Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics 03.3: Homosexuality

So in this Christian, scriptural virtue-based ethical framework, what do we do with the verses about homosexuality?

First, we need to be clear about what proposition we're even talking about. Christians broadly fall into three camps on this issue. The sides below are not my terminology, but they are my attempts at definitions.

Side A: God has no objection to either people who experience same-sex attraction, nor to the action of two people of the same sex having sex, at least in some contexts.

Side B: God has no objection to people who experience same-sex attraction, but does object to the action of two people of the same sex having sex in any context. Non-straight persons should remain celibate.

Side X: Experience of same-sex attraction is sinful. Non-straight people can and should change their sexual orientation, or should be excluded from the Church in all capacities.

I'm just going to say outright that the ideas of Side X are completely disconnected from objective reality. All truth is God's truth, and one way to determine that truth is by science and observation. Looking at the world, we see that people cannot change their sexual orientation, and that attempts to that end are often or universally harmful. Sexual orientation is a fixed aspect of someone's created personality, and God will not exclude for such reasons. If you want someone willing to entertain the notion that God hates anyone, or wants anyone excluded from the Church, you're reading the wrong writer. And if anyone has told you anything like that, they were not preaching Christ to you. Find another preacher.

The difference between Side A and Side B is largely the question of whether God objects to two people of the same sex having sex in all contexts. It's entirely about actions, not about desires. There's a spectrum of teachings in various churches about this. Many evangelical churches would describe themselves as Side B, but in practice there's a lot of Side X actions mixed in. The shame involved is often literally unbearable. Take a look at the suicide rate among LGBT+ youth in the Church, and tell me the teachings of the Church on this subject are a tree that bears good fruit. We, as a Church, need to take a very close look at what we're teaching on this subject. Anything that makes any person, especially a child, feel less than loved and wanted by God? That is blasphemy.

But let's pretend that doesn't matter and act for a moment like we're legalists. What does the Bible say about this matter?

There are about half a dozen passages talking about homosexual sex in the Bible. There are a few in the Old Testament. (Recall: that part of the Bible which we completely reject as binding on Christians.) And then there are a few verses in the New Testament, in the writings of Paul. Nowhere is it a major subject, by any means. But we'll walk through these verses, and I'll explain why I no longer find them convincing.

(To be clear, David Gushee does this vastly better than I do, in his book Changing Our Mind.)

Now, before we get into those verse-by-verse, I want to point out something: every single one of these references is explicitly about two men having sex. In the entire Bible, the only verse that can be construed as talking about two women having sex is in Romans 1:26. "...for their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones..." And that's it.

Now, it's not at all clear that this is intended to be a blanket condemnation of the idea of two women having sex; it definitely could be, but it could also be about a dozen other things. But even if it is a blanket universal condemnation, let's think about the implications of that. There's no mention of lesbian sex in the entire Old Testament! I mean, how could there be? In their context, sex was a thing a male did to someone; two women having sex was linguistic nonsense.

But then, what are we to make of this? If Romans 1:26 is really a verse we should interpret to mean "God universally objects to two women having sex," then we also have to conclude that God was perfectly okay with Jewish lesbians for 1,500 years, before finally telling them to knock it off, very obliquely, in a letter Paul wrote to non-Jewish Christians in Rome.

This proposal is improbable to the point it does not bear further discussion.

Based on this, I think we can reasonably say that any prohibition of female-female sex is man-made, once again elevating the teachings of man to the level of scripture. Interestingly, a second-century parabiblical book called the Apocalypse of Peter references lesbians being condemned to eternal torment. So while man-made, it's not exactly new. (AoP is also the earliest reference we have to hell as a place of eternal conscious torment, also a man-made idea that's not in scripture.)

Now, I've never heard anyone actually argue that God is fine with lesbianism, but still objects to male homosexual sex. But it's at least an imaginable argument, so I'm going to work through the scriptures anyway. Remember, we're trying to answer "Does God clearly object to male-male sex in all cases?"

So where do the objections start? Sodom, where the men of the condemned city tried to rape Lot's angelic visitors. Since we're testing whether God condemns consensual male homosexual relationships, a story about rape has no bearing on that point. That should shut down the usefulness of Sodom right there. But even beyond that, the sin of Sodom is discussed multiple times elsewhere in scripture, and nowhere is the cause of their destruction called out as homosexual sex. And ignoring that, if the primary sin of Sodom is the homosexual part, the implication is that if they'd been gang-raping female visitors, God would have objected to that less. Really? Using this as some sort of proof text against homosexual sex just falls apart at even the slightest examination. It's kind of embarrassing.

Next, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, a crime/punishment pairing. 18:22 says "And with a male you shall not lay [as the] lyings of a woman." (Ancient Hebrew is awful. The Septuagint Greek translation is basically the same thing.) This is usually translated as "You shall not lie with a male in the manner of a female." But consider that it could also be translated "You shall not lie with a husband in the bed of a wife." Or more clearly, "You (a man) should not have sex with a man who is married to a woman." In a culture where sex with with another man might not necessarily be considered cheating on your wife, having it called out explicitly as a form of adultery might make sense. Either way, even if we accepted the Old Testament as binding, which we do not, the meaning of this passage is not clear.

And that's it for the Old Testament. This really doesn't get talked about much.

In the New Testament, we get three passages from Paul, all of which are ambiguous.

Romans 1 (New English Translation):

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones, and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed in their passions for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Now, this is clearly talking about two men having sex. But it may be talking about two men having sex in the context of pagan worship. Even if it's not that, it could very well be a reference to the pervasive rape culture of the first century Roman world, where a man could rape anyone below him in the social order, but was subject to rape by those above him.

Can we interpret Romans 1 as a blanket condemnation of male-male sex in all cases? I don't see how.

Then we get to the really interesting ones. Paul throws a couple references to homosexual sex into a couple of his sin lists, without further elaboration. 1 Corinthians 6 includes μαλακός/malakos and ἀρσενοκοίτης/arsenokoitēs. 1 Timothy 1 also includes arsenokoitēs. These are the words usually translated into English as some variant of "practicing homosexual."

Malakos is literally something like "soft." Some Bibles translate it as "effeminate," other times it gets lumped in as a variant of homosexual partner. It's not used anywhere else in the New Testament except to anti-describe John the Baptist's clothing in Matthew 11:8. Other Greek sources treat it as something more like moral softness. So this word isn't doing much heavy lifting for telling us what's considered right or wrong here.

Now, the word arsenokoitēs seems straightforward at first. It's a combination of two Greek words, and pretty clearly means "male-bedders." This is definitely about male-male sex, at least some subset of it.

But when you dig further, this word is fascinating, because we have no record of it prior to Paul using it in 1 Corinthians. There might be one usage roughly contemporary to Paul, also by a Greek-speaking Jew, in a list of economic wrongdoing. If you look at the Septuagint, the standard Greek translation of the Old Testament that Paul would have known, those verses in Leviticus are translated into Greek using arseno koitēs. It looks for all the world like Jews made this word up, expressly to reference Leviticus!

Now, why would they do this? There were many common Greek words they could have used to reference homosexual sex. And Paul is well-educated. He's not writing these letters to introduce new concepts to his readers; he's reminding them of conversations they've already had in person. He's not using a rare Jewish-Greek word because he doesn't know any other. He's got to be purposefully referencing some subset of male-male sex that standard Greek didn't have a specific word for.

There's all sorts of deeper academic discussions about this available. But I'm at this point very comfortable saying that Paul's usage in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy does not constitute a compelling case for universal condemnation of male-male sex.

And then there's the argument from Jesus teachings on divorce. Mark 10:

Then Jesus left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan River. Again crowds gathered to him, and again, as was his custom, he taught them. Then some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts. But from the beginning of creation he made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Here the Pharisees reference Deuteronomy 24, and ask Jesus to take sides in one of their religious disputes. Jesus quotes Genesis to them, saying that marriage is always intended to be permanent, and divorce was never God's intent. He never starts saying "Oh, divorce is okay in these circumstances, but not these other circumstances." He restates the problem, but expects those involved to figure out the solution.

Now, the reasoning here goes something like this:

• Jesus referenced Genesis as a standard for marriage and divorce
• Therefore, all marriages should be like that of Adam and Eve
• Adam and Eve were heterosexual
• Therefore, two people of the same sex cannot be married
• A separate argument concludes that sex should only exist within the confines of marriage
• Therefore, two people of the same sex should not have sex
  

(If I'm missing a step here, I'm not purposefully trying to set up a strawman. Let me know.)

First, I just object to the idea that we can take Jesus statements about divorce and apply them to a very different subject. That's not respecting his words. Jesus said what he meant. You do not get to bend his words to apply to something else. "No, no, what he actually meant was, 'Blessed are the makers and purveyors of all dairy products!"

But it gets worse. This argument structure can be made to mean basically anything you want. As a source of moral dictates, it is inherently not compelling. For example, similar logic goes like this:

• Jesus referenced Genesis as a standard for marriage
• Therefore, all marriages should be like that of Adam and Eve
• Adam and Eve were commanded to multiply
  
• Therefore, married couples should not use contraception

(It should surprise nobody that I don't subscribe to this argument.)

Or consider this example:

• Jesus referenced Genesis as a standard for marriage
• Therefore, all marriages should be like that of Adam and Eve
• Adam and Eve were naked vegetarians
  
• Therefore, married couples should not eat meat or wear clothes
  

Still, for the sake of argument, suppose we assume that Genesis 2 should be our guide for choosing between Side A and Side B. Side B says we should look at the story, and understand that all marriages should be heterosexual. This is clearly a man-made inference and not in the text at all, but okay, let's explore the implications of that.

Since Jesus references Genesis 2 as a standard for marriage, we must conclude that Genesis 2 does refer to marriage, and not some sort of non-marriage companionship. God saw that it was not good for man to be without a suitable marriage partner. So either:

1. God wants homosexual persons to remain without a suitable marriage partner. The clear statement of God that it is not good for man to be alone, and the statements by Jesus that avoiding marriage is only given to a few, is simply not applicable to gay people.
   
2. God wants homosexual persons to have a suitable marriage partner, of the opposite sex. Simple observations of how this works out in practice puts this under "no good tree bears bad fruit."
   
3. God wants homosexual persons to have a suitable marriage partner of the same sex, just... without the sex. This would be a very odd definition of marriage to extract from a very tortured connection of ambiguous scriptures. And it would also mean one can't actually be opposed to gay marriage, in itself.
   

Now, consider this argument from Genesis 2:

• Jesus referenced Genesis as a standard for marriage
• Therefore, all marriages should be like that of Adam and Eve
• Adam and Eve were commanded to be fruitful
• Some people, due to the details of their brain structure, cannot be fruitful in a heterosexual relationship, but can be fruitful in a homosexual relationship
• Therefore, two people of the same sex can have a fruitful relationship in the same sense that Adam and Eve did
  

One could still try to strain out smaller and smaller gnats. One could try to parse out what it is to be fruitful. (Not a bad idea in itself, perhaps.) But we are going to far down this rabbit hole that we can't even see daylight any more. If this is an argument you expect other people to find convincing, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

There is no clear indication in scripture that sex between two people of the same sex is generally condemned. Neither shall I condemn it.