IGF CultureWatch

First published Nov. 12, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press. This version has been slightly revised.

One of the Bible verses most frequently cited by conservative, anti-gay Christians occurs in the Letter to the Romans, generally attributed - except for its final verses - to the Apostle Paul, Romans 1:26-27:

(26) "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural," (27) "and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Revised Standard Version)

First of all, it is important to notice that although Paul clearly refers to sexual acts between males, it is not clear at all that he is referring to lesbian behavior. Not only does Paul distinguish women from men, but just where the parallelism of the two verses would lead us to expect it he specifically avoids saying anything like "woman committing shameless acts with women." It is only in the case of men that Paul specifies homosexual sex as the "unnatural" behavior he objects to. So Paul may be thinking of some other behavior by women.

Be that as it may, the usual gay Christian interpretation of this passage is that Paul had little concept of a life-long homosexual orientation and so regarded homosexual acts as a deviation from a natural heterosexuality by people who were unusually lustful or wanton or rebellious. In that case Paul's argument would not apply homosexuality as we understand it today.

That may well be true. But, even if so, exactly what theological point Paul was trying to make about homosexual behavior is far from clear and, on closer examination, seems far different from what both gay and anti-gay Christians assume. But that point emerges only when the verses are seen in context of the whole section (or "pericope") where they appear: Romans 1:18-32.

In this insistent and repetitious passage dense with "therefores" and "becauses" that obscure a lack of real argument, Paul asserts that his God's eternal power and deity (singularity, omnipotence) were once perceptible through the "eye of reason" by all men in the things God created.

But despite this evidence for an invisible, transcendent God, people refused to honor and worship him and being "vain in their reasoning" invented pagan gods - "created things," "images resembling mortal man, or birds, or animals or reptiles." (Notice, in passing, the glancing allusion to deified emperors.)

In other words, Paul claims that knowledge of his God had been available and that people who refused to acknowledge him were led astray by their own thinking "and their misguided minds are plunged into darkness." Referring to the ancient Greek and Roman poets, priests and intellectuals, Paul says, "They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves."

And because they fail to acknowledge Paul's invisible God, nothing keeps them from depraved reason and wrong conduct. Here is Paul: "God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves BECAUSE they have bartered away the true God for a false one ..." (Romans 1:24-25, emphasis added).

The word "because" is key. Paul is offering his explanation for homosexual desire and behavior - as well as a generic explanation for other things he regards as improper - including people who are "gossips, slanderers, insolent, haughty, haters of God, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless," etc. (Romans 1:28-31)

So Paul's argument refers to cultures that rejected an earlier natural knowledge of God available by the eye of reason and turned to worship other, visible, pagan gods. And it is the worship of pagan gods that leads them to engage in these various types of conduct Paul deplores.

Put the other way around, Paul's claim is that homosexual desire and behavior are (are only?) the result of belief in pagan gods. And belief in pagan gods comes about when people reject the light of reason and place more confidence in their own theological imaginings.

But if that is so, then Paul's claim about the origin and significance of homosexual desire and conduct can hardly apply to people who did not reject an earlier belief in God and turn to pagan gods. Specifically, it hardly applies to homosexuals who are Christians or Christians who come to realize their homosexuality. Paul amateur theologico-psychologizing has no explanation for such a thing.

Furthermore, it is not clear in any case how a supposed primordial belief in or "perception" of a unitary, transcendent god could have provided anyone with a particular ethical code, much less any specific commands about sexual behavior. Paul was clearly aware of that difficulty because he struggled to fill the gap later by postulating that some pagans have the law "by nature," "written on their hearts" (Romans 2:14-15). But he is unable to explain - nor does he try to explain - how this happens or why some peoples do and others do not have it "by nature."

First published on Nov. 5, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.

It is a striking fact that people who are anti-Semitic are so often homophobic and many who are homophobic are anti-Semitic as well.

At the end of October, Malaysia's prime minister - dictator, actually - Mahathir Mohamad retired after ruling for 22 years. Shortly before, in mid-October, Mahathir gave a widely publicized speech to a gathering of leaders of Islamic countries in which he charged that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and "get others to fight and die for them. " Further, "They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they can enjoy equal rights with others. "

If we took such charges seriously enough to rebut them, we could point to Jews serving in the American and other western militaries as well as the fact that military service is mandatory in Israel, where Jews have fought and died since 1948 repelling repeated invasions from surrounding countries who oppose Israel's mere existence.

We could point out that democracy was invented not by Jews but by ancient Greeks. Natural human rights were first conceived by the English philosophers Hobbes and Locke. Socialism was invented by early 19th century French writers. And Communism was invented by Plato, another Greek, as an ironic construct - as the Soviet Union so painfully discovered - of the politically impossible.

But clearly such factual corrections would have little impact. The hostility comes first, then "facts" are imagined or rearranged to support the prejudice. Does that sound familiar?

It is now barely recalled that in 1998 Mahathir suddenly turned against his presumptive successor Anwar Ibrahim, accusing him of corruption and sodomy and after a flamboyant show trial had him sentenced to prison for 20 years. The charges were almost surely false, prosecution testimony coerced and perjured, and human rights groups protested the whole affair as politically motivated.

Far from being unique, Mahathir is all too typical. Most Arab countries are both viciously homophobic and obsessively anti-Jewish. Saudi Arabia lashes, imprisons and executes gays and not only prohibits Jewish (and Christian) worship services but has its government-owned newspapers print absurd medieval libels against Jews.

Egyptian police conduct sweeps of gay cruising areas and entrap gays they meet on gay websites. At the same time, Egyptian government television broadcast an interminable mini-series based in part on "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a late Czarist forgery about supposed Jewish plans for world domination.

In the West, the Catholic church from its beginnings has been both homophobic and anti-Jewish. The anti-Jewish sentiment was attributed to the supposed responsibility of "the Jews" for the death of Jesus in the gospel legends (John 19:12-15; Matthew 27:25). Given the Catholic view that Jesus sacrificial death was necessary for mankind's redemption, you would think Catholics should be grateful to "the Jews" for helping it happen, but then no one ever claimed Catholic doctrine was logical.

In any case, it was not until the 1960s that the Catholic church formally declared that, oh, by the way, "the Jews" were not responsible for the death of Jesus after all. Small comfort to the generations of Jews excluded, harassed, assaulted and killed in pogroms by pious Christians doing the Lord's work.

It is scarcely necessary to recount the arrest, torture, executions and burning at the stake of "sodomites" when the Catholic church held political power, nor the innumerable hate-inspiring sermons denouncing homosexuality and "sodomites" in both Catholic and evangelical Protestant churches. Even today the Vatican and conservative Protestant churches inveigh against homosexuality and are the strongest supporters of sodomy laws and opponents of gay equality.

The reasons for the frequent appearance of both hostilities in the same person or culture are complex, speculative and deserve a column of their own. But here is a start.

Most people seem to want to think that however they are is the right way to be - that their conduct and beliefs are true and natural for everyone. Both gays and Jews diverge in noticeable ways from the usual, the familiar, so people conclude that gays and Jews must be wrong to be as they are. And since how "we" - the majority - are is "natural" the others are somehow "unnatural" and probably malicious in rejecting the obvious superiority of our practices and beliefs.

Thus Jews are an affront to Christianity because they do not accept the founding Christian myth that Jesus is a savior or messiah - or, in Islam, Mohammed the last and truest prophet. Since the truths of Christianity (or Islam) are so blindingly obvious to their proponents, they think that Jews are being willfully stubborn when they refuse to accept them as true and may well be motivated by evil intent to harm Christians (Muslims) and undo Christianity (Islam).

In a similar way, gays are an affront to heterosexuals who cannot imagine that anyone can really have different desires from their own except by virtue of something unnatural about them or else motivated by evil intent to harm heterosexuals or undo heterosexuality. So mere difference is interpreted as opposition and then as a threat.

On Nov. 2, the Episcopal Church consecrated their first gay bishop. This is the highest church rank an openly gay person has achieved in any major Christian church.

Gene V. Robinson, the new bishop of New Hampshire, is extraordinarily brave. People have called on him to step down. A maelstrom of publicity has swirled about him. His consecration ceremony was attended by 4,000 who greeted him with a standing ovation‹but a spokesman for 38 opposing bishops also spoke during the ceremony, saying that Robinson's " 'chosen lifestyle' is incompatible with Scripture and the teachings of this church," according to the Associated Press.

Most commentators on the church expect the result to be a split between the congregations who support Robinson and the more conservative "confessing congregations" who don't.

That's a lot of pressure on one man - the knowledge that he is the catalyst for the church he clearly loves breaking apart.

Yet it has never been clearer that one man is doing the right thing.

No one can predict the future of course, but I say this with certainty: the world will not end as a result of Robinson's consecration. The sky will not fall. The church, yes, will probably split - but churches have split before and survived.

And really, it is not Robinson who is splitting the church. It is the conservatives who are pulling away, who have announced they are unable to commit to working through these issues. They are breaking up this marriage of churches because they are unwilling to see their own faults, unwilling to recognize that on this they may be wrong.

Robinson said, "They must know that if they must leave, they will always be welcomed back."

But they won't come back. They were waiting for the more liberal churches to do something like this; they were eager to take their stand against the gays and lesbians who had previously huddled at the fringes of church life. The conservatives are willing to carve a church to pieces in order to protect the blinders of their own bigotry.

It's ridiculous, really - are gays and lesbians really such a great evil that they cannot be countenanced by the rest of the church? I mean, the Episcopalians once didn't ordain women, either (the Bible commands that women keep silent in the churches, after all) and there was great controversy around that - but gays and lesbians are somehow more sinister.

So there will be a backlash against Robinson. A gigantic, church-shaking earthquake of a backlash.

But the end result will be tranquility.

Why? Because people are adaptable. They are afraid of what they don't know - they are afraid of what might happen. But when the Episcopalians realize that their church is still the same church, that their lives are still the same prayerful lives, then the pressure on Robinson will ease and things will go on.

Soon, even most anti-gay (or uncertain about gays) Episcopalians will realize that Robinson's choice of life partner doesn't affect their own lives of faith at all. Life will continue the way it always has.

That's why it's important that Robinson didn't step down. By not bowing to the pressure - by staying firm in the face of increasing world adversity and in the knowledge that history books would note that he was the cause of perhaps the worst Episcopal split in the history of the church - Robinson has advanced the civil rights of all of us.

But Robinson alone is not enough. One person can always be considered an exception, as in: "I like you, of course, but you?re an exception - you're not like those other gays and lesbians out there."

What Robinson needs is for other gay and lesbian bishops to join him - not just in his church, but in other churches. He needs other gay and lesbian clergy to be open in their sexual orientation, to teach their congregations that leaders are leaders no matter whom they fall in love with. He needs gays and lesbian clergy around the world to stand beside him - and beside their gay and lesbian members - despite the negative publicity, and despite the chance that they could lose their livelihoods and be thrown out of their own churches. He needs all of us to pressure our own denominations to accept and elevate gay clergy to higher offices.

There are, of course, many brave gay and lesbian clergy who are already doing all these things. They marry same-sex couples against the wishes of their denominations. They introduce their partners into the regular give and take of church life. They rail against bigotry. They may be unsung on the national stage (or they might be demonized, depending how prominent they are) but they are all gay and lesbian heroes. They are changing the churches one strong example at a time.

And changing the churches is important, because it hits people at the core of their belief system. Because of this, Robinson is not just incidentally important. He's not just a footnote to a controversy. He is the key that will help change thousands of hearts.

All we need is for other clergy - and other congregations - to join him in pushing through the door.