As I have reflected back on my conversation at Valley Presbyterian Church last month, there is really only one thing that I regret not saying. It is this:
You do not hold to the biblical position on homosexuality.
Ok, that was presumptuous of me. So let me give the “if” part that my conclusion rests on.
“If you believe that men and women are equal, then you do not hold the (a?) biblical position on homosexuality.”
The Trap & the Alternative
There’s a trap that is very easy for us to fall into. Because our conscious working assumption is that men and women are equal, we assume that when we read the writings of those who found homosexual contact abhorrent we are seeing an argument about natural anatomy. Such sex is condemned, in such a reading, because the parts don’t fit.
But if you go back and look at the texts used to condemn same-sex contact this is never stated. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong. It might be wrong, it might be correct, or it might be partially correct.
There is another possibility as well.
The alternative (or complementary) explanation is that the problem being addressed is “natural” expression of gender–specifically, that men are to express their masculinity through rule, strength, power, hardness, wisdom, and self-control. For many ancients, the problem with homosexuality is that it makes one man give up this superior position of strength and power in order to be treated like a woman. That is to say, the problem isn’t so much that the parts don’t fit as that the sex act expresses a submission and femininity that is shameful because it is not manly.
Revisiting the Key Texts
If you are looking for unity between the Sodom and Gomorrah passage and the prohibition of male-male sex in Leviticus 18, this is your link.
Why is homosexual contact unseemly according to Leviticus 18? It is “lying with a man as one lies with a woman.” The problem is not one of anatomy [full stop] but one of gender. It is disgraceful to treat a man as though he is less than what he is; it is disgraceful to the “passive” partner to be treated as less than what he is.
Part of the framework on which the biblical prohibitions are plotted is patriarchy. And in patriarchy, women are thought of and treated as inferior to men.
The Sodom story is one of power. Rape is often about power rather than sex. This story is about exerting superiority and power over the one who would “play the judge.” It’s a power play. The men of the city want to show that they are the superiors, they are the ones in charge, they will not be “under” these foreigners, but will put the foreigners “under” themselves.
This is a patriarchal power game in which dominance is demonstrated by treating the men like women. That’s why the daughters wont do. The men of Sodom aren’t exceedingly horny and hoping for sex. They are exceedingly violent and hoping for conquest.
Such a demonstration of conquest is mapped onto a patriarchal system in which to be in charge is to be more manly, and to subdue someone else is to feminize him.
Notice that this also is not saying that the sex act is wrong because it simply makes someone something they are not, where in the abstract those two things are of equal value. It is wrong because it makes the man into something inferior.
You might say to me, “Come on, Kirk. Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what the OT was up to?”
How Did First Century Jews Read their Scriptures?
Well, there is the interpretation of Lev 18 by a first-century Jew named Philo.
Here’s what we learn from his exposition (Special Laws 3:37-42):
- Those who are taken as passive partners contract “the female disease.”
- They have not even a spark of manliness (it’s a disease of the soul)
- It is also a disease of body (they adorn themselves as women)
- This is an expression of a thoroughgoing patriarchal hierarchy: to act like a woman disgraces self, family, country, all humanity
- Those who penetrate other males are guilty of great crime because they thereby teach the partner to succumb to the greatest of evils: unmanliness and “softness” (effeminacy)
To be feminine is to be diseased, says Philo. It’s not about bodily complementarity, but about living up to gender norms as those norms are defined by patriarchal hierarchy.
Patriarchy & Hierarchy, the Bible & You
Does the Bible itself participate in this gendered assessment of homosexuality? Yes. Paul is concerned about those who are “soft” (1 Cor 6), and possibly about the shame of penetration (Rom 1).
And it might just be that Philo has shown us why a passage such as Leviticus 20:13 would call down death on both parties. One is shameful for his womanizing of the other, the other is shamed for taking it upon himself.
Here is something that seems obvious once we get our minds around it: what we say about gender and what we say about sex are distinct, but they influence each other. What the ancients said about male dominance influences what they said about two males coming together in sex.
If you don’t share their view of male superiority, you don’t share their view of homosexuality–even if you want to hold onto the same conclusion.
Image: Jasn Flickr Creative Commons