It is tough, lonely, and occasionally dangerous to be an LGBT religious activist. Fellow queers think you’re an apologist for an oppressive system, or that you haven’t yet gotten over your guilt about being gay. Religious people think you’re nuts, or evil, or worse. And you have to be told, time and time again, that your love for your partner, lover, or friend is no different from someone’s lust for a sheep. I think our work is saving the world, but it definitely sucks at times.
Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, a regular contributor to this journal, has been
one of the few activists to “heal the healer,” as it were. Her book,
Bulletproof Faith, is an invaluable guide to queer folks and allies who,
perhaps unwittingly, find themselves on the front line of religious
arguments about sexuality and gender. From meditation instructions to
old-fashioned encouragement,
Bulletproof Faith is a treasure.
Recently, on
The Huffington Post, Rev. Chellew-Hodge
suggested that gays
and lesbians should never argue scripture—in particular, the half dozen
“clobber verses” that some people interpret against gays. Why? Because
nobody wins, everyone’s opinion hardens, and we talk past each other,
because gays and lesbians are usually not biblical literalists, while our
opponents usually are. Most importantly, she wrote, “the Bible has nothing
much to say about homosexuality,” which after all is a modern concept
not known to the pre-modern men who wrote the Bible—men who also
believed that the earth was flat and that women were property.
Chellew-Hodge’s suggestion sounds wise, but I want to respectfully disagree
with it. I think we can make progress by talking about Scripture, even if we
adopt a literalist perspective for the sake of argument. (For what it’s worth,
my new book, coming out in October—God vs. Gay? The Religious Case
for Equality—does just that. So I’m a little invested in the idea.)
First, we don’t need to “win” on the clobber verses—we need to tie. I agree
that nobody will ever “win” on the definitive reading of
Romans 1:26. However,
many LGBT people (and allies) have put forth plausible, close readings of it,
as well as
Leviticus 18:22 and
1 Corinthians 6:9. (It’s scary that I know these
citations by heart.) Not by explaining them away on context, or ascribing them
to a limited human perspective, but by looking closely at words like
toevah
(“abomination,” but really “taboo”) and
para physin (“unnatural,” but not in
anything like a scientific sense). On these micro-points, some of which I’ve
discussed
here,on RD, our readings are as good as theirs, if not better.
So then a dilemma arises. When faced with two equally coherent interpretations
of biblical verses, what do we do? Well, we have to turn to our fundamental values
and ask which reading makes sense in light of those values. By way of analogy,
“thou shalt not kill” seems to admit of no exceptions—and yet, obviously it does,
because other biblical verses discuss the law of war. So we resolve the ambiguity
in one verse by looking at other ones.
And this is where our tie turns into a win. Unless the very existence of sexual
diversity is denied, the anti-gay readings of the clobber verses raise a lot of
problems. How can we square our value that “it is not good to be alone” with
a demand that all gay people be celibate for life? How can we reconcile our
values of fairness and justice with penalizing people for an involuntary trait?
(Of course, not every queer person experiences sexuality this way, but some
do.) It’s a mess.
On the other hand, if we read the clobber verses narrowly, none of these
problems arise. Thus, between two equally valid readings, the one that maintains
our fundamental values of love, companionship, fairness, justice, honesty,
and human dignity wins.
Is this too abstruse for arguing around the dinner table? I don’t think so.
Most folks still believe that the Bible speaks clearly and unambiguously
about homosexuality. Where they disagree is in what to do about it. But the
Bible doesn’t speak clearly and unambiguously—quite the contrary.
And we need to make that clear.
Chellew-Hodge’s program hangs our religious hopes on literalists changing
into non-literalists. Now, I wouldn’t mind if that happened, but it’s a tall order—
more like a miracle. Folks have deep-seated reasons for their commitments
to biblical inerrancy; deeper than their love for their own children. As religious
progressives and advocates for equality, we can’t hang our hopes on divesting
people of this belief. We can do better—not because literalism is right, but
because we don’t need it to be wrong.
In contrast, my approach only requires that people admit that there is a lot
more unclarity in the clobber verses than they previously thought. From there,
we’re on home turf. Then we can have the real conversation: how God’s
grace operates in the lives of LGBT people, how gay and lesbian love is
a path to holiness. Then we can testify to the truth of LGBT experience:
that sexual diversity does exist. Then we can speak from our own experience,
our own witness.
But first we have to crack the false façade of biblical unambiguity.
I am convinced that we can open that crack, on the face of the biblical text itself,
and that when we do so, the light will come in.
By JAY MICHAELSON AND CANDACE CHELLEW-HODGE
http://www.religiondispatches.org
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