There is a widespread belief among observers of various
religions that homosexuality, per se, is sinful. I wish to make a strong case that the verses
in the Torah which are used to justify this belief have been misinterpreted,
and that what is actually proscribed is homosexual acts by straight
individuals.
Basic to my argument are two postulates: 1. Differences in wording between Torah
verses are significant, and 2. It is often the case that a story is narrated
and only later a law appears prohibiting some behavior of the characters in the
story. For example, in
Bereishit/Genesis, Cain kills Abel, but the law against murder appears much
later. Likewise, Abraham had a meal
prepared for the visiting angels containing a calf and milk (Genesis 18:8), but
only later did the laws appear pertaining to separating dairy from meat.
Comparing the verses in the Torah referring to bestiality
and to homosexual acts, we find the former mentioned in four places:
Shemot/Exodus 22:18
Anyone
who lies with an animal shall be put to death.
Vayikra/Leviticus 18:23
To
lie with any animal is contaminating (and a woman shall not stand before an
animal to mate with it, which is a perversion).
Leviticus 20:15-16
A
man or a woman who lies with an animal shall be put to death, as shall the
animal.
D’varim/Deuteronomy 27:21
Accursed
is one who lies with any animal.
Laws pertaining to homosexuality appear in only two
places in the Torah:
Leviticus 18:22
You
shall not lie with a man as you would lie with a woman; it is an
abomination.
Leviticus 20:13
A
man who will lie with a man as one lies with a woman, the two have
committed an abomination and shall be killed.
In other words, bestiality is condemned in more places
than are homosexual acts. However, there
is also a consistent difference in wording, with the addition of the reference
to lying with a woman only in the laws pertaining to homosexual acts. What this difference means to me is that,
while the laws against bestiality apply to all people, the laws about
homosexual acts apply, not to all men, but solely to men who would lie with
a woman, namely straight men (and perhaps the laws also command
lesbians, who sleep with women, not to sleep with men, which would deceive the
men about their orientation).
This leads to the second part of my argument. What Torah story is the antecedent to the
laws pertaining to homosexual acts? For
this, we turn to Genesis 18-19. After
Abraham’s circumcision, three angels in the form of men visited him, after
which two continued to Sodom and approached Abraham’s nephew Lot. After Lot fed them, the townspeople (the word
for this means “men” but may also include women) approached and demanded that
the men (referring to the angels but using the same word for “men” or people)
be brought out so that the townspeople might “know” them. (The word used here for “know,” with root yud-daled-ayin,
means to know something or to know carnally; the same word is used, for
example, in Genesis 4:1, when Adam knew Eve, who conceived and bore Cain. In Hebrew, there is a different verb, with
root nun-caf-resh, which means to know or be acquainted with someone.) Lot begged the townsmen to not act wickedly
and instead offered his two virginal daughters to them, with whom to do as they
pleased.
It is implausible that all the Sodomite men were gay or
bisexual, based on typical population prevalence of homosexuality and on the
fact that only straight men would have been interested in “knowing” Lot’s
daughters. Therefore, the offensive
behavior in this story is for straight men to engage in homosexual acts as
a show of dominance or for sexual pleasure.
It is this behavior which appears to be the antecedent of the later laws
regarding homosexual acts.
Therefore, we may conclude that both from the difference
in wording between the laws regarding bestiality and homosexual acts, and from
consideration of the specifics of the antecedent story to the latter, the
behavior the Torah is prohibiting is homosexual acts by straight men, not
homosexuality per se. Some will say that
rabbis and scholars who know far more than I have always interpreted these laws
more broadly to prohibit all homosexual acts.
My response is that my interpretation is at least equally valid, and I
do not believe that God (whatever that is), who created humans, both straight
and gay, or whoever wrote the Torah, intended to discriminate against a whole
class of God’s creations.
