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From: joe@emacs.UUCP (Joe Chapman)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Re: Thus saith the Lord
Message-ID: <118@emacs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Nov-85 16:26:47 EST
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Posted: Fri Nov 15 16:26:47 1985
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  Jim Campbell in <90100003@haddock.UUCP> on 14 Nov 85:
> Now I am curious -- does the Bible ever make an explicit statement against
> homosexuality in general, instead of just male homosexuality?

I don't think so.  It's difficult to say what the Bible says explicitly
on any subject.  Perhaps most of the difficulties are linguistic: the
words and rhetorical elements don't translate well across a few
milennia.  Whether the blessed Apostle Paul would have approved of
Quentin Crisp is an exercise in psychohistorical speculation; whether he
would have described him to the holy Church in Rome with any of the
words many allege he used to mean "homosexual" is unlikely.

The passages which might be read as proscriptions of homosexuality fall
into two general categories.  The first includes the Levitical
"abomination" (you shall not lie with a man as you lie with a woman) and
St. Paul's "men leaving the natural use of the woman and burning in lust
towards one another" passage.  It would be hard to argue that these
don't apply exclusively to males.

The other category includes the anathematic laundry-lists of the New
Testament ("neither x, nor y, nor z shall ever inherit the kingdom of
heaven").  The words used here are "arsenokoitai" and "malakos".  The
former is difficult to translate precisely, but it's clearly based on
the root "arseno-", which refers to males.  The latter is usually
translated "soft" or "effeminate"; given the circumstances, I don't
think it was meant to be interpreted as referring to lesbians.
Incidentally, "malakos" is an especially interesting word: it takes up
at least a column of tiny type in Liddell & Scott's Greek Lexicon (the
standard reference work).  The Latin "mollis" (used in the Vulgate)
isn't any clearer.

One might reasonably expect that little attention would be paid to
women's sexuality in writings of the period; it was certainly no less a
phallocratic society than our own.  Considering the Bible as a whole,
very little attention is paid to anyone's sexuality.  I hate to have to
have to admit to my personal interest in the matter, but I think that
the Father of an Infinite Majesty, His Honorable, True, and only Son,
and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, would find my sex life rather boring.

[ This is my ten-minute homily on this topic, so the citations and
references are off the top of my head.  I'm an Anglican, not a
fundamentalist, so I can't quote chapter and verse of anything but the
Book of Common Prayer.  The best general discussion of the scriptures
and homosexuality can be found in John Boswell's "Christianity, Social
Tolerance, and Homosexuality" (Univ. of Chicago), of which an excellent
summary was posted to this newsgroup by rrizzo (I think) several months
ago. ]

--
Joe Chapman                         Dr. Prentice: "I couldn't commit the
decvax!cca!emacs!joe                act.  I'm a heterosexual."
joe@cca-unix.arpa                   Dr. Rance: "I wish you wouldn't use
                                    those Chaucerian words."