Leviticus 18
22You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination
I get why some people who consider the Bible the ultimate source of moral truth read this and the small number of similar passages in the Old and New Testaments and interpret them to mean that God disapproves of homosexuality. I disagree with that interpretation on a lot of levels: I’m much more agnostic about the Bible’s relevance than I once was, I think these passages are likely mostly about specific exploitative behaviors particular to the time and place in which they were written, and I believe that the Bible at best represents a human (i.e. highly fallible and prone to prejudice) understanding of the divine. But for those who believe that the Bible speaks directly to life in the 21st century without the need for all that ambiguity and analysis, I really do understand why the conclusion that homosexuality should be condemned seems so inescapable.
Genesis 22
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 2He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’ 3So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt-offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. 4On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. 5Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.’ 6Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. 7Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?’ 8Abraham said, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.’ So the two of them walked on together. 9When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. 11But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 12He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’
God called on Abraham to murder his son, and Abraham obeyed. Do you think he was enthusiastic about it? Did he share Facebook memes about the importance of sacrificing your children when God demands it? Do you suppose he lied to his young man servants and sent them away because he knew they would be intolerant of his sincere religious beliefs that he must plunge a knife into the chest of his teenage son? And was his shading of the truth for Isaac because some activist teacher at his public school had filled the boy’s head with liberal buzzwords like infanticidephobic?
Of course not. Abraham must have felt what anyone would feel if they knew their child was going to die violently – anguish – multiplied by a million because it was to be by his own hand. He lied to Isaac and to his servants because he was ashamed. That Abraham believed that to disobey a cruel god’s command to inflict suffering was a graver sin than the inflicting itself I can accept, at least intellectually. But I can’t accept that he took any pride in becoming God’s hitman.
There are people who think God commands them to publicly condemn gay people, to stop them from forming families with the people they love, to deny them equal protection under the law, to ostracize them, perhaps even to commit violence against them. Okay. But why aren’t they anguished by the cruelty of that command? It might not be a bloody murder (sometimes it is) and it might not be their child (sometimes it is), but when they wield the supposed anti-gay scriptures as a weapon, they cause real harm to real people who have caused them none.
Why is that so easy for them?
Where is the anguish?
Where is the shame?
Where is the humanity?
That’s the part I don’t understand.
