Jack Haven

"God's Will Misused"

Our stories begin the same. As early as we can remember, we felt different. We did not know why, but we shook the feeling out. Then, as we began to mature sexually, these differences expressed themselves in terrifying ways: We came to realize that we were attracted to our own sex. Our first response, seeing the world around us already coming at us like a mob with picks and poleaxes, was to deny this fact. We saw the mob shouting and cursing that we were deviant—normal people get married and have families and babies with the opposite sex!—and we believed them because we thought that we were alone. Not alone like Daniel in the pit of lions; Daniel had God on his side. No, God hated us, too, as long as we continued to have these abnormal "feelings" of ours.

For those of us who survived this wretched part of our childhood, the solution was simple: If God hates me, then I'll hate Him back. In order to accept ourselves, we were forced to reject our traditions, our religion, and in some cases even our families. I was raised a Catholic in a conservative Latin-American family. When, at fourteen, I first faced the possibility that I may be gay, I tried everything I could to suppress it. I believed that with prayer and self-control, I could beat my homosexual impulses. As a bisexual, I continued to have feelings for the opposite sex, and I mistakenly argued with myself that if I could simply focus on that side of myself, the "gay" would fade away. But it does not fade away, and the more we find ourselves repressing our desires, the more angry we become with ourselves, and eventually also with God.

God is in an unfortunate position. Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, who claim to know God's will, tell us consistently that homosexuality is a sin. They have many reasons for doing so, many of which are far from pious, but men and women of faith buy into their rhetoric and pass it on to others. The Catholic Church also bombards us with the idea that homosexuality is a sin. The more rational of these groups tend to hold, at least in their written and publicly voiced arguments, that God loves every human being, including homosexuals. Nevertheless, the message of love is rarely diffused to the local churches that coldheartedly reject us and, with drooling lips and poisoned tongues, condemn us to the darkest pit of hell for the vile atrocity of loving a person of the same sex.

Christianity does not condemn homosexuality. Much of the biblical support condemning homosexuality as a sin is a result of either mistranslation, misinterpretation, or the deliberate manipulation of the Bible's meaning by leaders who began their study of the Bible with prejudices that have little, if anything at all, to do with the will of God. Those men and women who criticize homosexuality not only fail to understand the message behind the Bible, but they have also failed to adapt to the evolving nature of morality. Failure to adapt has been a chronic disease among Christian religious communities for many hundreds of years, but they have, eventually, adapted. What mainstream Christian churches condemn and what they do not have changed dramatically over the centuries. This does not make Christianity wrong any more than a parent's belief that children must wait thirty minutes before going into the water after having eaten makes parenting a useless practice. Even though parents err, we still need parents; similarly, when Christians err, we need not leave the religion of Christ to the bigots who long ago forgot his message.

The Bible is the strongest weapon waved about by those men and women who have tried to wield it against us. If the Bible is inerrant, they preach, then the Bible clearly condemns homosexual behavior in the Old Testament as well as the New. While we may not all agree as to the inerrancy of the Bible, we are still more than capable of combating them on their ground. Let us, then, assume that the Bible is the infallible word of God made print. The first passages often used to condemn homosexuality are those that deal with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The passage has two angels coming into Sodom. Lot sees them and asks them to go into his house, and they do. That night, the men of Sodom came out and "they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them" (Holy Bible, Gen. 19.5). "Know" is a verb that is used in the Bible to mean many different things, among them, of course, to have sexual relations with someone. If the latter is the case, then the Bible is clearly condemning the behavior of the men of Sodom: rape.

Rape, we all agree, is wrong. But rape, homosexual or otherwise, is nothing like a loving homosexual relationship, which the Bible is not discussing. The sin of Sodom, so often blamed on homosexuality, is explicitly stated in several sources throughout the Bible (ibid., Deut. 29.23, Isa. 1.9, Jer. 23.14, Lam. 4.6, Ezek. 16.49-50, Am. 4.11, Zeph. 2.9, Mt. 10.15, Lk. 10.12, Lk. 17.29, Rom. 9.29, Rev. 11.8). In all of these sources, the Bible claims that the sin of Sodom was their lack of hospitality and abusiveness toward strangers. The only one of the Bible authors who even mentions the issue of sex is Jude. He says, "Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (ibid., Jude 1.7). "Going after strange flesh" is often interpreted to mean homosexual sex. Clearly this is taken out of context. The next verses say, "Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. / Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee" (ibid., Jude 1:8-9). If we consider that dominions and dignities are classes of angels, we can see that Jude is discussing humans having sex with angels. This fits perfectly with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where men attempted to rape visiting angels, not men. It is further supported by scholars' belief that Jude is here cross-referencing also the apocryphal Testament of Naphtali in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which describes the sexual relations that the women of Sodom had been having with angels, an evil that had previously led to the Great Deluge.

The most compelling Old Testament arguments against homosexuality are in the Book of Leviticus: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (ibid., Lev. 18.22), and, "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" (ibid., Lev. 20.13). Here, we see clearly that men cannot lie with men as they would with a woman. The assumption, probably correct, is that this refers to sex. This prohibition is part of a larger set called the Jewish Holiness Code. It may have come about for several reasons. First, sexual relations that favored procreation were valued because the Jewish people needed to increase in number in order to survive against their enemies. Second, many overtly homosexual practices throughout the Middle East at the time were connected with idolatry, which the Jews sought vehemently to avoid. "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances" (ibid., Lev. 18.3). As a consequence, many of the laws in the Holiness Code are condemnations of idolatrous behavior. Finally, women were treated like property in ancient Jewish culture. To lie with a man as with a woman would be tantamount to emasculating the man and making property of him. Since the Holiness Code also forbade making slaves of fellow Jews, it seems to follow that this law should exist. Naturally, women, having neither seed to spill nor a place in society from which to fall, are exempt from this law.

It is telling that homophobic Christian leaders would use this argument to support their views. The Holiness Code does not only condemn homosexual behavior and bestiality. It also forbids having sex with women during their period (ibid., Lev. 18.19), eating pig (ibid., Lev. 11.7), eating seafood without fins or scales (such as shrimp) (ibid., Lev. 11.9-10). It also allows polygamy and orders that the seventh day of the week, Saturday, be considered the Sabbath. Today, Christians have sex with women regardless of when their periods are, and they eat pig and shrimp readily and without remorse. Most Christians believe polygamy is wrong and celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday. Christians no longer follow the Holiness Code for good reason:

The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: / Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; / Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation. (ibid., Heb. 9.8-10)

This reformation is what Christians refer to as the New Covenant created via Jesus Christ between humans and God. It allows Christians to be faithful and pious without following the many laws of the Old Testament. The Christians who condemn homosexuality believe this, or they would not so readily gather at a Red Lobster after church or ask for bacon to go with their eggs. Those who single out the laws against homosexual practices in Leviticus in order to condemn us do so arbitrarily; there is no other reason those laws would be more important than the others except convenience, and this sort of manipulation of the Bible is obviously wrong. Jerry Falwell and others have argued that the ordinances are separable into separate categories: some of the ordinances are "dietary regulations" that no longer matter because "after the coming of Christ, one may eat anything, as long as he gives thanks for it, because no particular animal is unclean" (Falwell 1). The other ordinances, he claims, have to do "with morality, or character, or integrity" (ibid.). One wonders, then, what the author of Hebrews could have possibly meant by "carnal ordinances," which clearly refer to sexual behavior. That some Christians have decided to separate the Holiness Code into categories based on such arbitrary conditions is ludicrous when one carefully reads the New Testament.

In the New Testament, Christian homophobes refer to Paul as condemning homosexuality in two places. The first of these is:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: / And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. (Holy Bible, Rom. 1.26-27)

In Paul's time, homosexuality was far from unnatural, so it is unlikely that Paul would have called homosexual behavior per se unnatural. Nevertheless, the condemnation seems clear enough when men are burning in their lust for one another. The problem with this interpretation lies in the passage having been taken out of context. Romans chapters one through three say, in short, the following: (1) The Gospel is for everyone, Jew or Greek; (2) God's wrath is toward all unrighteousness; (3) the Gentiles need the Gospel; (4) but so do the Jews; (5) "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (ibid., Rom. 3.23); and (5) are "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (ibid., Rom. 3.24). We are not sure what homosexual behavior Paul was referring to; at his time, the practice of pederasty, which we now rightly condemn, was common as well. It was also still common for males and females to gather for orgies in celebration of their gods, which Paul would have certainly found idolatrous. Both of these practices may have involved heterosexuals, for whom homosexual activity would certainly have been unnatural. Despite this, it seems that Paul's point is not that homosexual behavior is evil. Paul is pointing at the Gospel and arguing that everyone, Jew or Gentile, needs it in order to be saved. His point is clear from reading all three chapters together, but it is easy to miss if one capriciously singles out random verses to prove a point.

The second Pauline verse is:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, / Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (ibid., 1 Cor. 6.9-10)

"Abusers of themselves with mankind" is, of course, interpreted to mean "homosexual." A loving homosexual relationship, much like a loving heterosexual relationship, is anything but abusive. The idea that homosexual relationships are equivalent to abusing oneself with mankind is an irrational prejudice. In some Bibles, the words here are translated as "sodomite," "homosexual," or "pervert." In the original Greek, however, the words are malakoi arsenokoitai. Malakoi is a common Greek word meaning, literally, "soft." It is used in other places in the Bible to refer to soft clothing. In later writings, it came to mean something akin to soft in terms of one's morals. Nowhere in the Greek is this word ever used to refer to homosexual behavior of any sort. In fact, until about the turn of the 20th-century, malakoi arsenokoitai was used to refer to masturbation.

Popular morality dictates how these rules are interpreted and reinterpreted over the years. This is the reason that Hebrews refers to the imperfection of the former laws and Paul refers to the need, despite everything else, to appeal to the Gospel for salvation from one's sins. Morality has changed a great deal over the centuries; the only thing that one can continually refer to, the only constant, is Jesus Christ. It is unfortunate that so many Christian leaders do not agree that Jesus Christ, not the law, is at the heart of the Christian faith. Perhaps it is also a little fortunate because it allows us to see just how foolish these men and women can be. Jerry Falwell, for instance, has been caught changing his views many times. He supported the segregation of Black communities during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and he believed then that the Bible supported it, too. Today, he no longer believes that Blacks should be segregated—God has apparently changed His opinion on the subject—but he continues to have very controversial views that he later apologizes for.

On September 13, 2001, Jerry Falwell joined Pat Robertson on his show to talk about the September 11 terrorist attacks. He said, referring to the attacks, that:

I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen. (The 700 Club 1)

Pat Robertson agreed with him at the time. The next day, the outrage caused by Falwell's comments and Robertson's acquiescence to them led both Robertson and Falwell to apologize publicly for having made them. Falwell decided to blame the terrorists, and Robertson pretended that he had no idea what Falwell had actually said as he had not heard him correctly. The Catholic Church has also been known for changing its mind. Today, the Church allows for divorce, the baptism of children conceived illegitimately, and the right of women to serve as deacons and as liturgists. All of these were once starkly opposed by the Church, and all of these oppositions were based on sound biblical judgment.

Either the Bible has changed, or the opinions of those who hold opinions based on the Bible have changed. If the Bible is inerrant, and we accepted this at the start of our discussion, then the Bible could not have changed. Rather, the interpretations of the Bible by the men and women, who claim to have studied it so well that they now have direct and perfect access to God's eternal will, have changed. It is hubris to believe that one knows God's mind, yet men and women over the centuries have claimed to know just this, and they have used this knowledge to hate, to oppress, and to destroy. If we can accept that the Bible is inerrant, then these Christians, so-called, must accept that they are not. We interpret the Bible differently because we have changed. We cannot know God's will; all that we can do is follow His word as best we can, without judgment, for no man is without sin, and no sinner is worthy of casting one stone at another (Holy Bible, John 7.8).

We do not have to wait for other Christians to welcome us into the faith that Paul states is for all Gentiles and all Jews alike. We do not need them to accept us. Christianity does not belong to the homophobes and the bigots. It belongs to all humanity, straight and gay alike. It's time for us to take it back.

Works Cited

The 700 Club. Host Pat Robertson. CBN. 13 Sept. 2001.

Falwell, Jerry. Interview. Frontline. PBS. WGBH, Boston. Feb. 2000.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 2000.