To listen to the
radio broadcast go
here.
Rev. Barry Lynn (UCC)
Executive Director of "Americans United
for the Separation of Church and State"
Host, "Culture Shocks"
cc. Jimmy Creech, Director of the
homosexualist group "Faith in Action"
Dear Barry,
Thanks for having me on your show. Even
though you were clearly not neutral, with you and Jimmy Creech feeding
off of each other and the time very limited, I thoroughly enjoyed the
time that we did have.
At times you would say that what
Scripture says doesn’t matter anyway or shouldn’t be introduced into the
public debate but at other times you would push for the view that
Scripture does not speak with one voice or absolutely against homosexual
practice. The two clashing perspectives gave me a bit of a whiplash. But
I was, and am, happy to answer both.
If you want Jimmy Creech or some
‘bigger gun’ to debate me on specific passages of Scripture, like Spong
or Gene Robinson (who actually are not big guns but probably know more
than Creech) I would be happy to do that, whether in one program or
stretched out over several programs. For example, you could devote one
program to Jesus, one to Paul, one to the Old Testament, and one to
whether appeals to Scripture are even valid. This would give us more
time to hash out the positions on both sides.
Becoming acquainted
with my work.
If you would care to read my views of
what Scripture, philosophic reason, and the scientific evidence suggest
about homosexual practice, you can start with my online article here:
http://wtseminary.gospelcom.net/pdf/reformreview/gagnon_autm05.pdf.
Note: The philosophical, largely non-religious, argument (drawn from holistic
male-female complementarity and comparisons to consensual incest and
polyamory) is at the beginning, pp. 30-45; the use of analogies like
slavery and women’s roles, pp. 90-100; the scientific evidence on pp.
114-30; the use of Scripture everywhere else, including the views of
Jesus on pp. 30-34, 56-61 (for a table of contents to the article go
here:
http://www.robgagnon.net/articles/homoReformedReviewTableCont.pdf).
On my views on hate crime legislation, with which you began the show,
please go to
http://www.presbyweb.com/2007/Viewpoint/Robert+Gagnon-Haberer+on+Hate+Crime+Bill.htm
and to
http://www.robgagnon.net/GayRightsLetterToEvangLeader.htm.
Your confusions about
what I say in my work.
As it is, it appears that you (or some
other source used by you) took some snippets from my work without
reading in context or taking the time to read the arguments that
substantiate my position. The online article that I cite above is only a
small portion of my work but it is a good place to begin to get a
summary of most of my major positions. Two clarifications on points in
my work that you appear to be confused about:
(1)
“Threesomes.” You quoted the following from one of my online
pieces:
We have also noted that faithful polyamorous
arrangements—whether a traditional polygamous bond or non-traditional
"threesomes" and the like—are not as severe a violation of God’s
sexual norms as are homosexual unions. ("Case Not Made: A Response to
Prof. John Thorp," p. 17)
Apparently you quoted it in an effort
to show that arguments from the Bible are not relevant to the civil
debate because, allegedly, I was making the illogical statement, from
the Bible, that a bisexual polyamorous relationship would be worse than
a monogamous homosexual relationship. But you misunderstood, on two
counts. First, the argument made in this paper was directed to the
Anglican Church in Canada, not to the civil sphere, so the argument from
Scripture was quite appropriate in this context. Second, by
“non-traditional 'threesomes'” I had in mind a heterosexual threesome
with, say, two husbands for one wife, not a homosexual or bisexual form
of threesome. Obviously homosexual practice combined with polyamory adds
an additional offense to homosexual practice alone; with the homosexual
or bisexual intercourse being worse than the polygamy. An analogy: Is
adult consensual incest combined with polyamory worse than monogamous
adult incest? Yes, but clearly the far worse component in polyamorous
incest is the incest.
(2)
Male-male vs. female-female intercourse. You made another
reference to my work, saying that I have written in another article: "Is
same-sex intercourse a relatively minor or major sin? Certainly texts
from Leviticus and Paul indicate that same-sex intercourse, particularly
between males, is to be treated as a major sin" (where you got the quote
I am not sure). Your argued from this that this disparity between the
reaction of Scripture's authors to male-male sex and the reaction of
Scripture's authors to female-female sex is provoked by a male-dominated
society and therefore should be rejected. But you have misunderstood my
remark. Some circles in the ancient world regarded male-male intercourse
as more offensive because female-female intercourse by its very nature
did not involve penetration; mostly the Greco-Roman Gentile milieu
regarded female-female intercourse as worse, and here largely on
misogynistic grounds. Some, though, saw the two acts as equivalent.
Leviticus addresses only male-male intercourse directly but that was
likely because female-female intercourse was virtually unknown in
ancient Near Eastern society, rare no doubt given the tight control on
female sexuality, not because male homosexual practice was necessarily
worse. When Paul addressed the matter in Romans 1:26-27 he treats them
both as equally problematic. My phrase "particularly between males" does
not mean that I believe that the authors of Scripture regard male-male
intercourse as necessarily worse than male-male intercourse but rather
that, because Leviticus mentions explicitly only male-male intercourse,
the indications of opposition to homosexual practice in Scripture
are stronger here than for female-female intercourse. There is a
difference.
Other matters:
Choice.
At one point you summarized my view of causation of homosexuality as
“choice.” This was an inaccurate summary, even in your subsequent
qualification. As I stated in the broadcast, causation is
multi-factorial: predisposing congenital factors, environmental factors
(including macrocultural and microcultural influences), personal
psychology, and incremental choices (which may or may not be blind
choices). To summarize this under the single rubric “choice” is not to
hear what I said.
Jesus.
Your argument at the end of the broadcast that Jesus cited “male and
female” (Genesis 1:27) and “man” and “woman” (Genesis 2:24) only because
“more people are attracted to persons of the opposite gender” Is
incorrect. Jesus constructs an argument that limits the number of
persons in a sexual bond to two by citing these two texts from Genesis
that have only one point in common: the twoness (dimorphism) of the
sexes that God has established as the foundation for sexual bonds. Given
that Jesus predicated his argument on the twoness of sexual bonds on the
foundation of the twoness of the sexes, same-sex intercourse would be a
more severe violation of God’s standards for him than polyamory. For the
foundation must be more important than the structure built on the
foundation. There are plenty of historical contextual arguments
for regarding Jesus' view on homosexual practice as tantamount to his
view of incest (something that Jesus also said nothing explicitly
about but about which there is no historical uncertainty for Jesus' position).
See a brief summary of twelve main arguments at the end of my article on
Jesus and the centurion at
http://www.robgagnon.net/HomosexCenturionStory.htm.
Jesus did not spend time speaking against homosexual practice for the
obvious reason that no Jew in first-century Palestine was advocating the
practice or known to be engaging in it. Instead he simply embraced
Scripture's unequivocal stance on the subject, premised his position on
other sexual issues on it, and moved on to those over
which some dispute existed in Judaism.
Format. The format of the show
was interesting. At times you were even-handed in directing the
conversation, but generally your direction seemed designed
for you to get the first word and Creech the last: starting with an
assertion or
question by you to me (often in the Jeopardy-style "frame your
answer in the form of a question"), letting me speak, and then giving Creech the rebuttal
position to every question, with little allowance for me to respond
unless I seized the moment to do so. In the end you and Creech combined
for 19 minutes espousing a homosexualist line while I had about 12
minutes to defend a two-sexes prerequisite. In spite of all this, I enjoyed
the experience and trust that it will be helpful to your hearers. A
couple of times I felt cut off a bit abruptly but also felt that I
talked over either you or Creech on two occasions (eager to respond
since you and Creech were getting 50% more time to make your case than I
was to make mine). Overall the conversation was civil.
Again, thanks for having me on and I
hope you will do so again in the future.
Sincerely,
Rob
A postscript on
Creech’s use of exploitation and orientation arguments.
I don’t
think that it is misrepresenting Jimmy Creech to say that he is not a
scholar of the Bible or of the ancient world. I dare say that he would
admit as much himself. Please listen to the following conclusions by
scholars who strongly agree with your and Creech’s position that
homosexual unions are good things but acknowledge honestly what the text
of Scripture in its historical context actually says:
Thomas K. Hubbard, a classics scholar
from the University of Texas, has produced the definitive sourcebook
(with good introductions and annotations) of Greco-Roman texts treating
the issue of homosexual practice. You will remember that Rev. Creech
stated that the ancients knew nothing akin to our view of “homosexual
orientation.” Here’s what a real scholar has to say:
Homosexuality in
this era [viz., of the early imperial age of Rome] may have ceased to be
merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as
an essential and central category of personal identity, exclusive of and
antithetical to heterosexual orientation. (Homosexuality
in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents
[University of California Press, 2003], 386)
Creech also argues that the biblical
writers could not have been opposing homosexual practice absolutely. Yet
even in the non-Jewish milieu of the Mediterranean basin, “literature of
the first century C.E. bears witness to an increasing polarization of
attitudes toward homosexual activity, ranging from frank acknowledgment
and public display of sexual indulgence on the part of leading Roman
citizens to severe moral condemnation of
all homosexual acts”
(Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece
and Rome, 383, emphasis added). That their position was
understood as absolute opposition, no exceptions, is evident from their
argument about male-female complementarity: “Basic to the heterosexual
position [against homosexual practice in the ancient world] is the
characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of Nature, which has
matched and fitted the sexes to each other” (Thomas K. Hubbard,
Homosexuality in Greece and Rome,
444). “Some kind of argument from ‘design’ seems to lurk in the
background of Cicero’s, Seneca’s, and Musonius’ claims [against
homosexual practice]” (Craig A. Williams,
Roman Homosexuality [Oxford
University Press, 1999], 242). Ancient writers “who appeal to nature
against same-sex eros
find it convenient to concentrate on the more or less obvious uses of
the orifices of the body to suggest the proper channel for the more
diffused sexual impulses of the body” (William R. Schoedel, “Same-Sex
Eros,” Homosexuality, Science, and
the “Plain Sense” of Scripture [ed. D. Balch; Eerdmans,
2000], 46). [Note: Williams and Schoedel are both highly respected
classics scholars and both are supportive of gay and lesbian unions in
our society.]
Those Gentile moralists opposing
homosexual practice absolutely were a minority of the elite in Greece
and Rome but the fact that they existed at all indicates the absurdity
of arguing that any Jew at this time, including Jesus and Paul, might
have been open to committed same-sex sexual bonds. The culture of
ancient Israel, continuing on in early Judaism, is one that can only be
characterized as the most implacably opposed to homosexual practice of
any known culture in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman Mediterranean
basin.
Louis Crompton in the massive
Homosexuality and Civilization
(Harvard University Press, 2003) has written:
According to [one]
interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide”
homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however
well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or
any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of
same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals
might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to
Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. (p. 114)
Similarly, Bernadette Brooten (Harvard,
Brandeis), a self-acknowledged lesbian who has written the most
important book on lesbianism in antiquity and its relation to early
Christianity (especially Rom 1:26), at least from a pro-homosex
perspective, criticized both John Boswell and Robin Scroggs for their
use of an exploitation argument:
Boswell . . . argued
that . . . “The early Christian church does not appear to have opposed
homosexual behavior per se.” The sources on female homoeroticism that I
present in this book run absolutely counter to [this conclusion]. (p.
11)
If . . . the
dehumanizing aspects of pederasty motivated Paul to condemn sexual
relations between males, then why did he condemn relations between
females in the same sentence? . . . Rom 1:27, like Lev 18:22 and 20:13,
condemns all males in male-male relationships regardless of age, making
it unlikely that lack of mutuality or concern for the passive boy were
Paul’s central concerns. . . . The ancient sources, which rarely speak
of sexual relations between women and girls, undermine Robin Scroggs’s
theory that Paul opposed homosexuality as pederasty. (Love
between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], 253 n. 106, 257, 361)
She also criticized the use of an
orientation argument:
Paul could have
believed that tribades
[the active female partners in a female homosexual bond], the ancient
kinaidoi [the passive male
partners in a male homosexual bond], and other sexually unorthodox
persons were born that way and yet still condemn them as unnatural and
shameful. . . . I believe that Paul used the word “exchanged” to
indicate that people knew the natural sexual order of the universe and
left it behind. . . . I see Paul as condemning all forms of
homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from
God.(p. 244)
Martti Nissinen, a Finnish Bible
scholar who has written the best book on the Bible and homosexuality
from a pro-homosex perspective and whose work I heavily critique in
The Bible and Homosexual Practice
(precisely because it is the best on the other side),
acknowledges in one of his more candid moments:
Paul does not
mention tribades or
kinaidoi, that is, female
and male persons who were habitually involved in homoerotic
relationships, but if he knew about them (and there is every reason to
believe that he did), it is difficult to think that, because of their
apparent ‘orientation,’ he would not
have included them in Romans 1:24-27. . . . For him, there is
no individual inversion or inclination that would make this conduct less
culpable. . . . Presumably nothing would have made Paul approve
homoerotic behavior. (Homoeroticism
in the Biblical World [Fortress, 1998], 109-12)
The scholars above are the best on the
side of those supporting homosexualist ideology. It is troubling to find
Jimmy Creech who, though I’m sure a nice person, is a non-scholar arguing
positions about Scripture that the best homosexualist scholars
would not support.