Homophobia

When pushed to justify their belief that homosexuality is biblically condemned, Christian opponents of gay marriage invariably point to Leviticus 18:22. And there can be little doubt in the words in my “New Revised Standard Version” Bible: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Similarly, in my “Master Builders: Bible for Men” the translation is similarly unambiguous: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable”. Alternately, we have Leviticus 20:13, either “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” Or “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 heads.”

However, what you’ll note is that both of these are translations, and while close, they are not exact. According to one web site, a more proper translation of the original Hebrew is “Two men must not engage in sexual activity on a woman’s bed; it is ritually unclean.”

Is there any reason to trust this later translation over the former? Perhaps not, but it does point out that ambiguities arise in the document just based on the linguistic skill and personal bias of the translator. Imagine if, in fact, the last translation is actually more in keeping with the intent of the document? Then there would be NOTHING wrong with two men engaging in sex with each other, but engaging in sex in the bed of a woman (who had presumably had a menstrual period at some point while making use of that bed) was in fact the sin. Interesting thought.

The fact is, one can find translations of the Bible to support vastly different points of view, and oddly enough, very few people indeed have access to ancient versions in the original language, nor the linguistic skills to check. So, does it make sense to condemn a whole segment of society on the basis of a possibly flawed translation?

Regardless, let’s assume for the rest of this article that my “New Revised Standard” Bible translation is, among all of the English translations of the Bible, the one that holds truest to the original meaning. (Inasmuch as it and most other English versions are based on re-casting the words of the King James Bible into more modern speech patterns, they’re all pretty similar anyway.) If that’s the case, let’s take a look at Leviticus a bit more closely for the “The Bible is the Literal Word of God” folks, the ones who refused to accept that Leviticus, the third book of the Old Testament, might not be 100% applicable to today’s world.

For those people, I’m curious when the last time was that they sacrificed an animal to the Lord. At the very start of Leviticus, the Lord commands Moses “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When any of you bring an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering from the herd or from the flock.” It goes on to describe the specific rituals which are to be followed in slaughtering the animal and the method in which it is to be placed on the fire. Actually, this is a cook book. Really! The offerings to the Lord are there for the Priests (the Sons of Aaron) to eat. So perhaps we can dismiss this part of the book as no longer applicable to today, in so far as the sons of Aaron are surely all dead. But Moses was commanded to give these instructions to the people, if they are the literal word of God, then perhaps we should be bringing livestock and barbecuing them for our priests and pastors, especially if your priest or pastor is one who considers himself a descendent (or “son”) of Aaron.

The next section describes how to bring offerings of grain, once again with basic cooking instructions so that a small part of the offering can be burned in tribute to the Lord, and the rest consumed by the priests.

The next few sections (actually a good portion of the book) are all about the different forms of offerings that should be brought under various circumstances, and as restitution for various sins.

So, we get to 8:24, and the ordination of Aaron and his sons as priests. Several bulls are slaughtered, and Moses “took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the thumb of his right hand and the big toe of his right foot” after telling them this was what the Lord had commanded be done. Moses goes on to dab blood on each of the sons in the same fashion, and then throw the rest of the blood against the four sides of the altar. Shall we, then, as literal “word of God” Christians, take from this that our priests and our pastors are not properly ordained unless we slaughter several bulls and take blood from one of them and dab it on? Or doesn’t that part apply in modern day America?

So, now we come to the parts of the book which start really telling people how to behave. 10:6 says “Do not dishevel your hair, and do not tear your vestments, or you will die and wrath will strike all the congregation”. Reading carefully, this is clearly an admonishment not to behave in like fashion in mourning for two who had just been consumed by the Lord’s fire, but must we not, as literalist Christians, keep our hair neat and our clothing orderly? How many Christians who are so against the marriage of homosexuals make sure their children are running around with fresh haircuts and eschew the current fashion of torn jeans?

10:9 says “Drink no wine or strong drink when you enter the tent of meeting. It is a statute forever throughout your generations”. I suppose that since Jesus later asked his disciples to drink wine as symbolic of his blood, shed for them, that it’s now quite OK to consume wine in the “tent of meeting” or Church?

OK, now we get to the real meat of the book (pun not intentional). The Lord speaks to Moses and Aaron and tells them to tell the people a list of foods which they must not eat. Among these: (11:7) “The pig, for even though it has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed, it does not chew the cud, it is unclean for you.” (11:10-12) “But anything in the seas or the streams that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and among all the other living creatures that are in the waters – they are detestable to you and detestable they shall remain. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall regard as detestable. Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you.” So, I suppose all of us strict, literalist Christians have never eaten bacon or pork roast, crab or lobster, shrimp or clams or oysters? Quite certainly we must not have, if we are (as quoted later in the Good Book) “without sin” and thus willing to “cast the first stone” against gay men.

Here’s one for the mothers among us literalist Christians. Chapter 12 says that you are ceremonially unclean (as during your period) for 7 days after the birth of a son or 14 days after the birth of a daughter, and your time of blood purification shall be thirty three days for the male child and sixty six days for the female. I can only assume that when you had your children, you did not touch anything holy (including your Bible) or enter into a Church sanctuary for the prescribed 33 or 66 days? At the end of which time, I’m quite sure you brought a lamb in it’s first year of life and a pigeon or turtledove to your local priest as offering to purify the sin of childbirth!

Thank heavens there aren’t that many people suffering leprosy any more, so we can pretty much skip over Chapters 13 and 14. But we must remember them, in case we come into contact with a leper or at some point contract this disease.

And I’m sure we’re all quite aware (from Chapter 15) that women are unclean for seven days from the start of their period (15:19), and men are unclean until the evening on any day that they have an emission of semen from their member (15:16). Men, keep in mind that anything your wife has touched during her seven days, if you touch it as well, you are unclean and must immediately bathe yourself in water. If you come into contact with her menstrual blood, you also are unclean for 7 days!

And now having, as I’m sure we all have, followed the letter and the spirit of all of these instructions, now we reach Chapter 18, the first chapter which instructs us that our sexual relations must only be between members of the opposite sex. Before we can get to the homosexuality, however, we are, I’m sure, all very careful not to have sexual relations with our wives during their unclean menstrual period of seven days as described above, right? 18:19 clearly says that’s wrong. Oh, but wait, according to the end of Chapter 18 (verses 28-29), if we break any of the rules in Chapter 18, “the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations shall be cut off from their people”.

I’m tired of the literary device into which I have fallen. Just read 18:28-29. If Leviticus is the literal word of the Lord, then any man who has ever had sex with his wife within 7 days of the start of her period, or has had sex with another man, should have been vomited out of their land and cut off from their people. Strange that although the consequence is CLEARLY described, there are an awful lot of homosexuals, and an awful lot of men who do not wait the full 7 days after the start of their partner’s period, who have clearly NOT been “vomited” out of the land. So somehow the rule is the literal word of God, but the consequence... isn’t? Mighty selective of you. By the way, Chapter 26 also talks about the penalties for disobedience, including consumption and fevers, your enemies eating the fruits of your labors and much more. So let’s see, if God has already declared what punishment He will mete out on those who disobey, why do we worry so much about it? If it’s a sin, God will deal with it.

So, why is it so vital that we pay strict attention to that ONE passage, but somehow when the next chapter, (19:11) tells us not to lie, we don’t have quite the same objection. Why, our current President, the darling of the Religious Right, has been caught in a number of lies. Same book, same set of commands from God, but when it’s homosexuals, Leviticus says it’s a sin. When it’s lies, eh, who cares? 19:13 says that people who work for you must be paid on that day, it is a sin to hold the money until a later day. How many of us receive a daily paycheck for our work? Why isn’t this a big deal?

By the way, at several points in Leviticus, the text makes it clear that these are commandments for the Lord’s people. For example, 20:26 “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine”. So arguably, it’s not wrong for men to lie with other men, only for ancient Jewish men, and by extension, Christian men.

This is getting long. There are more things in Leviticus that we oddly don’t follow with the same vehemence with which we choose to enforce 18:22. In the interest of not making this too much longer, I’ll just list them, with occasional short commentary:

19:18 – Love your neighbor as yourself. (Keep this one in mind as you condemn homosexuality. Those who behave in a hateful manner towards a homosexual are clearly sinning as badly as the homosexual himself, according to Leviticus.)
19:19 – Do not sow fields with two different kinds of seed, nor wear garments made of two different materials (cotton-poly blend t-shirt, anyone?)
19:27 – Don’t round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. (Hmmm. All of us clean-shaven men are sinning? It would appear so.)
19:28 – No tattoos.
19:32 – Defer to the elderly.
20:10 – Adulterers should be put to death. (Really. A whole lot of people ought to be put to death for this one!)
20:18 – If a man and woman have sex during the 7 days of her period, they should be cast out and banished from society.
20:21 – If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity, they shall be childless. (Hmmmm. If that were true, Jerry Springer’s show would have a lot less guests. There sure seem to be a lot of children from these childless people.)
21:7 – A man must not marry a woman who has been divorced.
21:12 – Priests shall not leave the sanctuary.

My point is that even if you want to take the Bible as the strict, literal word of God, and want to assume that His hand guided the translation that sits before you, so that you are getting His exact intention, it’s really quite intellectually dishonest to point to this one passage as proof of the sin of homosexuals, while we condone, ignore and even (many of us) engage in some of the other sins listed.

Just keep all of this in mind, the next time you eat shell fish. Or don’t wait the full seven days to have sex. Or go to church right after childbirth. Or get a tattoo. Or, oh yeah, condemn homosexuals.

Copyright (c) July 11, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net