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| Ancient Roman painting of 2 women. Image source. |
Here's a thought I had when I was writing my review of the book "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals":
So, for Christians who view the bible as inerrant, as the authority over our lives, and who therefore believe it is very very important to carefully analyze all the rules in the bible, to research ancient Near East culture and ancient Hebrew and Greek languages, to really really figure out what *exactly* the writers meant, and how we must put those things into practice in our lives now- for Christians who are coming from that perspective (and, full disclosure, I do NOT view the bible that way, though I did when I was evangelical), the discussion of "what the bible says about homosexuality" goes like this:
On the one side, you have the traditional view, which says that the bible says same-sex sexual relationships are DEFINITELY sinful. There are 6 "clobber passages" in the bible which mention homosexuality, and all of them portray it as bad.
On the other side, you have Christians doing queer apologetics, making the case that these passages can be interpreted differently, and that the bible does NOT say that all same-sex sexual relationships are sinful.
(Queer apologetics were extremely helpful to me, years ago, but now I no longer believe the bible is an authority over our lives, so I don't really need the "queer apologetic" approach now. But yes, I really needed it back then, and I'm glad there are Christians doing this work. Back then, I was mainly influenced by Justin Lee and Matthew Vines.)
Here's the main queer apologetics argument: Whenever the bible condemns homosexuality, it's condemning homosexual practices which were clearly immoral for other reasons. For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is an attempted gang rape. Gang rape is wrong. Just because it was men trying to rape men doesn't mean all gay relationships are wrong; it really has nothing to do with that at all. And in passages like Romans 1, same-sex relationships are characterized as being driven by overwhelming lust- in ancient Roman times, they didn't view people as having a "sexual orientation"; they viewed homosexual behavior as caused by an excess of lust. Also it was common for adult men to have sexual relationships with boys. All of this is, uh, not healthy. The bible isn't condemning loving, consensual, committed same-sex relationships between equal partners, because that wasn't really a concept they had back then.
(Ya know, hetero relationships back then were also not very healthy/consensual/equal...)
(Other key components of the queer apologetic are: Genesis 2, where God says "it is not good for the man to be alone"- therefore, since in modern times we know that it's natural for some people to be gay, we should allow them to have same-sex relationships, rather than requiring them to be single. Also, Jesus' teaching about "a good tree cannot bear bad fruit"- what is the "fruit" of preaching that being gay is wrong? It's BAD- queer people are at a high risk of things like hate crimes, being rejected by their families, depression, and suicide. But if you accept and support queer people, everything is so much better. Jesus said you will know them by their fruit.)
So anyway, the argument very much depends on the idea that there wasn't really a common relationship structure in ancient Roman culture (when the New Testament was written) which is similar to same-sex marriage today. So when the apostle Paul, or the other biblical writers, were condemning homosexuality, they weren't condemning our modern version of it.
Anyway, that's the background information that sets the stage for what I want to talk about:
I remember one time I was reading someone's argument about the bible and same-sex relationships, and they talked about all this, and then they said, "But, it turns out, there were loving same-sex relationships in bible times. And, yes, Paul would have known about them. So, when we read the bible passages condemning same-sex relationships, it means all same-sex relationships are wrong."
Reading that, it was like... like it just deflated the whole argument. Like, oh, there were healthy gay relationships back then. Oh. So, all the gay people nowadays who want to date are just out of luck. And that's that.
(Queer Christians and allies have pushed back against this; I seem to recall I read something by Matthew Vines arguing against the idea that "oh they totally had equal gay partnerships back then and Paul would have known about it"- here's a link along those lines. Though personally, like I said, I don't care because the bible is not in charge of me.)
Anyway, recently when I was reading "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals," (and wondering why straight Christians want to spend so much time and energy barging into gay people's lives and telling them what they're allowed to do) it brought up that memory of when I read someone saying there were loving gay relationships back then, and how discouraged I felt when I read that.
And, can we just take a minute and marvel at how BIZARRE that is?
Like, suppose we find out that there were same-sex couples in ancient Roman times that had happy, loving relationships. Wow, good for them! Right? Let's be happy for them! But somehow, "traditional" Christians turn that into "and that means gay people now are not allowed to get married" which is bad news. What is going on here? How are we turning this into bad news?
Why not just be happy for people? Why not just let people live their lives? How can historical information about the existence of healthy relationships be used to forbid people from having healthy gay relationships today?
The authority of Scripture is a hell of a drug.
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Related:
"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?)
The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance
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