Can Christians be "glad to be gay"? In the sixties Canon (later Bishop) Montefiore caused a furore by suggesting ever so mildly that because Jesus remained unmarried, and all his close associates were males, perhaps He could have been homosexual? - not actively of course, but by orientation. It is alleged that one sixth of males are homosexually oriented, just as one sixth are left-handed. Once to be "cack-handed" was educationally unacceptable; now it is seen as perfectly normal. Once homosexuality was unacceptable; now (it is alleged) it should be considered as normal as heterosexuality. Heterosexual marriages are normative; a marriage can be successful without children; perhaps we should allow homosexual "marriages" even though children are biologically impossible.
SODOM AND GOMORRAH:-
The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is not spelt out in brutal frankness in Genesis 18 and 19; but it cried out to heaven for vengeance (Gen 18:20-21) in the same way as the blood of murdered Abel "cried unto God from the ground" (Gen 4:10). God was unwilling to punish the innocent with the guilty; so He sent two angels to warn Lot and his family, whilst the LORD Himself remained with Abraham. In a wonderful example of intercessory prayer, Abraham pleads with God to spare the cities if but ten righteous people could be found there. God knew there were not that number. Because the actual sin of Sodom is only delicately hinted at in the text, gays allege that their sin was not sodomy at all, but only that they showed hostility to righteous Lot and his divine guests. But judgment fell; only Lot and his three daughters were saved. His wife and sons-in-law all perished; "remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32).
THE LEVITICAL LAW:-
Leviticus is abundantly clear and specific: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (Lev 18:22); "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Lev 20:13). Some try to escape the force of this by claiming that Christians have been freed from the bondage of the Law. "All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient" (1 Cor 6:12). So provided it is "expedient" (e.g. we are consenting adults in private), we can do anything.
THE SODOMITES IN THE LAND:-
In the Authorised Version (Cambridge edition, margin) we read "There shall be no sodomitess (qedheshah, female cult prostitute) of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite (qadhesh, male cult prostitute) of the sons of Israel" (Deut 23:17). Here we have a euphemism for sodomite, from the root QDSh, to be separate. It is first used in Genesis 38:21, where it refers to a professional cult prostitute of Astarte, the Canaanite goddess of sex. The cult was suppressed by Joshua, but the "trade" continued. The word occurs again in the reign of Solomon's son Rehoboam. "There were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel" (1 Kings 14:24). Good king Asa "took away the sodomites out of the land" (1 Kings 15:12); his son Jehoshaphat finished the job: "the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land" (1 Kings 22:46). But things got worse again, for later king Josiah "brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD". Gay brothels next door to the Temple! The Temple priests' headdress bore the words "HOLINESS TO THE LORD" (QODHESH L-YHWH, Ex 39:30) so here is a new play on words - these sodomites considered themselves "gay priests", not to Astarte, but to YHWH.
SODOMY IN THE GOSPELS:-
Jesus never once mentions homosexuality in all His reported discourses in the Gospels; so the allegation is "if Jesus doesn't condemn it, it must be OK" (cf John 8:11). But this is the "argument from silence" - one of the classic logical fallacies. The only thing silence proves is silence. Jesus did refer to the sin of Sodom but only obliquely: "and thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee" (Matt 11:23-24). So there is a sin worse than sodomy - and it is to refuse to believe in Jesus Christ (John 16:8-9). Jesus also referred to Lot's wife: "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32). Her heart was in Sodom; where is yours?
SODOMY IN THE PAULINE EPISTLES:-
In Romans 1, St Paul is analysing the state of those who know the biblical revelation of God's sovereignty, but choose to reject it. "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever, Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet". (Rom 1:24-27). These are not ignorant people who know no better. These are they "who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" (Rom 1:32). In 1 Corinthians, Paul is just as explicit. He uses the blunt Greek word arsenokoitai, literally male bedfellows. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9-10). In 1 Timothy is a similar list of offenders for whom the Law provides sanctions, ending up with "for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine; according to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust" (1 Tim 1:10-11). But there is good news as well as bad: "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor 6:11). If such are some of you, you can likewise be delivered.
SODOMY IN THE GENERAL EPISTLES:-
2 Peter and Jude are very similar. "Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude 7). 4Strange flesh5 seems to be a reference to the men-of-Sodom's lustful desire for the angelic beings sent to rescue Lot. Lot's role as a plaintiff is stressed in the parallel passage in 2 Peter where the angels "delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds" (2 Pet 2:7-8). Gay behaviour is vexatious and abominable to non-gays.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS:-
Homosexuality seems to be a phase people go through in puberty and adolescence. For example, it is well known that girls grow up faster than boys. Boys aged 12 to 14 suddenly find that the girls in their peer group are just too big for them; so the boys cling together for support and don't re-discover girls until after their treble voices have broken and their physique has developed. If at 15-plus boys are kept apart from girls, e.g. in a single sex boarding school, military unit, ship's crew, remand home or prison environment, they begin to cast eyes on one another for their sexual experimentation and gratification. If at the same time they are the victims of seduction, interference or abuse by adult homosexuals, they may find themselves unable to escape this orientation. There is no more pathetic a creature than the catamite. As the Greek philosopher Plato pointed out, every sodomite needs a catamite, "as every itcher needs a scratcher" (Gorgias, 494E). The itcher may even enjoy his itch, but only so long as he can keep scratching it. It is being increasingly recognised that pubescent boys need a male hero- figure as a role model. Boys growing up without a father, or without a substitute-father whom they can respect, have no clear idea of what being a male is. Militant feminism and unisex confuse the adolescent even more. It seems that the increase in "gay" activity accompanies a general breakdown in the concept of the family and family life. This was true in ancient Canaan, in ancient Egypt, in ancient Greece, and in ancient Rome. It is true in the permissive society of the decadent West.
PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS:-
We mentioned Plato already. We need also to mention Hegel, the 19th century German philosopher. He abandoned the classical methodology of thesis-antithesis logic and the law of contradiction (that a thing cannot be P and not-P at the same time). He said that what we have is a Synthesis. The solution is somewhere on a line between the Thesis and its Antithesis. In the Bible we have Antithesis. If a thing is true, its opposite is false. There is Good and there is Evil; there is North and South; East and West; Male and Female. When Adam was created he was unique; there was none like him. He searched for a "help meet" for him, and found none among all the creatures of God. Then God made a Woman for him and brought them together. Adam said "this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." The Bible adds "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen 2:23-24). Adam was the same as Eve, and yet different. He and she are equal and opposite, complementary. Before, Adam was Man; now, Adam and Eve together constitute Man, male and female, in the image of God. In modern philosophy we have a consensus that has abandoned Antithesis in favour of Synthesis. As a result we have a loss of absolutes. Homosexuality today is often philosophical homosexuality, not clinical homo- or paedophilia. Modern man has no place for antithesis or absolute truth; only averages. Complementarity is an antithesis, an anathema to modern man. Once we accept the Hegelian dialectic, we have only Synthesis. Yet from antiquity men and women have always dressed differently; we know there is a difference. Modern man in pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification is following the hedony of the ancient Greeks who had their wives to bear them their children, and their young men to bring them their pleasure. The theory is, if a thing is so pleasant, it can't be wrong; if I am strong enough to have my way, that makes it right. Darwinism has added the principle of the Survival of the Fittest to the Machiavellian, Sadist, and Nietzschian doctrine of Might is Right. Adolf Hitler followed that ethic with his doctrine of the Master Race. The whole world united against him.
IS THERE A CHRISTIAN WAY?:-
Servicemen will know the intense comradeship of military service. The Army cultivates the "buddy-buddy system", especially in the Parachute Regiment. There is something like this in the Bible, where we read "the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Sam 18:1). This was no homosexual union; both were married men. This was a soul brotherhood; as David testified in his lament for Saul and Jonathan, "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women" (2 Sam 1:26). This was true philadelphia, brotherly love; as the writer to the Hebrews urges, "Let brotherly love continue" (Heb 13:1). Are we not all brothers in Christ? Marriage is not for all; there is a call to celibacy for some (see 1 Cor 7:32-40). But there is no call from God to homosexual union for anyone. Let us all be philanthropists, but not homophiliacs.
CONCLUSION:-
What is needed is a return to classical thesis-antithesis logic: that is, to Christian values and Biblical principles in male/female roles. God created male and female and instituted the family. God intended lifelong monogamy, and sexual intercourse for marriage partners of opposite sex within wedlock only (Heb 13:4). All other sex, hetero- or homo-, is adultery. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14). God is not being cruel in denying us pleasure. When we do what He says it is for our good, and we find it satisfying and fulfilling. When we disobey, we find we are into terrifying problems. In His grace God has provided a remedy for sin, and a way of escape from temptation; we must use them or perish. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" (Heb 2:3). Psalm 119:9- 11 and Proverbs 7 give instructions to young men in particular; and 1 Corinthians 10:13 gives re-assurance to all. "Sin shall not have dominion over you" (Rom 6:14).
N.B. The prefix Homo- is from the Greek homoios, "the same", not from the Latin homo, hominis, a man.