Redemption For The Pariah

Berlin Sylvestre, Editor

One does not simply “read The Bible.” To gain any kind of foothold on what’s going on, you have to understand that there were many cultures that the Jews (and the newly formed Christians) were leaning into: the ancient Egyptians (think Amon Ra, hieroglyphs, The Mummy); the Greeks (think democracy, philosophy, those beautiful painted vases); the Romans (think architecture, mesmerising sculptures, men fighting lions in an arena); and more. The rockstars of The Bible were walking into these cultures with a decidedly different one of their own, and they were on a mission to distinguish themselves as the chosen ones and bring salvation to the world.

As well, we’re talking about a time when literal life and death depended on your loyalty and proximity to your tribe. When you’re wandering the desert, there’s a small margin of error that separates the living from the dead. You rely on your family, extended and nuclear, for your very survival. To top it all off, we’re talking about a time when superstitions among the people ran high. Witches, warlocks, curses, incantations, all of that sacrilegious stuff comes into play as we pore through passages of The Holy Bible.

So as you go through the heavily translated text and find strange guidelines and prohibitions, you can leave the surface with a mere scratch and not wonder about the oddly specific (and seemingly arbitrary) laws, or — as you might with any ancient manual — press further for the real meaning.

or example, mixed fabrics. When gays are condemned using scripture from Leviticus, it’s common for detractors to shout back a passage in the exact same book that denounces the wearing of mixed fabrics. Is that an arbitrary rule or is there more at play? (Answer: There’s more.) Ok, so why did Moses tell the Jews not to mix their fabrics? For a number of reasons. Back then, clothes distinguished a tribe from a good distance away. You could tell if people were friend — or potential foe — based on what they were wearing. Additionally, Moses and Company were obsessive about “purity,” and forbade intermingling on many levels. As well, being set apart from other tribes was a staunch goal. Other tribes wore mixed fabrics, so for the chosen, it was a no no. Clearly, the mixed fabrics rule wasn’t arbitrary. Does it still apply today? (I’ll let you be the judge of that.)

all of the text. If you truly want to know the will of God according to The Bible, you can risk taking the word on its face and assume you know what it means outright … or you can dig deeper for a better understanding of the religion of Christ. For a remarkable historical perspective (and/or to combat those who use the scripture as a weapon against our community), I suggest immersing yourself in the study of the ancient worlds in which its passages were written. As a starting point, Out Front presents: Redemption for the Pariah.

Onto the clobber passages!

Why the Story of Sodom and Gomorrah Isn’t About Gays

Let’s start here. (And keep in mind that, like everyone else, I’ll be paraphrasing these stories in a faithful way, but also one that makes them easier to digest.) So here we go.

Picture it: a Middle-Eastern desert, thousands of years ago. Abraham and his family, along with his nephew Lot and his family, were traveling around the desert after heading toward places God instructed them to … and then eventually leaving those places of famine and cursed pharaohs. (The story of Abraham’s wife and the pharaoh is juicy and weird; google it.) After some time, they stopped in a lovely enough spot, but as it turns out, Lot and Abraham had to part ways. (There was quibbling among the fray and they wanted to keep their relationship cool.)

So Lot set out with his wife and kids toward more well-watered regions and found himself in the glittery city of Sodom. (It was said, at the time, to be a hub of sophistication and modernity.) Thing is, God’s ears were hearing about the wicked ways of both Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah — they were way too crunk for the people of the time — so he sent three angels to visit Abraham and let him know. Abe was caught off guard in his hot desert tent, but offered up some hospitality to the angels. (It was just his style.) When they broke the news about their plans, Abe was saddened that his family might perish for the deeds of the sinful. He asked one of the angels if they could let the cities off the hook if they went there and found ten people who weren’t wicked. They agreed. (Funny enough, Abraham bargained them down from fifty to ten. But anyway.)

Only two angels showed up to Sodom, and people like to speculate that the third who vanished without explanation was God Himself. Just God. In my tent. Chillin’. No bigs.

When they got to Sodom, they ran into Lot, who bowed politely to the strangers. (It was just his style.) In spite of their unwillingness, he insisted they come back to his place to eat, get a good foot-wash, and stay the night. In those days of tribal stick-togetherness, strangers in a strange land posed great risks to a place — they could be spies, after all. The angels, it’s said, didn’t want to put Lot at risk, so they insisted on sleeping in the square. But Lot, risk or no, wouldn’t have it.

That night, The Bible says that all of Sodom’s men, young and old, descended upon Lot’s house and demanded the men come out so they could “know” them. (Back in that day, that was how you spoke before you went about raping someone. Oh, boy.) The men were angry, having found out somehow that the foreigners were there to judge them for their behavior, and they were ready to throw down in the worst way over it. (Way to make a case, guys, but ok.)

So Lot, freaking out, steps outside and shuts the door behind him. “Don’t do this, guys,” he says. “I have two daughters you can have instead. Bonus: They’re virgins.” (For real, Lot?! For real.) Anyway, the guys persist and the crowd pushes in, letting Lot know that he’s going to get something worse if he doesn’t comply. The angels, however, snatch the door open and yank Lot back in. A neat little spell is cast so that all the men outside go blind and suddenly can’t find the door to Lot’s house. The angels tell Lot to head out and warn his two future sons-in-law to gtfo because this place is going down come morning. (Lot does so, but the two future sons-in-law think he’s making jokes.)

The next morning, the angels have to literally grab Lot and his family by the hands and lead them out of the city. (They were hesitating.) The angels instructed them to run for the mountains, but Lot pointed and said, “Can’t we just go to that little city over there? Can’t you spare that tiiiiiny city for us? We’d die in those mountains, c’mon!” And so it was. The heavens waited for Lot and his crew to get to Zoar (which is Hebrew for little, or insignificant) before inflicting a fiery sulfur-rain onto the plains and destroying the region, plant and person alike.

So now! The part where it doesn’t condemn gays.

For starters, I’m going to hand the mic to Ezekiel, who was divinely inspired by God’s word, and a fan of kinky analogy, it appears as you’re reading his book. (He rips into Jerusalem, comparing the city to a size-queen prostitute — I’m not even joking — and afterward, gives the Sodom Sisters a quick read.) Says he:

“This was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore, I did away with them as you have seen.” He mentions nothing of homosexuality, but instead, continuing his blistering assessment of what Jerusalem had become, says that not even the sister cities of Sodom were that bad. (You really have to get into it. Ezekiel reads to filth!) Anyway, he mentions nothing of homosexuality.

Moving along, all the men of Sodom couldn’t have been gay. As you’ll recall, the story insists that all the men, young and old, showed up to violate the angels. (The other townsfolk weren’t test-tube babies, am I right?) Just the fact that Lot, who lived there, offered his girls up like that shows you that he knew at least some of them were straight. Heck, two of the guys were engaged to his daughters! (Also: If they were men of Sodom, they’d have been outside Lot’s place with the rest of the guys and saw their wives being offered up. Awkward!)

Lastly, this wasn’t about sex as lust; this was about violation. If the men were simply there for some freaky fornication, they’d have accepted Lot’s daughters. (Omg, Lot. I still can’t with you right now.) The point is, the angels were nearly subject to the kind of sex that was neither driven by lust nor homosexuality, but by violence, humiliation, and demoralization. Even with rape as an item on Sodom’s wicked player, Ezekiel still doesn’t mention it in his condemnation of her flaws, and neither does The Bible.

Btw: If you want to know what happened to Lot’s wife (weird stuff) and his daughters (gross stuff) after the destruction of Sodom and her sister cities, pick up a copy of The Bible. It really gets going after that.

Concerning Leviticus

Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman: it is abomination. If a man lie with a man 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. Lev. 18:22

Jeez! Leviticus is a serious book, truth be told. It outlines the 76 prohibitions known as the “Holiness Code,” which is what the Israelites, in a pact with God, were instructed to follow to keep their culture “pure” of other cultures. The pact basically said that God would hook His people up with land and protection (and even better stuff when they die) if they make sure to set themselves apart by following His rules by being consecrated, being special, and being the chosen ones. And Leviticus, among other books, guides the Jews on how to mark themselves chosen, what with all that traveling  through other cultures they’ve embarked upon.

The book starts off with precisely how you should slaughter animals that you offer up for things like guilt and … sin in general, let’s say. There are even two little guys (Nadab and Abihu) who drop dead for burning incense in an unauthorized fashion. Strict stuff. Among Leviticus’ other hits are rules concerning what to eat (cows are good, hyrax is out, which is sad as I had a hankerin’ for hyrax) what day to cut your baby’s penis; what days women are unclean, what she can’t touch as such, and on what she can do 66 days after her weirdnesses; how to handle any strange skin deformities of the chin; the scoop on mold in your wool; what to do if a man discharges on his bed; all kinds of neat stuff.

Where we’ll begin, though, is at the part where God put down some rules on how His people are to conduct themselves (espesh sexually) in the land of Canaan. (That’s where the Israelites found themselves at the time of the writing.) The Canaanites had many of their own practices in place, of course, and God wanted to be sure that while His people were strangers in a strange land, they knew how to conduct themselves against the backdrop … to, if anything, separate themselves from the Gentiles — especially in a place that was offering child sacrifices and crazy temple-sex in the name of the god Moloch.

To be clear, the passage about men playing switch-hitter does come in a long list of sexual no-nos, like sleeping with your Dad or your sister, which is eww eww eww. But the chapter literally begins by addressing that they’re in a land where some weird things — pagan rituals specifically — were going on. (I’m trying really hard to fight the inclusion of facts about the Latin translations and details surrounding the Cult of Moloch, but I only have so many pages and I don’t want to be too longwinded. I encourage you to google these fascinating items surrounding the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of The Bible.)

So why did God have to mention stuff about homosexual activity? Because the temples in which the Canaanites (and some of the Egyptians) worshipped would get freaky on the regular. The temple priests, called assinu, were believed to have special powers. Trick was, you had to hook up with them to get to the goods. Semen was considered especially sacrificial as an offering to their goddess of love and fertility, Ishtar. So if you wanted to prosper in those areas of life as a man, you’d show up at the bedroom of one of these priests. This was, of course, frowned upon by the chosen ones, and God (speaking through Moses), made sure to let His people know. This isn’t the first time another culture’s practice was used in example of what not to do. (See: the Tammuz and eating pork.) People have long argued that the passage in Leviticus isn’t a condemnation of homosexual sex, per se, but sex used as worship in general. Detractors to “Gay Sex Is Sin!” posit that if it were simply about gay sex, where the lesbians at? Why no mention?

This is literally the only place in The Bible that specifically condemns male/male homogenital sex, and it’s not about lust, it’s argued — it’s about preserving Jewish identity in the land of Canaan.

Another facet concerns procreation. Tribal identities were everything back then, and you couldn’t be one of the selected without being selective. So many things came from belonging to a family — land, property, wealth, power, even the movement of the economy — and you needed to make sure the brand stayed strong and the members plentiful. Leviticus in particular is obsessed with purity, from the consumption of shellfish (a no no) to the mixing of seeds in fields and fiber in clothes (remember from earlier?). As well, hooking up outside the faith and the tribe is frowned upon, and having sex that doesn’t grow the tribe (gay sex and masturbating, for examples) will get you in big trouble. Remember: This was a time when people died with much more regularity — especially women in the process of bearing children. It’s believed that 25 years was the average lifespan, so you needed to get busy. To make sure the odds stayed good, sex needed to have a mission of growing a strong, healthy family. So sex with your relatives (considered unclean) would get you as strong a “tut tut!” as hooking up with a member of the same sex would. As a Jew, you could not act as a Gentile. Ever.

Before we go, let’s wax etymological about the word “abomination.” In ancient Hebrew, the word used was toevah. It meant (in a more faithful translation, according to biblical historians) “taboo.” When you consider that the scripture could’ve used the word zimah instead, it becomes a thing of certain importance. Zimah means an injustice, a sin, a wrong — and it’s used in other places throughout the book. In this case, were we expressly talking about gay sex being a moral or ethical intrusion, or was it simply … taboo? It’s worth considering.

Rome If You Want To

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another. Men with men committing shameless acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Romans 1:26–27

So now we’re in the New Testament reading what appears to be outright shade at gay folks and, for a first, at lesbians, too!

I will admit: When I read those passages long ago, I was crushed. I thought, “There’s no way you can brush that off as being Old Testament madness.” This was Paul, after all, brandishing some fury at my people in his letter to the Romans. What was his deal? What’s he mean “unnatural?” Nothing that occurs in nature is unnatural, but let’s play the game.

So if I were to build the Book of Romans as a scene in a play, I’d start with a man sitting at a desk writing a letter of the things he’s observing about the culture and lifestyle of this part of the world. And his pen is moving fast, honey.

Paul had been traveling for a decade in Greek and Roman lands where the idea of worshipping a single deity was mostly just goofy. These were people who had a god for almost everything; love, war, wine, plants, animals, the forest — you name it and there was a god you could pray to for it. Statues lined the streets, works of beauty, shrines to their gods. If you wanted to end bad weather, you performed a ritual to a god. If you wanted to know the future, you performed a different ritual to a different god. (You get the gist.) These were people who didn’t mind filling up their dance cards with tons of deities.

They were also blissfully unabashed and insatiable in their passion to partake of the good things in life … hedonistic, most would say. Sex, food, art, more sex, tons of wine, music, more food, good food, more sex — yes, yes, and yass! And when they got to praying, child, they praaaaayed.

Much like some of the ancient Egyptians from the Old Testament, they integrated sex into some of their worship, and inside the sexual practices were priests who let you worship your god through sex with them. Some of the men in these new lands were castrated, and meant expressly for the sexual pleasure of other men. They’re referred to as eunuchs in The Bible, and it’s believed that eunuch is a common euphemism for homosexual throughout the text. Anyway, the Romans knew them as the Galli. Through the Galli, men would worship the “mater diem” (mother of gods) Cybele, and Paul really wasn’t feeling that.

So imagine it: a cacophony of bodies in a temple, writhing naked and unbridling their moaning in service to the gods of love. Straight lovers, bi lovers, gay lovers, (I wouldn’t doubt the eunuchs to be) trans lovers … all there in service to Venus or Pan or Aphrodite or Cybele or … you get the point. Some were drunk or high on opium, blue lotus, and/or pythia gas. (Another google-able moment.) Flames would leap from the temple’s firepits and the people would throw echoes down its chambers with their ceremonial sounds of sexual pleasure. It was unrestrained ecstasy. This was their church.

>Well, now.

When Paul saw all this mess, he about had a fit. He took much pride in the fact that Jews and Christians were way more sexually conservative. Thusly, smoke was coming off the papyrus as he raced his thoughts onto the scroll. He did not like what he saw and he was going to give someone what-for.

So he wrote about people who, in their quest for wisdom, had “become fools.” He wrote:

“ … their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.”

I think the most interesting fact surrounding those passages, however, was Paul’s vocab, specifically a few Greek words he’d used.

“Their women exchanged the natural (physiken) function for that which is unnatural (para physin), and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another. Men with men committing shameless acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”

So physis, its adjective being physiken, means “of nature.” As is the case today, nature takes on a few meanings:

I love to get outside and hike in nature.

Caring for children is what nature intends.

It’s not in Paul’s nature to hold back his thoughts.

Using his exact verbiage in an earlier passage concerning people who are Jews by nature, Paul says:

“A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly (physis), nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.”

It would appear, using physikos in parallel ways for these passages, Paul insists that to be natural, you must embody what you are — not just make a show of things. Did he mean to say that the men were defying all of nature … or just their nature when they were hooking up with one another in search of wisdom? Was it that (let’s say) Mike was going against his nature and kissing another guy … or was he going against the whole of it? Tough to say, but he uses a similar phrasing when he refers to something God did, as well.

When God is described as “grafting a wild branch” onto a cultivated tree in the analogy of Jews and Gentiles coming together, He acts para physin. In this way, it’s said that he’s done so in a sort of … atypical order. (Normally, you graft the cultivated tree’s branch onto a wild one.) Was Paul throwing shade or saying God was absolutely wrong in doing things a bit differently? Of course not. He was just remarking that something was different. When he describes the women of those days hooking up in this fashion, the same could (and, in my opinion, should) be said. It’s not typical, per se, but it’s there.

Once again, we’re dealing with the supposed “condemnation of homosexuality” breaking down to suggest that it’s more of a “don’t do homosexual things out of worship or lust.” (Same goes for heterosexual sex, you’ll note.) There is in no way an indication that a healthy, loving, homosexual relationship is an “abomination.” (Or, as I’m wont to say instead, taboo.)

And then there’s the Stoic usage of para physin, a philosophy that Paul was undoubtedly familiar with. We know the word ‘stoic’ to mean unfeeling, cold even. Simply put, the Stoics lived by reason — not emotion. Any sexual acts that were outside the realm of procreation (such as same-sex coupling or having sex with a woman who is on her period) was considered para physin. Acts that would make a baby were kata physin. It’s just another angle from historians, but Paul could have been drawing from the hip new dialect of his region, only to have it go completely awry centuries later. Safe to say, though, more biblical historians see his version of the word to mean “atypical.”

But does he condemn these things or merely look upon them with some side-eye? Either way, if we’re to believe Paul threw shade at the gays, we have to believe he condemned the sometimes wacky ways of his beloved God, too. Temper temper, Paul! Or … just a weird translation. You decide.

The Core of Corinthians