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What the Bible says about gays, religion
By Kenneth L. Cuthbertson, Ph.D.
(c) Nov. 27, 1992, The Washington Blade
If you have been struggling with questions about your sexual orientation, and
about your faith in God, these may be the most important words you can hear.
God does not hate you. God does not hate Gay male and Lesbian people. God is not
going to punish anyone for being Gay, or for having sex with someone because
they are the same gender as you.
There is a lot of hate and prejudice in the world, and religious people are
often as guilty as anyone else, especially when sex is part of what is being
discussed. This message is intended to help you if you are being challenged by
what some people
claim the Bible says about homosexuality, and if you find it troubling.
First of all you need to realize that different people use the Bible
differently. There's a story told about a certain man, or woman, who went every
morning and opened the Bible to see what guidance it had for them that day. One
day it opened to the
verse, "And Judas went out and hanged himself." This person couldn't see what
that had to do with their life, so they tried again. This time it said, "Go and
do likewise." The story shows how easy it is to misuse the Bible.
According to the Gospels, Jesus thought the religious leaders of his time, and
their followers, were misusing the Bible. These "Pharisees" were a group that
sincerely loved God and the Bible, and they worked very hard to obey all that
was commanded
in the Bible. They worked so hard that they came up with over 600 rules that
people were supposed to obey! They were very concerned with being "pure," and
didn't like that Jesus hung around with the "wrong sort" of people. When one of
them finally
asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, Jesus said, "You are to
love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength ... and you are to
love your neighbor as you love yourself. On this hangs all the law and the
prophets." While the
Pharisees were concerned with keeping "pure," Jesus was concerned with bringing
people together with God, and with one another, in love.
The same belief is found in the writings of Paul, a leader who became prominent
in the years after Jesus's resurrection. Paul described himself as having been a
"super-Pharisee." He claimed to have kept all of the 600-plus laws, and more
(Philippians 3:4-6). But Paul's dramatic conversion to Christianity brought him
to an entirely new understanding of God's love and of the Bible. He dealt a lot
with Jewish Christians who still felt the need and desire to keep their old laws
and
customs, and with non-Jewish converts -the "gentiles" -- who had never had any
of these rules. According to Paul, keeping or not keeping the old rules wasn't
important. What was important was loving one another (Romans 13:8-10).
This doesn't mean that Jesus and Paul had no standards of behavior. They still
expected people to keep basic rules like not killing, not stealing, not lying
and so on. Rules like these are necessary to enable people to live together in
peace and
harmony. What they didn't want was rules that divided people unnecessarily, or
caused people to look down on one another. In one of the most famous parts of
the Bible, the "Sermon on the Mount," Jesus says: "Do not judge [others], so
that you may
not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged..." (Matthew
7:1-2).
Nowadays people still want to use the Bible as a book of rules, much like the
people did in the days of Jesus and Paul. This is especially true in matters
dealing with sex. But the real lesson of the Gospel is that what makes sex moral
is not a
question of "purity," it's a question of love and respect. Having said that, you
may be asking: "But what about verses from the Bible that seem to say that
homosexuality is wrong?" Let's begin by looking at the Old Testament.
The story of creation (Genesis 1-3): Some people like to say that God made Adam
and Eve, not Adam and Steve. That's true, and we'd be in trouble if there were
no people who wanted to have children! But as we shall see, the Bible itself
also praises
love between men (David and Jonathan), and between women (Ruth and Naomi).
Genesis tells about humanity in general, but what is said there doesn't even
apply to every person in the Bible. If it did, Jesus himself would have sinned
by never marrying.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19): This famous story tells how a
crowd of men gathered outside the house of Lot, a stranger who lived in their
town, and threatened to commit a gang rape on two "men" (really angels) who had
come to visit
him. The angels prevent this, but God still wipes out Sodom on the following
day.
People have used this story for several centuries to claim that homosexuality is
wrong. What it really teaches is that sexual violence such as gang rape is
wrong, and that's true whether the victims are angels, men, or women! This story
has more to
say to people who harass or beat up "queers" than it has to say against Lesbians
and Gay men.
The "abomination" verses (Leviticus 18:22, etc.): "You shall not lie with a male
as with a woman; it is an abomination." The words seem really clear, and a
couple of chapters later the death penalty is called for in such cases. Because
of this,
these verses are the most popular ones among those who want a "verse" to "prove"
that homosexuality is wrong. But, these verses come in a place where there are
rules forbidding Israelites to follow the religious customs of their pagan
neighbors.
These customs included having sex with animals and sacrificing babies to their
gods. There were many bizarre religious customs in the ancient world (and there
are still some today!). One of these was "sacred prostitution." In the religion
of
Israel's neighbors a person could go to the temple and have sex with a woman, or
a man, who did this as their "ministry." It was considered an act of worship.
This is the "abomination" that is talked about in Leviticus 18:22. Another
verse,
Deuteronomy 23:17, makes this really clear: "None of the daughters of Israel
shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple
prostitute." It's as simple as that!
So far as we know, Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Paul, however, did
say some things that people use against Lesbians and Gay men.
Natural and unnatural desires (Romans 1:26-27): "Their women exchanged natural
intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural
intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men
committed shameless
acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their
error." What Paul says here has to be read in the light of Leviticus 18:22.
Paul's comments come in a discussion of idolatry, and it seems that Paul
believed the worship of
idols to be the cause of homosexuality. In other words, Paul believed that
idolatry caused some people who were heterosexual by "nature" to become
homosexuals. This sounds strange to us.
But many people still believe that Gay men and Lesbians have chosen to be
homosexual, even though it's been shown otherwise. And, we do hear people talk
about "straight" people in prison who start having sex with other men, or women,
because no one
else is available. This example helps us to understand that there are
circumstances in which some people may act against their own sexual orientation.
After all, many Gay people have forced themselves into heterosexual marriages
because of religion.
Others force themselves into vows of "celibacy" where they promise never to have
sex of any kind. In Paul's day, some men, in a religious frenzy, would even
castrate themselves and then become sacred prostitutes. So, if you are
confronted with these
verses, remember that Paul was speaking about idolatry and used his
understanding of its effect on some people as an example.
The "wrongdoers" list (I Corinthians 6:9-10, etc.): "Fornicators, idolaters,
male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers
-- none of these will inherit the realm of God." It is a basic Christian belief
tha
t sex is too special to be bought and sold. This verse (and a similar one, I
Timothy 1:10) says exactly that. All of the people listed here are acting in
destructive ways. Adultery broke the vows between a husband and a wife,
threatening destruction
to their marriage. Male prostitutes and their clients treated one another as
commodities rather than people. These acts spring from a willingness to use
others rather than love and respect them. That's why they are wrong.
Would you believe that these few verses are all the Bible supposedly has to say
against homosexuality? Considering all that some Christians have to say on the
issue, it's not much! Most Gay people have no problem in agreeing that rape,
worshiping
idols, and buying and selling sex are not desirable practices. They're not good
for heterosexuals either! The tragedy is that religious people have misused
these verses and continue to use them today to support their prejudice against
homosexuals.
That is sinful.
Gay people need to know that there are also a couple of places in the Bible
where love between people of the same gender is praised. Both of these occur in
the Old Testament. The story of David -- the same David who killed Goliath and
became the
great King -- and Jonathan is the most romantic story in the Bible (I Samuel 18
- II Samuel 1).
Jonathan was the son of King Saul, and probably the heir to the throne. When he
first met David, it is said that, "The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." (I Samuel 18:1) It says that he
and
David made a "covenant" (a kind of committed relationship) with one another, and
that Jonathan gave David his royal robe, his armor, and his weapons. When King
Saul later turned against David, Jonathan tried to get his father to change his
mind, and
then betrayed his father by telling David. Eventually Jonathan helped David to
flee, after a touching farewell of embraces, kisses, and tears. King Saul was
furious and some scholars believe he accused Jonathan of having a sexual
relationship with
David (I Samuel 20:30). David and Jonathan never saw one another again, but when
Saul and Jonathan were later killed in battle, David wrote a song of mourning
that includes these words: "I am distressed for you my brother Jonathan; greatly
beloved
were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (II
Samuel 1:26). None of this "proves" that David and Jonathan ever had sex
together, but it does show that two men can be in love, and that that's OK.
"Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my
people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be
buried" (Ruth 1:16-17). It is not uncommon to hear these words read at weddings.
The strange
thing is that they were originally spoken by one woman to another!
Ruth was the great-grandmother of David, and had originally come from the
country of Moab. Naomi was her mother-in-law. Both of their husbands were dead,
but instead of following custom and returning to her family, Ruth decided to
move back to
Israel with Naomi. There aren't any real indications that the two women were
"lovers," but they loved one another deeply enough for Ruth to commit herself to
Naomi in a relationship as binding as a marriage. So here, too, the Bible shows
that it is
OK for two women to love one another and be committed to one another.
Most Christians have misused the Bible and followed the mistake of the
Pharisees. Their fears of Gays have influenced them to misunderstand and to
close their minds. For Jesus, love was what mattered the most. The Bible
approves same gender love,
and sex is the natural expression of such love. The Bible disapproves of
unloving sex, under any circumstances.
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This is an abridged version of an article which appeared in _More Light Update_,
the monthly newsletter of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, a group of
ministers, elders, deacons, and members of the Presbyterian Church, USA. Write
the
newsletter at PO Box 38, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0038. The author revised this
piece with the assistance of Doug Calderwood and Stuart Smith.