The Birds, The Bees & The Bible: Is it okay to be a gay Christian?

There are several Biblical passages which some Christians have used to condemn LGBTQIA+ people.

Sometimes people intend to harm us; other times they believe that they are doing God’s work by enforcing certain commandments or keeping up certain traditions. Often times, people who believe that homosexuality is wrong in God’s eyes think that they are loving gay people better by “telling them the truth” about scripture or God’s wrath. It’s hard as a pastor to discourage anyone from doing what they think is right in God’s eyes. It’s also hard to sit by while my own holy scriptures are being weaponized against people like me, even if those who do it sometimes have good intentions.

I will start with the words of Christ before I venture into the Old Testament. This is not to say that Jesus negates the “old law.” In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, “Do not believe that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill” (NRSVUE). But then in Matthew 22, one of the Pharisees asks Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (NIV)

So, all the laws/commandments in the OT or NT exist in order to honor the command to love God and love others. That means that any time anyone uses one of the 613 Laws of the Torah as a reason to hate someone, they are misusing it. If anyone thinks that a commandment in their scriptures is an excuse to hate gay, trans, straight, or cis people, they are using it wrong.

(Same deal, by the way, for black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, republican, democrat, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, American, Mexican, Russian, Israeli, Palestinian, Iraqi, Argentine or any other people group you can think of.)

Accordingly, we will discuss these “clobber passages” with attempts to avoid any

belittling, insulting, or devaluing of evangelicals, Biblical literalists, or religious conservatives. I ask the same respect from these groups. In fact, I kind of like the idea that interpreting the Bible’s original socio-historical context, language, and intended audience gives me the right to take on the label of religiously-conservative, evangelical, and Biblically-contextually literalist. If Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, I endeavor to find its true meaning and accurate application. I plan to draw people to Christ through this inclusive gesture. I want to find ways that the Bible supports all our love. That kind of makes me those things.

That means that any time anyone uses one of the 613 Laws of the Torah as a reason to hate someone, they are misusing it.

Then again, some Biblical literalists don’t think that one can be literalist and still take some of the scriptures as allegory from oral tradition; some evangelicals don’t think that I can attract people to Christ with a message which includes a welcome for gay people as they are, not how they would change them; some religious conservatives think that this inclusive policy makes me too progressive, and therefore not faithful to the source material. So, I’m a revisionist-literalist, gay, evangelical, progressive, conservative, Christian?

Wow, now I’m getting why my Same-Sex Attracted friend doesn’t like labels.

Genesis: Adam and Eve:

Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. No copyright

infringement on Rogers & Hammerstein intended. I’m sorry in advance to anyone who has used verses in Genesis to the ends of condemning homosexuality, because I probably have the least grace for any of these arguments. They make the least logical sense. I mean no disrespect, but I will probably come off pretty snarky when I refute these: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” Yes. Yes, they were. Let’s talk about Genesis 1 and 2 from a historical perspective: These chapters were part of an oral tradition passed down in Judaic tradition, and the oral tradition far predated their written forms. These two stories in particular are written in order to be interpreted as a Myth of Creation and an Origin Myth of humankind. Here is where the literalists may not like my interpretation, but it is possible to believe in something being true for its intended meaning, not historical accuracy, and here’s why: One of these chapters gives an account of God creating the vegetation and animals before humans, and the other says that Adam was created before these things were made for humans. This is not because they are contradicting histories, but because the Creation Myth was given in order to emphasize God’s planning of Creation, and the Origin Myth was given to emphasize God’s care in creating us. This would have been understood by its original audience as expressions kind of like Jesus’ parables: They have an intended meaning, lesson, moral, etc. This meaning is true. The story would have been in the style of a parable or an allegory. If we had the same passage translated into our style of storytelling, it might have started with a phrase such as, “Once upon a time…” and sounded fantastical in nature. The allegory of Adam and Eve does not make its lesson less true. The authors weren’t trying to trick us or anything. They just knew that for their own people, the style would have differed from later Genesis texts which record history.

I find Genesis 1 to be absolutely genius for people who had no concept of the Big

Bang, subatomic particles, interstellar collisions, and evolution. It says that God took so much care in making the Earth able to support life. Whether you’re literalist or not, we can agree that God must love us a lot if creation took that much planning and care, whether you think God did it in 6 days or 18 billion years. Let’s agree on that: God loves us.

Genesis 2 is where people want to argue, because that’s where we get the eponymous first man. I say “eponymous” because "Adam," in its original context, was not a name at all—"a-dam” means “first man.” There are plenty of things like this which get lost in translation. It’s kind of like how from Greek to English, we have relatively few words for “fear” and “love.”

Anyway, the argument is about Adam and Eve not being Adam and Steve. Firstly, human evolution must have branched from a common species of genetic ancestor hominids, not likely one person. The idea of all humans coming from one common hominid necessitates the kind of inbreeding which would make procreation impossible in relatively few generations. This means that a species would have to be common enough before evolving even into mammalian species before they would be viable enough to support enough families to avoid such inbreeding. If you are a literalist with no concern for context and authorial intent and you believe that no such evolution happened, then for the sake of your argument, we’ll neglect the discrepancies between the two chapters for a sec: Yes, I’m glad that Adam and Eve were heterosexual. If they had not been, we would not exist. Or for that matter, Seth, their son, would have also had to be heterosexual, as well as all of Noah’s children and every animal on the Ark. I’m not arguing that I want any straight people in the Bible to be gay. I’m not arguing that Adam or this hypothetical Steve character were gay, or bi for that matter. No one said that. No one theorized about a “Steve” character until it was a quip made against people like me.

Beauty in the Text:

Okay, I’ve unraveled some argument against gay people in this story, but I want to

highlight the beauty in the text before I move on. This narrative deserves to have some dignity if I’m going to go at it from a defense perspective. See, I’d rather look at how beautifully these things are written than have to hone in on one mistranslated phrase in order to defend myself. Let’s look at the beauty with which God’s creation of womankind is described in this creation myth: God places the first-man into a deep sleep, reaching into him painlessly, extracting a rib, and closing up the flesh where it once was. Out of the living tissue of the first-man, God forms a mate, a companion, a person whose life makes his more enjoyable. For the first-man, this was a woman. The idea that she was made out of him displays God’s care in making someone just perfect to complement each of us. The text goes on to say that for this reason, a man leaves his parents, clings to a mate, and they become one flesh. They are naked and are not ashamed.

The “problem” with the first-man was that he was alone, not that he was without a sexual outlet. And to reduce the role of the woman to procreation is, frankly, insulting to women. Adam did not need (just) a procreative partner, but a companion—the kind that only he needed, made for him and only him and vice versa, him for her. In some translations, the word “rib” here can also mean “side,” as in, the first-man was split in two, becoming two parts of one flesh, equally made in God’s image. Neither “rib” nor “side” imply subservience. Any “subservient” status is a result of sin.

When we “leave our father and mother, cling to a mate, and become one flesh,” we are creating a new family identity with someone who is like-souled. “One flesh” isn’t just a sexual euphemism, but an expression of one mind, objective, focus, love, life. Why would you want to take any person’s ability to do that away from them? And how would doing that be honoring the commandment to love them? God created the universe with such care that our planet supports life, and then God created us with the things we need from each other. The beauty of falling in love can feel like God made that person from a piece of you. I hope that you find someone who makes you feel that beautiful, and I don’t care what’s in their pants. Or skirt.

Sodom and Gomorrah:

Now that we’ve covered Eden, there’s another story in Genesis which people use

frequently in order to oppose gay people. The theory of some such Christians is that God

destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because people were gay. *Takes deep breath*

Firstly, the concept of being homosexual did not exist in ancient times. People did not put

the same labels on themselves that we do now, and in fact, the word homosexual did not exist in

the English lexicon until around the 1890’s, when it was listed in the Diagnostic Statistical

Manual (DSM-1) as a psychiatric disorder. Also listed as mental disorders in the DSM at the

time were PMS and, I’ll just say, self-pleasuring. Both were treated by mental health

professionals. This means that any translation of the Bible you read which uses the word “homosexual”was translated to that kind of language after the 19 th Century. In fact, it didn’t enter religious language from its psychiatric counterpart institution until decades later.

We’ll get to Leviticus and Paul’s Epistles in a later blog.

Want to read more? Check out the first installment in this blog series or check back later for the next part.

Trigger Warning: the next post in this series will cover some intense subjects such as

sexual assault and incest as it is mentioned in parts of the Old Testament. Reader discretion is advised and if you are under the age of 18, please read with a trusted adult before exploring these concepts.