Homosexual Loophole in the Bible
Fundamentalist Christians love to talk about how homosexual behavior is an “abomination.” They are always talking about how God loves everyone, but hates that gay people engage in gayness. It is the whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” thing which just seems to look a lot like hating the sinner in most of these cases.
Well, I decided the other day to take a closer look at some of these passages in the Bible in which God talks about the “abomination” of gayness. Guess what I found? I found a loophole. But before I get to that, let’s look at the passages.
The first passage I am going to look at is one of the most quoted by anti-gay Christians. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22. That is pretty straight forward right? Clearly the Bible says it is an abomination and abominations are not good things. But what exactly is the abomination here and what does this passage not say.
Let’s first look at what this passage doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that womankind shalt not lie with womankind. So from this passage, it seems that lesbianism is okay with God (or at least God doesn’t say anything about it here).
Now for the loophole; what exactly does this passage claim “we shalt not do?” I think the key word here is “lie.” In other words, gay men can have gay sex as long as they aren’t lying down. So sex standing up wouldn’t be an abomination. Backdoor Doggie style should be okay with God too.
But let’s look at a little further at the Bible and see if God talks more about homosexuality. Well, we don’t have to go too far, because in Leviticus 20:13 the Bible says, “If a man also lie with mankind, 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.” Wow, not only does this passage also focus on the lying down of the men with each other, it also says that those who do lie down with other men should be put to death. Those are some mighty strong words coming from the Creator of the Universe, Lord of mankind. It kind of makes me wonder why I don’t see Jews and Christians do what many Muslims do and go out killing gay people (or at least the gay men who lie down with their partners). This verse is pretty clear that those who commit this abomination “shall be put to death.” I don’t think lobbying against Gay Marriage really is fulfilling the full letter of God’s Law, do you?
But just to show the ridiculousness of this passage, all we really have to do in go a little bit further back and see that God prescribes death for other things too. In Leviticus 20:9, God has this to say, “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood [shall be] upon him.” So how many Christians would put to death a child who curses his or her parents? Why not? It is in the Bible. If you have the slightest tiny bit of moral sense, you would not kill a child who curses his or her parents as God has commanded. Some Christians have told me that that passage is part of the “Old Covenant” and so it isn’t valid any more. Yet those same Christians still think homosexuality is an abomination despite the fact that the main passage against it is only a few lines further away.
This is where fundamentalist believers pull out the New Testament. In Romans 1: 26-27, the Apostle Paul writes, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” But let us be clear about this. This is Paul’s opinion and not the words of the Creator of the Universe. For those of you who didn’t know, the Apostle Paul was terribly sexually frustrated. He really has a bug up his ass (no pun intended) about all sexual behavior. This is what he said in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”
Paul seems to be a virgin and he seems to be of the opinion that everyone ought to be a virgin too. But if you don’t have the will power to resist your urges for sex as he does, than he thinks that you should marry so that you can satisfy your urges without the risk of eternal torture in Hell. You know what? That might even be a strong Biblical argument in favor of gay marriage.
Filed under: Gay Issues, Religion, sex, the bible
