Text 4117, 94 rader
Skriven 2004-10-26 16:06:40 av Alan Hess
Ärende: God and sex
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 The New York Times
October 23, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
God and Sex
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

So when God made homosexuals who fall deeply, achingly in love with each other,
did he goof?

That seems implicit in the measures opposing gay marriage on the ballots of 11
states. All may pass; Oregon is the only state where the outcome seems
uncertain.

Over the last couple of months, I've been researching the question of how the
Bible regards homosexuality. Social liberals tend to be uncomfortable with
religious arguments, but that is the ground on which political battles are
often decided in America - as when a Texas governor, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson,
barred the teaching of foreign languages about 80 years ago, saying, "If
English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."

I think it's presumptuous of conservatives to assume that God is on their side.
But since Americans are twice as likely to believe in the Devil as in
evolution, I also think it's stupid of liberals to forfeit the religious field.

Some scholars, like Daniel Helminiak, author of "What the Bible Really Says
About Homosexuality," argue that the Bible is not anti-gay. I don't really buy
that.

It's true that the story of Sodom is treated by both modern scholars and by
ancient Ezekiel as about hospitality, rather than homosexuality. In Sodom, Lot
puts up two male strangers for the night. When a lustful mob demands they be
handed over, Lot offers his two virgin daughters instead. After some further
unpleasantness, God destroys Sodom. As Mark Jordan notes in "The Invention of
Sodomy in Christian Theology," it was only in the 11th century that theologians
began to condemn homosexuality as sodomy.

In fact, the most obvious lesson from Sodom is that when you're attacked by an
angry mob, the holy thing to do is to offer up your virgin daughters.

Still, the traditionalists seem to me basically correct that the Old Testament
does condemn at least male anal sex (scholars disagree about whether the Hebrew
phrasing encompasses other sexual contact). While homosexuality never made the
Top 10 lists of commandments, a plain reading of the Book of Leviticus is that
male anal sex is every bit as bad as other practices that the text condemns,
like wearing a polyester-and-cotton shirt (Leviticus 19:19).

As for the New Testament, Jesus never said a word about gays, while he
explicitly advised a wealthy man to give away all his assets and arguably
warned against bank accounts ("do not store up for yourselves treasures on
earth").

Likewise, Jesus praises those who make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of
Heaven, but conservative Christians rarely lead the way with self-castration.

Theologians point out that that the Bible is big enough to encompass gay
relationships and tolerance - as well as episodic condemnations of gays. For
example, 1 Samuel can be read as describing gay affairs between David and
Jonathan.

In the New Testament, Matthew and Luke describe how Jesus cured the beloved
servant of a centurion - and some scholars argue that the wording suggests that
the pair were lovers, yet Jesus didn't blanch.

The religious right cites one part of the New Testament that clearly does
condemn male homosexuality - not in Jesus' words, but in Paul's. The right has
a tougher time explaining why lesbians shouldn't marry because the Bible has no
unequivocal condemnation of lesbian sex.

A passage in Romans 1 objects to women engaging in "unnatural" sex, and this
probably does mean lesbian sex, according to Bernadette Brooten, the author of
a fascinating study of early Christian attitudes toward lesbians. But it's also
possible that Paul was referring to sex during menstruation or to women who are
aggressive during sex.

In any case, do we really want to make Paul our lawgiver? Will we enforce
Paul's instruction that women veil themselves and keep their hair long? (Note
to President Bush: If you want to obey Paul, why don't you start by veiling
Laura and keeping her hair long, and only then move on to barring gay
marriages.)

Given these ambiguities, is there any solution? One would be to emphasize the
sentiment in Genesis that "it is not good for the human to be alone," and allow
gay lovers to marry.

Or there's another solution. Paul disapproves of marriage except for the
sex-obsessed, saying that it is best "to remain unmarried as I am." So if we're
going to cherry-pick biblical phrases and ignore the central message of love,
then perhaps we should just ban marriage altogether?

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