Sexuality in the Ancient Mediterranean World

I think that before I continue with the “Biblical Misinterpretations” series on the blog, an understanding of sexuality in the time and place that the books of the Bible were being written is needed. This will help to eliminate any confusion for future entries. Since the Bible did not develop in a vacuum, understanding the times will help us understand the text.
The first, and possibly the most important, thing to remember is that the word ‘homosexual’ did not exist linguistically prior to the late 19th century. The reason is not because homosexuality is a recent development but rather that an understanding of human sexuality as we now have did not come about until Karl Heinrich. Biblical writers were writing in a time when there was no such thing as ‘sexuality’ but rather were writing in a time when sexual activity was a means to an end.
Sex was not regarded as a unitive act in a committed partnership between two consenting adults. As Biblical scholar Mary Tolbert points out: “The single most important concept that defines sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world...is that approved sexual acts never occurred between social equals. Sexuality, by definition, in ancient Mediterranean societies required the combination of dominance and submission.” Therefore, sex between two men was a means to show social, political, and/or military dominance of one male over another male. In sex during this era, there was a penetrator (dominant) and penetrated(submissive), hence, sexuality was only understood in terms of masculinity.
All men (female sexuality didn’t truly exist) in the ancient Mediterranean were ‘heterosexuals’ who choose to perform ‘homosexual’ acts, according to societal sensibilities. There were 3 major reasons for which one male would have sex with another male: pederasty, temple sex/prostitution, and rape. The Bible makes mention to each of these types of same-sex acts, however, it is sometimes harder for modern readers to spot and no context or explanation for them is given; the writers might not have felt the need to do this because their contemporary readers would have understood what the author was saying.
The first form of a ‘homosexual’ act in which an ancient male could have partaken usually didn’t even include a sexual act and was only found in the upper social class. Especially in ancient Greece, the practice of an older man courting a younger teen was common place. Even though their relationship may appear to us as being sexual in nature, penetration was rare. The Bible has no mention of this type of same-sex relationship, however.
Temple sex/prostitution, the next form of male-to-male sexual act, receives the most amount of Biblical condemnation. Much of the Torah is early Israel working out its unique identity; trying to separate itself from surrounding civilizations, invaders, and foreign rulers. One thing prevalent in Greek and Roman worship was temple sex. It is often said that prostitution is the oldest profession and in many ways, temple sex is what drove a profession where one person payed another person for sex. Depending on which cult you followed, ritualistic sex may have been one of the ways in which you connected with a particular deity. Early Jewish people, wishing to create a distinctive identity, would have intentionally shunned a particular practice (temple sex) or adapted a distinct mark (circumcision) to set themselves apart. Since the God of the Jewish people is different from the gods of the Greco-Roman world, than logically speaking, the ways in which the Jewish people worshiped God had to be different as well.
The third reason one male would have sexual contact with another male was rape. It was common practice in the Mediterranean for village men to gang rape a foreign man traveling through their city as a reminder of his subordination and as a means to humiliate him. Conquering armies would often rape the prisoners of a defeated army as a way to prove masculinity and superiority. Especially for Romans, it became a way of feminizing the enemy. As with any rape, the sole purpose of this male-to-male sexual contact was power and control. Sexual orientation, as we understand it and as psychology explains, played no role in this. The only purpose was to instill fear and humiliation. Naturally, as the Israelites were called by God to love, compassion, and mercy to the stranger, the practice of male-to-male rape was strictly forbidden by the Holiness Codes and by cultural norms of Judaism. For a man to rape another man was sinful in the eyes of the Lord (the same did not hold true for the male rape of females, however).
I hope that this will help to serve as a background for the following installments of “Biblical Misinterpretations.” I will be citing this in coming posts so hopefully you will find this useful. Take care and God bless!

Pride Month and LGBTQ Spirituality

I remember my first Pride Weekend 2 years ago very vividly for many reasons. I remember the days leading up to it and my parents asking the question, “Why must you go to this parade where people wear their sexuality on their sleeve? Throwing your gayness onto people isn’t the way to achieve equality.” I had no answer other than “Because for 363 days we live in the minority, are told that we are sinful and deviant, treated as social inferiors. For 2 days, we take over Chicago and are in the majority, we are with others who will not judge us for who and what we are. We are given 2 days to make up for those 363 other days.” However sassy and insightful that response may seem, I never understood the true meaning of Pride until a week ago.
In Christianity, pride is one of the 7 Deadly Sins. It was pride, or the excessive regard of oneself, that lead to the fall of Satan and the cause of humanity’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. Yet, as LGBTQ Christians, we are now celebrating “Pride.” At first this may seem like a contradiction, however, in light of our personal experiences, Pride celebrations can also have a profound spiritual significance to us.
I remember the shame and confusion I felt when I started having crushes on other girls instead of boys; I hated God so much and even thought that God had made a mistake. I tried desperately to change the way God had made me. Indeed, thinking that God had made a mistake and that I could “fix” that mistake is no doubt an excessive regard for myself and blatant distrust in God’s plan for me. I know that my experience is not unique, though. Almost all LGBTQ youth feel immense humiliation and even guilt about their sexuality. We live in such a hetero-normative society that still, decades after the Stonewall riots and the counter culture movements, values gender roles and stigmatizes any variance from heterosexuality. Suicide is still the number one problem that plagues LGBTQ youth and adults. Accepting our sexuality is no doubt also an acceptance of God’s plan in our lives.
But Pride isn’t just about our own journey of acceptance. Pride month was established to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of 1968 when a bunch of drag queens and other gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn said enough is enough and fought back when the police came to again raid and arrest the patrons for the crime of being homosexual. It is kind of like a celebration of the “LGBTQ Saints” whose bravery in the face of laws saying being gay was illegal paved the way for much of the Gay Right Movement. We owe much to their courage; they took a big beating (literally) and were called all sorts of hideous things by religious people seeking to demonize LGBTQ people to the rest of middle America. If as Christians we celebrate the lives of those men and women who have courageously lived according to God’s plan, than we must do the same as Christians who are also queer to celebrate the lives of those men and women who fought, and continue to fight, for full LGBTQ equality.
Pride is celebration of who and what we are, children made in the image and likeness of a Loving Creator. So in response to my parents question, it is absolutely necessary that we wear our queerness on our sleeve during Pride month, but also at every other time. It is our duty as Christians to proclaim the living Gospel of the Lord, and being proud of the way in which God made us is one of the ways in which we do that. It has become my prayer that somehow the Gay Pride celebrations become a sign of hope for all those LGBTQ youth struggling to accept their identity from God that by us fully being the person God made us to be, one more LGBTQ youth will be at next years parade for the first time, accepting him or herself as God’s blessed creation.

Biblical Misinterpretations: In the Beginning

While I don’t plan on doing this series in the order in which these passages appear in the Bible, I did find it fitting to start with Genesis and the misunderstanding of the story of Adam and Eve as reason for why same sex relationships are wrong. As many of you have might know, it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve and that is why same-sex attraction is wrong. Since we have established that as the truth ipso facto, there is no reason to continue. Ugh, gag me. I hate when people try to pull that one. If ever you wanted to sound like an uneducated person or a second grader, that is a sure way to do it. To dumb down Genesis like that is as offensive as it is absolutely wrong.
Before I go in to explaining why these thirst two chapters of Genesis speak about loving, committed monogamous relationships, we must first establish what the first two chapters in the Books of Genesis are. To do this, I will be using the theories of Joseph Campbell and his main body of work “The Power of Myth.” Applying the word ‘myth’ to anything in the Bible is not a snub to it but merely a literary means of classifying a type of story found in the Bible; it gives the reader a frame work to begin dissecting the text. When Greeks and Romans heard stories like that of the Judgement of Paris, they did not believe it was a story of historical non-fiction. According to Campbell, stories like those we now read in literature classes were a means by which morally acceptable behavior was learned and passed on to younger generations. Since the books now part of the Bible were not written in a cultural vacuum, this tradition would not have been lost on the author of Genesis. Following the model of Campbell, one of the many lenses with which we can examine the first two chapters of Genesis would be to look at it as a myth of creation (NOT Creationism).
So now that we have established what the first two chapters of Genesis is, it is time to dissect the words. Let’s look at the second story of creation because it was the first one written. English lacks the depth and complexities which a language like Hebrew has. In 2:7 we are told that God creates man. That is how it reads in english; however, there is a rich play on Hebrew words here. The word adam means ‘man,’ as in human. It sounds very much like the Hebrew word adama, meaning ‘ground,’ since God created humans from the clay of earth in this story. At this point, the human which God has created is neither male nor female in Hebrew, it is merely an androgynous being (literally soul). Skip down to verse 18 where it reads “The Lord God said: “It is not good for the (hu)man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” Again, in the Hebrew, the pronoun used has no gender and the word “partner” can literally be translated as ‘help-mate.’ So God takes a rib from adam and creates a suitable partner for the first human. It is at 2:23 that we have the first use of gender specifying words in Hebrew; it is a play on similar sounding words ishsha (woman) and ishah (her man, her husband). When we read the end of verse 24, we see that the ‘two become one body.’ The Hebrew writer here is stressing that this union is willed by God.
When God creates the first human, that adam is lonely; all of God’s creation is grandiose and wonderful, but none of it gazes back with true love and passion and equality. God, seeing this loneliness provides adam with a partner who looks on ishah the same way ishah looks upon ishsha. When God explains the reasoning for creating a partner, God does not say that this partner is for procreation only; we are not like the other animals for our partner is for companionship. The “be fruitful and multiply” verse is found in the first story of creation. Indeed, although same-sex partners cannot literally procreate, they can adopt and become loving parents, just as countless opposite-sex couples do.
In my opinion, the message of Genesis is not to say that humans are partnered solely for procreation, but rather something far more deep and far more transformative. The ability of humans to enter into monogamous, caring and meaningful relationships is that which makes us most like the Divine. Further, the creation stories say less about human sexuality than it does about God; they speak volumes about God’s love and power in the universe. The real message here is that God has placed us as the peak of creation and called us “very good.”

Biblical Misinterpretations

As a Christian, the one thing that bothers me a lot is Biblical Literalism, for a number of reasons. For instance, the people who like to think that Creationism is fact because of the book of Genesis. The problem there becomes which creation does one believe as fact: Genesis 1, Genesis  2, Proverbs 8, or John 1. Another problem I have with Biblical literalism is when people use it as justification for homophobic rhetoric or teaching that queerness is an “abomination” (I will get to the ancient Hebrew understanding of that word in a subsequent post).
For years, this was a huge part of my struggle in accepting my sexuality because I had allowed Biblical literalism to pervade my understanding on sexuality. However, in more recent months, when people try to say, “Well the Bible says this about (insert ANY topic),” I often reply, “No, that is how the Bible reads; what does the Bible say?” Of course, I get very confused looks and then try to explain what the Bible is. In order to interpret what the Bible is saying according to how it reads, one must devote a great deal of time to understanding each nuanced aspect of the Bible. The Bible is not merely a single book; the Bible is a collection of books, a library as the name indicates. When we walk into a library, we know that we are dealing with a collection of books, each written in different circumstances, by different authors, with varying agendas, from all corers of the earth and all with a unique background. The Bible is no different. The Bible is a cannon of writings that were developed over a course of around 5,000 years, from all over the Mediterranean, and from various points in human, Jewish, and Christian history. This adds to the richness and flavor of every Bible passage; it is, in my opinion, what makes the Bible the most exciting and evolving collection of books.
The purpose, then, of this series of blog posts that I am titling “Biblical Misinterpretations,” is to help shed light onto some of the most common Biblical passages used to justify teachings against homosexuality. I will use a variety of methods in helping to translate what the Bible is saying as well as laying down some of the background for the culture at the time a given passage was written. That being said, here is my disclaimer: I am by no means a Biblical scholar nor am I claiming to be any sort of authority on what is written. Anything that I am writing is gathered from various scholars as well as from the extensive footnotes and background information in my collegiate study Bible. The thing that I ask you all to keep in mind while reading from this series of posts is a simple quote: Everything in the Bible is True. Not everything happened.

New Format

Well, I have come to a conclusion after not blogging for such a long time; in most cases, it is extremely difficult for me to relate EVERY Sunday's readings from the lectionary to LGBTQ struggles and experience. The truth is, to focus every week's lessons on a single theme is not the best approach for several reasons. Number one, every reading in the Bible is rich with layers of meanings and lessons upon which we can reflect. Like everything in life, the Bible can be, and for that matter, must be, read from a variety of lenses. To look at it only through the lens of the experience of LGBTQ persons simplifies the wonderful complexities of Scripture. Further, doing so denies that as Christians, we are multifaceted persons that are influenced and molded from our various life experiences which may or may not relate to our sexuality.
That being said, this blog will remain a place where Christianity/Scripture and the queer experience converge. Meaning, when applicable, I might select a Bible passage that has relevance to being queer. I will also spend some time debunking some of the commonly (mis)cited passages that some people feel relates to same-sex relations being ‘abominations.’ My hope is that I can also do some entries on coming out experiences for people who are also deeply Christian and how coming out was also a profound step in their faith journeys (this will include Allies as well).
If anyone has any suggestions for something s/he would like to see, please let me know and I will do my best to cover it. Take care and peace to all!

My Apologies....

I have only a few moments, but I would like to apologize for not keeping up these past few weeks. For those in university, you will understand what I mean when I say that it is that time of the semester. I have barely had a moment to breathe and unfortunately, the first priority is those things which count toward my academia. Unfortunately, this blog is not one of those things. Once finals are over, I will be back in the swing of things and update the blog. I will do my best to catch up on the missed weeks, but I will start with the most current lectionary readings first and then fill in the gaps as I have time. Thanks for following the blog! Peace

Palm Sunday and the Cost of Faithfulness

Ah, Palm Sunday. I must admit, this is my favorite Sunday of the year, and not because I used to make all sorts of things with the palms during mass. This is, after all, the story of Christ’s Passion, the reason for God becoming human. Besides the fact that Palm Sunday kicks off Holy Week, it also serves as the most powerful reminder that God is present in the suffering of all people, that Jesus paved the way for us ride head on to challenge the oppressive powers of society.
We start off with the procession readings, first from the Psalms, and then from the last part of Luke 19. The irony evoked from these passages almost mocks the customs of the Roman Empire. The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a juxtaposition of the triumphal entry of a Roman general after the slaughter of an enemy army. Jesus was praised by the powerless as he rode on a rather unglamorous animal. He knew the fate which awaited him in Jerusalem, yet, he still rode into the city, to the dismay of the Roman and Jewish leadership. When we come out of the closet, like Jesus riding his donkey into Jerusalem, we do so with much hostility from the status quo. But, we don’t need to worry because Jesus has done this before us. Many people, who, like the powerless who welcomed Jesus, welcome us with loving actions once we do come out. These are the people who support us as we take our first steps out of the closet and into hostile waters.
The second Psalm in the readings paints a picture of abused power. Even though the lectionary omits the distress of the psalmist, we have an idea of trust in the Lord, despite injustice. The psalmist understands that God’s protection is all inclusive and empowering, despite any experience.
Unlike the uncertainty surrounding the psalmists suffering, Jesus’ crucifixion is well understood. Jesus is accused of crimes against Rome and against Jerusalem. His message and ministry challenged the very factors which enabled the ruling class to have its power. He endured suffering for us on the cross and he endures it with us as we struggle with identity, as we come out as LGBTQ persons, as we are treated as second class citizens by the status quo.
Isaiah’s reading focuses on suffering under abused power. It is our duty to sustain the weak and downtrodden. When those around us, and even ourselves, are beaten down by overwhelming power, we must be there, to support and to give strength to those among us. I have found that the LGBTQ community is really good at doing this. Like the Psalmist finds strength in the presence of the Lord, so to do we find strength in the Lord, but also in the support of our ‘queer families.’
The reading from Luke is the culmination of all of Jesus’ ministry, of the message of the prophets. Jesus enters the city and is brought before the Jewish and Roman councils as a matter of destiny. Jesus' mission was to challenge the powerful, confront "normal" ways of organizing society and offer an alternative. Through our experiences, God is present, as God was at Jesus’ trial, and by our witness to the transformative love of God, we are liberated from all injustice.