Carol Towarnicky | THE REAL WORD ON HOMOSEXUALITY
IT'S obvious what the Bible thinks is important: loving one another, respecting the stranger, justice for the poor and the powerless. It repeats these messages over and over. And, based on that measurement, the Bible doesn't think about homosexuality much at all.
IT'S obvious what the Bible thinks is important: loving one another, respecting the stranger, justice for the poor and the powerless. It repeats these messages over and over. And, based on that measurement, the Bible doesn't think about homosexuality much at all.
Depending on the translation, there are four or five (or at most 11) Bible verses out of more than 35,000 that relate directly to sex between people of the same gender, says the Rev. Debra Haffner of the Religious Institute for Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing (religiousinstitute.org).
And the meaning of the verses is rather ambiguous compared to the Bible's strong and unmistakable support for, say, slavery.
So, just as we don't look to the Bible to tell us what to think about slavery, we shouldn't use a handful of Bible verses as "proof texts" on homosexuality.
Yet those few verses, and the method of reading the Bible they represent, have carved a deep fault line between and within many churches, affecting not only the minority who take the Bible literally but also those unfamiliar with different modes of interpretation. This has serious ramifications for everyone. In this column and the next, I'll take an alternative look at what the Bible appears to be saying.
Last week, it was the bishops of the U.S. Episcopal Church who were trying to buy more time rather than risk a permanent schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion. At their meeting in New Orleans, the bishops issued a contradictory statement that voiced "unequivocal support and active commitment" to the full inclusion of gay people but at the same time agreed to "exercise restraint" in ordaining any more gay bishops. (The unwillingness of conservative bishops to accept the 2003 choice of a gay man as a bishop of New Hampshire has fueled the split.)
Church leaders also continued to refuse to support public blessings of same-sex unions, although priests in individual dioceses certainly will continue to do so.
Not surprisingly, news coverage didn't examine the divergent ways of interpreting the Bible that underlie this and similar controversies. So conservatives continue to claim that they have God on their side. That's one reason, I bet, that Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hesitated last spring when asked if they thought homosexuality is immoral.
But there is a different way to look at it. Take the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The word "sodomy" comes from the idea that homosexual sex was the sin for which God destroyed the inhabitants of these two ancient cities.
The story is told in Genesis (19). The men of Sodom surrounded Lot's house and demanded that he let them rape two heavenly messengers whom he had invited into his home. Lot refused, instead offering the men sex with his unmarried daughters.
The "traditional" interpretation of the story turns out to be a relatively modern one not shared by the ancient Hebrews. The "iniquity" of Sodom was long understood to represent the failure to offer hospitality to visitors, a matter of life and death in desert societies. In the words of the prophet Ezekiel (16:49), Sodom's sins were "pride, fullness of bread, an abundance of idleness" and a failure to help the poor and needy.
But the context of the Sodom story supports another interpretation: In the verses immediately before it, God has already decided to destroy the city, but Abraham exacts a promise that it will be spared if 10 men are found to be innocent. If the sin of Sodom was homosexuality, and all the men were guilty of it, why would Lot think his daughters would satisfy them? And does saving Lot mean God approved of his willingness to let his daughters be raped?
Jewish legends about Sodom, called "midrash," make the same point, describing the crimes of the Sodomites as over-the-top greed and cruelty to visitors.
If the very source of the word sodomy is based on a misreading of the Bible, how much else have the traditionalists misunderstood?
Plenty.
Next: Leviticus and more.
Praying with the News: Let us pray that Congress will have the courage to provide health care for the nation's poor children even if it means defying a presidential veto. Amen. *
Carol Towarnicky is a freelance writer who was a long-time member of the Daily News editorial board. E-mail her at
