Last week I opened up a discussion on the connection between patriarchy and homosexuality. The long and the short of it is that one of the primary ways ancient Romans determined what sorts of sexual activities were ok was tied to its patriarchal structuring of society.
You needed to “play your part,” which meant among other things that acting like a woman was shameful for man–not because women are different but because women are inferior.
After I started getting my head around this, the question that nagged in the back of my mind was whether or not Paul’s judgments against homosexual practice are plotted onto the same sort of social map.
In other words, did Paul (as Dale Martin claims) disapprove of homosexuality for reasons we would disapprove of?
In part, I think the answer is no.
Homosexuality and the Biblical Story
Paul talks about homosexual practice in two places: Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6.
In Romans 1, the comments about same-sex contact come at a climactic point in a decline of civilizations narrative that intends to show how Gentiles have rejected the creator God and the disastrous effects of this on society. The language Paul uses to describe the creation and how it is rejected echo Genesis 1, especially, at many points.
This shows that part of the conscious social and theological grid that Paul is using to articulate why same-sex contact is wrong is a Jewish nature/creation framework that he sees being rejected in misdirected sexual practices, including same-sex male intercourse, and possibly (though not definitely) female same-sex contact.
Similarly, when male same-sex contact is listed in 1 Cor 6 among vices Paul impugns, he uses a word, arsenokoites, that may well refer to Leviticus 18:22, which says it is an abomination for a man (arsen) to have sexual relations (kioten) with a man as one would have with a woman.
In both cases, then, a good argument can be made that Paul is consciously working with a scriptural understanding of natural sexual relations. But wait there’s more.
Homosexuality and Patriarchy
I’m also convinced that in both 1 Cor 6 and Rom 1 Paul is working within, and judging on the basis of, the patriarchal worldview he inhabits, whether wittingly or no.
Softies
The most obvious indication that Paul is judging homosexual practice on the basis of his patriarchal society is his use of the word malakos to describe people who “won’t inherit the kingdom of God” in 1 Cor 6.
This is word that is sometimes translated “effeminate” (which is actually a very good translation) and is often thought to indicate the passive partner in a male homosexual coupling.
First, then, here’s what’s going on with the word: malakos just means “soft.” But inasmuch as “soft” is one way of articulating the difference between weak women and strong, hard men in a patriarchal society, and was used to denote excessive luxury and the like, the word was often used as way of insulting a man who acted too “girlie.”
Accusations of being a “girly man” could be thrown at you if you took too good care of yourself, spent too much time keeping well shaved and otherwise presentable. It could be an accusation thrown at someone who was thought to be immoderate in his sex with women, thereby demonstrating a womanly lack of self-control.
And, it could be used to deride someone who liked to be (or was rumored to like being) the passive partner in same-sex intercourse.
So Paul’s word choice doesn’t mean dudes who like to be on the receiving end, but it would include them.
Second, then, what does all this have to do with patriarchy?
The reason why it was thought shameful to be “girlie” was because women were thought to be worse than men. The reason why it is an insult to be called a malakos is not just because you were acting differently than you are by nature, but because you are surrendering the superior thing that is yours by nature in favor of a lesser thing.
Being “effeminate” is shameful because the feminine had less value, was perceived as foolish and enslaved to passions.
As Christians we are often loath to pick out a word from a vice list and say, “That one doesn’t matter anymore.” But I think we need to seriously weigh two things: (1) do we want to participate in judging people based on the notion that men are better than women? and (2) do we want to affirm with Paul that men who walk the wrong way, perhaps talk the wrong way, take “too good” care of themselves, get mani-pedis and the like “will not inherit the kingdom of God”? What standard of “manliness” do we think men have to embody to be worthy of God’s kingdom?
Receiving in Themselves
One of the most enigmatic comments Paul makes in all his letters comes in his discussion of male same-sex relations in Romans 1:27. Speaking of men committing “shameful acts,” he says that they “received in themselves the due penalty of their error.”
I remember in high school reading this and writing, “STDs?” in the margin of my Bible. Let’s hear it for the 80s AIDS crisis to put hermeneutical conclusions in a kid’s head!
Other, more historically situated options have been offered. But here’s the answer that clicked for me while reading Stanley Stowers, A Rereading of Romans (though I can’t tell, still, whether he says it, implies it, or just inspired it).
The idea that men “receive in themselves the due penalty” is a rather literal and graphic depiction of what a first century Roman would consider to be “shameful” in a same-sex encounter. The “due penalty” is the shame that comes from being penetrated itself.
In an honor/shame culture the shame arises from having one’s position undermined through one’s own actions or the actions of another. In this case, being the passive partner in a same-sex encounter makes a man play the part of a woman, a degrading of his standing–because women were thought to be inferior to men.
Paul, Patriarchy, and Homosexuality
What I’ve suggested here is a both/and: Paul is in all likelihood consciously working with a Jewish creation/nature theology, and using this to plot homosexuality on the map of a good world gone wrong.
At the same time, Paul is in all likelihood unconsciously engaging his theology through the cultural grid of patriarchy that he has inherited and is so much a part of that he often cannot see it.
Did Paul disapprove of same-sex sex for reasons we ourselves should disapprove of? In part, at least, the answer is yes.
Now the larger question becomes, how does that cultural lens influence the reading of the biblical text itself? Does the chaff of the first century patriarchy leave us, still, with a grain of natural theology that continues to inform what a Christian, biblical position on homosexuality entails? Or does Romans 1 become, like 1 Timothy 2, a text that we recognize as providing a patriarchal interpretation of creation, thereby creating distance between the story as told in scripture and the story we must live in light of the gospel of who God has made us to be in Christ?