And the conference is tomorrow! As such, here, in its totality, is my entire
case against a so-called Biblical sexuality.
1) In a culture where death by lynching was an accepted
reality even 60 years ago, where not only could people opposed to outlawing lynching run
for office openly, and where such people who practiced it are called “Grandpa”
instead of “inmate”, it is the duty of any Christian in such a culture, indeed
any human being with the barest sliver of a conscience, to hold those who declare
an entire class of people sinful, evil, unnatural, or condemned by any Divinity,
especially in instances where the so-called offenses are consensual in nature
and result in no harm to person, property, or the social well-being, to the
strictest standards of political, legal, and spiritual accountability.
2) Because of the nature of the current debate over
homosexuality and the current culture that the debate is found in, those in a
position of leadership or social influence who declare homosexuality to be
ungodly and sinful must have the burden of proof. If they wish to convince the Church that the
loving God whom created all of Mankind and its sexuality would condemn an
entire people as sinful, tell them their base identity evil, and force them to
deny themselves the very happiness and fulfillment that their hetero brothers
and sisters have or risk their immortal soul, they must do so under the
strictest scrutiny. As a Church called
to enact Justice and Peace, we as followers of Christ have no other moral
option but to insist that they must do so by proving beyond all reasonable doubt, yes, all reasonable doubt,
that such is and has always been the case within the Christian religion. The damage and loss being asked of LGBTQ
people for no other reason than the personal discomfort of those against their
way of life demands no other standard.
3) Those for Biblical Sexuality cannot remotely meet this
burden:
a) The
Bible neither understands itself as a rule book nor the
Word of God
b) Jesus the Christ, whom the Bible
refers to as the True Word of God, is the final authority within the Christian
religion, and his recorded ministry does not involve the subject once.
c) Homosexuality is a modern term
important only to a modern world.
Ascribing a 19th century concept to 1st century and
earlier works would be dismissed as an anachronism in literally any other area
of human scholarship.
d) Any and all understandings of
the Bible condemning homosexuality come from cultural bias not interpretive
diligence, extending even to irresponsible if not deliberate mistranslation.
i) The early chapters of Genesis
are poetry and counter-myth, not a chronicle of actual historical events. Any argument relying on the story actually
revealing how God made anything is fallacious.
ii) Homosexual Anal penetration
was a common method of shaming in the ancient world, almost always done by
heterosexually married men. Sodom and
Gomorrah were condemned because they were xenophobic rapists, not immaculately
dressed interior designers or restaurant managers.
iii. Leviticus 18 and 20 lists Old
Testament sexual offenses generally, the vast focus being on familial couplings
not homosexual encounters. Even then, “thou
shalt not lie with a man as a woman” only covers one sexual position with one
gender that mimicked, again, war-time rape.
To say that all homosexual encounters would be outlawed from this verse,
and thus an abomination, is at best a stretch
iv. As this is the whole of the
testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures on the subject at hand, noting that the KJV
has triple the texts on unicorns than it does on homosexuality, we now turn to
the New Testament. As Christ, again, had
no words on the subject, we must bypass the gospels and, yes, even the Book of Acts
for our next text.
v. Paul in his epistle to the
Romans does call homosexual acts “para physis” or against nature this has two
problems. The first problem is that
nature for Paul’s time is not “all of nature” but “individual nature”. Also, God goes against nature in grafting the
gentiles into the people of God later in the same epistle so it is very
difficult to say that going against nature is necessarily an evil thing. Lastly it fails utterly to understand Paul’s
entire argument. The entire point for
chapter one of Romans is found in chapter 2, “You,
therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at
whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who
pass judgment do the same things.” That Paul is quoting a Roman speech or
oration and then using it to call out the hypocrisy in the Roman church. The subject literally does not get brought up
again. Once more, Paul is not saying
that homosexual relations are sinful and natural, he is saying that Romans say
it is sinful and unnatural and yet are doing them anyway.
vi. While
other verses in Paul’s letters are translated to talk about homosexuality, the
fact is the words in question are largely unknown and have not been proven. The words in question are incredibly rare and
there is no text, either within the New Testament or even the Greek in which
the New Testament was written, that shows any connection between those words
and homosexual urge, inclination, or practice.
vii. The
actual translation of Jude 1:7 is “Sodom and Gomorah and the surrounding cities
indulged in gross sexual immorality and went after the flesh of others (or flesh
of strangers) are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of
era-long fire.” None of the words used
in this verse have any evidence to back their use to refer to what is
understood to be homosexual activity.
viii. And all
of this ignores the fact Eunuchs were widely understood to have homosexual
tendencies, yet they are clearly included to the Body of Christ without
question (Acts 8:27-39) and the fact that David is described as having “romantic
love” for Jonathan, the same word “ahabah” used to refer to the feelings of the
lovers throughout the Song of Solomon.
It also fails to the Church did not have much to say on the subject of
same-sex relationships until over a thousand years later and indeed produced
same-sex wedding liturgy.
ix. All these facts show unequivocally that the
belief that the Bible supports one and only one sexuality is simply
non-sensical. If an individual community
feels strongly that homosexual relationships are bad then we as their loving
brothers and sisters in Christ advise them strongly not to have one. The facts presented here show that the
Biblical Sexuality camp cannot meet a burden of clear and convincing proof or
even the preponderance of the evidence, let alone the fierce standard of beyond
any reasonable doubt as this situation warrants. As such, the entire church needs to act like
it. No reasonable and ethical person can
continue to uphold such draconian, damaging, and unfounded beliefs as this and
we as a Church need to reflect this reality.
Anything less is to slander and make base the very Sacrifice that
founded us. Amen
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