You Decide

… that many argue that both the Bible and the institutional church condemn homosexuality?

Near the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 19, Lot meets two angels at the gates of Sodom. Concerned for their safety, Lot presses them to stay with him that evening. They agree, and all seems to be going well until the townspeople, including men “both old and young,” surround the house, asking Lot: “Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them”—and by “know them,” they meant in the biblical sense.

It’s then that the angels reveal themselves, telling Lot to flee before the Lord punishes the iniquitous Sodomites with a rain of “brimstone and fire.”

Later, in I Corinthians 6:8-10, the apostle Paul warns the people of Corinth that the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” will not “inherit the kingdom of God.”

But nowhere in its teachings is the Bible more explicit than the Book of Leviticus, where it states: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: It is abomination.” Leviticus, in essence a compilation of holy codes, goes on to state: “If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Although modern church leaders have stopped short of that punishment, they have certainly been strident in their opposition to homosexuality and, by extension, same-sex marriage. Soon after his elevation to the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of “the dissolution of matrimony,” telling an assembled crowd at Rome’s Basilica of St John Lateran: “[F]ree unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.”

… that some scholars think the Bible isn’t nearly so clear in its denunciation of homosexuality as many would claim?

Take the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The standard interpretation is that God brings his wrath upon the Cities of the Plain because they were host to perverse sexuality.

The tipping point comes after the men of Sodom surround Lot’s home and demand that two of his guests—strangers to the city, foreigners—come outside “that we may know them.”

By “know them,” the Sodomites wanted to sodomize them. (Where did you think the word came from?) Instead, Lot, a true protector and father for the ages, offers the Sodomites his two daughters, who “have not known man.”

Offering one’s virgin daughters to save a pair of strangers from the salacious hordes sounds plenty problematic to our modern sensibilities, but a growing school of theologians argues that the story must be regarded in its pre-Christian context. They maintain that if we judge it by today’s social mores, we will invariably misinterpret its meaning.

This was a world, they argue, in which women were regarded as mere chattel. What’s more, they contend that our modern notion of homosexuality—that is, someone who is defined in part by the intersection of their sexual orientation and romantic entanglements—did not exist in the pre-Christian era. Sex, rather than being an organic outgrowth of love, was a tool of reproduction and domination.

Far from wanting to cruise the strangers in a modern sense, the men of Sodom, these theologians argue, wanted to humiliate the foreigners—unmanning them, as it were, through sexual abuse.

The sin of Sodom, then, was the city’s inhospitality and entrenched xenophobia.

According to this reading, the Bible’s most vehement denunciations of homosexual acts—those contained in Leviticus, where homosexuality is termed an “abomination” and punishable “by death”—are similarly in need of greater context.

Originally intended as a holiness code for priests, Leviticus, supporters of gay marriage point out, is filled with arbitrary and antiquated laws we no longer follow. For instance, the Levitical code prohibits planting different seeds in the same field, touching a woman while she is menstruating and wearing blended-fabric clothing.

Why, then, these theologians argue, do detractors of gay marriage choose to follow some Levitical laws and ignore others? In other words, you are free to argue that the Bible denounces homosexuality all you want—just be sure you’re not wearing that cotton-poly blend collar while you’re doing it.