Above All Else, Love

I can still hear his words so clearly. 

"I think all of the gays should be taken out back and shot." 

I remember the fire that lit inside of my veins at that moment. I snapped my head to my right, fixing my angry eyes on the boy sitting next to me. He was a very average boy in my small town - cute but not too cute, smart but not too smart. I was sitting next to this very average boy on a very average day in sociology class during the middle of our senior year of high school - our minds fixed on the next home basketball game, who would ask us to prom, or what excuse we would give our parents to stay out a little past curfew. We were just average kids. Good kids. But there, right in the middle of our daydreams and our innocence, was something that made my heart sink into my stomach. It was sitting right next to me in a flannel shirt. The average boy with the handsome smile, a smile that gave me butterflies in middle school, said some of the worst words I'd ever heard in my seventeen years. That smile looked like a smirk now as his eyes met my own and he saw my outrage. 

"What did you say?" 

He didn't back down. He didn't even blink. 

"It's just gross. You can't be mad at me for that. God is the one saying they're going to hell. I'm just saying that I wish we could just line 'em up and shoot 'em." 

My ears were burning. I felt nauseous. My mouth went dry and I couldn't get my voice to make a sound. I wanted to scream. For reasons I still don't understand, the teacher kept on with the lecture. No harsh words for this boy. No punishment. 

It's been over five years since this particular incident. That fire still runs through my veins when I think about it. My ears still burn. But I'm not silent anymore. In fact, I have a lot to say. And I pray he reads this. 

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Dear Young and Misinformed,

I'm still so angry with what you said. You casually used God as a justification for wanting gay people to die. Maybe you were making a horrible joke. Maybe you've progressed in your thinking and you now see just how ridiculous your argument was. Maybe you are in a healthy love and can now understand just how important that feeling is for all people. If so - perhaps this letter doesn't apply. 

But I fear that it does. I may not have been as articulate as I had hoped to be all those years ago but I have a few things I'd love to say if you'll give me the chance. 

First and foremost, I want to state that I too am a firm believer in God - the creator of Heaven and Earth. I believe that a man named Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for all of us, freeing us from our sin. I believe that we will all be judged by our Creator. Only our Creator. 

And that is where we disagreed so long ago.  

We have what I like to call social lenses - perspectives through which we view the world. Despite our shared history of friends and small town activities, you and I are going to read the Bible from two different perspectives. You have an entirely separate set of experiences than I do and it would be naive to assume that we would share the same social lens when reading the Bible or anything else for that matter. 

There are seven total verses in the entire Bible that could even remotely apply to what we would now call homosexuality. Granted, the Bible does not actually deal with the kind of homosexuality that we often see today – monogamous, long-term, loving relationships  - because there was no concept of it back then. There was no Greek word for it, no Aramaic word for it, and no Hebrew word for it. I believe that the Bible is the word of God. I also believe that those words were put into the minds of men of that time and that they wrote their respective books of the Bible through their social lenses at that time, using the words available to them.

Biblical literalists are quick to argue, “That’s what the Bible says!” But is it? Or is that how you are reading it through your social lens? We need to determine the context and language and culture and customs of the time in which the Bible was written in order to understand the meaning of what is truly being said.

So let's start with the most commonly used argument against homosexuality. Leviticus 20 reads: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

So there it is. Sleeping with another man is an abomination. That’s what the Bible says. It is punishable by death. But what exactly is an abomination? It means the mother of all sins, right? The worst of the worst, worthy of damnation? Not so much. The Hebrew definition of an abomination meant anything that went against tradition or against ritual. Other abominations included eating shrimp, co-mingling crops, eating rabbit, and wearing clothes of two fabrics (i.e. wool and linen).

When the Bible was written, the growth of the Hebrew nation depended upon making lots and lots of babies. To be frank: semen was a valuable resource and needed to be protected. A guy in the Old Testament named Onan ejaculated outside of the woman so that she wouldn't get pregnant and God struck him dead. The “spilling of his seed” was against tradition, ritually impure, and worthy of death – an abomination.

And then of course there is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have heard this story told so many times as an example of God’s disgust and hatred of homosexuality. But let’s get some facts straight.

God declared he was going to destroy the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. He had heard they are exceedingly wicked towns and sent two angels to see what was up. Abraham went with the angels to visit a man named Lot. Lot was a really cool guy, welcoming them in for food and conversation, as required by Hebrew law. Not welcoming in strangers was a serious social no-no.

But the town of Sodom was a very wealthy community. They didn't like the idea of strangers coming in and threatening their wealth so they canceled that law. When law enforcement got word that Lot had welcomed in these outsiders, they sent officers to pound on the doors of the house, telling the visitors to go away.

Now this is where it gets tricky.

One translation reads, "Let these men come out so we can have sex with them," while another reads, "Let these men come out so we can know them."

It is speculated that the officers were so angry that they wanted to gang rape these men, an act of humiliation used as punishment at the time. Defeated members of an army would sometimes be anally raped as a means of demeaning and humiliating them even further. The angels struck the officers with blindness and ushered Lot and his family to safety.

The story is not about perversity. It is not about God's hatred of homosexuals. It is about cruelty and inhospitality. The irony of it all is that by judging homosexuality so harshly, fundamentalist Christians are disregarding kindness and compassion and committing the very sins that got Sodom and Gomorrah burnt to the ground. Inhospitality. Cruelty. Hatred.

But maybe we should talk about Romans 1:26. It reads: "God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned their natural relationships with women and were inflamed with lust for one another."

That seems pretty cut and dry right? 

Except it's not. 

The Jewish context for the words natural and unnatural can be translated to customary and uncustomary. It is clear that God disapproves of same sex genital intimacy because it does not produce children. Yet neither does sex for pleasure between a man and a woman on birth control. Neither does sex after menopause. Neither does masturbation. But we don't refer to those acts as unnatural because they do not produce children.

The Bible is a love story; a story of epic proportions about sacrifice, kindness, hope, and forgiveness. Not hate. Not torture. Not human judgment. The texts used against present day homosexuality are inappropriate because, in the time the Bible was written, it was uncustomary to see the kinds of long-term, loving relationships between two men or two women that we see today. When writing the Bible, these men could not have even comprehended the kind of monogamous, dedicated gay relationships that we see today. It was no fault of their own. It was merely outside of the social lens.

Sexuality is one component of the far greater, more powerful phenomenon of love. I am a straight, happily married woman and enjoy a healthy sexual relationship with my husband. So why is it that nobody judges how appropriate or strong our relationship is based solely on our sexual tendencies? 

Because love is more than sex.

Homosexuality is not the sin. The sin is the fear and loathing of homosexuals. Judgment is sinful. Hatred is sinful. And by using God as a justification for that hate, you are doing yourself and your faith such a disservice. God wants us to grow in our faith and in our love for one another. Hate limits us. Denying change limits us. Please free your mind from the shackles of your disgust and judgment and try to open your heart. 

Marriage used to be the acquisition of a woman to a man. Yes, acquisition. As in property. He would give her a marriage band and she was legally his. But we have progressed as a society since then. With the exception of a few men stuck in the metaphorical Stone Age, it is a generally accepted idea that women deserve more than that. Both men and women now exchange rings, vowing to honor and respect each other until death do they part.

Until sometimes it doesn’t. Divorce rates hang out right around the 50% mark in this country. Just over 41% of marriages consist of one or both spouses committing adultery. But we’ll just sweep those stats under the rug with working on the Sabbath and not taking the Lord’s name in vain. 

Is homosexuality clumped together with the far greater sins somewhere and I didn't get the memo? 

Some of the most well known Biblical literalists in the country, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Dobson, and the like, believe that the Bible is to be read as word-for-word truth. No interpretation. No cultural adaptation. No wiggle room. No exceptions. Except for that line about "give all that you have to the poor" right? Their multi-million dollar a year salaries seem to go against that one but we can sweep that right under the rug with the others. Uff. It's getting crowded under there.

Oooh but now I'm started on Jim Dobson. He's the Focus on the Family dude whose Love Won Out reparative treatment program claims to help homosexuals transition out of this lifestyle choice.

Interesting. 

Because the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychoanalytical Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, and The National Association of Social Workers have all stated: 

•       homosexuality should not be viewed as a mental disorder

•       we do not encourage or condone reparative or conversion therapy

•       sexual orientation is not a choice and it cannot be changed

I like to think doctors and scientists know a thing or two. But aside from their medical and scientific expertise, I have my own brain and my own heart. It is pretty common sense to think that if I were pressured to deny a key aspect of my identity, disastrous consequences could follow. 

Studies estimate that LGBT teens are three to seven times more likely to attempt suicide. It is estimated that every five hours, an LGBT teen takes their life. For every one who completes suicide, there are 20 more who tried. This is an epidemic and words like yours are the fuel to the fire.

That declaration of yours that gays should be taken out back and shot... that right there is the fuel. Did you stop to think that the boy next to you could have been questioning his sexuality? Probably not. But you're not alone. That same message is laced in the sermons regarding the perversion of homosexuality. It is heard in the insults hurled at athletes when they make a mistake - "sissies" or "pansies" or "faggots." 

Words are so powerful. And you sure did choose some awful ones. Maybe it was fear, a claim I know you will deny. Because you're probably not afraid of anything. You're a big strong man. Definitely not afraid of homosexuals. Disgusted but not afraid. 

But at the very core of your disgust is fear. You're afraid of what social changes could occur if gay marriage were legalized in this country. Making an other brings a sense of togetherness for all of those outside of that label - we can be a group and all of them are outsiders. The Bible has been used in the past to justify the despicable treatment of blacks, Jews, and women, baseless justifications that we now look back on with shame and embarrassment, and yet here we (or rather you) are again: doing the exact same thing to gay people.  

I refuse to hate you. I refuse to become prejudiced against the prejudiced because I will never stoop to that level. My favorite passage in the entire Bible is 1 Peter Chapter 4 verses 8-10 which reads: "Above all else, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." 

My God-given gift is to take the complexity of thoughts and emotions and chaos in my mind and turn it into relatable words for others to read. I strive to be a faithful steward of God's grace through my words - words of kindness, compassion, and tolerance. Above all else, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. If you take one thing from this lengthy, wordy post, let it be that right there. Above all else: love. 

Sincerely, 

Lauren 

P.S. As I was about to hit "publish" my phone buzz buzzed. NBC News informed me that Rhode Island's governor just signed a bill making it the tenth state to allow same-sex marriage.... 

"You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone. Oh the times they are a-changin'!"