To my fellow Gaians, especially those who find homosexuals and homosexuality in the wrong:
All over the Extended Discussion and Chatterbox, a wave of pro- and anti-homosexual sentiment has hit. I can understand that the moderators have had it with idiotic threads and "repeats." However, yours truly has something to say of this.
I wish to restate my theory for the error of homophobia, which is as follows:
Homophobic arguments of all sorts - including scientific and psychological - are among the fruits of religious homophobia, which in itself has been caused by, among other things, biblical mistranslation.
Allow me to clarify. This said "biblical mistranslation" is both of willful ignorance and blatant misunderstanding. The Bible and certain passages are loaded with possibilities for mistranslation.
I'd like to elucidate my statements.
1) The "evidence" used by homophobic religious zealots is, in general, a rather unfortunate mistranslation or misinterpretation.
2) There cannot be such a thing as "scientific" homophobia. Such statements reek of religious backing.
Now, I am for gay marriage and all, but that is NOT the point of my paper. If you come into my dissertation thinking that, you are completely in the wrong, my dear friend.
My being Catholic may or may not restrict room for intellectual debate with Catholic doctrine, but being human allows for me, as a human with free thought and free will, to be able to debate with his faith's theological arguments.
"Evidence" vs. Evidence
First off, THE BIBLE WAS NOT ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN ENGLISH.
In fact, the languages used in the Old and New Testament are, in respect to time written, Hebrew, Aramaic, and a dialect of Greek called "koine." Note that the Latin translation by St. Jerome was written in the time period between 300 and 550 CE (please excuse my erroneous dating of the event).
People tend to read through the Bible with prejudiced learning (in this case, "I know what it says and means" sort of thinking). However, this sort of doctrinaire prejudice (coined by someone whose name I cannot recall) is wrong in and of itself. We place our own thinking onto something that was not created by our own thinking, but another's. We place modern learning/prejudice onto previous cultures and writings, and use this "interpretation"
In this section, I'll be going through the most often cited verses of the Bible when it comes to homophobic arguments as is noted in the New American Bible. Translations are from various sources, but I will dutifully cite each quote as I can.
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Now, I need to get this out of my system, but I've heard the phrase "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" so many times that, if it were oil, Iraq wouldn't have needed to invade Kuwait in the early 1990s.
There is SUCH a great deal of illogicality in the assumption that, since the "first" couple on Earth happened to be heterosexual, so should the rest of us. That is about as erroneous as saying all Africans, Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and so forth are doomed to eternal damnation simply because they don't lack melanin.
Now, Rev. William H Carey encounters a major problem. Quoting:
God said that it was not good for the adam to be alone (Gen. 2:18 ) and went on to say "I will make a help meet for him." (King James Version) But what the Hebrew says here, and the manner in which God made this "help," tell us volumes about the creature He was about to present to the man. The words translated as "help meet" are E-zer k'NEG-do. The word "ezer" means "helper." But there is more to it than that. You see, Hebrew has no neuter gender; every word is either masculine or feminine. Most nouns referring to people have both a masculine form and a feminine form, like "actor" and "actress" in English. Ezer is masculine. The feminine form would be ezrah. But God didn't say He would make an ezrah. He used the masculine form, ezer. The second half of this, k'negdo, means "as opposite him," that is, as a mirror image.
In this case, "the adam" refers to the first man - "Adam," or as this man-creature calls himself more properly, "enosh."
In fact, the creation of "Adam's" companion is significant in itself.
Instead, we find that He took a rib from the man and made the woman from it. This is very significant. From what we now know about genetics, we can understand what God did: Although it sounds frightening to say it, the plain fact is, God cloned another "adam" from the rib. Because the new "adam" was made from the first adam's DNA, she was genetically identical to him in every way. (Was Eve also called Adam? In Genesis 1:27, the Hebrew tells us that "adam" was made both male and female. Genesis 5:1-2 tells us the same thing, and that their name was called "adam."
wink When God made this new person, the Hebrew text of Gen. 2:23 tells us that Adam called her "inshah," which is simply the feminine form of enosh. It means "woman."
In fact, the name which is bestowed upon the woman is merely a statement that she is the mother of all humanity - Chavah, or Eve.
In all honesty, it is more likely that "Adam" and "Eve" had no true sexual knowledge until they gained their mortality by eating of the Forbidden Fruit. They were just created, and very likely were curious about the things around them and each other. The "differences" between these two people were bound to show up, but they likely had no idea how to use these "differences" until after the Fall.
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Certain words for certain phrases, events, people, or emotions are ultimately lost in translation. For instance, there are multiple Hebrew words for "know." Take the example of Sodom and Gomorrah.
This WILL sound ridiculous, but the verse in Genesis (forgive my paraphrasing) basically says, "Let us get to know your visitors." The exact verse is found in Genesis 19. Now some Christians, take this to mean "Let us have sex with your lovely male friends."
However, note that there are MULTIPLE words for "know" in Hebrew - yada happens to be one of them, and is in fact the one used in the said verse.
A form of yada is used here and hundreds of other times in scripture. Only about ten of those times refer to sex, and in each case, the sexual meaning is clear by the context. (Example: Adam knew his wife and she conceived.) To try to make this word mean sex everywhere will get us in a lot of trouble, because the scripture tells us that God knew David, and uses a form of this word.
Like I said, it sounds ridiculous, but transference of that meaning upon other usages of the word(s) for "know" shows how equally ridiculous such a translation of the verse would appear.
As for a better historical reference,
http://www.apostolicrestorationmission.4t.com/id27.htm
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Leviticus 18:22 states: "Thou shall not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination." The term abomination (to'ebah) is a religious term, usually reserved for use against idolatry; it does not mean a moral evil. The verse seems to refer to temple prostitution, which was a common practice in the rest of the Middle East at that time. Qadesh referred to male religious prostitutes.
Leviticus 20:13 states: "If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they should surely be put to death....". The passage is surrounded by prohibitions against incest, bestiality, adultery and intercourse during a woman's period. But this verse is the only one in the series which uses the religious term abomination; it seems also to be directed against temple prostitution. (whosoever.org)
Now, I have heard PLENTY of counterarguments talking about how tattoos, eating shellfish, eating rare (the cooking state) meat, sowing fields with multiple varieties of seed, and so forth. I've even read the letter to Dr. Laura Schlessinger that has circulated over the internet. However, these statements aren't the point of my argument here. It is the verses' being used alone that is wrong in this case. The whole of Leviticus concerns the Jewish Holiness Code, a code which, though the basis of Christian moral canon, is basically null and void. See the Acts of the Apostles (10:1 - 11:18, 15:1-21).
As to lying with another man as with a woman ... now there's a bit of a problem here. It is likely that the prohibition thou shall not lie with a male as with a woman came about for one of the following reasons:
> Only sexual acts which could lead to procreation were valued as the tribes needed to grow in numbers in order to survive.
> Male homosexual sex may have been connected in the Hebrew mind with idolatry. Notice that Lev. 18:2 deals with idolatry. In fact many of the prohibitions in the Holiness Code were probably connected with idolatrous practices, see 19:26-29.
> Women were second class citizens in the Hebrew culture and were generally treated as property. If a man was penetrated in sexual intercourse he was being treated like a woman and so was degraded in the Hebrew mind. The offense was not that this was a homosexual act, the offense was that a MAN was treated like a WOMAN. If this line of thinking is correct it would serve to explain why there is no prohibition against female homosexual acts in the Old Testament. Women could not be degraded by such an act as they were already not held in high esteem. there is a theory that the Hebrew people believed in a perfect order of creation and anything that violated that order was considered unclean or an abomination. A probable example would be that fish were considered the perfect sea animal, hence anything in the sea that did not have scales and fins was unclean. (Lev. 11:9-10) Cattle were the perfect cud chewing animal, hence anything that chewed cud, but didn't have hooves was unclean. (Lev. 11:6). If this theory is correct then the prohibition against male sex acts would be violating the role of the perfect ideal human: man. It would seem to mix the sex role of the imperfect woman with the ideal role of the man.
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Deuteronomy 23:17 states (in the King James Version) "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel . This is an "error" by the authors of the KJV. The word qadesh in the original text was mistranslated as sodomite. Quadesh means "holy one" and is here used to refer to a man who engages in ritual prostitution in the temple. There is little evidence that the prostitutes engaged in sexual activities with men. Other Bible translations use accurate terms such as shrine prostitute, temple prostitute, prostitute and cult prostitute.[
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm ]
In this passage, the actual word that is being translated is "qadesh" which means "holy one" or "someone set apart for a holy purpose." In this case the word is referring to people who commit ritual acts of prostitution in order to honor their deity. The clearest translation of this concept would simply be "temple or ritual prostitute". For example, Deuteronomy 23:17 should be translated thusly: "There shall be no ritual prostitute of the daughters of Israel, or a ritual prostitute of the sons of Israel". Any translation which translates qadesh as pervert or sodomite is blatantly mistranslating. An example which shows this clearly is found in the New King James version which translates qadesh in its male form as 'perverted one' but translates qadesh in its female form as 'ritual harlot', both should be 'ritual harlot or prostitute!' [
http://members.cox.net/paulmcc/mcc/prologue.html ]
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St. Paul's letter to the Romans, specifically chapter 1, verses 26 and 27.
Now, according to the King James Version (one of the first "modern" translations), the verses read as follows:
(26) For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: (27) And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
However, this is a MAJOR mistranslation from the Greek. The following is a straight-from-Greek translation:
(26) For this cause God gave them up unto disgraceful passions: for their women exchanged the instinctive use (sexual intercourse) into that which is contrary to native disposition. (27) And likewise also the men, laying aside their instinctive use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
These verses, in a somewhat clearer translation, does not mention "true homosexuality," much less condemn it. Excuse me - when I mention "true homosexuality," I am really pointing out Paul's phrase "native disposition." The apostle to the Gentiles is stating that it is a sin to go against the nature (in this case, sexual) that God instilled upon us. In truth, it was of the Roman heterosexuals that Paul spoke. The sort of behavior which Paul is concerned with is similar to the 19th century Boston marriages - which two heterosexual women are "married" - only the difference in the former is more carnal than social.
The bottom line is, God created each of us with a sexual orientation. To attempt to change it is, in effect, telling God that He created us wrong. The creation (us) does not have the right to "re-create" itself.
Some may think it unlikely that heterosexuals in the first century would force themselves to engage in homosexual relations simply because society expected them to. And yet, today, in many parts of the world, homosexuals are forcing themselves to engage in heterosexual relations for the very same reason: Society expects it. But if it was wrong for heterosexuals in the first century to tamper with their sexual orientation, then it is equally wrong for homosexuals today to tamper with theirs. (Lighthouse Ministries)
It must be remembered also that Paul was referring to homosexual ACTS, not homosexuals. AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HOMOSEXUAL ACTS PAUL WAS TALKING ABOUT... NO ONE KNOWS THE BACKGROUND... We must ask ourselves "what type of homosexual acts was Paul talking about?" Was he talking exclusively about homosexual acts connected with idolatry? (Perhaps that was the only kind of homosexual activity he was familiar with.) Was he talking about pederasty? Was he talking about homosexual acts committed with slaves? Was he talking about people of heterosexual orientation committing homosexual acts? Just exactly what type of homosexual acts was he concerned with? Do people have the Right to just ASSUME that these verses were a blanket condemnation of homosexual sex in every context? (Whosoever)
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1 Corinthians 6:9 -- "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not deceive yourselves: Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor soft ones, nor those who have sex with men."
Please pay attention. Why "soft ones" are separate from "those who have sex with men" is a very simple explanation. THEY AREN'T THE SAME THING!!!
"Soft ones" refer to those of who really don't give a rat's ###### for other people - in other words, the rich who'd rather bathe in acid than give money to charity with full sincerity or don't do what Jesus Christ spelled out in Matthew 25 - the parable of the Goats and the Sheep, to be specific. If you have a Christian Bible on you, read it.
For the rest of you who aren't familiar with what I'm saying, The King of Heaven (God) spelled out that whatever we do to others "lower" than us, we do to the King. This would include visiting the sick, welcoming the visitor, giving food and drink to those in need, and doing acts of kindness in total sincerity.
As for "those who have sex with men," no one is really sure WHAT group Paul is directing this towards, but many scholars are very sure that it refers SOLELY to sexual relations outside of marriage, heterosexual or not.
It is amazing the number of times that you will see the word "sodomite" or "homosexual" or "pervert" in different translations concerning this text. It is amazing because no one knows exactly what the words of the original text mean! The layperson, unfortunately, has no way of knowing that interpreters are guessing as to the exact meaning of these words. Pastors and laypersons often have to rely upon the authority of those who have written lexicons (dictionaries explaining the meaning of words) of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words. The authors of scriptural lexicons search for the meaning of the word within the scriptures themselves and also go outside of scripture and research literature written around the same time the scriptures were written. If the interpreter is already prejudiced against homosexuality they can translate these words as condemning homosexual sex even based upon little usage of that word in the Scriptures and little if any contemporaneous usage of that word.
The truth is that the word some translators "transform" into "sodomite/homosexual/pervert" in I Corinthians 6:9-10 is actually TWO words. Some translators combine them because they "think" they go together but they DO NOT KNOW. This uncertainty is reflected in the fact that other translators keep the words separate and translate them "effeminate" and "abusers of themselves with mankind".
The two words in the original Greek are "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai". Malakoi is a very common Greek word. It literally means "soft". It is used in Matthew 11:7-18 and Luke 7:24-25 in reference to soft clothing. Scholars have to look at material outside of the Bible in order to try and figure out just what this means. The early church Fathers used the word to mean someone who was "weak" or "soft" in their morals and from the time of the reformation to the 20th century it was usually interpreted as masturbation. In Greek this word never is applied to gay people or homosexual acts in general. "No new textual data effected the twentieth-century change in translation of this word: only a shift in popular morality. Since few people any longer regard masturbation as the sort of activity which would preclude entrance to heaven, the condemnation has simply been transferred to a group still so widely despised that their exclusion does not trouble translators or theologians." (See Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, John Boswell, University of Chicago Press, 1980, page 105-107). (Whosoever)
There were a number of Greek words to describe homosexual sex acts and the two words "malakois" and "arsenokoitai" do not appear among them (on "arsenokoitai" see Boswell, pp 345-346.) [http://members.cox.net/paulmcc/mcc/prologue.html]
Argument
Biblical translations and interpretations do indeed happen. However, a COMMON and VERY DANGEROUS "sin" of interpretation, as coined by Peter J. Gomes, is that of culturism - the worship of the culture, in which the Bible is FORCED to conform to the norms of the prevailing culture (Gomes p. 36, emphasis added)
Gomes points out that a prevailing theme in the Old Testament is the intolerance of, in the words of the said author, cultic idolatry, which we take to represent in part a moral impatience and a desire to possess as one's very own the word and works of God (38 ).
Culturism ... is the notion ... that we read scripture not only in the light of our own culture but as a means of defining and defending that very culture over and against which scripture by its very nature is meant to stand. In other words, scripture is invariably used to support the status quo, no matter what the status quo, and despite the revolutionary origins and implications of scripture itself. (47)
In basic and unfortunate truth, "followers" of culturism use scripture to justify current conditions and events - of what has been, is, and "should" be. The danger of culturistic reading of the Bible is the great temptations ... to use it as the moral sanction for our own culture (48 ).
Culturists do not worship God, nor do they idolize the Bible; rather, they force the scripture into servitude under the master Culture - a neo-Mammon of sorts. The Bible itself had been used to support Apartheid in South Africa, a Christian country.
It should be carefully noted that the scripture used to maintain status quo will eventually destroy that same status quo and forward a new era. This can be said for the end of American slavery, the fight against Communist Russia, the Civil Rights movement, the Apartheid era, and so forth.
On to the scientific/psychological attacks.
Stating that homosexual beings are unnatural is about as asinine as the following experiment performed in the late 19th century. A scientist, whose name eludes me, had compared the cranial space of the skulls of a white person and a Negro person. To measure the volume of the Caucasian specimen's space, fine sand was used so to get an accurate measure. As for the Negro specimen, pebbles, considerably more voluminous than sand, were used, and such usage allowed for space to be in between these pebbles, as opposed to the usage of sand.
The results?
The scientist concluded that Negro peoples have smaller cranial spaces than Caucasians, and thus were naturally inferior to whites.
The same is applied to homosexuals, but not by usage of skulls.
Reasons for the unnatural existence and behavior are numerous, but in a good deal of "research," homosexual behavior is deemed "unnatural" due to its non-procreative nature.
Please do note, readers, that this is NOT a scientific statement, but rather is rooted in a theological statement.
By St. Augustine of Hippo, a former Manichaean, and other Church Fathers.
Now, going back to Gomes' work, he points out that when it comes down to cases, homosexuality is not about the Bible or texts. It's all about the sex. (Gomes p. 166) However, the early Christians were raised under the notion that the primary function of sex was procreation. However, when the writers of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) commanded the human race to multiply, the writers meant that from "Adam's" descendents would the Messiah spring out from. Any child could be the Messiah, in this logic, and thus any wasting of the seed - masturbation, coitus interruptus, and "homosexual" activity - was considered sinful.
Mind you, St. Paul did not pick up this notion and run with it. Rather, he preached celibacy, given that he believed that the Christ would return within the era of the Apostles - why make more kids when the end times are near?
The emphasis on procreation was made by the Church Fathers, who, seeing that the end of the world was not yet at hand and that the church needed to be replenished, grudgingly gave the mandate of sex for procreation. ... they, like Paul, held celibacy to be a higher vocation than marriage ... by keen observation [of the pagan pleasures of sex] ... they wished to separate "Christian sex" from "pagan sex" by imposing a strictly moral purpose on it.(168 )
It was St. Augustine of Hippo who used the theology of shame on sexual behavior. He himself, who was once a wild child, changed up the Eden story to make the disobedience sin into one of "discovery of sexual shame" (ibid), thus making sex itself the cause of the Fall. In this logic, Augustine made marriage itself a sign of weakness of the persons involved.
What the homosexual did was different, and hence the homosexual was different, and in a religious world that increasingly prized conformity in all things, but particularly sexual manners, the difference branded the homosexual a threat to the moral order, the equivalent of a heretic in the church or a traitor to the state. (169)
The Bible itself was used to enforce the moral strictures on sex; however, it was also used as evidence for the same system. A homosexual, in this belief system, was considered with masturbation and other non-procreative sexual activity to be deviant and were all the more in the state of sinful lust.
What is illogical about this argument is the source for counter arguments - what of infertile couples? Andrew Sullivan points out in the March 1996 issue of The New Republic that, "if homosexuality is an objective disorder, then what is infertility?" (Gomes p. 170)
According to Sigmund Freud, in "Letter to an American Mother" (1935, documented on page 128 of Pim Pronk's work), he stated that it is certainly no advantage to be homosexual, but neither is it anything to be ashamed of; it is not a vice, nor degeneracy, let alone a crime; and "it cannot be classified as an illness; we [psychologists and sexologists of the era] consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development." It is even stated by Freud in his "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" that "A person's final sexual attitude is not decided until puberty." It is "the result of a number of factors, not all of which are yet known; some are of a constitutional nature," but others are social in character. Freud does not deny than qualitative differences in the end products exist but "the differences between their determinants are only quantitative"(Pronk 128 ). Freud even states in these essays that humans are psychically bisexual, "as apparent in childhood" (ibid.)
It is a very interesting "coincidence" to point out that Pope John Paul II has many NON-Catholics agreeing with his stance against homosexual behavior.
However, this should be pointed out.
"Naturalness" in a moral sense depends on the prior acceptance of a normative view of man in which reproduction is regarded as the purpose of sexuality. It is this view of man, not the naturalness of it, that makes the intention to reproduce oneself a moral obligation. Now, if naturalness in a moral sense is not applicable to heterosexual because of reproduction, then the counter-notion of "unnaturalness" is not applicable to homosexuality because of non-reproduction. Therefore, the concepts "natural"/"unnatural" have no discriminating value and we cannot do anything with them in our ethical reflection. (244)
A final question of this logic of unnatural behavior.
Are we able to get beyond this notion of "procreation only" sex?
The answer is yes. In fact, the 1958 resolution of the Ninth Lambeth Conference - the decennial meeting of Anglican bishops - stated that sexual intercourse is "not by any means the ONLY language of earthly love, but it is, in its full and right use, the most revealing" (171, emphasis added). In this logic, we would be wrong to say that the only purpose of sex is a willing conception of offspring.
To conclude this section, not only is the "scientific" argument of "procreation only" heavily on the UN-scientific side, it is also a wrongful assumption to make, when God gave us the gift of love so we can share it with others and our partner.
This is not a very good closing thesis, but in short, most, if not all, homophobic arguments are essentially flawed, thanks to mistranslation, misinterpretation, and misapplication of the Scripture.
Works Cited
Peter J. Gomes. The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart. New York: HarperCollins, 1996
Pim Pronk. Against Nature? Types of Moral Argumentation regarding Homosexuality. Grand Rapids (Michigan): Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993
Lighthouse Ministries <
http://www.apostolicrestorationmission.4t.com/id27.htm >
Whosoever <
http://www.whosoever.org/bible/ >