Neither Gay Nor
Straight:
Biblical
Christianity
By Robert M.
Price
Ever
since
I
became acquainted with gay
religion, especially its "Evangelical" incarnation,
I
have been intrigued with two
problems. These issues, of biblical hermeneutics and ethical
standards, seemed to be peculiarly acute in the gay context, but I
believed their solution would be important for the larger world of
Evangelical, "Bible-believing," Christianity as well. In fact, one
might almost say that the particularly gay version of these problems,
by putting them in their extreme form, forces consideration of
problems too easily ignored by straight believers. It puts the
hermeneutical and ethical issues in the starkest possible form so they
can be tackled head on. And that is what I want to attempt in this
essay, as I consider anew the questions of biblicism and perversion.
Surely one of the most astonishing
things about gay Evangelicalism to outsiders is the claim to hold onto
biblicism, the doctrine of verbal inspiration. Witness the following
statement of Reverend Bob Darst in the March 11-25, 1973, issue of
The Catalyst: "Every portion of the Old and the New Testament -
every single verse of every chapter of every book is most definitely
the divinely inspired Word of God.”1
Such a theological course seems suicidal for gay
Evangelicals, for will they not run afoul
of
several well-known texts which ban
homosexual activity? It must
be
admitted that
gay exegesis has proceeded
to turn
up alternative exegeses
of
several
of
these "problem texts" which have
swayed many exegetes with no
sexual axe to grind.
For
instance, only now does it seem
obvious that the crime of the "men of Sodom" (Genesis
19:4ff)
was attempted rape,
not
homosexuality per se. And it
is finally clear that I Timothy 1:1 0 and I Corinthians 6:9 refer only
to specific abuses of
homosexuality.
2 So far so good, but the crux
interpretum would seem to be the (in) famous Pauline text
Romans 1:26-27:
. . . God gave them over to
shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations
for
unnatural ones. In the same way the
men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with
lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and
received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Let us take a brief look at the
difficulties of gay exegesis in dealing with this passage. Then we
will be able to see what light these difficulties shed on the real
task of gay hermeneutics.
First, some gay apologists
implausibly claim that the apostle Paul means merely to condemn "lust"
apart from
the context
of
interpersonal relationships. But
this rationalization cannot explain the homosexual focus of the
passage. The same might easily
be
said concerning heterosexual lust.
Why isn1t it if this is the point? A slightly
more'
sophisticated approach seeks to
draw the modern distinction between "inversion" and "perversion.” Paul
is imagined to condemn only willful homosexual acts on the part
of those who are constitutionally
heterosexual. Constitutional
homosexuals, we are to believe, are not in view at all. This is rather
hard to swallow. In a bizarre reversal of the old Moody Science Film
claim that the Bible anticipated the discoveries of modern science,
those who argue this way attribute to Paul a distinction he could not
have been aware of. But even if he had been, the argument scarcely
comports with gay attitudes anyway, since it tends to ignore all the
poor stragglers along Kinsey's scale, who are neither absolutely gay
nor straight. The se people are implicitly being condemned as perverts
in a move that is especially ironic; precisely Kinsey's middle range
of homosexual experimentation is invoked by gay apologists to show
that they themselves are not so different from the social mainstream!
Put plainly, this avenue of approach is nothing but hermeneutical
ventriloquism, doing the Bible the dubious favor of attributing one's
own views to it. An approach like this virtually invites the
suspicion that gay apologists are merely making excuses for what they
them selves know is phony theology.
But isn't there a more convincing
alternative open to gay exegetes? Yes, I believe that there is, though
as we will see, it needs more work. In an argument that can easily be
mistaken for the one just rejected, some advocates of gay
Evangelicalism, notably Ralph Blair and Virginia Mollenkott, have
admitted that we as moderns may have a sexual-psycho-logical
sophistication (e.g., the ability to make the invert-pervert
distinction) that was unavailable to Paul and other biblical writers.
Or as J. Rinzema puts it: "The confirmed homosexual was not re
cognized until roughly 1890.
The Bible writers assumed that everyone was heterosexual. . . .”
Rinzema goes on to conclude that "It is, further, urgent that
Christian moralists develop a morality for homosexuality. . . .
Homosexual people must. . . dedicate themselves to a viable
homosexual ethic."3 And in
doing so they may safely disregard Pauline taboos along with their
cultural frame of reference.
The hermeneutical strategy just
described is strikingly parallel to the "demythologizing" program of
Rudolf Bultmann. Only whereas Bultmann wanted to dispense with the
supernaturalistic world-picture of the New Testament, this view seeks
to bracket the first- century cultural ethos. Both are held to be
merely temporally and culturally conditioned forms in which the gospel
was clothed. It would be a mistake to absolutize either. This is
quite a reasonable and cogent position. The problem is that on the
face of it, it tends to suspend the relevance of all the Bible’s
ethical instructions. What then is to be the basis for this new
"homosexual morality" Rinzema calls for? Put simply, the same device
that removes the stumbling block seems to eliminate any further
usefulness of the Bible for ethics. At least this would seem to be
true on Evangelical assumptions since the assertions of the text are
no longer binding. All are relativized.
We may use two illustrations to
demonstrate the problem here. First observe some of the efforts
already made to formulate a gay ethic. Most suggestions from
Evangelical quarters attempt merely to modify the biblical picture of
marriage.4 The only difference
is supposed to be that both
partners are of the same
sex! But, naturally, it is not so simple. Leaving aside other
ambiguities, we must ask what the poor bisexuals are to do. As
in the case of the "invert vs. pervert" argument, they are again left
out in the cold.
Second, consider the quandary faced
by gay Evangelical churches who suddenly find their more exotic
brothers and sisters knocking at the sanctuary doors. What sort of
welcome is to be extended to bikers, drag queens, sadomasochists,
etc.?5 Smarting from the
accusation of "perversion" themselves, gay Evangelicals may be
tempted to throw open the gates and say "anything goes.” But if they
do this, they run the risk of espousing a gospel of cheap grace.
Indeed such a moratorium on moral discrimination is a tacit admission
that fundamentalist critics were right- - once one dispenses with
biblical ethics at any point, chaos follows. In other words, how would
one be able to make a demand for repentance? Granted, there are plenty
of non- sexual sins to be repented of, but would anything be
sexually immoral? Or to put it another way, if homosexuality is no
longer a perversion, is anything else? (Of course I am not assuming
that any of the above-named sexual pursuits are perversions. I
merely ask how one would decide.) Perhaps about now gay Evangelicals
would welcome some of that ethical guidance from the Bible.
I want to suggest that such
guidance is still there to be found. The moral relevance of the Bible
is not exhausted when one makes the hermeneutical decision to bracket
the specific injunctions of biblical writers. The solution to the
apparent dilemma presented here lies in the fact that
the process of "ethical
demythologizing II begins already in the Bible itself. It is not a
decision of mere expedience, imposed on the Bible from without for the
convenience of gay (or other) Evangelicals.
It is well known that Paul
announced the end of the dispensation of Law. “For Christ is the end
of the law” (Romans l(10:4a). Yet it is far from clear to many
exegetes that this fact substantially affected Paul's ethical views.
But perhaps it should have. Virginia Mollenkott and Paul Jewett have
eloquently dealt with the same tension in Paul regarding the question
of women's roles.6 Those
scholars employ Bultmann's notion of “content-criticism” (sachkritik),
pointing out that Paul's great manifesto of eschatological equality
(Galatians 3:28) tends to subvert his own legalistic and culture-bound
prejudices, e. g., that women should stay silent (I Corinthians
14:34), or should not take authority (I Timothy 2:12). The biblical
writer, then, has himself missed the implications of his own main
thrust. Similarly Bultmann pointed out how Paul's evidential appeal to
eyewitnesses of the resurrection (I Corinthians
15:5-8)
is inconsistent with his own
emphasis on pure faith (I Corinthians
2:1-5).
In what follows I want to indicate
the unique relevance of this content-critical approach to the
question of gay Evangelical ethics. In order to do this, I want to
lead the reader on what may at first seem a digression. I believe that
a brief dip into the field of anthropology will greatly clarify the
issues.
One of the easiest sets of anti-gay
biblical texts to dispense with is the Levitical prohibitions. Often
gay apologists are content to point out that Leviticus makes other
stipulations that no straight Evangelical
is
prepared
to obey,
and
leave it at that. For instance,
when Troy Perry was challenged by an antagonist who carped, "Do you
know what the Bible says?” he replied, "I sure do! The Old Testament
says it's a sin for a man to wear a cotton shirt with woolen pants, to
eat shrimp, oysters, or lobster, or your steak too rare.”7
As clever and to the point as such a response is, it is
actually counterproductive for a gay Evangelical, since the thrust of
it is to debunk the scriptures. "Look, it says such absurd
things here, how can you trust it there?" And this is not exactly in
the interests of Evangelicals of any stripe! A much more
fruitful approach to the dicta of Leviticus is provided by
anthropologist Mary Douglas.8
She argues with great ingenuity and cogency that the Levitical taboos,
like all such prohibitions, represented an attempt to reinforce the
inherited cognitive categories into which the people had organized the
world around them. The very process of constructing a worldview
involves organizing the disparate phenomena encountered in experience.
The ancient He brews, like other tribes and civilizations, had to
provide "a place for everything, and [to put] everything in its
place.” The rules of holiness and abomination were a codified effort
to guar-d those categories, to keep the world from falling into social
and moral chaos. Everything had to be kept in its allotted place at
all costs. This concern extended to virtually every area of life. "You
shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not
sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon you a
garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff" (Leviticus 19: 19). This
was also the rationale for dietary restrictions. "Unclean" animals
were those which didn’t seem to obey the "God-given” categories. For
instance, shellfish were off limits since they didn't quite meet the
requirements for true fish. They lived in the sea, but they didn't
have scales and fins. Pigs didn’t qualify as true "cattle' since
despite their cloven hooves, they didn't ruminate. Even sexual
“perversions” are to be seen in the same light. Bestiality
transgressed the animal/human division; homosexuality confused the
man/woman divide. In fact the word "perversion” in Leviticus comes
from a Hebrew word (tebhel), which means “mixing or confusion.”9
So the whole Levitical system of "abominations" represented
what in an individual would be termed a low tolerance for ambiguity.
But crossing or confusing reality-categories need not denote only
abomination. Paradoxically, such breaches can also signify the
in-breaking of the Holy, of transcendence. Another anthropologist,
Edmund R. Leach, explains that religions often make use of anomalous
"hybrids" to straddle the categories "this world/ other world.”10
These
half-and-half creatures include virgin/mothers, divine/human saviors,
winged/men (seraphim) and incarnate / spirits. They mediate between
heaven and earth by virtue of their breaching the unbreachable wall
between them. (We might also think of God’s speech in Job, chapters
39-40, where it is the most strange and bizarre of God’s creatures
which, instead of being unclean as in Leviticus, are the best symbols
of God’s awesome Otherness.) In theological terms, anomalous
creatures like “virgin mothers" are paradoxical symbols which function
as "limit-language," directing our attention to the margins of earthly
experience where God is acting.11
So when the
categories are transgressed, this
may mean not abomination but the inbreaking of the divine.
All this takes on a surprising
relevance when we recall just what is the distinguishing mark of the
new age of salvation according to Paul: “There is neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Christ has inaugurated the Kingdom of God,
the sure sign of which is the abolition of all the “taboo"
distinctions! This is precisely the meaning of Paul's claim that
Christ has abolished the (Levitical) law. Seen this way, the
bracketing of Old Testament strictures against homosexuality is in
complete accord with Paul's own theology.
And this obliteration of all
legalistic categorization must imply the overcoming of the
gay/straight dichotomy just as surely as that of the male / female
distinction. The resulting scenario would be something like the new
“androgynous” form of consciousness predicted by June Singer, where (a
la the variation along the Kinsey scale) sexual attitudes and
orientations are no longer dichotomous, but form a graded continuum.
All options are legitimate.12
Though we have seen that in the
case neither of homosexuals nor of women did Paul follow this insight
consistently, he did pursue the ethical implications in general.
He did address the question of the basis for “liberated” ethical
behavior in a fallen world. First, and let us get this straight, there
is for Paul strictly speaking no longer any perversion: “All
things are lawful for me” (I Corinthians 6:12). Let us not shrink from
this; it means exactly what it seems to mean. But Paul
did not
advocate
going
"beyond
good and evil.” No, one must still
live in this world until the Kingdom is fully come. He recognized that
under mundane conditions, liberty in Christ might become mere
libertinage. And as Angela Carter has aptly observed, “The lonely
freedom of the libertine. . .is the freedom of the outlaw, a
tautological condition that exists only for itself and is without any
meaning in the general context of human life.”13
The continued need for ethics, even when "all things are lawful,”
arises from the fact that
the Kingdom is not yet consummated, but only inaugurated, like a
beachhead on enemy territory. One must reckon with that "general
context of human life.” So life in Christ is informed by the New Age
in which it proleptically participates, but it cannot simply be lived
as if the old age were swept away. Paul deals with this circumstance
not by reimposing law, but by invoking an altogether different
principle--that of pragmatism or "expediency.”
Such words sound strange in
the context of Christian ethics, but they come from Paul himself. “All
things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient"
(I
Corinthians 6:12). But Paul’s
utilitarian concern is not selfish. He curbs his freedom for the sake
of others because he doesn't want to cause anyone to stumble. And he
is careful what he does with his body which is the property of the
Lord (I Corinthians 6: 136).
Here then is the biblical basis for
.sexual ethics in an eschatological context where nothing is perverse-
- “I will not be enslaved by anything" (I Corinthians 6:l2b). This is
a fine sounding principle, as all principles are until one is forced
to get specific. But what real ethical guidance is
offered here? Listen to the
thoughts of Troy Perry, rejected by a lover:
It was hopeless, useless to even
try to go on. I couldn't remember God. I felt as though God did not
exist, so why even try to talk to Him. I had lost something I had
loved more than any thing else in the world. That was the problem, of
course. Benny had taken God's place. I had equated him with God. He
was “God” in my life, the driving force. 14
This emotional enslavement led
Perry to attempt suicide. Pauline sexual ethics would indicate that
such emotional idolatry, whether committed by heterosexual or
homosexual, is "inexpedient, It and therefore off-limits. And the same
would apply to any sexual pursuit, "kinky" or conventional. Nothing
would be ruled out en bloc, as if any practice could be
prejudged as being enslaving for everyone, an implausible diagnosis
often directed against masturbation, for instance. And naturally, if
one I s own freedom is to be safeguarded, how much more doe s this
apply to others? Christian freedom is never to be used as a cloak for
the exploitation of others. That mutuality forms part of the liberated
Christian ethic should go without saying.
So moral discrimination will still
be possible. Sexual activity will come to be evaluated not on the
basis of biological mechanics or biblicist taboos, but rather (case by
case) on the flexible bases of Pauline expediency and mutuality.
All in all, then, I have tried to
show that the hermeneutical bracketing of anti-gay biblical texts is
actually quite a biblical thing to do. This became apparent when
Paul’s doctrine of the supercession of the Law in Christ was
interpreted via anthropological insights as to the dual role of
"categorical transgressions.” The very boundary-breaches which under
the Law denoted ethical abomination, came to herald the inbreaking of
transcendence, of Christ’s Kingdom (Galatians 3:28). The resulting
state of affairs finds no place for the stigma of "perversion" since
"all things are lawful. It
Thus since legal
prescriptions are no longer in play, a new and highly flexible basis
for moral judgment is introduced, i.e., enlightened "expediency.”
This pragmatic approach is governed only by the twin concerns of
deference to others and refusal to be enslaved by compulsive pursuits
oneself. Pauline eschatological pragmatism thus offers a norm for
biblical morality that survives the sweeping away of the Law with its
moral taboos. The whole scenario should be of interest to various
segments of Evangelicalism. But it provide s gay Evangelicals with a
set of hermeneutical tools with which both to clarify their position
vis-a-vis "Bible-believing" critics without, and to negotiate moral
standards within.
FOOTNOTES
1
Quoted in Ronald M.
Enroth and Gerald
E.
Jamison, The Gay
Church
(Grand Rapids: William
B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1974), p. 40.
2
John Boswell, Christianity,
Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980); see especially Appendix
I,
"Lexicography and Saint Paul, "pp.
335-354.
3
J. Rinzema, The Sexual
Revolution (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1974), pp. 105, 106. Also, d. Ralph Blair: "Evidently the
apostle thought that people who were really heterosexual were doing
sexual things with people of the same sex and were thus going contrary
to their natural or expected way.". . . certainly the apostle never
dealt with homosexual orientation or with gay life styles as we know
their variety today." An Evangelical Look at Homosexuality (New
York: Evangelicals Concerned, Inc., 1977), pp. 9, 10.
4
For instance, a form of "homosexual marriage" is suggested by Rinzema
and by Virginia Mollenkott and Letha Scanzoni in Is the Homosexual
My Neighbor? (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978).
5
See Enroth and Jamison, pp. 78-82.
6
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott,
Women, Men, & the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977);
Paul King Jewett, Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975).
7
Thomas L. P. Swicegood, Our God Too (New York: Pyramid Books,
1974), p. 225.
8
Mary Douglas, "Pollution"
and “The Abominations of Leviticus” in William A. Lessa and
Evon Z. Vogt, Reader in Comparative Religion, An Anthropological
Approach (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972), pp. 196-201,
201-205.
9
Mary Douglas, “The Abominations of Leviticus”, p. 203.