I am currently taking an upper-level Women's Studies course called
The Politics of Sexual Diversity. For our final project we have to write a paper on any issue that deals with sexual diversity. It is a very open project, which I love. But these open topics cause me unnecessary stress when thinking about a topic that I can write about. After a couple months of thought, I was more or less presented a topic that I think I could most definitely fill the 15 page requirement.
My friend, who I recently came out to, emailed me a
Chick Tract on Sodom and Gomorrah called
Doom Town. If you are unfamiliar with Chick Tracts or the
Doom Town tract click on the links. If you don't feel like it, I'll just give you the short version. Jack Chick publishes fundamentalist Protestant Christian comic tracts, some of which have been regarded as hate publications in Canada and are illegal.
Doom Town is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how people who are gay today are going to be destroyed simply because they are gay, just like many believe Sodom and Gomorrah were.
I read the tract and was horrified and very offended by it. It provided a false and vile view of gay people. All I could think was that it was historically inaccurate, culturally ignorant, and personally offensive. He tried to convince that this story was told out of love, but if that's love then I want nothing to do with it. It was absolutely disgusting to me. But I was partially thankful my friend sent it to me as I feel it gave me a great topic to write about for my final paper. It's still in the form of a rough outline, but the main point that I am going to attempt to explain in this paper is how Christian fundamentalist groups have used false information and misrepresentation of gay people and homosexuality to oppose gay rights movements in the United States. Sodom and Gomorrah will definitely be a part of it as I am using the tract
Doom Town as my main empirical source.
Today I came across
John Corvino's website. At the top of his site he has in large font "THE GAY MORALIST". He has provided a number of columns that he has written over the years and I skimmed through them to find one called
The Sins of Sodom. This is his column:
The Sins of Sodom
by John Corvino
First published at 365gay.com on March 31, 2008 Though it may sound perverse, I get excited whenever religious fundamentalists speak up during the Q&A portion of my public events. While fundamentalists are hardly a dying breed, they seldom participate in such functions. And though I find their silence generally pleasing, it does rob me of what we college professors like to call “teaching moments.”
So it piqued my interest when, at a debate in St. Louis last week, an audience member concluded an anti-gay tirade with, “Haven’t you ever heard of the Sodom and Gomorrah story?!”
You see, I had actually read the Sodom and Gomorrah story the evening before—out loud, to a Detroit audience. If you’ve never actually read the story, find a Bible and read Genesis 19 (it’s near the beginning). You may be in for a surprise.
A quick summary: two angels come to Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham’s nephew Lot invites them into his home. An angry mob surrounds the door and demands, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” Lot protests, offering them his virgin daughters instead. (Yes, you read that right.) But the mob keeps pressing for the visiting angels, who suddenly strike them blind. The angels then lead Lot and his family to safety, and the Lord rains fire and brimstone on the cities.
Most scholars take the mob’s demand to “know” the visitors in a sexual (i.e. “biblical”) sense. Assuming they’re right, this oft-cited story is about an attempted gang rape. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that gang rape is BAD. But what does that have to do with homosexuality?
At this point fundamentalists will point to the fact that the mob declined Lot’s offer of his daughters, instead demanding the (male) visitors. “Aha,” they say. This proves that the story is about homosexuality!”
I always find this response surprising, since Lot’s offer of his daughters is an embarrassing detail of the text—for fundamentalists. Lot is supposed to be the hero of the story, renowned for his virtue. When faced with a mob of angry rapists, what does he do? Why, he does what any upstanding man would do. He offers them his virgin daughters. If you ever want an example of the Bible portraying women as expendable property, you need look no further than the Sodom and Gomorrah story.
Some biblical scholars have suggested that the true sin of Sodom is inhospitality. Inhospitality? Failing to offer visitors a drink, after they’ve traveled a long way to see you, is inhospitality. Trying to gang rape them is quite another matter. (And let’s not forget about offering them your daughters, which apparently is biblical good form.)
Lest you think Lot’s offer is a quirk, a strikingly similar story occurs at Judges 19. In this story, an angry mob demands to “know” visitors, and the host offers both his virgin daughter and his guest’s concubine. As in the Sodom story, the mob declines the women and keeps pressing for the visitor. This time, however, the guest tosses his concubine outside and closes the door. (Again, he’s supposed to be one of the good guys.) The mob violently rapes her until morning, when she finally collapses dead.
The lessons to be drawn here are several. First, most people who cite the Bible against homosexuality have little idea of what it says. Either that, or they have a rather strange moral sense. A story where the good guys offer their daughters to rapists is supposed to teach us what, exactly?
Second, the Bible contains some pretty wacky stuff. This isn’t news to those who study it carefully, but it does surprise the casual reader. For example, later in Genesis 19 Lot’s daughters get him drunk, have sex with him, and bear his children/grandchildren, without eliciting the slightest objection from the brimstone-wielding God.
After I explained all of this to my questioner in St. Louis, my debate opponent (Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family) interjected that the Bible contains more salient references to homosexuality than the Sodom story. This is undoubtedly true, but it misses the point. The point is that the Bible reflects the moral prejudices and limitations of those who wrote and assembled it. Genesis 19 makes that abundantly clear (as do passages regarding slavery, and numerous others).
Once you grant that point, you can’t settle moral claims merely by insisting that “the Bible says so.” The Bible says lots of things—some true, some false, and some downright bizarre.
So when fundamentalists quote the Bible at my events, I don’t try to silence them. On the contrary, I ask them to continue reading.
I think I especially like the last paragraph as this is something I have found in my own studies in the Bible. We often read the verses and stories we are familiar with and then just stop once it gets into unknown territory. We just accept the meaning behind them that we have been told and don't question its accuracy. And once we do read something in the Bible and recognize that it perhaps goes against what we have been taught, we do one of four things: 1) We ignore it. 2) We attempt to question it and simply end up finding ways to justify our original thoughts. 3) We question it and panic and experience a meltdown of our faith. 4) We question it and attempt to find the truth behind it. I think that Corvino has the right idea here when he asks them to keep reading. Sometimes there are things that we have been taught that are not accurate to Scripture and all it takes is a little more reading of the passage to find the truth.
It is true that in
Judges 19 the same thing happens again, where men of the city came to the door to "know" the man inside the home. In this story though, they send the concubine out and she is gang raped until she is dead. This story is very similar to the story of Sodom. And what this says to me is that there must be something culturally significant happening here. I've discovered that in that time to shame an enemy like in a time of war, for instance, they would be raped. It was a terribly shaming thing for those who were defeated. It had nothing to do with gay people or homosexuality. The act here was to intentionally inflict deep pain and shame on another person.
Something I recently read in the Bible is in
Ezekiel 16, and this has blown me away because I wonder how I have never heard this before. Perhaps someone can explain it to me because it seems fairly clear to me that the Bible explains what the sins of Sodom are. In this chapter, God is angry at the unfaithfulness of Jerusalem, stating that they are more wicked than Sodom and Samaria. Ezekiel 16:49,50 reads: "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen" (NIV). He goes on to say more of how Jerusalem is more wicked than Sodom and Samaria.
People have told me that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of the sin of homosexuality. I have been told that any view besides this is just some flawed perspective of a liberal new age pro-gay theologian who wouldn't know the meaning of Scripture even if it was written out clearly in the Bible for him to read. It appears to me that it is written pretty clearly that the sin of Sodom was indeed some form of inhospitality. What surprises me is that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is still used today as evidence against the acceptance of gay people in our churches and society, yet this verse is never referred to. Why is that?
This paper is due at the end of April. I am hoping that I will be able to explain myself properly as this may be one of the most important papers I write while in university. Not only is it worth a lot of my final grade, but it is also worth a lot to me personally in preparing myself for discussions I expect to have in the future with Christians about homosexuality. Sodom and Gomorrah is just one of the examples I will use. I hope to be able to fully examine this and other claims that have been used to oppose gay rights in the United States.
If you have any thoughts on this please let me know. I will really be able to benefit from all points of view on this and other common arguments against gay rights.
t - y.
Chatboard (0)