Years from now, it will all be much clearer.  We – or perhaps our descendants – will know how it all turns out, by which I mean the controversy that has now engulfed the Christian church worldwide regarding the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality.  For now, without the benefit of hindsight, we can only speculate as to whether this disruption within the life of the church is near its end, or whether it has only just begun, or whether it is somewhere in between.

 

My own sense, which again cannot be verified, is that the church is right about in the middle of it all.  A lot has happened, but a lot remains to be seen.  And right there in the middle of it all, too, is the Bible.  

 

The major U.S. Protestant denominations have visited and revisited the issue several times now at their respective national assemblies.  Recently, support for gay unions and gay clergy by the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada caused leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to take the step of requesting that the U.S. and Canadian church bodies not send delegates to the gathering of the Anglican Consultative Council in the summer of 2005.  What may once have been an issue that had primarily embroiled U.S. churches has now disrupted church relations worldwide.  

 

And right in the middle of it all is the Bible.  The decision by the leaders of the Anglican Communion was based on a 1998 Anglican resolution that condemns homosexual practice as “incompatible with Scripture.”  My own denomination, the American Baptist Churches in the USA, adopted a similarly-worded resolution in 1992, declaring that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  While the American Baptist resolution does not explicitly base its position on the Bible, the implication is clear enough, given that American Baptists consider the Bible to be the most authoritative guide to the Christian faith.

 

Much has been written, much of it of high scholarly caliber, about the Bible and homosexuality.  The prevailing view at the moment seems to be that the Bible condemns homosexual practice.  How well-founded is the currently prevailing view?  Has everything been said that can be said about the Bible and homosexuality?  Or are there insights yet to be attained that might help to point the way out of this time of controversy?

 

This article will examine the biblical texts that have come to be viewed as the scriptural foundation for the conclusion that homosexuality is incompatible with the Christian faith, in an effort to determine just how sound that foundation is.  There is not one single passage in the Bible in which homosexuality is the primary topic of the passage, or that sets out to address homosexuality per se.  With the exception of two single verses from Leviticus, which are nearly identical, the biblical texts that are commonly cited appear lack any clear connection to this controversial issue.  

 

One might say that various biblical threads have been woven together to produce a fabric that gives the appearance of condemning homosexuality, but when these threads are examined separately they provide remarkably thin support for what it is claimed is such a clear and unequivocal biblical teaching.  Thus it seems odd that, when Christianity is compared to other major cultural traditions, Christianity does seem exceptionally hostile toward homosexuality.  It would be remarkable if the eclectic assortment of biblical passages commonly viewed as the Bible’s “teaching” on homosexuality could account for the harsh condemnation that many Christians assert to be the clear position of their faith.  The concluding section of this article explores the possibility that it is not the content of theses biblical passages, but rather the form that the two verses from Leviticus  took, as legal prohibitions, combined with the manner in which these prohibitions became codified as law by successive Western governments over several centuries, that accounts for Christian culture’s uniquely hostile attitude toward homosexuality.

 

What does the Bible say (and not say) about homosexuality?

 

1. What the Bible does not say

 

For all of the certainty that many profess regarding what the Bible says about homosexuality, one might get the impression that it is condemned by one of the Ten Commandments.  None of them, however, address the topic.  Perhaps even more surprisingly, Jesus has nary a word to say about it.  The topic does not come up in any of the Gospels.  

 

In fact, there is no word, in either Hebrew or Greek, that corresponds to the modern term, “homosexuality.”  Same-sex relationships did exist in Biblical times, and have indeed existed in all human societies, ancient and modern.  But there was no biblical term to refer to the modern concept of homosexuality, or even of sexual orientation in general, in the Biblical languages.1  

 

2. Nearly all of the frequently cited passages lack any clear connection to the topic

 

Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:4-6

 

Nearly all of the texts that are frequently pointed to as evidence that the Bible condemns homosexuality, on closer inspection, have no clear connection to the topic at all.  This is  the case with respect to two passages that one evangelical leader considers to be the definitive biblical teaching on heterosexual marriage as the norm for all human relationships.2  The first of these passages, Genesis 2:24, follows upon the account of the creation of woman from Adam’s rib.  The verse itself states:  “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”  The uniting of a man and a woman in marriage is here portrayed as the culmination of a process that begins with an original unity, which then becomes separated, and which finally is reunited again.  From this perspective, when a man and a woman come together in marriage they are coming back together to a unity they have known before, in that they both originated in the first, sexually undifferentiated, human being, the adam.  

 

By portraying male-female relations as the reunification of what had once been united, Genesis 2:24 is offering an explanation of the origins of heterosexual desire.  From the point of view that this verse suggests, in their heterosexual relations men and women express their desire to overcome their separateness by returning to their original unity.  As Phyllis Bird demonstrates, however, the verse does not in any way contemplate the possibility of homosexual desire.  The verse simply assumes that human sexual desire is heterosexual in nature, and offers an explanation for the origins of that desire.  The verse does not prescribe any specific form of human behavior, or establish any institutional format for human relationships.  The verse seeks only to explain why things are the way they are assumed to be, without even considering the possibility that the nature of human sexual desire might vary.3  This verse has nothing to say about homosexuality, because it assumes that heterosexuality is universal. 

 

The second purportedly definitive teaching about the righteousness of heterosexual marriage involves an instance in which Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, quotes the verse we have just examined, Genesis 2:24, in response to a question about the lawfulness of divorce.  In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus “answers” the question about the lawfulness of divorce with a question of his own that incorporates Genesis 2:24: “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?”  Without waiting for an answer, Jesus concludes, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”  

 

On the surface, Jesus here appears to be advocating that divorce is impermissible, but at least two large leaps are required to get from Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19:4-5 to the notion that heterosexual marriage is normative for all people.  First, if Jesus condemns anything in this passage it is divorce.  That is the subject of the question he is asked, and it is also the subject of his response.  To conclude that because it may be impermissible for heterosexual persons who are married to divorce each other homosexual relationships are also impermissible simply does not follow.  Further, even to say that Jesus clearly condemns divorce in this passage is to ignore the background context of the passage.  Under Jewish law, it was rather easy for men to obtain a divorce, whereas women had no way out of a difficult marriage.  Jesus’ statements imply that for men to take advantage of this double standard is unjust.  Jesus’ disciples fully understood his message, for in Matthew 19:10, they observe, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”4  To conclude on the basis of Jesus’ critique of a gender-based double standard with respect to the availability of divorce that heterosexual marriage is the norm for all persons would require a great, unjustified leap.

 

Genesis 18-19 (and Judges 19)

 

The fact that the word “sodomy” is derived from certain interpretations of the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18-19 indicates the prevalence of the view that this passage provides evidence that God abhors homosexuality.  The existence of an historical connection between this passage and negative viewpoints regarding homosexuality does not necessarily mean, however, that this passage actually does condemn same-sex relations.  Without question, the story itself is deeply disturbing, and as readers we will come away with strong reactions.  This passage, and another passage that is often mentioned along with the Sodom story from Judges 19, however, do not bear upon the topic of the Bible and homosexuality.

 

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah begins in Genesis 18, when God tells Abraham that God is planning to go down to these cities to see whether they have indeed committed the “very grave” (but unspecified) sins that God has heard about.  In a dynamic series of  exchanges with God, Abraham urges God not to “sweep away the righteous with the wicked” – even if there are only fifty, or just forty-five, or forty, or thirty, or twenty, or even only ten righteous people there.  

 

Then in Genesis 19, two angels, sent by God to investigate Sodom and Gomorrah, arrive at the gateway to Sodom in the evening.  There they were met by Lot, who persuaded them to stay in his house rather than out in the square.  After dinner, but before Lot’s guests had gone to bed, the men of Sodom surrounded the house and demanded that Lot release his guests to them, “so that we may know them.”  (Genesis 19:5)  Scholars are in nearly unanimous agreement that this reference to “knowing” Lot’s guests indicates the men of Sodom’s intent to engage in sexual relations with Lot’s guests.  

 

In response, Lot went outside, to urge the men to “not act so wickedly.”  (Genesis 19:7)  He offered them instead his two virgin daughters, to “do to them as you please,” rather than violate his guests.  The men of Sodom refused Lot’s offer, and stormed toward Lot at the door of his house.  Quickly, Lot’s guests pulled him inside, and they struck the men with blindness so that the men could not find the door.  Inside, Lot’s guests revealed that Sodom was going to be destroyed, and urged Lot to save himself and his family.  When Lot hesitated, the angels forcibly escorted Lot, his wife and his two daughters from the city.  God then destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah completely.  As the family was fleeing, Lot’s wife turned to look back at the destruction and was turned into a pillar of salt.

 

This is a disturbing story in several respects.  Readers will probably be most disturbed by Lot’s attempt to offer his virgin daughters to the mob in the place of his guests.  Some may see in this aspect of the passage a reflection of the high value that ancient Jewish culture placed upon hospitality to the stranger, but to value one’s responsibilities to one’s guests so highly that one would let this angry mob have its way with one’s daughters seems clearly unacceptable.  Of course, the mob’s declared intent to rape Lot’s guests is also extremely disturbing.  Finally, that God would turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt simply for looking back at the destruction seems quite harsh.  

 

To conclude that the sin of the men of Sodom consists of homosexual behavior, however, “is clearly wide of the mark,” according to Louis Crompton, author of Homosexuality and Civilization.  “What is at issue here is not a consensual act but mass rape – sexual violence against two heavenly emissaries by an entire community.”5  Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott agree: “Surely, none of us would be prepared to say that if the men of Sodom had accepted the offer of Lot’s daughters and abused them as did the men in chapter 19 of Judges, God would have withheld judgment because heterosexual acts had taken place!  Violence – forcing sexual activity upon another – is the real point of this story.”6

 

Judges 19 contains a similar incident in which the men of Gibeah demand that a host turn over his out-of-town guest to them, that they might have intercourse with him.  Anthropological studies indicate that “human societies at many times and in many regions have subjected strangers, newcomers and trespassers to homosexual anal violation as a way of reminding them of their subordinate status.”7  The prevalence of this danger would explain the host’s insistence, in both Genesis 19 and Judges 19, that the stranger stay in the host’s home rather than in the town square.  

 

Some scholars, however, point to Lot’s eagerness to substitute his virgin daughters in the place of his guest to be an indication of the degree to which ancient Jewish culture considered the homosexual rape of a man to constitute an unthinkable affront to his masculine identity, thus linking this passage to the issue of homosexuality.  Dan Via, for example, explains Lot’s reasoning as follows:  “For a man to be put in the position of being the passive partner – the penetrated one – in homosexual sex is such a violation of his masculine honor that men should protect other men from this offense at almost any cost – the sacrifice of one’s virgin daughters or one’s concubine.”8   Via thus concludes that, although “these two stories have no direct bearing on the validity of contemporary consensual homosexual relationships,” they do “condemn homosexual gang rape.”9  

 

Taking the opposite view, that the Sodom story condemns gang rape per se, regardless of its homosexual character, Darrell Lance draws our attention to another account of rape leading to divine destruction, also found in Genesis.  Genesis 34 tells the story of Shechem’s brutal rape of Dinah, as a result of which the city of Shechem was destroyed.  “It would not be logical,” Lance reasons, to conclude from the story of Shechem’s rape of Dinah “that heterosexuality per se is being condemned.  Similarly the stories of Genesis 19 and Judges 19 are not instructive about homosexuality per se.  All rape is violent and to be condemned.  The stories therefore are essentially irrelevant to the larger issue.”10

 

Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the cultural attitudes and practices that may happen to be reflected in a biblical story, on the one hand, and the point of teaching of the story, on the other.  Genesis 19 and Judges 19 may provide evidence that homosexual rape was considered to be degrading, and was performed in order for one to assert one’s social dominance over another, but to equate biblical evidence that certain cultural attitudes and practices happened to exist during biblical times with biblical agreement with or support for such attitudes and practices is to confuse the trappings of a biblical story with its message.  The point of the Sodom story centers on God’s disapproval of the townspeople’s attempt to rape Lot’s guests.  This is not a passage that “says” anything about homosexuality so much as it happens to reflect the cultural attitudes and practices prevalent at the time.

 

In sum, though the church fathers would later identify the “sin of Sodom” as male homosexuality, the original story does not support this interpretation.  Further, none of the Hebrew prophets mentions homosexuality as having anything to do with why they considered Sodom to be an evil city.11  Ezekiel does refer to Sodom’s sins as “abominations,” but specifies only that Sodom “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”  (Ezekiel 16:49)  According to Crompton, “not until the writings of Philo is homosexuality unequivocally represented as intrinsic to Sodom’s lifestyle and its preeminent sin – the view adopted by the fathers of the early church.”  Jesus, Philo’s contemporary, on the other hand, “refers often to Sodom but always as an inhospitable city, never as a homosexual one.”12  Despite our tendency to  associate the story of Sodom with what we’ve come to call “sodomy,” that association should be attributed to the writings of Philo and the early church fathers, not to the Bible itself.

 

Romans 1:26-27

 

Romans 1:26-27 is situated within the context of a much broader theological argument about the significance of humanity’s redemption in Jesus Christ.  The first step in Paul’s argument is to demonstrate the need for God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.  Paul begins by asserting that, from the beginning of creation, God’s power and nature have been in plain view, through the things that God has made.  Instead of honoring and worshiping God, however, humanity began to worship idols.  (Romans 1:19-23)  God’s response, according to Paul, was simply to let humanity follow the corrupt path that they had set before themselves.  The result was that their hearts were corrupted by impure lusts and their minds were debased, which led them to engage in a variety of types of immoral conduct.  

 

Consumed by passion, women “exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural” (verse 26), and men gave up “natural intercourse with women” and committed “shameless acts” with other men.  (verse 27)   Further, their debased minds also led them to do “things that should not be done.  They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”  (verses 29-31)  Paul concludes the passage by summarizing the unfortunate state of affairs pre-Christ as follows: even though God had decreed “that those who practice such things deserve to die,” people “not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.”  (verse 32)

 

Curiously, Romans 1:26 is the only passage in the Bible that can be interpreted as an explicit reference to female homosexuality.  Such an interpretation depends, however, on what Paul’s use of the terms “natural” and unnatural” mean, as well as the translation that is to be given the Greek term that the New Revised Standard Version translates as “intercourse.”  David Frederickson interprets these terms against the backdrop of the intellectual environment within which Paul lived, which viewed sex as analogous to food, as something that should be used in moderation, without being indulged in.  According to Frederickson, Paul was following “a pattern established by the moral philosophers whose concern was to make passion and its control the core ethical problem in all matters of life.”  Proper use of anything entailed controlling one’s passions, and according to this ideal sex was to be used sparingly.  From the perspective of Paul’s intellectual context, Romans 1:26 is to be understood as a reference to women exchanging “unnatural use” (not “intercourse”) for “that which is against nature.”  Paul’s concern would thus have been that women were losing control over their passion for their husbands, and not at all that they were having sex with other females.13  

 

From this ancient philosophical perspective, Frederickson continues, we live in a “world given over to excess.”  The challenge “has less to do with the gender of the persons having sex and more with the loss of self-control experienced by the user of another’s body.”  Even when Paul speaks of men giving up “natural use” of sex with women and committing “shameless acts” with other men, “it is not Paul’s interest to condemn homosexuality but to highlight sexual passion, which is uniform with respect to the gender of the desired object.  Paul tells the story of humans who have been overwhelmed by passion….  Their error was to exchange normal use for erotic love.”14  This helps us to understand why, as Lance points out, that when Paul shifts from his broad theological argument about the significance of redemption in Christ (with which he begins the Epistle to the Romans) to the ethical issues that he considers to be important for Christians (beginning in Romans 12), “he does not raise the matter of homosexuality at all.”15  

 

1 Corinthians 6:9-10

 

In this passage, the apostle Paul uses a rhetorical device that was commonly employed in  his day, known as the “catalog of vices,” to specify those who will not be included in the kingdom of God.16  “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”  (verses 9-10)  A great deal of scholarly debate has taken place regarding the proper translation of the Greek terms malakoi and arsenokoitai, which in the New Revised Standard Version are rendered as “male prostitutes” and “sodomites,” respectively.  Frederickson has demonstrated, however, that “if we put them in the context of Greco-Roman ethical reflection on the problem of akrateia (lack of self-control),”17 much as he did with certain key terms in Romans 1:26-27, the meaning of these terms becomes much clearer. 

 

During Paul’s time, the term malakos (literally, “soft”) could be used to designate, in a highly derogatory way, a man who would passively allow himself to be penetrated in homosexual anal intercourse.  Men could be described as “soft” for a wide variety of other conduct, however, including “men who are too interested in having sex with women, their wives included,” and adulterers.  To illustrate, Aristotle spoke of those who are self-restrained as “enduring,” in contrast to the unrestrained as “soft,” and went on to connect malakia with excess or luxury.  When it is considered that all of the other vices listed in Paul’s catalog are active, rather than passive, deeds, and that other catalogs of vices from the same time period “do not condemn the male allowing himself to be sexually penetrated,” but rather “point more generally to the evils of excess or greed and lack of self-control,” it emerges that Paul’s concern here appears to be with “the problem of self-restraint with respect to bodily pleasures (food and sex).”18

 

The term arsenokoitai presents notorious translation difficulties.  It is a compound of the words for “male” (arsen) and “bed” (koite), leading naturally enough to Via’s conclusion that it means “a man who goes to bed with other men.”19  The term itself is rare, however.  No occurrence of its use has been discovered prior to its use by Paul.  Paul might have invented it himself, but as Frederickson suggests this does not seem likely, since Paul would have wanted his audience to understand the nature of the moral ills that he was listing in his catalog of vices.20  Based on the ways in which the term was used by writers coming after Paul, Frederickson concludes, “It seems likely that with this term Paul is picking up a thread of Greek and Jewish tradition which regarded pederasty as an illegitimate form of erotic love not only because of the lover’s loss of self-control but also because of the younger male’s disgrace in being penetrated.”  Accordingly, other vice catalogs “often included violent, hybristic love of boys in association with other unjust acts, such as adultery, theft, slander, and avarice.”21  

 

Paul’s catalog of vices thus appears meant to condemn sexual self-indulgence, even within the context of the marital relationship, and the sexual exploitation of minor boys by older men.  The former exhibits no direct connection to homosexuality, and the latter exhibits a specific concern about the injustice that can result from sexual relationships between adults and minors without condemning homosexual relationships in general.

 

1 Timothy 1:9-11

 

The word arsenokoitai also appears in 1 Timothy 1:9-11, translated as “sodomites” in the New Revised Standard Version:  “This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.”  The translation difficulties remain, but for the reasons discussed with respect to the usage of the term in 1 Corinthians  6:9, it appears well-justified to conclude with Scanzoni and Mollenkott that neither passage contains “a blanket condemnation of the homosexual orientation or homosexual love.  Specific kinds of sexual abuse are under discussion in these passages.”22  

 

3. The Holiness Code does condemn homosexual practice – but only in passing

 

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13

 

The Holiness Code contained in the book of Leviticus is generally considered to date to about 550 B.C.E., when the Israelites were living as captives in exile in Babylon.  The Holiness Code contains two prohibitions against homosexual practice.  Neither of Judaism’s older law codes (Exodus 21:1-23:19 and Deuteronomy 27:15-26), however, contains any such provision.  The absence of any legal provision regarding homosexual practice in the earlier codes indicates that the issue of homosexual practice emerged during the exilic period, when Israel was struggling to redefine its identity in non-geographic terms.  According to Phyllis Bird, Israel’s earlier laws had been concern primarily with perceived threats to the community norms of “the geographically based and kinship-ordered agricultural village.”  Developed during the exile, the Holiness Code addressed developments that threatened “to break community solidarity at a time when the community is under stress and the old kinship-based mechanisms of social control are threatened or no longer operative.”23

 

The first prohibition of homosexual practice in the Holiness Code is found at Leviticus  18:22:  “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”  Following a list of ten prohibited forms of incest in verses 7-16, verse 22 is located within an appendix (verses 19-23) that contains a miscellaneous assortment of practices considered to constitute ritual defilement, including sex with a woman who is menstruating; adultery; sacrificing one’s children to the Canaanite god Molech; a man having sex with a man “as with a woman”; and bestiality.  

 

The second prohibition occurs at Leviticus 20:13: “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.”  The verse is located within a list of capital crimes (verses 9-16) that appear to be graded, beginning with the most serious, including cursing one’s father or mother; adultery; incest; a man having sex with a man “as with a woman”; polygamy; and bestiality.

 

The reference to homosexual practice as an “abomination” in both prohibitions serves to characterize it as something that is so abhorrent or revolting that it need not be explained.  Bird provides a helpful analysis of the reason why this was the case:  “It appears most likely in the patriarchal ethos of ancient Israel that homosexual activity carried a sense of male shame for the partner ‘forced’ to assume the ‘female’ role (or shamelessness for the male who assumed it voluntarily)….  Behind the prohibition is, I think, a fear of deviation from the socially dominant pattern of male-female intercourse….  In the final analysis it is a matter of gender identity and roles.”24  The phrasing of the Holiness Code’s prohibition against bestiality, which is described as literally a “mixing,” or “confusion,” supports this view.  Sex between two men is seen as another instance of mixing, “a mixing of the order of sexuality as created by God, male and female.”25  

 

That these verses condemn homosexual practice cannot be disputed.  What tends to get distorted, however, is our sense of the relationship of these verses to the overall purpose of the Holiness Code.  These prohibitions “received ‘canonical’ formation in a period of transition and breakdown of older community boundaries and norms, when the question of communal identity had become the central theological question,” Phyllis Bird reminds us.  “The answer provided by the Holiness Code applies a cultic concept to the community as a whole and creates legislation that redefines the boundaries of the community, interpreting them in cultic terms of purity and separation from defilement.”26  At a time when the people of Israel were threatened with the loss of their identity in exile, the Holiness Code provided clear boundaries in an effort to preserve that identity.  These boundaries were drawn to exclude homosexual practice, but only as a by-product of the primary focus of the Holiness Code, which was on the challenge of redefining Israelite identity in terms of cultic purity, not matters of sexual ethics.27

 

What accounts for Christianity’s traditional hostility toward homosexuality?

 

In Homosexuality and Civilization, Louis Crompton surveys the attitudes of a dozen historical cultures toward homosexuality.  The pattern that emerges “is the divide between those that called themselves Christian and those that flourished before or independently of Christianity.”  In Christian societies, “we find laws and preaching which promoted hatred, contempt, and death”; in others, “varying attitudes, all of them (barring Islam, which, like Christianity, inherited the lethal tradition of the Hebrew scriptures) to a radical degree more tolerant.”28  For example, in ancient Greece, “love between males was honored as a guarantee of military efficiency and civic freedom.”  In Roman culture, a mixed attitude developed.  It was socially and legally acceptable for a man to engage in sexual relations with male slaves, but “the association with slavery made the passive role, according to the rules of Roman sexual politics, unacceptable to a freeborn Roman, since it compromised his status as a dominant male.”  Nonetheless, “nearly every Roman poet of note wrote love poems to boys.”29  

 

Crompton also found the cultures of Confucian China, Buddhist Japan and Hindu India to be remarkably tolerant of homosexuality.  Even Islam, which like Judaism and Christianity considered the Holiness Code’s prohibition of homosexual practice to be sacred scripture, “fostered a radically different literary, social, and affective atmosphere that was much more tolerant” than Christian culture.30

 

In contemporary debates about homosexuality, those who assert that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching appeal directly to scripture in support of their view.  This article has demonstrated, however, that the Bible is not so clear about homosexuality.  Careful examination reveals that nearly all of the texts that are frequently cited (Genesis 2:24; Genesis 18-19; Judges 19; Matthew 19:4-6; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; and 1 Timothy 1:9-11) have no clear connection to the topic whatsoever.  Only Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, of the Holiness Code, clearly condemn homosexual practice, but even then it must be noted that Judaism’s two earliest law codes made no mention of the topic.  These prohibitions of homosexual practice took shape only later, as a function of Israel’s need, living in exile, to shift from understanding its identity in geographic terms to understanding that identity in terms of cultic purity.

 

Given that biblical support for the condemnation of homosexuality is so thin, amounting basically to two quite similar, single verses from the Holiness Code, the question must be asked:  what can account for the uniquely virulent attitude of many contemporary Christians toward homosexuality?  I would suggest that it is the form of the two verses from Leviticus, as legal prohibitions proscribing the death penalty for homosexual conduct, that points us in the direction of an answer to the question of what can explain the origin of Christians intolerance of homosexuality.  

 

Early Christianity rejected a wide range of Jewish rules about proper diet, grooming, dress, and other matters, but theologians such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Eusebius emphatically embraced the Holiness Code’s prohibition of homosexual practice.31  The establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire would prove to be the key turning point, allowing the Holiness Code’s prohibitions to become law.  According to Crompton, “When the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century, the Old Testament death penalty for male homosexual behavior was incorporated into Roman law.  Later, this same precedent was cited when death for homosexual behavior was prescribed by criminal codes in France, Spain, England, the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian states, Scandinavia, and every land settled by European colonists who professed Christianity.”32  As a result, by the eighteenth century William Blackstone could describe the death penalty for homosexual behavior as a “universal” law of God, and “not merely a provincial [that is, Jewish] precept.”33   

 

The influence of the Holiness Code’s prohibition spread to the New England colonies with the Puritans, whose “[t]emporal laws followed divine decree.”34  The 1648 Massachusetts code, for example, enacted the very language of Leviticus 20:13, changing it only to add exceptions for boys under 14 years and for duress in place of the phrase “their blood is upon them.”35  The influence of Leviticus 20:13 explains what Roger Thompson describes as the paradox of the New England colonists’ excessive repugnance towards homosexual activity, given how rare such activity appears to have been in these  colonies.36  

 

The influence of the Holiness Code’s prohibitions on U.S. law has only recently been curtailed.  As recently as 1986, United States Chief Justice Warren Burger recognized that condemnation of homosexual activity “is firmly rooted in Judaeo-Christian moral and ethical standards” in voting to uphold a state anti-sodomy statute.37  It was not until the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas that this influence was rejected, in a decision that barred states from punishing private homosexual conduct between adults.38  

 

No other civilization so directly absorbed and enforced a scriptural prohibition of homosexuality as the Christian West did.  It is due to this history of prohibiting and harshly punishing homosexual conduct that we find ourselves in a situation in which those who claim that the Bible condemns homosexuality appear to have the upper hand over those who take issue with the view that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible.  Again and again, Western governments appealed to the Holiness Code’s provision criminalizing homosexual conduct, under penalty of death, to justify their own death penalty statutes.  The fact that homosexuality has been outlawed as a capital crime for centuries in the West, combined with the fact that the source of that prohibition is biblical, has predisposed us to accept, in a more definitive sense than can actually be justified, that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

 

1 H. Darrell Lance, “The Bible and Homosexuality,” 8 American Baptist Quarterly (1989): 140-41.  The modern term “homosexuality” was not coined until the late 1860’s, in German, and it was not for another two decades that it was first used in English and American texts.  The word did not come into popular usage until the 1920’s.  Byrne Fone, Homophobia: A History (New York: Picador USA, 2000).

 

2 See Michael G. Maudlin, “John Stott Speaks Out,” Christianity Today (Feb. 8, 1993): 37-38.

 

3 Phyllis A. Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation,” in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture, edited by David L. Balch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 167.

 

4 Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?  A Positive Christian Response (revised ed., San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco: 1994), 82.

 

5 Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2003), 37.

 

6 Scanzoni and Mollenkott, 59-60 (the men of Gibeah in Judges 19 accepted the guest’s concubine in his place, raping her repeatedly all night, leaving her on the doorstep to die).  

 

7 Lance, 143.

 

8 Dan O. Via, “The Bible, the Church, and Homosexuality,” in Dan O. Via and Robert J. Gagnon, Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 8-9.

 

9 Via, 5.

 

10 Lance, 144.

 

11 Crompton, 37.

 

12 Crompton, 39.

 

13 David E. Frederickson, “Natural and Unnatural Use in Romans 1:24-27: Paul and the Philosophic Critique of Eros,” in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture, 199-200, 206, 204, 201 n. 15.

 

14 Frederickson, 205, 207, 215 (Greek terms omitted).

 

15 Lance, 148.

 

16 Lance, 145.

 

17 Frederickson, 219.

 

18 Frederickson, 219-220.

 

19 Via, 13.

 

20 Frederickson, 220.

 

21 Frederickson, 221.

 

22 Scanzoni and Mollenkott, 76.

 

23 Bird, 156.

 

24 Bird, 157.

 

25 Lance, 145.

 

26 Bird, 162.

 

27 Bird, 162.

 

28 Crompton, 537.

 

29 Crompton, 538.

 

30 Crompton, 172.

 

31 Crompton, 117.

 

32 Crompton, 34.

 

33 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1779), quoted in Crompton, 34.

 

34 Roger Thompson, “Attitudes Towards Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies,” Journal of American Studies 23 (1989): 32.

 

35 “If any man LYETH WITH MAN-KINDE as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they both shal surely be put to death: unless the one partie were forced (or be under fourteen years of age in which case he shall be severely punished) Levit. 20. 13.”  Max Farrand, ed., The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929), 35.

 

36 Thompson, 40.

 

37 Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 196 (1986).

 

38 Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 570 (2003) (“far from possessing ‘ancient roots,’ Bowers, 478 U.S. at 192, 92 L.Ed.2d 140, 106 S.Ct. 2841, American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century.”).