Gay Marriage

Illinois will soon become the 16th state in the nation to recognize marriage as NOT JUST between a man and a woman. Very excellent and a long time coming. I was, however, made aware by our pastor, a woman dedicated to freedom and equality for all and who leads us in an open and affirming church, that our denomination still prosecutes pastors who marry or even oversee civil union ceremonies for gay or lesbian couples, and who do not condone either as pastors in their churches. I am deeply saddened by this. It caused me to remember an incident in my past. A rousing debate on the subject with a pastor of a former church I attended.

We were discussing this several years ago, and the issue was not gay marriage, as that issue was perhaps just emerging onto the stage, but it was homosexuality in any situation. My pastor at an introductory dinner, despite the fact that no one had asked the question, offered that the church considered homosexuality to be a sin and in direct violation of Biblical teachings. Well I was unprepared at the time, but I decided to look into this. Here is what I presented to him later. For a great and fair discussion see, http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm. It is a great site for all sorts of religious reference and analysis.

I asked, if homosexuality is such a dire act, as you say, then certainly Jesus preached against it at least once if not many times. I asked if he could show me where in the Gospels he explains that homosexuality is a sin. He could not.

I asked, well did Jesus point out any sins in his time on earth. Well certainly, and he rattled off several, which I agreed were in the Gospels. He pointed to Matt 15:18-20: "...those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man..." Note that sex with a person of the same sex is not specifically listed, though it is argued that it is subsumed in the word "fornication" since homosexuals could not marry one another. If, however, they can be married, then this argument is lost. In many translations, however, this word is interpreted as "prostitution," which is a different matter entirely. Most of what is translated as homosexuality is mistranslated in this manner.
The pastor did not mention any of this.

I said, "Well I wonder then, if it is an abomination, why Jesus left it out of his message entirely? I said, we are Christians, right, and so he is sort of "the guy" on what we believe, correct?"
He agreed. He did point out that, "Leaving it out does not mean he favored it. It only means that in his world of Galilee and Judea, it was not an issue that arose such that he had a reason to deal directly with it."

"But", I said, "the region was full of Greeks, Romans, Arabians, Persians, and many other non-Jews during that time. That was a big reason the Jews wanted a 'Messiah,' someone to free them and the Promised Lands from these outsiders. The area had been part of many empires over the years. The most popular was the Greek empire. Many Jews and Hebrews took on the beliefs and activities of the Greeks during these years. Many peoples, especially the Greeks, practiced homosexuality as an open part of their culture. Certainly Jesus' cared little for the Greeks and Romans, and homosexuality was a part of their culture that many of his Jewish targets had become comfortable with. He certainly would have had reason to not only run across it, but to expressly condemn it as part of the heathen cultures around his people."
No real response. He reiterated that not mentioning it does not mean he did not condemn it. The argument on that front was over. So I moved on.

I asked, "Wasn't a core part of his theology, loving everyone no matter who they are, what their sins are and even one's enemies?"
"Oh", he said, "We love homosexuals. We just believe the act is a sin under heaven. So we care for them and try to help them stop having homosexual thoughts and actual intercourse."

"Didn't Jesus also say that it is not for us to judge others?"
"Oh", he answered, "We do not judge them."
"But you just said that you judge their homosexual acts and thoughts and consider them a sin."
"Well, we believe they are not their thoughts and acts. They are the work of the Devil."

"OK, but still we are sure that Jesus never condemned homosexuality ever, right?"
"Well, no. He did not per se."

OK, so it is certainly in the Ten Commandments."
"Well, no. Not really."

"Well is is certainly one of the seven deadly sins."
"Well not specifically. Lust is on the list."
"But the concept of lust focuses us on coveting someone else's wife or someone other than our own spouse or girlfriend, or contemplates sex with someone else without their consent, essentially rape, or someone who is just looking for sex at every turn without love as a part of it at all, correct?"
"Yes, that is what it contemplates."
"Couldn't a gay or lesbian person be in love with another person of their own sex, be devoted to that person just as you are to your wife, and thus not be lustful at all?"
He stated that the church did not believe that gays and lesbians actually loved one another in that way.

"Well where is this strong and clear objection to homosexuality then and if Christ did not think it important enough to even bring up ever, how do we consider it such a terrible sin?"
He pointed to Leviticus. The current translation seems to clearly make homosexuality a sin.
I provided him a text from the Internet site above that explained how difficult that section is to translate from the original Hebrew, and that there are many translations other that the one King James' translators put to it. He looked it over, un-convinced, which I knew from the beginning what not going to happen and was not my objective. I asked, "Why are we dead set against a more positive translation? Clearly there were homosexuals at this time, and yet there is no clear demonstrable statement against it in the Old Testament. They opposed prostitution, rape, and the like, but not with any clarity, homosexual activity. Why do we force the interpretation that they did?"

We discussed some other references in the Old Testament. I pointed out that they were all about public sex, rape or threatened rape, prostitution (hetero- and homo- and other-sexual), and sometimes in the context of worshipping god with public sex. I think we are all pretty much on board that those things are at least arguably bad.

I asked if there wasn't somewhere in the Old Testament where homosexual sex between consenting adults who cared for one another was clearly banned as a sin?

"What about the New Testament?" I asked.
His eyes brightened because he knew Paul was clearly against homosexuality.

He pointed to Romans, Corinthians and Timothy as examples. As to the latter two, Paul uses a made up Greek word, "arsenokoitai." It is not found in any other Greek writings. The Greek word for homosexual males was at the time, "paiderasste." He did not use that word, so he could not have meant, consenting homosexual males.
There is a great discussion of what he may have meant at this site.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/homarsen.htm
I gave him the explanation. I had printed it out. He promised to read it over.

It is widely contemplated that Paul wrote to his Jewish audience in Greek. There is a fair amount of current argument that he actually wrote in the language most people he was targeting, mostly Jewish, but also Gentile peasants in far off lands, actually spoke - Aramaic. This would allow their leaders to actually read it to them so that they could understand. Aramaic is a pre-language of Arabic and is closely related to Hebrew, with similar alphabets but somewhat different pronunciations and some different words. It is contemplated that the Persians who ruled the area for so many years, forced all residents to speak it, even non-Jews, and so peasants who would never have been trained in Greek regardless of their heritage, would still generally speak Aramaic, just as Jesus did along with those he spke to. I do not know if all that is true, but it is interesting.

The Church of the East, which is an old Christian church that managed to escape persecution because they lived in the mountains of the area, has a very old version of the Bible written in Aramaic. They consider it the original version of the writings of the Apostles and of Paul. The pages have been translated into English. See http://www.v-a.com/bible/ and other sites.

The Aramaic "original" of this Corinthians passage translated into English reads, "Neither adulterers, nor idol makers, nor fornicators, nor perverts, nor child molesters." It does not mention homosexuality. So perhaps the translation of the Greek that the Romans used in 325 to create the Bible, was a rather failed attempt to properly translate the words from Aramaic. Perhaps it was not Paul who created "arsenokoitai" but a mediocre ancient translator who made the word up to fit an Aramaic word he was not sure about. Who knows.

Bottom line, whichever "original" you choose, NEITHER meant homosexual!

Perhaps the most powerful passage used is Romans. In just the plain reading, it seems to me to refer to prostitution. Most believe that the context clearly indicates temple prostitution. The translation from the Aramaic seems to make this clearer: 
"For their women exchanged their natural virtue for that which is unworthy of their nature. And likewise their males abandoned the female's natural virtues and exhibited their depraved lusts one for the other, and males acted shamefully against males, and they received wages worthy of oblivion in their beings."

"Regardless, unless I am mistaken," I concluded, "we are not Paulians. Paul was just a man, correct?"

"Yes, but a holy man who witnessed Jesus and spread the Word . . . "

"But he was not Jesus, right. You are a man. I am a man. We both care what Jesus preached for us. We are not a aggressive as Paul, but we are just as inspired and just at human. Why then do we ignore the positive messages of Jesus to love everyone, in favor of an arguably poorly translated message of hatred that not only conflicts with what Jesus was all about, but conflicts with everything else Paul preached to the world?"

We decided to agree to disagree, but I think I at least got him thinking. He took the pages I gave him. Who knows?