Homosexuality and the Bible: the proof text

 Deuteronomy 25 v.11,12: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity. (New International Version)

No, that's not the proof text! But it is a reminder that Christians - and Jews for that matter - no longer follow Old Testament Law to the letter. If you would like more reminders of that look here for an interesting 'Top 10': https://stephencjames.com/2013/08/02/the-top-10-weirdest-old-testament-laws/

If you read my previous blog entry from four years ago you will know that I am writing from the point of view of a 'Conservative Evangelical' Christian who came to the conclusion that the Church of England has got it wrong about homosexuality. But I couldn't at the time explain in any detail why and how it got it wrong.

Now I have finally found the proof text (at least as far as I'm concerned.) It's not from the Bible. It's from a book called 'The formation of a persecuting society' by R.I.Moore. [Blackwell Publishing 1987]. I do like Blackwell. Their vast shop basement was immediately below my college library, and one Sunday fifty years ago, while showing my parents round, I discovered the door between Blackwell's and the Library was unlocked, and I was able to show my parents a vast display of hundreds of thousands of unattended books!

Not only are there too many books in the world to read, there are too many History books. This is my excuse for not knowing who R.I.Moore was. He is the Editor in Chief of Blackwell's (rather ambitious) multi-volumed History of the World. Among other things this suggests he has no particular axe to grind in the silly impasse that Conservative Evangelicals have got themselves into with regard to homosexuality. But, as it happens, I believe he has provided (and for some time now, I might add!) the key to removing it..

The deadlock in the argument is perhaps partly because we actually know very little about the particular sexual behaviour which was/is being condemned in the Bible. The reaction of both sides in the homosexuality argument to the lack of evidence has frequently been to write themselves a note saying 'Argument weak here – shout louder'. It is not clear from the Bible, as I pointed out in my previous blog, why it appears that homosexual behaviour was being condemned.

The Church, on the other hand, is nevertheless very precise and clear that sexual contact between men or between women is sinful. However, what R.I.Moore points out, partly on the basis of another book, 'Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality - Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century' by John Boswell - is that the Western Church did not regard homosexual behaviour in particular as a sin until the 12^th Century. For a thousand years the Church was content to advocate chastity and condemn adultery, and homosexual behaviour was considered within this context and not as a sin in its own right.

The crucial point that Moore makes, which one might guess from the title of his book, is that it was a change in society in the 11^th Century, not primarily in the Church or Christian thought, that was behind the definition of homosexual behaviour as a sin worthy of the severest punishment by Church authorities. The change was spearheaded by bishops, abbots and kings, not by theologians. The change in society can be seen, for example, in the Crusade movement, which identified Islam as the enemy. But enemies closer to home, Jews, heretics and lepers, were now identified too, and many began to die at the hands of the Church during the 13^th century. This, Moore makes clear, is the context in which homosexuals were suddenly picked on. By 1300 the accusation of sodomy had become a reason for prosecution, and death the normal punishment.

Some years ago I shared a flat with four Christian (straight) men. Most of us were from a very well-known Evangelical parish in South West Greater London. We were all very young and earnest, and all very professional, except perhaps for me – I'd worked as an usher in a cinema, and spent a period of unemployment, before joining an advertising agency. One day one of our number received, out of the blue, a catalogue for men's underware. He was deeply shocked by the intrusion, and began planning a very strong letter of protest, amid outraged cries of 'batting for the other side', and a general air of witchhunt – all provoked by this uninvited mailing. I didn't join in their outrage, having recently worked alongside a team of ushers who would have been proud of such labels, though at the time chiefly favouring the term 'camp as a row of tents'. In fact I was now shocked at my companions, who in this instant had been transformed into Nazi stormtroopers. (Actually the one who received the letter was normally the gentlest guy in the world, and later became a vicar.)

Our attitudes were based on prejudice, ignorance, and the norms of society. If we knew anything about homosexuality it would have been either that it was illegal, or possibly that it had just been decriminalised, I can't remember which. Our attitudes were wrong. Actually they were wrong when they first surfaced in 11^th Century Western Europe. The Church was stupid not to have seen that at the time, and even more stupid that it continues to do so today.

Oh, and to my companions in a London cinema many years ago – sorry society and church got it wrong for so long.