Is Homosexuality a Sin According to the Bible?

The first surface answer is, "Yes, it is." There is no straight forward approval of homosexuality in the Old or the New Testaments. Read in a literalistic fashion as God's laws, there are several negative citations and no positive ones. Given the historical and cultural contexts of the Biblical literature, it would be surprising if it were otherwise.

On the other hand, there is no particular concern about or interest in the issue. Certainly not in ethical terms. In the Old Testament, the interest, in fact, is the other way around. Sexual relationship laws are basically supportive of the patriarchal family and clan. Anything that might disrupt those property and economic arrangements are "outlawed." Some of those laws would seem a bit bizarre today, like the requirement to get your brother's wife pregnant with a son if the brother dies son-less. Otherwise, the property might be lost to the clan. There is a laundry list of forbidden relationships, all of which had property and economic consequences. Male homosexuality is included in that list, but there is no mention of female homosexuality because it would pose no economic threat. However, it is unlikely that an openly lesbian relationship would have been tolerated, if only because women were essentially the property of males. Even rape in the Old Testament is handled as basically a property crime.

There does appear to have been some level of tolerance for male homosexual relationships, as long as they did not preclude proper marriage. The relationship between David and Jonathan when they were both young men is acknowledged as very close and intimate. (I Samuel 18:1-4 especially, but read the whole tale, Chapters 13 to 20) It never says they had sex, but one needn't have a very dirty mind to hear loud and clear that they were more than just buddies.

The usual story quoted against homosexuality is Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19); but it only works as long as you don't actually read the whole story. Lot has visitors--angels who have come to see if Sodom is as evil as God has heard. The townsfolk want to have sex with Lot's visitors. Lot's solution is to offer them his virgin daughters instead; a solution that most people today would have some qualms about. The story ends with those daughters both getting themselves pregnant by Lot ! This Lot is the one righteous man that Abraham wants rescued from Sodom ?

In the New Testament, the condemnation comes in the form of disapproval of the loose marital practices of King Herod's dynasty and the Roman Emperors. Those practices make modern soap operas seem tame by comparison.

However, the primary citation is from Paul's letter to the young Christian church in Rome, written in advance of his coming there: Romans 1:18-32. It's a somewhat complex passage, and there is disagreement among Biblical scholars as to who he is talking about here. "Those that knew God, but glorified him not as God." Paul's list of their abominations includes everything from holding that Jesus was only a human being to back biting and being disobedient to parents. Many Biblical scholars hold that he is talking here about Christian heretics, and painting them with as broad a black brush as possible. The probable primary target, a Hellenistic Christian Gnostic group called Antinomians. They held that only what you do in the spirit counts. What you do in the flesh doesn't. You can imagine how such a notion could be abused, but also what fantasies in might stimulate in the dirty minds of those with other major theological differences with them.

It is worth keeping in mind that Paul is not very fond of sex in general. He says that "it is better to marry than to burn;" but just barely.

One can say that the basic thrust of Jesus' teaching is toward interpersonal relationships that are compassionate, truthful and forgiving; rather than using, depersonalizing and condemning. In those terms, heterosexual promiscuity--using the other as a masturbation machine--is as much to be condemned as homosexual promiscuity. It would seem that it is the quality of the committed relationship that is at issue here, not the sexual orientation.

So, if the opinion of the Bible is important to you, you have to decide whether to take it at a surface, literal level; or to attempt to understand the spirit of it, taken in its cultural and historical context. You pays your money and takes your choice.

In the spirit of the WWJD bracelets that were recently popular, I assume that Jesus' attitude toward gay and lesbian relationships would go something like this:

"If you have lusted in your heart, you have committed adultery with her already" That is, it's not just following rules that is at issue in sexuality, but where your head is at. If all you see is sex organs, that pretty much says the kind of person you are.

"Judge not, that you be not judged; for the measure you give is the measure you will get." What you've got your mind on with respect to other people says more about what you've got your mind on than anything else. We had a Family Values leader in Tampa that had a strange sexual adjustment. By publicly campaigning against homosexuals and pornography, he was able to wallow in sex with moral impunity. He was as obsessed with sex as the most promiscuous porn addict.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Few of us would prefer to be treated merely as a sex object. And those who would have short odds on having healthy, satisfying relationships.

In short, Jesus interest in such matters appears to have been on what you have your attention on and the quality of your interpersonal relationships. That is, it's the spirit of "God's Law" that is important, not just details of the rules. In that light, it is whether you are truly making love that matters; not which body parts you use to make it.

However, sexuality is a religious issue. If sex isn't religious, nothing is.

Prostitution is sometimes called the oldest profession. It is not. Priests are. She wasn't a prostitute until he declared her one -- and the gender of the pronouns here are intentional. The relationship between sex and religion has been a problem at least that long; probably since well before we knew for sure where babies came from. It is the most powerful human motivator after air and, maybe for some people, water.

The earliest religious images and metaphors we know of are intimately bound up with sexuality. You've seen the little carved stone figurines that are found all across Europe from Anatolia all the way into the far reaches of Siberia. They look like very pregnant women. In the Isis and Osiris style of myths, the goddess and the god are at the same time in sequence during the year lovers and then he is her child, and then again apparently lovers. That use of sexual metaphors to express our relationship with cosmic powers is as old as the human species. The insuring of agricultural fertility through sacred intercourse is ancient. As is the binding of family commitments through religious ritual. The intimacy of intercourse and the surrender of ego in orgasm are among the oldest metaphors of mystical union with the deity. In fact, to read Theresa of Avila with a dirty mind is to read about a saint having sex with God. This is not unusual. That metaphor is throughout the literature.

The first piece of property that property rights legislation covered was the possession of a woman, you can be sure. And intercourse was clearly the original forbidden fruit in the story of the Garden of Eden. If you have any doubt about that, talk to me later and I'll help you read the second chapter of Genesis with a dirty mind and you'll see it clearly.

The dynamics of sexuality touch every aspect of the life we share together. For that reason, priests have been trying to forbid it, control it because of its pervasiveness in our lives, or co-opt it from as early as there were priests. It may be that "God is love" is only a thinly veiled euphemism.

It's tempting to suggest that the Ten Commandments are almost entirely about sexuality. For example, the graven images that are forbidden by the Second Commandment have a distinct similarity to either animals famous for their fertility and interest in exercising their fertility, or statues that are disturbingly in the shape of male or female genitalia.

"Thou shalt not steal," as I mentioned, has first of all to do with the piece of property known as female.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness." The classic story in the Old Testament that has to do with that commandment is a story about the testimony against a young woman for having committed adultery.

And I don't have to tell you what "Thou shalt not covet" is about.

Our culture has inherited the full ambiguity of that history. We are obsessed with and concerned about somehow controlling this most powerful of all human motivations. The confusion about what it means is there in the very images in our language, our thought forms and our scrambled ethical judgments about what is and what is not acceptable.

Woody Allen was once asked whether he thought sex was dirty. He said, "It is if you do it right." Which is only funny because of that very ambiguity planted smack in the center of our cultural perceptions and attitudes toward sexuality.

Indeed, one reason to attempt to separate sexuality from religion is that religion has so muddied it up. Some feel that the only way to get sane, healthy, joyous sexuality is to separate it permanently from religion. The attitudes historically too often taught by religion have yielded both bad sex AND bad religion. It is time, many have argued, to kick the priests out of our bedrooms in the name of both sexuality and religion.

But our lives, fortunately or unfortunately, cannot be cut up into those things that are and those things that are not religious without doing violence to both. And any time it looks or feels that way, be assured the questions have been badly framed from the outset. To insist that sex is religious is not to turn it over to the priests and moralists, but to insist that religion has been wrongly used to mess it up. It is to insist that sexuality is at the core of who we are as embodied consciousness. Our sexuality is a major part of the shaping of our relationships, of our civilization, of what we see as beautiful, what we appreciate as of value, and the judgments that we make about the breaching of human relationships.

The problem that sexuality and religion are to each other has a great deal to do with the spirit/flesh, mind/body, split that resides right in the center of our language and habits of thought, as well.

Am I a body? Or am I a spirit inhabiting a body? The question keeps getting posed in that either/or fashion. At best, we say we are both/and; or we try to identify some aspects as spirit and some as fleshly, and are still stuck with a spook-in-a- box image of what it feels like to be a human being. We forget easily that spirit is a metaphor, a figure of speech. We cannot seem to forget that our being is bounded by that arbitrary ephemeral boundary called skin, as if somehow all that was significant about each individual human being stops at that layer. Both are wholly inadequate metaphors for the human experience; but we do not seem to be able to escape from them, and I will not urge you to try. It isn't going to happen.

A major part of the problem that we have with sexuality resides in that artificial split between consciousness and body, mind and matter, spirit and flesh. We somehow want to idealize the human experience as something that could conceivably happen without being wrapped in protoplasm.

All that is good and human and worthy about the human experience belongs to that part and somehow everything having to do with the flesh is at least awkward, if not probably sinful and -- anyway, it's yucky. But we are not departmentalizable except at great human cost. Sexuality, the fact of our being physical, sensual, sexual creatures and how that is expressed in our relationships, involves and influences virtually every aspect of our lives together.

Look at the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. Read them with a dirty mind. Every one of them has to do with the many aspects of our sexuality as a species that are currently problematic in our society today:

"The inherent worth and dignity of every person" -- whether you happen to approve of their sexual behavior, their sexual orientation, their choice of partner, and what and where they "do" it, and how old they are and whether they are disabled.

"Justice equity and compassion in human relations." -- As a society we find it very difficult to respond to the incredible richness of our diversity when it comes to the expression of sexuality in ways that are just; that reflect any kind of serious concern with equity or arise out of compassion. If you are not like me then you are unfamiliar; you are probably dangerous and threatening.

"Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth." Well, yes, if you're heterosexual and either are married or intending shortly to get married and are committed to bringing your required 2.3 children into the world. Those who do not fit the standard model will find themselves not welcome in most congregations.

"A free and responsible search for truth and meaning" -- as long as that search for truth and meaning does not violate some powerful segment of society's prejudices about sexuality, and how sexuality is to be expressed in relationships and in our culture.

"The right of conscience and the use of democratic process." You really want to take a vote on some of these issues? There are times when our vaunted notion of democratic process and the will of the majority scare the dickens out of me. I have the clear memory of having been a minority and of being a minority. Those religious and political groups that are the most willing to say, "Well, most of us agree about these things, therefore the rules for the society ought to be...." were once significantly persecuted minorities. How quickly we forget.

"The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all" -- except for any of those who might want to attempt serious sex education and make the medical procedures to control their exploding population effectively available.

"Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." We really are all in this together. Even those in our midst who make us uncomfortable, maybe especially those in our midst who make us uncomfortable, are still a part of our communities.

Are you giving pleasure, and receiving what is freely given; or are you taking or surrendering? Are you using sexuality, its images and stimuli, to coerce or manipulate?

If sex is not religious, then nothing else is. Nothing reaches into every corner of what it feels like to be a human being, reaches into what catches our imagination, what we see as beautiful, what we experience as meaningful. It is out of those metaphors that we talk about the things that are most profound and powerful in our lives.

Be patient with those who have accepted the literal interpretation of every phrase in the Bible without reference to its historical or cultural context. They are caught in an inescapable trap. And be cautious about the use of those metaphors of mind and matter, spirit and flesh. They are often very misleading. As in physics, where photons of light behave sometimes as a wave and sometimes as particles, but clearly are something else with no analog in our common sense experience; so also, we humans are not accurately characterized by the metaphors of mind and matter, spirit and flesh. We are both more and other than such limited images.

May we delight in our differences, and use them in ways that build and enhance joyous persons and joyous relationships. And may we continue to try to find the ways to share that knowledge, that wisdom, that joyousness as widely as possible in our society.

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