was not presented as a guideline for ethical living of all people, as – say – the Ten Commandments might be considered. In addition, scholars believe that these laws had more to do with gender roles, prostitution, and wasting “seed” at a time when the population needed expansion than they did sexual ethics even for that group of people. The wasting seed argument is especially useful in figuring out why women are left out of the equation. A note to lesbians: Leviticus is okay with you having sex, as long as it’s not during menstruation. So there’s that. The Lutheran scholars I studied decided that the laws in Leviticus which people still think are legit are those which “have to do with the life and health of our communities and not individual rights.” Therefore, mentions of same-sex sexual relations are beyond irrelevant.

5. Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 1:18-32)
In the only passage that mentions women having same-sex relations, Paul writes in Romans 1:18-32 about a group of gentiles who hated God and spent all their time screwing. Men did “unnatural” things with men, and women with women. The first problem is what unnatural means, which is complicated by this misleading translation. The original word doesn’t mean against nature, it means “excessive of natural.” Some scholars thus believe that this means the people in the story were thought to be so lustful that they would have sex with anything that moved, regardless of it being a man or woman; their sin was that they were blinded by their passion, not that there was something particularly wrong about engaging in same-sex intercourse. Other scholars believe that unnatural speaks to prevailing scientific or social beliefs, and not an ethical standard for moral sexuality. There’s also the issue that these weren’t good people to begin with – they had already turned from God and basically put on their headphones whenever she called them to supper. To make matters worse, instead of being productive citizens, they spent all day screwing each other blind. Within its social context, it seems reasonable for Paul to say, “Yeah, don’t do that,” without it having anything to do with same-sex relations.

6. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and to Timothy (1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-11)
In both of these letters, Paul types of people whom he considers to be sinners. What’s fascinating is the amount of liberty translators have taken in deciphering his words. He mentions fornicators, adulterers, and prostitutes, none of which are linked to being same-sex. He also uses a weird combination of words that are tough to make sense of today. Most literally, they seem to be referring to an “active” and a “passive” partner engaged in same-sex intercourse. Translators have taken these words to mean “homosexuals,” “homosexual offenders,” “active homosexuals,” effeminate person, and “pederast,” all of which are extremely poor choices. Homosexual implies that a sexual orientation was involved, and there is no reason to believe that Paul knew any more about sexual orientation than he did car mechanics. “Active homosexual” is a laughably opportunistic application of modern right-wing sentiment to an ancient text, and the effeminate tag makes me wonder if people who translate bibles even know how to read. The bottom line is, these letters tell us a lot more about the manipulation of Christian text to serve modern purposes than they do about gays today.

The Bottom Line
What have we learned today, class? Well, we’ve learned that the bible doesn’t say anything about “gay” couples. It ignores them in the creation stories and in the Ten Commandments, mostly because they didn’t exist when those things were written. It mentions rape in a bunch of old stories, but Evangelicals skip over that part and focus in on the butt sex. It bans same-sex intercourse between men while also damning a bunch of other practices that no one cares about anymore. And it makes a confusing mention about what Paul thought were men who normally were attracted to women but for some reason had sex with each other, along with doing a bunch of other shitty things. None of this seems to have anything to do with people today who identify as having a same-sex orientation (or, for that matter, as bisexual) or our society in which this is not a disruption of the social order or something people do just because they feel like messing with God.

In fact, based on the solid foundations of ethics that the bible does make clear, we can determine that an approach best keeping with the spirit of the text would be giving gay couples the same rights to marriage so as to encourage healthy relationships and not hooking up with Larry Craig in the Minneapolis airport. Extending marriage rights to gay couples can thus be viewed not as a turn away from traditional values, but as a fight to keep these values alive – which, for me, is a big deterrent in fighting for marriage equality. (I’m doing it for the tax breaks and the glory. That’s just me.)

If you’re interested in reading more about this subject in a slightly less flippant way, you can email me at corey@thenewgay.net for a manuscript of my thesis. You can also read the passages of the bible that specifically address these issues: Genesis 19:1-11, Judges 19:16-30, Leviticus 18:22, and Leviticus 20:13 from the Old Testament; and Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:8-11, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 from the New Testament.

Now go off and microwave some Peeps while enjoying the most morbid day of the year.

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