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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
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 that 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.
-----------------------------------------------

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.