[sturm und drang]

To answer Xerxes' question: after reading the Baptist perspective on homosexuality, I found a Unitarian minister's take on it - one that summarizes my interpretation of the issues at hand. It was in PDF format, so I have copied and pasted (and edited for clarity) below. Thoughts?

1. Leviticus 18, verse 22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

This prohibition is part of a lengthy and rigorous Holiness Code intended to keep the Jews culturally distinct from the Canaanites, whose land Jews believed God promised to them. “[Y]ou shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you,” the God of Leviticus commands. Jews were forbidden to sow their fields with two kinds of seed or to wear garments of two different materials. Round haircuts were banned, likewise tattoos, and consultation with mediums, and sexual relations during menstruation. These practices violated ritual purity and weakened the unique identity of the Jews. Many were punishable by death. The Holiness Code may have helped Jews survive on the hostile Canaanite frontier, but its time has long passed. If we damn homosexuality on the authority of Leviticus, we must do the same with Beatle haircuts, tattoos, and cotton-polyester shirts. Otherwise we’re not Biblical, we’re biased.

2. Sodom and Gomorrah, cities synonymous with wickedness.

Two angels sent by God stay the night in the house of Abraham’s nephew Lot. Men surround the house and call out the houseguests, “that we may know them.” Lot offers them instead his two daughters, that the men“may do to them as you please” but spare his guests. When the mob refuses this substitution, the angels strike them blind, and God rains sulfur and fire on the cities. “Sodomy” has come to mean any sexual activity, homosexual or heterosexual, deemed unnatural or offensive. But the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah warranting annihilation are not named in Genesis. God decides to destroy the cities before the offense to his angels. Elsewhere, the Hebrew scriptures frequently refer to Sodom’s wickedness—its pride, its gluttony, its indifference to poverty—but not once to homosexuality.The crime of the Sodomite mob was attempted rape and violation of hospitality. In Jewish society, so sacrosanct was the safety of houseguests that Lot offered his own daughters to be raped rather than permit his guests to be violated. That the assault was by
men upon men rather than upon women was incidental. Their crime no more implicates homosexuality than King David’s sin of adultery implicates heterosexuality.

3. The first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for
one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

But Paul was not writing about homosexuality. Homosexuality as we know it today did not exist in his society. There were no homosexual relationships, only homosexual acts committed by force, by rank, by ownership of slaves as property, or by lustful abandon that itself abandoned God. The only homosexuality Paul knew was exploitation and debauchery. When he calls these acts “unnatural,” he ‘s not talking about immutable Natural Law, a theory not yet invented. He means uncommon, uncharacteristic of Greco-Roman society. When he condemns “degrading passions,” he’s talking about compulsions so powerful they deny God. He’s talking about emotional idolatry. As Paul puts in the
immediately preceding verse: “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” The sin is idolatry, not homosexuality. Paul had no idea—he had no basis for knowing—that people of the same gender could love each other and God, that they could bind themselves each to the other as faithfully, as devoutly, as tenderly as anyone.
He didn’t know that. But we do. To be faithful to Paul’s purpose, we must read his words in light of our knowledge.

4. Likewise Paul’s list in First Corinthians of “wrongdoers” who will not inherit the kingdom of God: “Fornicators, idolators, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers.”

This and a similar list in First Timothy do not describe homosexuality. They are about sensualism, selfishness, and a willful turning away from God. Jesus never once mentions homosexuality. In all the Gospels, he says not one word about men having sex with men or women with women. If he thought it was important, he might have mentioned it. He never does. What does Jesus talk about? Well, he condemns divorce, but I don’t hear many politicians clamoring for a constitutional amendment to ban it. Jesus tells the rich to give their money to the poor. Today the rich get tax breaks while the poor get service cuts. Jesus drives the moneychangers from the temple. Today, big campaign contributors and their lobbyists have the run of Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill. Jesus talks about love, compassion, not judging people, welcoming to the table the shunned and the outcast. Jesus tells of a king who holds a wedding banquet for his son. When his friends spurn his invitation, the king sends his servants into the streets to bring in the poor, the blind, the lame, the bad and the good. All are welcomed. Asked to judge a woman caught in the act of adultery, Jesus tells the scribes and the Pharisees, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." “Judge not,” he says, “and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” Asked which is the greatest commandment, Jesus answers not one but two: “‘[Y]ou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all yourmind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”