Homosexuality and the Bible

I belong to a very liberal church. As such, we have been reading excerpts from Sex Texts from the Bible by Teresa J. Hornsby in my youth group. I found the section on homosexuality particularly interesting since the Bible has long been a tool to condemn homosexuality. Hornsby takes passage typically used to condemn homosexuality and puts the passages back into their historical context. Using this neo-historic approach, the potential interpretations of the scripture changes dramatically.

One of the most commonly cited passages to condemn homosexuality is Leviticus 20:13, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them". Even Hornsby agrees that the message here is frank: men who have sex with other men shall be killed. What is more important she argues, is why the Israelites would have responded in such a way. The word "abomination" is translated from the Hebrew word tovah which means mixing or confusion or unlike things. In this case, the gender roles of man and woman are being mixed. Hornsby argues that they had these views of homosexuality because their culture depended on the idea of remaining separate and not "mixing", therefore any time when things were not in their proper category the Israelites saw it as dangerous to their culture and therefore repulsive (Hornsby 64). They respond with such extreme punishment because they see homosexuality as a threat to their existence since it is a form of "confusion" to them.

Whenever looking to the Bible for guidance, it is important to remember that it was not written for our culture and our modern problems. People chose what to include in the Bible and what to leave out. Many of the stories were also adopted to appease the social trends of the era when the Bible was first being put into writing because followers wanted Christianity to be more main stream.

Leviticus is the book of Jewish laws, few, if anyone, follows all the laws in Leviticus. Most Jews and Christians only follow a select few. I argue though that if we can arbitrarily choose which ones to follow and not follow, such as not keeping Kosher, we should not adopt these views on homosexuality.