"GOD, MAN, AND HOMOSEXUALITY"

“Sexual taboo is a disease created by humans and blamed on God!” –Rabbi Gershon Winkler

In my early 20’s I became aware that my younger brother, Larry, was gay. I always thought that I was very open and tolerant and accepting of that news, though years later Larry opened my eyes to the realization that not only was I prejudiced about his being gay, but I had also initially been sometimes harsh and unfeeling in the way that I treated him in respect to his sexuality. Like so many other misguided people, I originally thought that his being gay was due to a choice that he had made, rather than realizing that it was the result of a long-term self-discovery that he had experienced. Suffice it to say that in the beginning I did not make Larry’s “coming out of the closet” any easier for him, as I acted like a superior, uncaring, judgmental bigot in some of my early treatment of him after he had come out. This was in spite of the fact that I love and admired him.

Unfortunately, Larry was one of the early gay men to contract what came to be known as HIV/AIDS. I remember one year, while visiting with him at his home in California, that he told me that he had attended an average of one funeral every week during the previous year. Week after week he had been saying “goodbye” at the funerals of many of his friends and other people that he knew. He, however, went on to live over a decade with this evil illness before finally succumbing to the insidious disease that had been fighting so long for control of his body by causing his body’s own self-destruction.

Larry was a brilliant, non-college-educated, computer systems programmer who managed to work his way up to a sufficient position in the business world that he was able to retire on disability with a better income than I have ever made from a working salary. And he did it all while battling off the shadow of death that hovered just over his shoulder. He was taking AZT, and that drug, over the years, caused his hip to deteriorate so that he walked with a cane and was almost always in constant pain.

He enjoyed living in Los Angeles because he loved the arts. For many years, at any given point in time, he liked to claim that he had over $1,000 worth of tickets in his pocket for upcoming plays, operas, ballets, symphonies, stage shows, and concerts. I would visit him at least once a year and he always enjoyed taking me to some exciting theatrical event, like “Phantom Of The Opera,” “Cats,” and the intriguing play, “Tamara.”

“Tamara” is about the Art Deco artist Tamara De Lempicka (see her art) and a ten-day post-Christmas visit that she made in January 1927 to Il Vittoriale, the mansion home of Italian World War I hero and all-around renaissance man, Generalisimo Gabriele d’Annunzio, in the town of Gardone on Lake Garda in northern Italy. This episode, along with other insights into the story of Tamara’s life can be found in the book, “Passion By Design,” as told by Tamara’s daughter Baroness Kizette de Lempicka.

Once, on a group tour of Italy, when the tour bus passed through Gardone, Larry got off the bus, promising to meet the others on their return to Gardone later that evening following a group cruise on Lake Garda, and he hiked on up the road to Il Vittoriale. Finding it closed on that particular day of the week (Monday), Larry noticed a nearby gardener working on the property. A short conversation led to the discovery that the gardener’s son was the chief caretaker for Il Vittoriale. The gardener called his son and Larry was taken on a private tour of the mansion before rejoining the tour group at the lake that evening.

The play, “Tamara,” which originated in Montreal, was playing in the Hollywood Armory (it holds the record of the longest running play in Los Angeles) when we went to see it, and the production took place simultaneously on three different floors of that building. The “audience” started out in “the library” where the rules of the show were laid out, that each person must choose a “player” and follow him or her. At any point in time one may choose to follow another player, but one can never be loose and on one’s own. As you might quickly imagine, it is impossible to see the entire play at one performance. It is therefore necessary to come back again and again in order to experience all of the nuances of the production. When Larry took me to the play, it was his 53rd visit and my first. By then he was on a cane and heavily dosed with Motrin, so he had to stay on the main floor, but he gave me explicit instructions on whom to follow, and when, so that I would catch all of the high points of the production on my first visit. He spent the next three days in bed recovering from the ordeal, but he wouldn’t have missed it for the world. He loved not only to be entertained but also to entertain or otherwise facilitate entertainment for others.

If you have visited my weblog, “Welcome To the World of the Web,” (7/28/04 entry) then you might be aware that I believe that the origins of AIDS and HIV were deliberate laboratory concoctions that have since gotten “out of hand,” though there are some who would secretly say that they’re right on target. That my brother was one of the early victims of this insidious form of death stirs within me deep feelings of extreme sadness. But it also gives me feelings of great pride and thanksgiving for the lessons about life that I learned from Larry while he was valiantly battling the disease that some ignorant religiously minded bigots have termed “God’s punishment for homosexuality.”

I never have understood how these radical, totalitarian religious leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Sun Mung Moon, and others can be so certain of the will and the intention of God. And I am particularly curious about how they can claim to be followers of Jesus when even the simplest understanding of the teachings of Jesus will quickly cause one to realize the baselessness of their outrageous claims. And yet it has not been until the second half century of my life that I have finally been able to sort through all of the mumbo jumbo of those who religiously condemn homosexuality so that I could get a clearer view of the Biblical perspective on relationship and sexuality between those of the same gender.

So, friends, let’s take a look at the religious scripture that many distort to promote their phobic view of homosexuality. I allude to the word “homophobia” here because it is a relatively new word (1969) defined in Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/) as “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.” I think that the term “irrational fear” says a lot. I also find one of the definitions in the aforementioned dictionary for the word “aversion” to be: “a tendency to extinguish a behavior or to avoid a thing or situation and especially a usually pleasurable one because it is or has been associated with a noxious stimulus.” Hmmm, to extinguish or avoid “especially a pleasurable (thing or situation)” due to an association with a noxious (morally corrupting) stimulus. Sounds like avoidance because, although it “feels good,” one nevertheless “believes” that it is “wrong.” But does one “know” it to be “wrong” or does one just “believe” it to be so?

Merriam Webster dates “homosexuality” at 1892. The root, the Latin “homo” (1596), means human beings, not men. This brings up a very important point. No matter how hard one may look, the terms “homosexual” and “lesbian” appear nowhere in the Bible. So, in order to find scriptural references that can be used to underwrite a personal distaste for same sex erotic activity, one must interpret other scriptures with the claim that they are referring to homosexuality as we know it. When one does this, one only finds possible references to male/male homoeroticism, with not a single possible reference to female/female homoeroticism in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). That’s strange. At first one would think that if same sex activity is so divinely repugnant, then God would give equal time to condemning women for this activity, as well as men. Of course, that can always be written off with the claim that women have never been given a clear and equal stake throughout the recordings of history. And that certainly includes the Bible. But for those who use these scriptures to tout their abhorrence of same sex activity, this isn’t mere history. This, they claim, is the “divine, revealed word of God.”

So, right away I have a problem with those who wrap their prejudices in scripture under the claim of divine direction. To claim absolute divinity for scripture is to claim that God is just as misogynistic as these hypocritical self-proclaimed spokesmen for God. (Misogyny dates back to 1656 and is defined as “a hatred of women.”) I’m not going to delve too deeply into the possible origins of the male fear and hatred of women expressed by so many misguided men in the world throughout history, but understand that the fear is real, and it is wrong, and to attribute it’s origins to God is spiritual blasphemy.

Theologically speaking, blasphemy is claiming for oneself the attributes and rights of God. And those who leap to quote obscure biblical passages to counter my charge of blasphemy are doing so in order to execute a subtle blasphemy in which they attribute their own shortcomings to define God and then they scour the pages of the Bible to find words and phrases that they can distort to support this limited view of God with which they then relate. It’s as though they are appointed by God to spread a doctrine that is totally of their own making and completely disassociated from the reality of God and the teachings of Jesus.

I raise the specter of misogyny in this examination of the origins of homophobic attitudes and actions because they both share similar roots that are grounded in the same fears. These are fears of the unknown. And one of the greatest unknowns in the course of the history of humanity has to do with sexuality.

Sex can be a very powerful experience. Sex can be a very puzzling experience. And when sex is used for the purpose of exercising power over another, it can become a very convoluted and frightening experience if all parties are not in agreement with those actions.

The climax of the sexual experience, while bringing extreme pleasure, also demands a heavy price. That price is absolute surrender. It is a surrender to the sexual experience wherein one no longer has the power to control the experience, but must, instead, give up oneself totally to the experience. To have this experience by oneself is usually fairly easily assimilated. But to have this experience with another, or others, present can be insecure, intimidating, frightening, or even threatening if one is not self-confident and self-assured. This can be a moment of extreme vulnerability. And to compensate for the pending vulnerability of the sexual climax, people often resort to acting out what can become very elaborate fantasies that portray them in positions of power over others, or in submission to others.

Sometimes the quest for sexual power takes on violent overtones. When this distortion occurs, the underlying root cause is usually a desire and a drive for personal power to compensate for feelings of insecurity and inferiority. That’s a harsh truth that those who are prone to sexual violence may challenge with great determination. But it is true nonetheless.

These inflammatory feelings of inferiority and insecurity are, of course, two of the many expressions of fear. And, as I have already stated, it is these fears that lie at the root of misogyny and also the prejudice towards same-sex sexuality.

Because historically accepted cultural norms have, by and large, been slanted against same sex intimate relationships, the acceptability of those prejudicial beliefs has been passed on for thousands of years without question. But just because an idea or a viewpoint may have existed for millennia does not mean that it is correct.

Less than four hundred years ago, when Harvard was founded in 1626, they taught the age-old, and then still-current, belief that the planet earth was the center of the universe and that all of the stars and the planets and the moon and the sun revolved around the earth. Today we know that only the moon revolves around the earth, yet the present-day obviousness of that reality was, for thousands of years, an alien viewpoint that was institutionally rejected across the board, often by punishment of death.

Because there was no term, no label, to describe same sex intimate sexual relationships in Biblical times, it might be wise for us to contemplate the origin of, and the reasons for, the word “homosexual.” As we’ve already seen, “homo” derives from Latin and is defined as “human beings,” not just anatomically male human beings. But the term, and more importantly, the modern concept and definition of “homosexual,” didn’t exist thousands of years ago when these Biblical books were being written.

I believe it was Albert Ellis who once said that human beings, rather than being heterosexual or homosexual, are, instead, polysexual. In other words, human beings are sexual beings and, as such, are not limited in their sexual desire or activity by mere gender association. Therefore, in the context of the actual meaning of the combined words “homo” and “sexual,” homosexuality encompasses Ellis’s definition by meaning “sexual human beings.” It is more like a redundant appellation than the oxymoron that plagues the psyche’s of the critics of sexuality.

If there are any limitations in the activity of polysexual beings, those limitations are founded in choice, based upon predetermined inheritances and conditioning. Choice, unfortunately, is all too often totally detached from rational consideration, relying, instead, upon conditioning. In other words, one believes what one believes because that is what one was taught to believe. Sort of like being a kind of dittohead. Though we like to secretly think of ourselves as independent beings, we are largely creatures of habit.

So, where do we look to find the Biblical references to these allegedly repugnant acts? Well, the World Bible Publishers’ cross-referenced edition of the King James Version is a good place to start. One need merely find one example verse and then follow the cross references to identify the rest. It turns out that there are only 8 such possible references, 5 in the Old Testament and 3 in the New Testament. Allow me to present them to you here, and then we will examine each of them “in context” and see what we have. I quote from King James as a most commonly familiar translation and interpretation.

1. Genesis 19:5 “And they called unto Lot and said unto him Where are the men who came into thee this night? Bring them out unto us that we may know them.”

2. Leviticus 18:22 “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.”

3. Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

4. Judges 19:22 “Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.”

5. I Kings 14:24 “And there were also sodomites in the land; and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel.”

6. Romans 1:27 “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.”

7. I Corinthians 6:9 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,” shall inherit the kingdom of God.

8. I Timothy 1:10 the law is not made “For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;”

There they all are. Over 1,000 pages, 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,101 verses, 783,137 words and only these 8 meager possible references to what some claim is the moral “sin” that is going to destroy all of civilized society. There are 6,468 commands in the Bible, and yet, to hear some preachers tell it, one of the overwhelming commands is to treat homosexuality as a sin.

So that we don’t overlook any individual’s verse of choice for hiding the fear of their own sexuality by condemning the sexual practices of others, I will examine all 8 of these instances in detail and in context.

We begin with Genesis, the 19th chapter. This is part of the story of Lot, nephew of Abraham, fleeing Sodom before it is destroyed. To set the scene, the previous chapter (18) opens with Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, being visited by the Lord, who is accompanied by three men (angels), by messengers of God, who inform Abraham that he and his wife, Sarah, will have a son and that Abraham “will become a great and mighty nation.” Then the Lord informs Abraham of his intention to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah “because their sin is very grievous.” Whereupon Abraham begins to bargain with the Lord over the fate of these two cities.

In a time when most people believed in a multitude of different Gods to account for the different phenomena in the experience of their lives, Abraham developed a belief in a single God that encompassed everything. His relationship with this single God was very personal, for he is reported to have walked with God, and talked with God, and even to have eaten with God. We therefore see him now bargaining with God over the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. This personal God of Abraham was the same God that Jesus resurrected through his ministry, a God that was all encompassing, yet individually personal.

Chapter 19 of the book of Genesis opens in the city of Sodom with Abraham’s nephew, Lot, hanging out at the entrance to the city.

“And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;

“And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.

“And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.

“But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter;

“And they called unto Lot and said unto him Where are the men who came into thee this night? Bring them out unto us that we may know them.

“And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

“And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly;

“Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof

“And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door.

“But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.

“And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.” -- Genesis 19:1-11

Who are these two “men” who come to the gate of Sodom where Lot sits. They are two of the three “men” who visited and ate with Abraham in the previous chapter. These men are messengers of God. They are angels. It says so in the very first verse.

So we have two messengers of God, two angels, coming to the town of Sodom where Lot offers them food and a bed for the night in his home, an action typical in near eastern culture. But when it comes time for them to retire for the night, Lot’s house is surrounded by a group of men, both young and old, from the city of Sodom, calling to Lot to bring the men, the angels, out so that they, the men of Sodom, might “know” them, it is assumed, in the Biblical sense. And thus we have our first alleged reference to homosexuality in the Bible. But is that what’s really happening here? I think not.

First of all, these visitors that the “men” of Sodom allegedly wish to have sex with, are not men at all. They are angels. So the men of Sodom are not there to have sex with men but rather to have sex with angels, with God’s messengers. And, what’s more, they want to have sex forcibly. The word for that forcible action is “rape.” So we have the men of Sodom surrounding Lot’s house with a desire to rape his guests, two visiting angels. This is not homosexuality. This is angel rape. I’m going to repeat that because I want it to be very clear. “This is not homosexuality! This is angel rape!”

No wonder God was reportedly angry with Sodom. Its men were deviant rapists. They wanted to have forcible sex with God’s angels. They didn’t call for Lot to come out and have sex with them. They wanted his visitors, the angels, to come out so that they could rape them. It’s not until Lot refuses to turn the two angels over to the mob of rapists that they then threaten to rape Lot, also. Again, this is not about sex; it’s about rape. It is about extreme violence. It’s about exercising total power over others through sexual violence. That was the sin of Sodom, that they had reverted to a more primitive means of expression wherein they had no God in which they believed other than the God of self and power. And so, they became like roving gangs of dogs, looking for someone else to subdue and overcome. And what better conquest than to rape angels.

Lot pleads with the townsmen not to “be so wicked,” and then he does something shocking. He offers his two virgin daughters to the rapist mob to “do to them whatever you please” (Lamsa Bible). This surely tells us about the importance of women in those ancient times. But there’s more to it than that. Lot would rather have his neighbors rape his virgin daughters than rape God’s messengers, God’s “angels.” In the second chapter of Hebrews, Paul says that God made “man a little lower than the angels” (verse 7) and made Jesus “a little lower than the angels” (verse 9). And, of course, some think that Paul thought that God made “women” just a little lower than that. So here Lot is offering to sacrifice his two daughters’ virginity for they are “just a little lower than the angels.” It’s as though he said, “Oh, not God’s angels.” He seems to be saying, “Better my virgin daughters than God’s angels.”

Later in this chapter, Lot’s two daughters get their father drunk on wine and after he passes out, they have their way with him and they both, thereby, become pregnant. These are the daughters that Lot offered to the mob of rapists. The daughters end up carrying and bearing their father’s seed through a deliberate act of drunken deception.

The town rapists, however, are single-minded in their desire to commit “angel rape” and they push Lot up against the door and threaten him, whereupon the angels pull Lot inside the house and “smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness.” Surely, smiting the crowd with blindness is the work of angels, not the work of homosexuals. So we find here, in our first scripture that those who use this scripture to condemn homosexuality don’t truly know and understand their Bible. Instead they read the Bible only superficially with an eye that does not see beyond the surface of their own prejudices. This misperception has been further compounded by attaching the name of the town of Sodom to those who practice same sex activity rather than where it more correctly belongs in referencing those who commit sexual violence, irregardless of gender.

Next, we move on to Leviticus. Ah, Leviticus, the book of commandments and sacrifice. Why anyone would be foolish enough to quote from Leviticus to back up any argument is beyond me, for it is filled with so many often ridiculous commands that only a full blooded hypocrite would find comfort there. And yet, we only have two possible references to homosexuality in the entire book of Leviticus. Leviticus is the book of God’s laws, God’s commandments, God’s overly extensive instructions on how to live a life according to God’s commandments and how to atone for a wide variety of “sins” through sacrifice. However, in all of its 27 chapters, it only makes two references, which are often quoted with pomp and circumstance, to male/male sex. And, actually, it is not referring to “all” male/male sex, but rather to sex wherein a man lies “with mankind as with womankind.” See for yourself:

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.” --Leviticus 18:22

What are they talking about here? It would appear, from an anatomical viewpoint that this verse may be specifically referring to anal sex since this is the only way for two males to experience the penetration that comes from “lying with a woman.” And such activity is referred to as an abomination (causing disgust or hatred). The 18th chapter lists all those with whom one cannot have sexual relations. Men (this is obviously addressed mainly to the men of Israel) shall not have sex with their mothers, stepmothers, daughters (Lot was excused because he was passed out drunk), stepdaughters, granddaughters, half-sisters, aunts, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, a woman “and” her daughter or granddaughter, a wife’s sister while the wife is still alive, a neighbor’s wife, or any woman during the time she is having a menstrual period. Nor shall men get strange women pregnant. Interestingly enough, it does not list any taboo against sex with concubines (mistresses). Then it goes on to say that men should “not lie with a male as with a woman,” and neither men nor women should have sex with animals. By implication, we might assume that women are not to become sexually involved with their sons, stepsons, fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, half brothers, nephews, fathers-in-law, brothers-in-law, a sister’s husband while the sister is still alive, a neighbor while they, themselves, are married, or any man during the time of the woman’s menstrual period.

This is all direction that the Lord (God) is allegedly giving to Moses to be relayed on to the children of Israel. The first group of “no-nos” is justified by the Lord because these are the relationships that God considers “near kin.” The acts of male/male anal sex and bestial sex are separated and defined as abominations. These acts were all verboten by God because the people of Egypt, from where the Israelites had come, practiced them, and they were also performed by the Canaanites, where the Israelites were going. So we have “God’s children” wandering through a world ripe with rampant sexual activity. And God has commanded his “children” to practice a more limited and structural sexuality whose goal is to guarantee the ongoing continuation of the descendants of Abraham through the offspring of Jacob/Israel.

The “near kin” directions either make genetic sense, or they make common sense to keep peace within the family. And by implication, having sex with “strange” women is apparently okay so long as they don’t get pregnant. King James obscurely describes this as letting “any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch,” referring to a Canaanite God of fire to whom sacrifices of children were made. So, men, if you’re going to have sex with a “strange” woman, keep the children in mind and don’t sacrifice them by conceiving them as a result of your “strange” sexual activity.

One may note that cousins are not mentioned here. Twenty-six of the 50 states of the United States have ordinances against cousin/cousin marriage, even though God does not prohibit it. This, in spite of the fact that recent studies have shown that the chance of genetic anomalies from such relationships is minimal. Most countries around the world allow cousin/cousin marriage, but these 26 states apparently think that they “know better than God.” It seems that many Americans are still proud of the misguided Puritanism of their heritage, and like the puritans of old who forced their beliefs upon others through even the extremes of burning “nonbelievers” at the stake, our modern puritans seem hell-bent on devising ways to condemn their fellow human beings who might not act in accord with their own limited concept of life’s reality.

Well, it’s obvious that Moses thinks that God has some sort of problem with “men lying with males as they lie with a woman.” I wonder why that is. Did you ever wonder about that? As we examine the other Biblical dictums allegedly against homosexuality, we may wonder even more why Moses felt a need to include this activity amongst the hundred or more divine “demands” of this “book” of the Bible.

In the 19th Chapter, God tells Moses to warn the people against “seeing near kin naked,” profaning “the name of thy God,” lying (having sex) with “any beast,” “stealing,” “dealing falsely,” “lying,” “defraud(ing) thy neighbor,” “curs(ing) the deaf,” placing “a stumbling block before the blind,” and letting “your cattle gender with a diverse kind.” Elsewhere in the book we find extensive directives regarding how to deal with blood, and especially how to deal with the blood that most mystifies and terrifies men, the blood of the menses.

Chapter 20 of Leviticus repeats the charge made in chapter 18, but with more forcefulness. Verse 13: “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Do you ever wonder what God means by “shall surely be put to death?” When, and how, and why? Why would God kill someone who trespasses against a divine commandment when one of God’s own commandments is “Thou shalt not kill.” Oh, that doesn’t apply to God? It’s only a commandment for humankind? Well, as soon as you make an exception, you open the door for others to make exceptions. Ever wonder why devout, self-proclaimed Christians who are opposed to abortion are also quite often very supportive of, and demanding of, the right to carry weapons with which they might kill others if threatened and also use to kill animals for sport in the meantime? And they also often support the use of capital punishment, and are the first to wrap themselves in the banner of patriotism if they feel the need to go to war and kill other human beings, even preemptively. All of this comes from making their own exceptions to God’s laws.

One of the major problems with the God that we all worship, no matter what name we give to that God, is that it is not the original God of scripture that created humankind. Instead it is a God that has, itself, been created by humanity in humanity’s baser image. We so want a God with skin on that we drag God down to our own level rather than accepting the more difficult challenge of rising to God’s image of us. That’s what Jesus came here to teach us to do. And look what happened to him. “What is the greatest commandment?” he was asked. “That you love the Lord, your God, with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your soul. And the second commandment is like unto it; that you should love your neighbor as yourself.” “Hey, somebody better shut that man up.” And we wonder why he was crucified.

I’m reminded here of the old story of the preacher who was going on and on about the divinity of Jesus and the sin of humankind when someone asked him what he therefore thought Jesus meant when he said, “the things that I do, you shall do also.” The preacher responded, “Well, I wish that he’d never said it.” Today’s self-proclaimed Christians who are quick to jump to judgment of others are ignoring the true teachings of Jesus because they’d just as soon that he had never said many of the things that he said. So they ignore the teachings of Jesus and wrap themselves in the “identity” of his name as it applies to the artificial edifice of “the Christian church.”

Modern Christians like to weep about how Jesus “died for our sins.” A more accurate translation of those words is that Jesus died “because” of our sins. And we still haven’t learned, after 2,000 years, to truly hear what Jesus was teaching, so we continue to be just like the sinners who murdered Jesus. “Don’t give us any of that love thy neighbor jargon. We’re Christians, Christians, Christians. We’re Muslims, Muslims, Muslims. We’re Jews, Jews, Jews. You don’t know our neighbors. Give us Kalishnikovs, not foolishly impossible commandments. This is the real world. It’s kill or be killed. Our bloodlust is justified because it is divinely inspired.”

If God does say “surely be put to death,” then what does that mean? After all, we’re all, from the day that we are born, on a countdown until the day that we die. If God is going to be the one to “put to death” those with whom God finds disfavor, then what is the timeframe, what is the procedure, what is the modus apparendi? Why do some “die before others” after apparently committing the same sin? Perhaps this verse is, again, an example of humankind (Moses) trying to frame God in a humanly understood perspective. Could death be a metaphor here, such as “dead to their soul,” or “as though dead,” or “dead to the others in the community,” or “treated as though dead.” You know, that last one is common in the Near East: “From here on you are dead to me. I mourn when I hear your name.” Could this be Moses having God say that the offenders will be ostracized? Is that not the “death” that has been visited upon a greater part of what has become known as “the homosexual community?” Condemned to live in a closet until the twentieth century when we finally begin to break free from the limiting bonds of our past perceptions, and those human beings that have been closeted away for centuries begin to emerge, ever so carefully, to a new recognition and acceptance.

And if ostracized to exile, who is that exile from? Is it separation from the good graces of God, or is it rather being shunned by the human community? The only thing that we know for certain is that it has been from the human community. As for God’s kingdom, the master Jesus demonstrated that all are welcome therein. All are welcome there. There are no distinctions of separation in Jesus’ teaching of God’s sovereign presence.

In reading the book of Leviticus, it is important for us to understand that it is largely written around the ancient belief in duality. It is rooted in the concept of good versus evil. And I’m certain that a lot of you readers would say, “So?”

Well, I’m going to lay down some spiritual teaching here because religion has too often distorted the truths of spirit, thereby allowing people to pervert those truths to underwrite their own limited prejudices. In a book that I am writing, “What We Believe That Makes Us Different,” and in the August 26, 2002, entries of my blog “Practical Truth Ministry”, I state that the reason Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden was not caused by God banishing them, but it was because they had lost sight of the reality of the garden when they started judging by appearances. This is what eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents.

Before I go further, I want to make it clear that I’m dealing with this whole Adam and Eve and the Garden scenario as an allegory, rather than as actual factual events. The physical actuality of this story is, and will probably always be, debatable. However, confronting it as an ancient story rather than as absolute fact allows us to avoid the sidetrack of debate and consider what we may learn from this story.

In reality, God is all there is and that allness is good, right, balance, and harmony. God is what God is, so there can be no delineation of right or wrong. All that is, is; right and wrong have nothing to do with it. That allness that is God expresses itself in an infinite multitude of ways. Many of those modes of divine expression converge as the “we that we are,” and that “we that we are” experiences further convergences of divine expression, and in the process we create a conceptualization born of our experiences that we think of as reality. The quantum physicist, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, has said, “Reality is nothing more than a whole lot of agreement.” And the agreement of which he speaks regards our perceptions of the infinite expression of God.

But that expression, as vast and as infinite as it is, is not God itself. It is, rather, an aspect of God. It is God expressing. It is the infinite manifestation of God. It is the appearance of God. And that’s where we get into trouble, by judging God, and God’s total kingdom, by its appearance rather than by its total essence.

In our judgment by appearances, we are prone to slip into the trap of thinking that the appearance is the true reality. And, in the world of appearances, it’s easy to see, and to believe, that there are opposites that are actively in a conflict of opposition to one another. In our study of science, however, we know that opposites attract and, furthermore, that opposites complement one another. It’s a balance rather than a battle. But in our religious beliefs we have mistakenly taken the awareness of the opposition that is required to balance expression, and we have applied the appearance of the opposition of expression to the source from which springs that same expression. This results in the mistaken belief of eternal conflict of good and evil. And that is precisely what got the Adam and Eve part of our nature thrown out of the Garden. They began to judge God by the appearance rather than by the essence. The true essence of God, which manifests, as a Vedic seer says, as “beautiful flowers and mighty trees, into enchanted gardens and majestic forests,” is displaced in our consciousness merely by the manifest appearance of those self-same gardens and forests.

Adam and Eve’s eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is symbolic of our perceiving the reality of the world of appearance, of creation, as a struggle between opposites, between right and wrong, between good and bad, as the underlying reality of the creator itself. This dance of the opposites of appearance is not a struggle. It is, rather, an ongoing dance of harmony and balance, and it is the fertile soil from which the evolution of the infinite creation that is the ongoing manifestation of God continues to fulfill itself.

This reality of opposites in expression evolves itself into a belief in duality, a belief in the dual nature of everything that is, including God itself. In the transference of the dance of duality to a claim of duality for the creator itself, we blaspheme God’s very existence and reveal our total lack of knowledge and understanding of the true nature of God itself. The truth of the essence of God is in the balance itself. And so, by applying the duality of appearances to the creator, we have, ourselves, created the mythological existence of an opposite for God itself. We have taken the all-encompassing good that God is and minimized its allness by creating an opposite of not good, an opposite that we call evil. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and used that knowledge to pervert our understanding of the true reality of God and the garden that is God’s creation.

So the belief in the divinity of duality has become a major foundation of our religious beliefs and teachings and through those beliefs it has become an underpinning for the creation of our society itself. Since we mistakenly believe in the apparent opposition inherent in the expression of duality, rather than in its true nature of balance and harmony and the creation of the fertile ground for the evolution of God’s expression, we have, therefore, transferred this mistaken perception into a belief in its power over us and its creation of a perpetual state of conflict throughout the opposition of all appearances. Thus, we see, and judge, the world of appearance that we call reality, as an ongoing dance of eternal conflict.

In that world of perpetual conflict, that which we do not understand or personally embrace as an inherent aspect of our own individual existence is often seen as a negative, as an aberration, as an abomination. This is a tool that those seeking power over others have long used to rally support to their quest to combat the opposition that they see in this world of appearance. So an underlying foundation of the fabric of society becomes a belief in an “us verses them” world in which only the strong survive.

John Brunner, science fiction writer, in his 1976 novel, “The Shockwave Rider,” has the lead character say, “If evil exists in the world, it is when human beings treat other human beings as though they are things.” We treat others as things, and thereby create the false reality of evil, when we treat people, when we act towards others, as labels rather than as the unique God-created individuals that they are. When we categorize others with labels, we cast ourselves out of God’s garden of balance into the land of the constant threat of the unseen evil. We cast ourselves out. God doesn’t cast us out. To believe that God would “cast us out” is to believe that God, too, has eaten of, and has been seduced by, the fruit of the tree. However, because God is all there is, God likewise knows all that there is, and God, therefore, sees beyond the fantasy of duality to the reality of the oneness of all of creation.

With the foregoing in mind, if we now return to the book of Leviticus, we see very clearly that much of it is written to create a scenario for dealing with the false concept of duality by continuing to honor its apparent existence through the creation of a hierarchy of rules for dealing with certain aspects of the unknown. One of those aspects, as I’ve already shared, is the lack of knowledge about, and the fear of, women. This is a fear that men have had throughout much of recorded history.

Another aspect of the unknown is sexuality, not only between men and women, but also between those of the same sex. The underlying problem that human beings have with sex doesn’t rest in the partner or other outlet that one chooses to express their sexual drives and desires, but in the reality of sexuality itself. However, unfortunately, although same sex sexuality, as we are discovering, gets extremely little mention throughout the entire Bible, it gets enough coverage to encourage the ignorance and fear of those who subscribe to the duality of creation fable, and who fear same sex intimacy. That’s right. Much of their hatred for same sex activity stems from a personal fear and insecurity about the mystery of same sex relationships and their own challenging sexuality.

Leviticus is the book where the early Israelites express their distaste for same sex sex. It is where the male dominated, patriarchal society of the Israelites rally the troops around the idea that sexuality must be channeled into the reproductive continuation of the Israelites as they struggle to survive as a nation and to conquer the evil around them that their dualistic view of reality sees as the major threat to their existence. The God of Israel is reported to have directed the Israelites to be fruitful and to multiply. There’s only one way to do that: through male/female sex; through the male continually planting his seed inside of the female until it fertilizes her egg and the gestation grows into a new individual life expression that perpetuates the species.

For a male to “plant his seed” in another male (male/male anal intercourse), or to “scatter his seed on the ground” (masturbation), is, therefore, seen as a contradiction to “God’s commandment” to “be fruitful and multiply.” In an ancient world where the Israelites were greatly outnumbered by other cultural and racial groups, it only makes sense to “use the seed wisely.” However, in a modern world of over 6 billion people, combined with a continuing mushrooming of the population, and the ongoing annual death of over 14 million children from starvation and malnutrition, we might wish to consider that under the circumstances, God may have a different, more contemporary, commandment today for humankind’s practice of sexuality because of the unique circumstances of present reality. Besides, the commandments of Leviticus were directed to the Israelites, not to the entire world population.

In summation, where the book of Leviticus is concerned, I wouldn’t give a whole lot of credence to a mere two mentions of the “abomination” of male/male anal sexual penetration. One might just as well be out seeing that one’s livestock do not gender injudiciously. That has about as much relevance to true spiritual reality as those two verses on same sex activity.

Make no mistake about it. These Levitical references have little to do with one’s sexual expression. Their purpose is to encourage the continuation of, and resulting population growth of, the Israelite peoples.

Our next biblical verses are a wash from the gitgo, and are included merely because they speak of a group of angry men demanding to “know” a man. Here are the verses in question:

“Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.

“And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.

“Behold, here is my daughter, a maiden, and his concubine; I will bring them out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you; but unto this man do not so vile a thing.” --Judges 19:22-24

This story, which allegedly takes place sometime after the time of Joshua, is reminiscent of the story of Lot and the men of Sodom who wished to rape the messengers of God that were staying in Lot’s house. However, here, the men are “certain sons of Belial.” Belial is not a place. It is a word that means “not profitable,” “empty,” and “worthless.” The true thrust of this story has nothing to do with “homosexuality,” but rather, lays the foundation for telling the story of the tribes of Israel uniting against the tribe of Benjamin and decimating all but 600 men in retaliation for what the “merry” men, who surrounded the old man’s house in our verses, did to the concubine of the visitor when the old man wouldn’t let them “know” his visitor. In short, they raped here to death. So much for “brotherly love.” It’s an amazing story and probably about as untrue as it is far-fetched, on a number of different levels. Anyway, anyone who attempts to use these verses to back up a condemnation of homosexuality is totally out of touch with even a superficial understanding of the Bible.

If you want to read a real horror story, read this story in the Chapters 19, 20, and 21 of Judges. This is not a story that has anything to do with homosexuality. Rather, it is a story of the incredible stupidity inherent in revenge. The Israelites may have thought that they were “God’s chosen people,” but they certainly didn’t act like it.

A couple of hundred years later, in the book of I Kings, after the rule of David and Solomon, we read:

“And there were also sodomites in the land; and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel.” --I Kings 14:24

Now, if one were mistaken enough to believe that the story of Lot and the men of Sodom was about homosexuality, then one might just as easily mistake this single verse as being another example of God’s homophobia. After all, we’re talking here about sodomites. These are people who are guilty of the sins that led to the destruction of the city of Sodom. But, remember, nowhere were we able to find same sex erotic love to be one of those sins. The sins were, rather, sins of violence, not acts of same gender love. Likewise, a misunderstanding of the use of the term sodomites would then reinforce the misinterpretation that the “abominations of the nations” also refers to homosexual conduct.

The chief “abomination” that this verse is speaking of here is putting idols back in the temple. In this case, the idols were probably bulls, which represented the productiveness of nature. That’s productiveness as in sexual reproduction. But a condemnation of homosexuality? Come, come, only one who has the fear of the male organ on the brain would find support for that fear in this verse. This verse might be better understood as a battle between recreational sex verses reproductive sex. For, as we’ve already stated, one of the chief goals of the Israelites was to dedicate the sexual act to reproduction alone.

And so, my dear friends, that brings us to the end of the Old Testament. We’ve only found five possible places where a reference to male/male sex might be implied, but it is only by a far stretch of the imagination that one would come to a conclusion that this means Divine condemnation of homosexuality. Thousands of years of the history of humankind and only five imagined references to something which, some claim, has resulted in the fall of entire empires.

Well, let’s trudge on and get this over with by examining the New Testament. Here we come across a major problem. These books, which are a testament to the ministry and teachings of Jesus, say nothing, whatsoever, even possibly regarding homosexual relations EXCEPT for three letters of Paul, written to the Romans, to the Corinthians, and to the Apostle Timothy. Because Paul is the only one in New Testament times to possibly be condemning homosexual relationships, that might very well call into question Paul’s motivation, since he so obviously stands alone in even broaching this subject.

As for the gospels, the writings allegedly created by people who actually knew Jesus, who were supposedly there to experience his teaching firsthand, there is no mention of this subject. NONE. Paul, in case you’ve forgotten, didn’t ever hear Jesus or have anything to do with the ministry of Jesus until after the crucifixion. And Paul, himself, before his transformation on the road to Damascus, persecuted Christians. Paul’s lack of first-hand experience of the pre-crucified Jesus was a bone of contention between Paul and Peter and other individual followers of Jesus who had actually personally heard him teach.

Anyway, since nothing in Jesus’ reported teachings has anything to do with same sex relations, this immediately begs the question, “How can a person claim to be a Christian and, at the same time, condemn homosexuality?” The only way to do that is by misrepresenting the teachings of Jesus. So, it looks like we’re going to have to examine whether it is Paul, or it is “Pauline Christians,” who choose to believe this distortion of the Jesus Christ teachings.

We begin our examination of New Testament same sex references with Paul’s letter to the Romans where he says:

“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;

“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.” --Romans 1:26-27

First off, it is important that we understand that the writings of Paul are largely letters to various churches of his time dealing with problems within each particular church. It would be kind of like your mama writing you a letter and also writing letters to your brothers and sisters. Each letter is not going to be the same, although they will all share certain similarities. But you are you, and your mother knows that and she knows who you are and she’s going to be addressing your uniqueness in her letter to you. Paul probably turned over in his grave centuries later during the Council of Nicea when the leaders of the church decided that his letters would be transformed into holy scripture and accepted across the board as directed towards everyone, forevermore, rather than just the particular group of people to whom each letter was originally addressed.

Although this letter to the members of the Roman Church is the first of the 21 letters (14 from Paul and 7 from other early Apostles) to appear in the New Testament, scholars tell us that this is not because it was the earliest of Paul’s letters. Rather it probably appears first because of the importance of Rome and because it is the longest of Paul’s letters, thereby containing the more complete presentation of his own religious beliefs. So it’s not his earliest thinking upon the teachings of Jesus, but is, instead, a thinking that has evolved with the changes brought about by the creation of the organization that is forming around those early teachings at the time.

This idea of Paul’s religious beliefs brings to mind an important lesson that I learned some years ago while studying various translations and interpretations of the Bible. During the last 40 years of my life, I have been exposed to the Bible as translated by Dr. George M. Lamsa from ancient Aramaic texts directly into English. I have also been a student of Dr. Lamsa’s student, Dr. Rocco Errico. Several years ago, while surfing the Internet, I happened to be looking for information on the Aramaic language and culture when I came upon a totally unexpected site. It was the website of an individual who was in the process of translating the Bible directly from ancient Aramaic texts into English. He had begun with the New Testament and he was publishing the results free, on the Internet, as he finished each New Testament book.

I printed his translations for later reading, but I was intrigued by the responses that he had received from people all over the world in his guest book. In reading the hundreds of entries that had accumulated since he had first gone online, I noticed something peculiar. Fairly early on, someone asked the question that I, myself, wanted to ask: had he ever heard of Dr. Lamsa and his work. His response was that he didn’t think he had seen anything of Dr. Lamsa’s. Later, another guest asked a similar question. This time, his reply was that he had heard of Dr. Lamsa, but was unfamiliar with his work. When a later guest prodded for more information on this subject, the answer had become that he had read some of Dr. Lamsa’s writing, but did not choose to read any more because he didn’t want it to influence his own translation work.

Some months later, while reading some information about Dr. Lamsa on Dr. Errico’s website, I came across the fact that when Dr. Lamsa died, his body was interred in Turlock, California. A light went off in my head. Where had I heard of Turlock before? Well, it turns out that Turlock has a very large Aramaic speaking population, and it is where the author of the website whose guest book I had been reading, resides. A quick check of some maps revealed that this individual who had claimed no familiarity with Dr. Lamsa, lives less than 2 miles from the cemetery where Dr. Lamsa is buried, and he also lives less than 2 miles from Dr. Lamsa’s heirs.

Of course, I became curious about how closely these two translations from ancient Aramaic into English might compare with one another. Two translations undertaken by two men who, in an unusual sort of way, were almost like neighbors. So I placed their two translations side by side and I began to read. And I was astounded by what I saw and what I experienced.

The two translations were different. What I mean to say is that they were not word for word like one another. But, more than that, those differences revealed something totally unexpected. And the differences created two separate viewpoints upon the same narrative. In reading both translations, I began to get a distinct feeling for the life and background of both of these men, revealed through the different ways in which they translated the same Aramaic text. Although I had met Dr. Lamsa decades ago when we both lived at Unity Village in Missouri, the revelation that came to me through this comparative reading gave me an insight into who Dr. Lamsa was that exceeded anything that I knew or had read up to that point in time about the man.

Dr. Lamsa was born into a tribe in the Near East, in what is now northern Iraq, an area that had changed very little over the past several thousand years. Until the 20th Century, Dr. Lamsa’s people were cut off from the rest of the world by the mountain ranges that surrounded them. Their language was Aramaic, the same language as that of Jesus. And their customs were still very much like they had been 2,000 years ago when Jesus taught the freeing word of his message. The early Eastern Christian Church had become a part of their lives during the dawn of the development of the religious organization that became known as Christianity, and it had been a part of the fabric of the members of Dr. Lamsa’s Mamisho tribe and Assyrian culture to this very day.

The translator from Turlock, on the other hand, also grew up in an Aramaic speaking community, with an Eastern Christian Church, but it was in California, USA. And, in reading both his and Dr. Lamsa’s translations I began to perceive the different backgrounds from which they both had grown. Same language, same church, same cultural threads, yet they were different in many ways that were blatantly obvious.

What this experience taught me, as it relates to our present explorations on the relationship of the Bible to the subject of homosexuality, is that the writer, the translator, the interpreter, the reader, all have different perceptions of the meaning behind the words, based upon the background of their own unique training and experience. Those differences heavily influence the ways in which they write, translate, interpret, perceive, and understand.

What I am doing here in this examination of Biblical texts is looking at them with a perception that is free of the conditioning of judging others according to a dualistic view of reality, because that’s my perspective. This results in a different picture than the one that more outspoken critics of their fellow beings might present. And the point to remember is that both viewpoints are just as valid, for our viewpoints are uniquely based upon the kind of upbringing we received and the belief systems that each of us was exposed to, particularly in the early days of our youth. My hope is that after I have finished with my presentation here, that it will impact some people in ways that will afford them the ability to see things in a different light and, hopefully, to abandon their negative judgment of their brothers and sisters on this planet based upon their apparent differences. After all, it is the differences that make us special and unique. And it is our shared uniqueness’s that make us mindful of our oneness.

Now, there are some, I know, who would choose, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, to claim that the line, “their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature,” is a condemnation of lesbianism. Really, now! That’s certainly stretching it. Women are changing “the natural use into that which is against nature.” When I first read a line like that, my initial response is, “what in the world does that mean?” And that very question implies that the answer is going to take some thought and consideration before it becomes clear. And folks, it’s that “thought and consideration” that often gets us into trouble. If one has to “think” about what it means, then one must remember that one’s own “thinking” is preconditioned by one’s own unique perceptions and prejudices, and that one’s natural prejudicial thinking is therefore going to affect the result of that thought.

My own thinking here leads me to feel that it is not “what” Paul is saying, but “why” he is saying it that will help us to unravel this mystery of what he is trying to say in that convoluted translation. Again, Paul is concerned here that the members of the Christian church in Rome are taking on habits of the Romans that he feels are in contradiction to the teachings of the emerging Christian church doctrine. It’s the old “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” dictum that he is battling against. Specifically, Paul is concerned about the worship of idolatry; in other words, worshiping the images of various deities rather than worshipping the “one true God.”

These verses obviously refer to sexual activity. This is because, in Rome, there was apparently a lot of sexual activity for its own sake alone. Remember that the Romans, unlike the Israelites and the Christians, didn’t have just one God. They had multiple gods and goddesses, with a different diety for every occasion. This was anathema to the Jews and to the Jewish cult known as Christians. Some of these gods and goddesses actually represented sexual activity. It’s interesting to note that in the Catholic Church, both Roman and Eastern, that an ongoing series of saints have essentially taken the place of the early “pagan” “gods for every occasion.” In other words, the early church appealed to people’s desires, conditioned or otherwise, to pray to a particular deity to deal with the particulars of their desires, by canonizing people and elevating them to a place of worship.

Speaking of the “images” of gods brings to mind Paul’s so-called “sermon” on Mars Hill. The event is related in the 17th Chapter of Acts. Paul is on the run from hostile Jews of Thessalonica who have come to Berea to stir up the people against Paul and his teaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Stealing away to Athens, Paul is invited by various Athenian Epicureans and Stoics to speak to a large group of Athenians about his religious teachings. They gather at Mars Hill where Paul is surrounded by statues of all types of gods. When asked about which gods he teaches, Paul proclaims that he teaches the God who has no statue, merely a pedestal and a sign proclaiming, “the unknown God.” His expansion on that idea is found in Acts 17.

Needless to say, Paul is teaching one God, one presence, one creator, one essence, one intelligence, one power that encompasses all that is. And it is for this reason that he is unhappy with the members of the church in Rome, for they have wandered into worshiping the idols of various Roman dieties rather than the idol-less singular God. In particular, many were worshipping the idol of the bull, which represented fertility. Therefore, they were probably more sexually active, with a variety of partners, than Paul would have thought proper. Thus his attempt in this epistle is to reign in this runaway sexuality.

Remember, also, that Paul, and the Christianity that he professed, were, in those days, still considered to be a Jewish cult whose roots were imbedded deeply in Jewish faith, including the centuries old belief and teaching of channeling all male sperm towards the perpetuation and expansion of the descendants of Abraham. So the Roman women who were “changing the natural use” and the Roman men who were “working that which is unseemly” is a further example of the poor translation of Paul’s convoluted attempt to rein in this sexual expression that he sees as driven by a worship of bacchanalian ways. Paul is trying to bring sexual focus to the Church of Rome, not to condemn same gender sex outright for its own sake. True, Paul may have found same gender sex to be personally offensive, but that is no justification for believing that he was attempting to, or that he had the right to, turn that personal distaste into divine, religious doctrine. That, rather, became the work of the later institutional church and many of its homophobic leaders.

Paul’s second reference to the matter at hand is buried in a grouping of the unrighteous as delineated in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he says:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

“Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” --I Corinthians 6:9-10

Right off, I think those two verses have, in one way or another, included just about all of us at one time or another. Our ticket to the inheritance of the kingdom of God has been snatched from our hands by our actions. If you don’t think this affects you, perhaps you might want to delve a little deeper into your conscience around words like “idolater,” “covetous,” and “reviler.” That last one encompasses many of those who condemn others for being involved in same gender sex.

Whenever I read an admonition such as Paul’s, I recall that premise of John Brunner’s “Shockwave Rider:” “If evil exists in the world, it is when we speak of other people as though they are things.” I’ve always felt that one of the most obvious examples of that is when we label people. And the labels that we’ve created for grouping people seem almost endless: average, tall, short, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, rich, poor, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Communist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Indian, conservative, liberal, heterosexual, homosexual, intelligent, dumb, adults, children, citizen, alien, men, women, etc. They seem to go on and on and you may note that each one seems to have one or more opposites. It’s a them and us kind of thing. That’s right, it’s an extension of the false view of reality as duality that I’ve been speaking of. Many of those opposites bring to mind conflict with one another. And those are only the more acceptable labels. For we also have labels like honky, nigger, wop, kike, Jap, pig, queer, faggot, idiot, dittohead, wonk, and on and on ad infinitum.

Labels are a safe way of protecting us from having to admit to, and to deal with, the humanity of our fellow human beings. It is so much easier to condemn someone else by grouping them under a puerile label, as though they are the member of some sort of objectionable group, than it is to have to address them as the individual that they are. And this way of communicating within our species has become such an integral part of our society that we no longer think anything of it.

I personally discovered the savage reality of this escape from our common humanity back during my hippy trippy days of the early 70’s. In those days I had bare feet and hair half way down my back and I wore tie dye and jeans with holes and I loved rock and roll and it became obvious that I scared the hell out of some people for they treated me with great distaste without knowing me or having ever even having spoken to me. But, I discovered that if I could just get them to talk with me, not about our differences, but about “stuff” in general, then the barrier that had been there between us quickly crumbled. This was a difficult experience for some people, for although their desire to pigeonhole me with a label was very strong, it conflicted with the fact that I’m a very nice and interesting person. I discovered that the labels could be discarded by simple one-on-one communication. Therefore, the labels are a way of denying our humanity so that we might more easily judge and be judged.

And in this bit of scripture, it might be that Paul has fallen into that trap of labeling people based upon their actions. There is a difference between embezzling and being an embezzler. There is a difference between committing acts of terrorism and being a terrorist. There is a difference between drinking repeatedly to excess and being an alcoholic. We take the act and use it to create a label for those who have performed the act. And in so doing, we are able to escape the responsibility of actually dealing with the person in question as a human being with human challenges. Instead they become a “thing,” and, according to John Brunner’s character, evil therefore manifests into existence. Where this question of labeling is concerned, I’m in full agreement with Brunner.

Paul’s words here come to us through poor translation. There is no word for “homosexual” in Aramaic. There is no noun to identify this late 20th Century label.

Isn’t it interesting that Paul does not include murderers, nor rapists, nor child abusers, nor heretics, nor liars in his list of those who will not inherit God’s kingdom? But he does include the effeminate. What does he mean by this? Well, probably not a damn thing, as far as the actual meaning of the word is concerned. If we look at the Lamsa translation of this verse, number 9, we find Paul saying, “Be not misled; neither the immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the corrupt nor men who lie with men…” Instead of the word “effeminate,” which is likely a bad translation, we have the word “corrupt.” Why are these two translations different? We do not know, for the translators are no longer alive. Again, it is obvious that Paul, or his translators who add their perspectives to the words that they are translating, have some sort of problem with “men lying with other men,” but I would propose that it is Paul’s problem, based upon his Jewish heritage, and not a condition that has originated directly from God, seeing as where neither Jesus, nor the Gospels, nor the Old Testament, as we have examined it, make any real issue of this act, other than as an admonition designed to encourage the expansion of the Jewish race. “Men lying with other men” refers to anal intercourse, which can be viewed as an act in contradiction to reproduction. However, that does not, quid quo pro, mean that it is therefore a sin against God.

Finally, in a letter to Timothy, Paul says some interesting things regarding “the law” and whom the law is “for.” Let’s take a peek.

“But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;

“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, of manslayers,

“For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

“According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.” --I Timothy 1:8-11

I don’t know where this “glorious gospel of the blessed God” that was “committed” to Paul’s trust was stored, but we know by now that it isn’t recorded in the Bible, at least not as far as those “that defile themselves with mankind.” This is Paul’s, and the Bible’s, final stab at same sex relations. The key to this whole little diatribe is the phrase, “and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” What do you suppose Paul means by “sound doctrine?” I suspect that he means anything that would threaten the order of things, as he perceives that order to be. And therein lies the problem with Paul’s condemnation of male with male intimate relations. It’s unacceptability all stems from Paul’s personal perception. And then he proceeds to claim its origin as being from the “blessed God’s glorious gospel.” This is a common mistake that we’ve probably all made at one time or another, claiming righteousness for our own viewpoint by claiming that it’s origins lie with a source of higher authority. But when one takes that common mistake and turns it into religious doctrine, one has crossed over the line. And this is what has happened to the plight of those who, throughout history, have been condemned for following their natural innate desires by finding someone of the same sex attractive and worthy of being their sexual partner.

To draw an analogy of how verses in the Bible can be misinterpreted and believed and taught as church doctrine over hundreds and thousands of years, I’d like to point to the case of the true nature of heaven and hell. Now, if you are like me, you grew up in a culture and a society wherein significant numbers of your fellow beings believed that when we die, we all either go to heaven or we go to hell (the Catholics also have Purgatory, a sort of a waiting place while God flips a spiritual coin). Furthermore, these two ultimate destinations have been believed over the millennia to be actual places. That belief rested pretty well with most people until the advent of modern science. With our increased ability to explore further and further into the macro and the micro realms of experience, it became harder and harder to believe that heaven and hell could be actual places, for if they were, certainly we should be able to discover and identify their locations. Because this belief in the actuality of both heaven and hell as physical locations has seemed to be around for as long as the Christian church, one would certainly feel that the Catholic Church, itself, would be the proud foundational resting place for this belief.

But then, just about 10 years ago, something astounding happened. Amazingly enough, most people have yet to realize what happened or to consider its impact upon our belief systems. The event that I’m about to relate to you occurred within the Catholic Church, yet most Catholics are not aware that it happened or what it was all about.

On July 21, 1999, Pope John Paul II, in his regular weekly audience, said, “In the context of Revelation, we know that the ‘heaven’ or ‘happiness’ in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.” The following week, on July 28, 1999, in his regular weekly audience, Pope John Paul II said, “Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.” To cement the fact that this is not some “new perspective” of this particular Pope, he continues, “This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: ‘To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is call “hell”’.”

Here we have a very profound perspective on this dualistic concept of heaven and hell; and it is presented by the Catholic Church’s descendant of 2,000 years of authority in church doctrine. Heaven and hell are not places. I’m going to repeat that in all capital letters for emphasis: HEAVEN AND HELL ARE NOT PLACES. Heaven, or “happiness,” is a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. To understand the “Holy Trinity,” let’s just realize that the Catholic Church, for whatever reason, decided to view God from three different perspectives. In my book, “Millennium Paradigm (http://millenniumparadigm.blogspot.com),” I will go into detail about why that triennial view evolved, but suffice it to say here that all three aspects of that Trinity, when viewed together, become One, the totality of what God is. The very first words of Pope John Paul II’s July 28, 1999 audience are “God is infinitely good.” In order for that claim to be valid, God must, therefore, also be infinite. And logically, that implies that God is therefore all that there is, ad infinitum.

So the happiness that is synonymous with heaven is founded in our living, personal relationship with God, with all there is. Therefore, when we “freely and definitively separate” ourselves “from God, the source of all life and joy,” we enter into that state of consciousness that is called “hell.” Heaven and hell are, therefore, states of consciousness. Note that it is not God that does this to us. We do it to ourselves. This is due to the free will that is a part of our very being. And that free will is very creative. It can literally create for us a state of heaven or a state of hell or an infinite number of states in between those two extremes. But we are the ones who create that state of consciousness that then manifests as our reality. God has not created eternal destinational places where we go when we “die.”

I have long claimed that there is only one sin. That sin is the mistaken belief that we are separate and apart from God. Although I use the term, “God,” here, it is not to convey a religious connotation, but rather because it is a term with which most people relate. I have personally disliked the word, “God,” for decades because it is a word that has different meanings for every person that uses it. It is, therefore, in many ways a useless term. Yet it is the one common term with which most people relate with some sort of a concept that is directed toward the reality of all that is. The past several years I have found myself more comfortable using the term, “universe,” or “total universe,” when speaking of that all that is.

As an aside, for the past year and a half, I have been receiving daily emails from the universe. Actually, I receive them on Monday through Friday. Apparently the universe also takes the weekend off. If you think you might be interested in receiving such emails, you can sign up at Totally Unique Thoughts. I have a very high regard for Mike Dooley, the man behind these daily emails from the universe.

Anyway, there you have it. Eight meager entries in hundreds of pages of text spanning over a thousand years, and not a single verse stands alone as clearly being a condemnation by God of homosexuals. And let me be very clear here, I’m speaking of the alleged condemnation of people rather than of the acts that those people might participate in. We are who we are. We are not our actions. What we do is the result of our awareness at the time, and our actions color our self-perception and the ways that others see us. But for those who choose to evade their personal responsibility for their actions by retreating behind religious texts, and I’m speaking here now to Christians, Jews and Muslims, go back to the Biblical roots in Genesis, the beginning, the first chapter, the 27th verse, where it says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” That’s who you, and every other human being is: the image of God. What you do will pass away. What you are is eternal. We need to start acting like the truth of who we are.

We have grown up in a world where we have seen much of reality in a cause and effect relationship. We have been taught that for every effect there is a cause and that for every cause there is an effect. Yet that is only a small part of the whole story. That is a very two-dimensional perspective on the reality in which we reside. There is something beyond cause and effect that transcends time exponentially. And what is that? Results! For every cause there is an effect and for every effect there are results. Cause and effect do not exist in a vacuum. They, and their relationship to one another, perform their dance in a ballroom of experiences of unlimited possibility. What’s more, the results that develop from the cause and effect experiences are often totally unpredictable from the mere data provided by just the cause and the effect themselves.

My dear friend, Vrle Minto, used to say that teaching the reality of results was a very effective way of helping people to assume more conscious responsibility for their lives. Let’s look at a couple of simple examples of what we’re talking about. Imagine two trains speeding towards one another on the same track. What we have are two rapid causes of motion. We can see that the effect of the work being done by the two train engines is to turn the engines wheels, which, in turn, pull the cars down the tracks in a speedy manner. But because there is only one set of tracks and both of our imaginary trains are on that set of tracks, they are eventually going to collide. Cause train A slams head-on into train B and cause train B, in turn, slams into train A. We refer to the effect as a crash. However, if we look closely at the event that creates that crash effect, we will see other events taking place. While train A was going in direction A and train B was going in direction B, when they collided, in addition to the wreckage that is created, parts of those trains change direction and go off in directions C – Z. These are some of the results.

Think now about a child growing up in a home where there are a lot of rules and acts of discipline defining the limits to what the child is allowed to experience. These rules and the resulting discipline, we’ll imagine, are founded in a desire to protect the child’s experience. The expected effect of this cause of a protected and structured life is a happy, balanced adult who will be free from doing things which might bring them sadness and harm. Then, one day in the future, the parents who created this original cause are at a loss to understand why their child grew up to be a rebel, or someone who is overly cautious, or depressed, or unhappy, or very manic, or whatever else might seem in contradiction to the original expected effects. These are some of the possible results.

These results stem from many different cause and effect sources. First off, the child in question in our example is a human being. For all that we have discovered about the nature and the makeup of a human being over the centuries, we still have not discovered what it is that makes us different and unique from birth. For example, we know that if we take a group of children and raise them, in every way possible, identically alike, nevertheless, they will grow up to be unique individuals. This has always been anathema to those who would aspire to ruling the world. Their best-laid plans always anticipate getting “people” to do their will. Yet that never happens. Bucky Fuller used to say, “It’s easier to reform the environment than it is to reform people.” Like it or not, each of us is who we are. This is because beyond the process of cause and effect there is the reality of results. And those results are often unpredictable.

Much of the objection to same sex relationship over the centuries has been based upon a perspective of cause and effect without taking into consideration the results that are created by these cause and effect criticisms. One of the more destructive of these results has been what this bigotry has done to tear apart countless families over the millennia. Just stop and think for a minute about what it must be like to be born into this world and to grow into discovering who you are only to be condemned for who you discover yourself to be and to have that condemnation come from the very parents who lovingly raised you. Yet this is exactly what many of the homophobic bigots of the church have taught and preached for centuries. They have taught people to deny their very own offspring: to shun them, to ostracize them, to denigrate them, to deny them, to condemn them, to banish them from the continued existence of the rest of their very own family. And, like sheep, countless families have followed this evil guidance to the destructive tearing apart of their own individual family.

Many of the people who condemn same sex relationships do so in the name of protecting the family. Yet they encourage destroying the family by turning family members against one another. And, what’s worse, they do it all in God’s name.

I’ve already told you that my brother was gay. But, before I ever knew that he was gay, he was my brother. And just because we discovered one day that he was gay didn’t mean that he was no longer my brother, that he was no longer our parents’ son. With so many factors challenging the bonds of family nowadays, it’s tragic that one of those factors continues to be misguided souls who try to use the name of God to rip families apart.

I have often told people that each of us is born alone. Oh, there may be other people present when the event takes place, but we alone experience our own birth without having any real communicative understanding from anyone else other than through the feeling of love. And one day, we all die. When that time comes, we die alone. Even if others die at our side, the experience of our own death is ours alone to experience. In between those two profound events that we experience alone is a lifetime that, for far too many people, is a lifetime of continuing loneliness. One of the few experiences that many people have in their lives is the bond and the love of family. The bond and the love. They do not always go hand in hand. But those two feelings are goals for which most of us strive throughout our lives. And we look to experience it even beyond our own families.

It is therefore a very special event when a person who is basically living alonely life discovers another being with whom they can find a commonality that holds the promise of lasting perhaps through the rest of their brief lives on this level of reality. To find and to share love with another is one of those elusive goals that, once achieved, magically rescues us from our lives of aloneness and gives us the blessing of sharing life with another human being. Sadly, not all people experience this during their span between birth and death. But when it happens, it is magnificent.

When the great teacher Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, what was his answer? His answer was that there are “two” great commandments. Simply put, those commandments are to love God and to love your fellow human beings. Love. That is the greatest commandment. Paul, in one of his letters to the Corinthians said, “Faith, hope, and love; abide these three. But the greatest of these is love.” These men did not put limitations upon love. They did not set up a list of guidelines as to what is and what is not love. So who are we to think that we can limit the expression of love by others. If there were any limitation at all, it would be to “do no harm.” But if it is truly love, then one can not do harm.

Well, after giving you all of this information exposing what appears to be essentially baseless religious opposition to the fact of intimate relationships existing between human beings of the same gender, I have saved my trump card for last. For those who have found it within themselves to deny or to otherwise ignore the foregoing repudiation of any religious foundation for opposing homosexual relationships, I’d like to relate a story of an experience that I had some 20 years ago in Austin, Texas, that helped me to get a clearer picture of this whole topic of God and homosexuality.

The event revolves around the visit to Austin of one of my mentors, R. Buckminster Fuller, during the early 1980’s. Bucky was coming to speak at the University of Texas, and, while there, he did a book signing at Grok books. Being Austin, the book signing took place outside under a huge tree, where a table and a chair were set up. This turned out to be the last time that I would see Bucky before he died, and I was excited because I had brought my camera and was taking a whole roll of pictures of the man whom I so highly admired. Oddly enough, when I later had the roll developed, not a single picture came out. The entire roll was blank.

Anyway, at the time that Bucky was visiting Austin, the local news media was churning over the issue of an openly gay man running for a seat on the Austin City Council. So it was not that surprising when, at a press conference arranged for Bucky’s visit, a journalist asked, “Dr. Fuller, what do you think about homosexuality?” Now, that may seem like about the most irrelevant thing to ask of a person of Bucky’s renown. It was as though someone was taking a poll and Bucky just happened to be the next pollee in line. “What do you think about homosexuality?” Bucky paused for a moment, and then he said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s God’s way of controlling population growth.” And that, my friends, says it all.

We don’t really know why people of the same gender are attracted to one another. What we do know, however, is that it is a phenomenon that has been around as long as there have been human beings. Furthermore, we have little idea what God’s “intentions” are about same sex relationships. Those who profess to know what God thinks are theological conmen. Bucky was absolutely truthful. He said, “I don’t know.” And the truth is, neither do the self-professed, and thereby self-possessed, representatives of the modern day Inquisition who would condemn their fellow men and blaspheme to do it under God’s direction and in Jesus Christ’s name. They don’t know a damn thing. They only claim to know and then they proceed to cloak themselves in garments of religious fervor.

And what about Bucky’s other comment? “Maybe it’s God’s way of controlling population growth.” Does anyone know for certain whether or not that is the case? You can’t start throwing Biblical quotes at me. We’ve already exposed the fraud of those claims. And that doesn’t just go for the Bible. It also applies to any so-called “holy” or “religious” document that claims to “know God’s intention.”

Who out there professes to know what is right for me? Who out there claims to know what God’s intentions are for me? Who out there claims the wisdom to understand the wisdom of God? All those that do are blasphemers. No one knows what is right for me or for anyone else. How dare anyone make such a claim? We are each very lucky if we have even an inkling about what is right for ourselves, not to mention anyone else. Extremely lucky. And I dare say that most of the critics of homosexuality have no luck at all. For those who would become God’s spokesperson in directing the course of my life, or the life of any other God-created human being upon this planet, they are mad with the insanity of self-aggrandizement and self-absorption. What they know of God could be put on the head of a pin and there would still be room left over for the Super Bowl. As for the most self-righteous, those who gain the greatest notoriety, those who seek the spotlight, owning self-promoting radio and television stations and newspapers and publishing empires that spread the gospel of their own greatness, they are all a bunch of hypocritical frauds. These people rape the spirit of their fellow human beings with the same abandon as the men of Sodom wished to rape God’s messengers.

I live in a country that was founded partly upon extreme puritan religious zeal. That heritage, through the opportunities presented by the industrial and informational revolutions has brought us to a place in time where we are self-destructing through the judging of others by a set of standards that we ourselves cannot keep. I live in a society that has taken the simple teachings of a rabbi from Galilee of loving God and loving one another and distorted his name into a system that denies practically everything that he taught and everything that he stands for through efforts to judge and condemn and abuse our planet, our environment, and our fellow human beings.

To all of those who seek love, peace, and justice, and who endeavor to find ways to live the spiritual teachings of the great masters who have shared their insight with us down through the ages, bless you. As Mr. Spock would say, “Live long, and prosper.” Let your thoughts, words and actions always be recentered and reaffirmed as an effort to live the truth of love that is humankind’s heritage. The only thing I know about sexuality is what I know of life itself: that which is done in love is God in action, is God expressing itself. Let not the shortsighted, selfish condemnation of others cause you to lose sight of the love that you experience and express.

Finally, for those who would choose to continue to seek personal power through the condemnation of others and by turning their backs upon ancient spiritual teachings while falsely claiming to represent and to follow those same teachings, I have something special to say to them. Please understand that this is not said as a judgment. My personal feelings towards these people are those of blessings and a prayer that they see the error of their ways and come back into an alignment with their true, spiritual, God-created self and learn to love themselves and their fellow beings with the love that Jesus personified. This is not said as a condemnation. Rather than condemn, we should forgive them for what they have done. We should ask that they realize that the actor and the action are not one and the same. A major part of Jesus’ teaching was to forgive, to not condemn those who have chosen to repent. Repent means simply, to turn towards God. I pray that we all stop being the judgmental killers and become, instead, the life-giving forgivers. The pure and simple fact is that we are the result of “our” thoughts, “our” words and “our” actions. For those who choose to continue to condemn their fellow human beings for their differences, and who choose to do so based upon a mistaken belief that God and God’s creations are a duality of good versus evil, my wish is that they realize that in condemning others they have condemned themselves. If they want to continue condemning same sex relationships, they need to find a more valid reason to back up their bigotry, and stop trying to blame it on God.