Why bother with what the Bible says?
For many people the Bible is not a book they want to read or give authority to. Indeed, even for many Christians, the Bible is jonly one source of authority which must be taken into consideration along with tradition, personal conscience and reason. However, the Bible is seen as one of the major sources for our culture, based as it is on the thoughts and principles of Judaism and Christianity. During the debate to lower the age of consent for gay men in February 1994 in the British House of Commons, the Bible was cited by many speakers. For many Christians from evangelical or conservative backgrounds the Bible is a major cornerstone of their faith, and a great stumbling block when trying to reconcile spirituality and sexuality. For these reasons it is essential to know that the Bible does not have to be seen as a book of condemnation for us. We can engage in dialogue with those who seek to condemn us, using the same arguments and methods.
The Sodom and Gomorrah Story
In the book of Genesis (Chapter 19) the story is told of two visitors to the city of Sodom, who were in fact angels in disguise, visiting the house of Lot - a Jewish, and hence foreign, inhabitant of the city. The story goes:
"Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom - both young and old - surrounded the house. They called out to Lot 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them'. Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind them saying: 'No, my friends, don't do this wicked thing......'"
After this Lot offers his daughters to appease the crowd. Eventually the angels step in and manage to defeat the mob. Later on in the story, Sodom is destroyed because of the actions of the inhabitants of the city. It is interesting to note that Lot is portrayed as the good man, the spiritual one, and yet his actions of offering his daughters to the crowd are reported without comment! To approve of this is to approve of rape - brutal, gang rape at that.
To say that the city was destroyed because of homosexuality is misleading, if not inaccurate, and it ignores other parts of the Bible and a long tradition of interpretation of these texts. Firstly, the book of Isaiah (1:10 & 3:9) and Ezekiel (16:49) claim that social injustice and oppression of the poor was the root cause. Other parts of the Bible say that it was the city's treatment of visitors which was wrong. In the ancient world it was imperative in most cultures to treat visitors with respect and honour. It is an understatement to say that gang raping them would be demeaning and offensive! In luke's Gospel (10:12) Jesus says that Sodom was destroyed because of inhospitality.
This interpretation continued in the Early Church and also in Jewish interpretations. The Midrash, a Jewish commentary, and an Early Church theologian called Origen, both state that it was this breaking of the rules on hospitality and respectful treatment of visitors that got Sodom into trouble.
Therefore, it can be argued from the Bible itself that the destruction of Sodom was because of oppression of the poor and mistreatment of outsiders; nothing to do with lesbians and gay men. Feminist theologians will also want to question Lot's apparent willingness to hand his daughters over to a baying crowd to face certain death. To claim that trying to commit gang rape on strangers is equivalent to loving and consenting gay or lesbian sex is to fly in the face of what the Bible itself says.
The Book of Leviticus
This Old Testament book is concerned with setting out a huge quantity of the Law (the Torah) - still observed today by Orthodox Jews. It is concerned with stating what behaviour and moral codes separate the Jewish people from the surrounding nations, cultures and religions and is very clear in prohibiting behaviour which was part of the worship of fertility gods and goddesses. The two pasages which are used to condemn gay men and lesbians are:
"Do not lie with a man as with a woman; that is detestable" (18:22)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands" (20:13)
The questions around this text for us today are quite interesting - indeed, there are very few Christians who take this book seriously. If we are to obey these two passages then we must obey all of the book which condemns cutting men's hair, eating rare meat, eating rabbit or certain seafood such as shellfish, sexual intercourse during menstruation, cross breeding cattle, and wearing garments made out of more than one material. Selective and literal interpretation is both misleading and dangerous, especially when it leads to condemnation and alienation of certain groups of God's people.
An interpretation based on feminist thought would also question the assumptions made in the text. Firstly, they only apply to men! Obviously the writers, having something in common with Queen Victoria, didn't think women did that sort of thing! Secondly, they assume that women take the passive role in sex and that this is inherently demeaning. The tone of the passage is that if you are passive in penetrative intercourse you become less of a man and more like a woman. This was seen as being shameful. Apart from the fact that we do an awful lot more with each other in bed than penetration, the passage assumes that women are less equal than men. This passage is sexist and irrelevant. Also it concerns laws that are patently unacceptable to most people today. Pre-Christian writings must be viewed with an understanding of cultural and contextual difference.
The Book of Romans
This book was written by St Paul who was a Jewish convert to Christianity and who devoted his life to spreading the Christian message to non-Jews (Gentiles). He travelled around the Roman Empire preaching and founding churches. He then wrote to them regularly giving advice on how to live a Christian life in a non-Christian secular world. Some of these letters have been preserved in the Bible.
Paul's point in the Book of Romans is to show that God has made salvation possible for all humanity and starts out by highlighting the need the human race has for this salvation. He speaks at some length on the evils he perceives in the world and in this context his words on lesbians (well done, you've made it into the Bible at last, just 1,000 years after the first mention of gay men!) and gay men appear:
"Because of this God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." (1:26-27)
Much has been written on what Paul might have meant here. It certainly appears that the sexual behaviour itself was objectionable to Paul. The late Professor John Boswell of Yale University suggests that what Paul was actually disparaging were homosexual acts committed by apparently heterosexual persons. It isn't clear whether Paul actually distinguished between gay people (i.e. permanent sexual preference) and heterosexuals who simply engaged in periodic homosexual behaviour.
There are those who believe that it is intellectually dishonest to think that Paul was not referring to homosexuality per se in this letter. But if that was the case, then - as with Leviticus - we must also be bound by his other teachings and opinions. Namely, that women should not be allowed to be priests and that the only way women will get to heaven is by bearing children (1 Tim 2:9-15). Also, in a contradiction to the Law in Leviticus, Paul also condemns men with long hair (1 Cor 11:14). In this last passage Paul uses the same Greek words (para phusin) as he does when condemning lesbians and gay men.
Bishop John Spong believes that Paul thought it was an unnatural act for a heterosexual person to engage in homosexual behaviour. Paul didn't, or couldn't, imagine "a life in which the affections of a male might be naturally directed to another male." Paul had no understanding of the origin or the effects of a homosexual orientation and so what we have in the letter to the Romans are the words of an ill-informed man of his time. Spong goes on to say that: "Responsible Christians cannot close their minds to the knowledge explosion in the field of human sexuality by hiding behind a Pauline quotation and claiming that this is the 'word of the Lord'".
If traditional churches wish us to follow Paul's words about lesbians and gay men then they will also have to condemn men with long hair, women ministers, and state that women will only get to heaven if they have babies. Until the main Christian churches start preaching Paul properly, there is no reason why we can't say that he was biased by the prevailing culture and sexism of his background, and his words should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
The Letters to the Corinthian Church and to Timothy
The church in Corinth had written to Paul for advice on some particular issues and whilst the original letter is lost, Paul's answer has been preserved for us in the Bible. Likewise, the letter to Timothy was advice from Paul to a young Overseer, or Bishop, who was responsible for spreading the Christian message. In both letters Paul uses a word to describe gay men which is very unusual and which modern Bibles cannot agree on how to translate into English.
The word (arsenokoitai) appears in 1 Cor 6:9-10 and 1Tim 1:9-10. Many think it just means homosexual man. However, some scholars, notably John Boswell, have said that the word refers to sacred prostitutes. These would have been young men who worked in the Temples of the Fertility Gods popular in the ancient world. Their function was to play the part of the god whilst the worshipper/client had sex with them. This was supposed to ensure a good harvest and was seen as a form of worship! Obviously Paul would not recommend such interesting worship services to those who were committed to following the life and example of Jesus.
Conclusions
To say the Bible condemns lesbians and gay men is to oversimplify a very complex issue. Parts of the Bible do seem to condemn us but, when compared with other, equally problematic and often sexist passages, it is clear that the phrase, "the Bible says" is not a sufficient argument for anything. When dealing with the Bible we need to be aware of what it says about itself - especially in the story of Sodom and also to see how it has been used over the ages. We need to develop, what feminist theologians call, an interpretation of suspicion which questions how texts either affirm or condemn women, lesbians, gay men and other minorities. If they are condemning then they are not, and cannot be, words from a God of Love.
Instead of asking if a piece of scripture is literally true, what we should be asking is, what did it mean and what meaning does it have for us now? It is the belief of Rev Kieren Bourne that the traditional Church has been wrong to judge and condemn homosexuality through the error of literal teaching. Such teaching, unsurprisingly, has not stood the test of time and people are now seeking to find the truth about faith and Christian ethics for themselves.