BHP journal: Conclusion to Chapter 1

This is a helpful conclusion to a really long chapter. Let's take a close look.

Old Testament texts that speak to the issue of same-sex intercourse are sufficiently widespread to claim the existence of a pervasive viewpoint within the Old Testament canon.

You know what? I don't think I would have agreed with him before on this point, but I think I almost do now. There are more possible references to same-sex sex acts than I realized, especially considering the numerous references to homosexual cult prostitutes.

However, I would add that every instance, except those in the law and creation, is directly associated with violence, rape or cult prostitution. And as Gagnon himself points out, the law is also has in view cult prostitution and is interpreted by Ezekiel as relating with rape. And while the creation story does define the sexual relationship between man and woman, it doesn't explicitly or necessarily exclude minority cases, as is consistent with other things in the account of creation that don't quite fit general categories, such as frogs.

So I think the case with "Ham's homosexual rape of his father, Noah" (if you believe that interpretation, which I accept as valid) and "the attempted rape of Lot's angelic visitors by the men of Sodom" - and I'm going to throw Ezekiel in here, too - is all deal with other factors (violence and rape) but the homosexual element of it adds a touch of "unprecedented evil" to the scene. I accept this, but I argue that because same-sex sex acts are always associated with many "other factors" in scripture, we can question whether what biblical authors understand as same-sex relationships is different enough from our understanding today to warrant consideration as to whether the bible speaks to the modern phenomenon at all. That's a terrible sentence with two "whethers" but you get the point.

Moving on,

Both the Deuteronomic law code and the Deuteronomistic Historian deal primarily with the phenomenon of homosexual cult prostitution.

He's talking about a word here that is used quite a few times that seems to be referring to homosexual cult prostitution. This is where he made the mind-bending point that, since this was the most acceptable form of same-sex sexuality at the time, then prohibiting it would have certainly also prohibited consensual committed same-sex relationships. This is contrary to common sense. It's like saying if you're going to exceed the speed limit, you may as well do it in a stolen car in a school zone. Even if this were the perception in culture - and it may well have been - this only serves as evidence of the fundamentally screwed up nature of thinking around sexuality.

He throws in the prohibition of cross-dressing here in Deuteronomy as related but I honestly don't understand how it relates. Yes, it's consistent with disdain for mixing categories, but this is easily dismissed along with many other similar things related with mixing categories in the law we disregard today.

As for the Levitical law, Gagnon mentions the importance of procreation and the ordering of creation first as reasons for the prohibitions of sex between men. And interestingly the third is,

The framers of the Holiness Code, like the Yahwist, understood Canaanite participation in incest and same-sex intercourse to be two key reasons why God vomited the Canaanites out of the land.

I just think this is so interesting. He's saying flat-out that all the above (and below) mentions of same-sex sex acts in the Old Testament are related, and that they involve multiple issues that everyone of all times would agree are abhorrent - incest, rape, violence, and cult prostitution.

What's interesting is, to me, this weakens his argument, while to him, it strengthens it. If the biblical stories involving same-sex relationships were like, "Ham fell in love with his neighbor, an fine young man about his age, and they asked Noah if they could commit their lives to one another, and Noah said, no way, for this is an abomination." And then the law said what it does, and then Paul confirmed it in a prescriptive manner in the New Testament, there would be a problem for modern evangelicals. But the stories are more like, "Ham raped his dad," and the law seems to have stuff like that in view and no one in the New Testament has anything prescriptive to say about it. And Gagnon is standing over here saying, "See? If rape is bad, homosexual rape must be really bad!"

One more thing,

"H" was responding to the conviction that same-sex intercourse was fundamentally incompatible with the creation of men and women as complementary sexual beings.

When he goes down this road and hammers on this - his main point - is that it just sounds like old covenant language. I know that's not a great argument, but I just feel like I want to ask, "Are we children?" Do we need to be taught about human anatomy and what fits where and how to make babies? And God in heaven is going to be very very disappointed if you disrespect this for all eternity in any way?

Finally,

We argued, too, that a focus on anal intercourse between males did not imply acceptance of other forms of homosexual behavior, including female homosexual behavior.

Gagnon's interpretive methodology is super convenient (for him). According to Gagnon, in the creation account, men and women are created to have sex with one another and there can be no chance of this being extended to anyone else. But here, only men are forbidden from having sex with one another in the law, but of course this naturally extends to women. Gagnon alone will decide for everyone when something scripture says can be extended to other cases, and when it can't (sarcasm).