Homosexuality

This all happened several years ago when I was young in the faith and foolish in the head.

I was halfway through my first year of Uni, living far from home in a residential college with two hundred other strangers, studying books and writing. He had just started his freshman year in another state, rooming in a college dorm with a guy he didn’t like very much. He had left behind his cat, his dog, his younger brother and two older sisters, and his loving Christian parents who had reared him in a beautiful country town in the midwest. He, like myself, had just discovered email.

We were both on this mailing list for some Christian band who were just starting out at the time. There were just enough list members to stimulate lively discussion but not so many that it lost its “community” feel. I only noticed him because he posted something about how hard it was for him, being in a new place with heaps of new people. I’d been there too so I started writing to him. He started writing back. We exchanged emails for what would be almost three years.

Aside from liking the same sorts of music, we seem to have a lot in common. We both liked the same kind of movies. We both worshipped and served the Lord Jesus Christ. We both were trying to find our feet as “adults” in the world of university. And we both struggled, periodically, with bouts of depression which would result in lengthy epistles and requests for prayer.

It was during one of these bouts that he confided to me that he was in love with his best friend: a guy he knew from back home, several years older, in a long-standing relationship with another girl:

I don’t know what to do. Feel like I’m going crazy. Want to be close to him. The closest one to him—like in the Bible—David and Jonathan. Want to know what he’s thinking and feeling inside. But he won’t let me. I can’t tell him. How do you bring up something like that? He’d get scared. He’d think I was weird. Or gay. The truth is, I am gay. And I am in love with him. And yet I am not. I am also straight. I’ve always looked forward to getting married and having kids. All this other stuff gets in the way. I can’t believe I’m telling you this ...

At first I didn’t understand. I thought he was confusing infatuation with friendship, and lust didn’t play a part. But when he made it clear that he struggled with that too, I didn’t know what to say or do. I could only offer him a listening ear, the support of prayer and words to say I cared.

As the weeks went on, he continued to share with me his ongoing battle, riding on an emotional rollercoaster through tempests and calm. Sudden two-line general requests for prayer would arrive in my inbox amidst other electronic correspondence of the minutiae of the day-to-day. Some nights we jumped on relay chat channels and revelled in the luxury of immediate response. The yawning expanse of the Pacific evoked the pain of separation. I longed to be a better friend but lacked wisdom in such matters.

Months later our textual exchange had slowed somewhat as the demands of “real life” consumed our time. I hadn’t heard from him for a while when he sent a message about seeing a doctor. He asked that I pray for him about it and didn’t want to say much more but eventually he wrote:

I don’t know how to say this. I’m afraid you’ll be heaps disappointed in me. I know I am. I’m finding it hard to forgive myself, even though I know God forgives me. I had sex with a guy. I didn’t know him very well. I met him on the internet. I think I might have gotten something from him. We used protection but nothing is full-proof. I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life...

Bible study had never prepared me for this. Sermons had never prepared me for this. Prayer breakfast, evangelism training and New Testament Greek lessons had never prepared me for this. I continued to pray and write—write and pray. He agonised over the cost of healthcare and whether to tell his parents. He asked me if he should ever tell his future wife. The blackest days brought the longest notes, fraught with guilt, fear and awesome isolation. Each message underscored with growing despair, I longed to sprout wings and bridge the distance between us.

But the Lord watches over his children even when we cannot. Close friends suggested counselling and he acted on their advice. His counsellor turned out to be a Christian who had helped people like him before. He started reading books about Christians who had once practised homosexuality. And he came clean with his parents and told them everything.

In the months that passed while I continued to write and pray, he was tested for disease and came out clear. He went to counselling on and off in the shadow of pendulum mood swings. He struggled with giving up his feelings. He started to think it was all right to be Christian and be gay. He wrote that he wanted a lasting monogamous relationship with another guy. We’d exchange messages but my words would make him angry.

I started having problems of my own. I was working through issues he didn’t understand and couldn’t face at that time. Life started getting in the way again—other people, other interests, other things to do that things that needed doing. Our messages slowed to a trickle. I forgot to pray.

Looking back, I wish I could have done more. I wish I had known as much about homosexuality then as I do now. I would have told him that homosexuality is not inherent and unchangeable, and certainly not rooted in a man's biology. I would have told him that homosexuality is not a human condition but a destructive pattern of behaviour, like alcoholism, resulting from elements of parental upbringing and early homosexual contact. I would have shown him the numerous studies that have been done into the gay lifestyle that have shown it to be extremely destructive and dysfunctional in nature, violently characterised by substance abuse and emotional damage. I would have told him that he was chasing a dream because long-term monogamous relationships between men don't last. In The Male Couple, David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison write,

the single most important fact that keeps couples together past the ten-year mark is the lack of possessiveness they feel. Many couples learn very early on their relationship that ownership of each other sexually can become the greatest internal threat to their staying together. (p. 256).

In other words, what is quite essential to the stability and intimacy of a heterosexual relationship is detrimental to a homosexual one.

I wish I had understood more about how the Bible speaks about homosexuality and sought wisdom in how to better serve him through my words. I would have told him he wasn't alone and that there are Christians in all sorts of congregations who struggle with homosexual feelings (see What Some of You Were, ed. Christopher Keane, for some of their testimonies). I would have reminded him of God's goodness in the face of adversity and the deliverance Jesus has achieved in taking our sin upon himself so that we are freed to live for him. I would have been more faithful in prayer for longer than when our friendship broke apart.

I would have encouraged him to seek professional counselling earlier and to stick with it despite his fluctuating moods. I would have pointed out that the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality have documented significant change individuals seeking to overcome their homosexual feelings through therapy and a desire to change. I would have brought to his attention support groups that he could have joined. I would have urged him to seek healthy non-sexual companionship with other Christians guys who would be able to pray with him and support him in his turmoil. I would have exercised more faithfulness in prayer and accountability instead of ceasing my intercession when our friendship broke apart.

But I know that, despite what I failed to do, the Lord still watches over my friend and will complete the good that was started in him. At the end of the age when all has submitted to the rule of Christ, and heaven and earth has passed away and been recreated, perhaps, then, I'll see him again.

The word “homosexuality” (from the Greek homos meaning “same”) was coined by the Hungarian journalist Karoly Maria Benkert in 1869. He used it in a letter to the Prussian Minister of Justice arguing for the decriminalisation of sodomy. Prior to this, sexual behaviour between people of the same gender was referred to as “sodomy” (after Genesis 19—Sodom and Gomorrah), “pederasty” (man-boy love) or “buggery” (anal intercourse). It was never thought of as an inherent human condition, though some argue that societies of antiquity did recognise it as being an orientation.

Homosexuality in the Bible is always referred to in negative terms (see Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Judges 19, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10). However, for other ancient societies, this was not the case. The Greeks made pederasty an institution for the purposes of population control so their cities wouldn't become overcrowded. Pederasty was also thought to enhance military prowess, the theory being that men who were lovers would fight more valiantly because they would be fighting for each other). Men and women were segregated from a very young age and marriage was delayed until a man was 30 (this was for Athens; in Sparta, marriage occurred earlier and the age difference between husbands and wives was not as great).

Boys between the ages of 12 and 17 (eronomoi) were courted by older men in their early to mid-twenties (erastes) with the view to educating them for social, political and military life in later years. When the boys entered their twenties, they were expected to take eronomoi of their own, passing on the knowledge and education they had received. As they grew older and participated in military and civil service, they were expected to settle down, take wives and have children.

Pederasty in ancient Greece was subject to strict rules. It was considered disgraceful to seduce boys under the age of 12 because they were not considered old enough to choose lovers. Boys who had been eronomoi in their adolescence were strongly criticised if they continued to play a passive role in adulthood as this was considered to be depraved. Homosexual relationships were only acceptable between adults and adolescents, not between adults and adults or adolescents and adolescents. It was acceptable for adults to be married and be in a relationship with a boy at the same time but a man was thought abnormal if he devoted himself exclusively to boys and shunned women.

As women were considered inferior, intellectual exchange took place between men only. For some thinkers, then, homosexual love was seen as being superior to heterosexual love because the former was concerned with aesthetics and communion whereas the latter was only concerned with procreation. Some academics in recent times have even claimed that the eventual abolition of pederasty was severely detrimental to the artistic and cultural life of ancient Greece.

The conventions of pederasty only applied to free citizens. Homosexuality in the other social classes was seen in a completely different light. Relations between slaves and citizens were strictly forbidden, regardless of the class of the initiator, because the prime function of pederasty was the training and education of citizens. Male prostitutes were condemned and any citizen caught selling his love would be stripped of his political and civil rights. However it was still acceptable for men to visit male prostitutes and no penalties were ever applied to clients.

In contrast to Greece, pederasty in ancient Rome was not an accepted social or pedagogical institution. Homosexual practice, however, occurred in a slightly different contexts. Roman society revolved around masculine domination and the worship of the phallus. Citizen boys were raised to be virile, active and ever-dominating, never dominated. They were expected to marry and continue the family line through children. Masters had absolute power over their own households and it was socially acceptable for a man to use anyone under his authority for sexual pleasure, male or female, slave or free. If someone stole his property or slept with his wife, he also had the right to inflict punishment through sexual subjugation and humiliation. Sometimes this was done to make an example of certain offenders.

Outside of the household, there were strict rules concerning who a man could have sexual relations with and who he could not. It was fine for a man to employ the services of male and female prostitutes provided he did not visit them frequently and exercised financial self-control. However, it was unacceptable for a man to have sex with other citizens, boys or adults, as this would violate their masculine integrity. It was unacceptable for a man to have sex with another man's wife as this would pollute family bloodlines and threaten the patriarchal structure of society. And it was also unacceptable for a man to have sex with slaves belonging to another man as they were considered to be his property. (Any offspring resulting from these unions would add therefore add to his workforce; it was therefore wiser for a master to beget more workers through his own slaves.)

This is not to say that such liaisons never took place. That there were laws stipulating penalties for infringement probably indicated they occurred regularly. (If a citizen was caught sleeping with another citizen's wife, he would be stripped of his legal and civil rights and, sometimes, even banished. As for the woman, her husband would probably divorce her and she wouldn't be allowed to remarry.) But everything could be done under the veneer of respectability as long as a man was always seen to be the active partner (penetrator, not penetrated), as long as he practised moderation by not indulging in luxuries, and as long as he kept everything in its place and did not flaunt his lovers.

These kind of double standards permeated every sphere of Roman sexual ethics. Husbands were allowed a great deal of sexual freedom within their own households but wives were not. If a wife was caught in bed with a male slave, her husband had solid grounds for divorce and she would be totally disgraced. The slave would either be killed or sexually humiliated. Parents worried about finding suitable tutors who would not corrupt their sons and yet did not think to rebuke older men to restrain their lusts. Prostitutes were social outcasts (even if they were citizens who had entered a life of prostitution because of impoverishment) because they played the passive role in their liasons, but their clients were certainly never ostracised. Behind the double standard lay the idea that the phallus ruled; masculine power could not be challenged.

Deviance, then, involved acting in a matter completely opposite to the rules of gender sexual behaviour. If a man curled his hair, wore perfume and long clothes, and paid excessive amounts of attention to his appearance, he was branded effeminate and ridiculed in public. If a man took to the stage to entertain others (like Nero did), he was seen in the same light as a prostitute. (Actors and musicians were thought to be soft and decadent because of the very nature of their work). If a man let his lovers manipulate him into excessive behaviour, his masculinity was questioned because he did not display control. Behind the gossip was the implication that men like these played the passive role in sex. It was considered obscene for a man to want to be penetrated—not because of the nature of the act, but because men were supposed to be the penetrators—active, not passive. This was one of the reasons why the Romans regarded oral sex as being completely depraved.

It is interesting that the civilisations of both Greece and Rome did not think in terms of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” but rather in terms of sexual acts which were further subdivided into insertive and receptive roles, acceptable and unacceptable acts. Bisexuality was normal; sexual activity confined to just one gender was abnormal. In addition, the concept of restraining male libido for the greater good was unheard of.

Given the wide spectrum of what was socially acceptable and what was not, it would have been shocking to the ancient world that the Apostle Paul did not differentiate between various forms of homosexuality but condemned them all as being totally unacceptable to God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 lists homosexual offenders (arsenokoitai) and male prostitutes (malakoi—ie.“soft”) as being excluded from inheriting the kingdom of God. The word arsenokoitai did not exist before the New Testament and is a compound word perhaps derived from the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. The combination of arsenos and koiten literally means “whoever lies with a male, having intercourse (as with) a female”. Paul's stance on homosexuality was firmly grounded in Old Testament law, and he is clearly saying the abolition of the old covenant and the freedom in Christ of the new covenant does not negate God's decree.

Paul's words in Romans 1:26-27 are striking in that he links homosexuality with lesbianism (a practice which we have fewer information about but which was consistently condemned in antiquity):

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

This was unusual in the ancient world and shows that Paul was concerned more with the rebellion of men and women against God than with people not playing out their procreative roles. Subsequent chapters reinforce this notion as Paul discusses, not just the sin of Gentiles who engage in homosexual acts, or the sin of Gentiles in general, but the sin of Jews and Gentiles alike who have all rebelled against God. Contrary to the social standards of Greece and Rome, the Bible condemns both parties engaged in the act, not just the passive partner.

However, the Bible's treatment of homosexuality does not end in thunderous judgement. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 6 speak glowingly of God's redemption:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 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 by the Spirit of our God. [1 Corinthians 6:10-11. My emphasis added]

Sexual immorality has been paid for through Jesus' death on the cross. Idolatry has been paid for through Jesus' death on the cross. Adultery, stealing, greed and drunkenness have all been paid for through Jesus' death on the cross. And homosexuality, no better and certainly no worse than the other sins listed in Paul's catalogue, has been paid for through Jesus' death on the cross. Those who sinned through homosexual acts in the past no longer face condemnation for their misdeeds of the body because Jesus has taken that condemnation upon himself.

In the Corinthian church, there were homosexual offenders and male prostitutes. There were idolaters, adulterers and sexually immoral people. But now that they have been washed clean by God's spirit in Jesus' name, they are no longer homosexual offenders, male prostitutes, idolaters, adulterers and sexually immoral people. They are no longer in bondage to the lusts that consumed them; they are now free to live lives pleasing to him. They are no longer defined by their practices, sexual or otherwise. Instead, their identities are defined by the God they worship and who has adopted them into his spiritual family.

It is therefore a very sad fact that, throughout history, many who call themselves Christians choose to treat homosexuals with contempt and hatred, sometimes subjecting them to ruthless persecution. Such homophobic attitudes are completely against Jesus' dictum to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and to do unto others as they would do unto you (Luke 6:31). One can imagine Jesus treating a homosexual person in much the same way as he treated that woman who was caught in the sexual sin of adultery (John 8:1-11). She was dragged before Jesus by the scribes and the Pharisees so that they might test him and bring some accusation against him. Quoting the law of Moses which states that the punishment for adultery is stoning, they ask him what should be done with her. Jesus replies, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” One by one, the scribes and Pharisees leave, forced to acknowledge that none of them is without sin.

No Christian is without sin. 1 John 1:8 even says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” No Christian, therefore, has the right to cast the first stone—to pass judgement or inflict punishment on a homosexual offender, particularly if he or she has become humble before Christ. If Jesus has paid the price for a man's sin, Christians therefore must not attack him for it.

It is significant, then, that Jesus, the perfect Son of God who never sinned throughout his entire life and who is therefore the only one worthy to throw the first stone, is now left alone with the woman. Jesus says to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She says, “No one, Lord.” Then Jesus says the most beautiful words in the whole Bible which are the joy and salvation of all sinners—idolaters, adulterers and homosexuals alike: “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”