Jesus and the Gays

I stole all of this from some guy named Toby Johnson. I don’t know anything about him, but I have checked the relevant details and it’s all solid:

There's an ongoing joke about Jesus's ideas on homosexuality: A pamphlet is titled "What Jesus Said About Homosexuality" and you open it and it's blank, page after page, blank.

Of course, that's true. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. Though He did mention Sodom and Gomorrah, using them as examples of inhospitality to strangers--AND neglecting to mention "sodomy."

So you have to wonder: if Jesus was God, as Christians believe, and so gifted at least in some way with Divine Omniscience, so He'd know there would one day be a terrible problem in Christianity and culture over homosexuality, gay rights, and same-sex marriage, why didn't He say anything specific.

Why didn't He say that He was abolishing all the rules in the Old Testament EXCEPT the rule against homosexual intercourse?

Why didn't He distinguish between His forgiving the woman brought to him in adultery ("Let him who is without sin cast the first stone") and His wanting to continue to hold homosexuality against people?

Why didn't He say anything about how homosexual marriage would defile the sanctity of the relationship of man and woman?

Why didn't He say anything?

Did He just keep forgetting to mention it?

The closest thing He DID say is very instructive.

In speaking about "protecting the sanctity of marriage" Jesus said:

"Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

"And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."

The disciples said to him, "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry"

But He said to them, "Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given.

"For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it." (Matt 19: 8-12)

Curiously, if you look in the glossary of the Bible I just quoted from, it defines "eunuch" as "chamberlain, official." If you depended on that for a dictionary, you'd have a hard time ever understanding what Jesus was talking about. You'd think the choice was between getting married and being a politician.

So what were eunuchs?

Eunuchs were men who didn't have sex with women and/or couldn't reproduce--who were therefore considered safe to be around women in the harem. Since they had no children, they had no vested interest in leaving a fortune to the next generation so they could be employed in government and civil service because they had no reason to be crooked or seek advantage for their own sons.

(Of course, not all men who don't or can't reproduce were necessarily thought of as eunuchs, though in that culture at that time and situation in history, most men were married and did reproduce. Having children was a way of serving God by increasing God's people in a world in which human beings were scarce. The point here is that when Jesus talked about eunuchs, he was certainly including men who didn't fit that norm. He himself didn't.)

Eunuchs were sometimes men who'd been castrated in order to serve in these functions. That's the "eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men."

Eunuchs were also men who just didn't look very masculine, who weren't interested in marrying or having sex with women, who were "sissies." Eunuchs included men who were obviously what we'd today call homosexual.

Those--clearly--were what Jesus referred to as "eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb."

SO JESUS SAID HOMOSEXUALS ARE BORN THAT WAY!

The other class of eunuchs are those who "make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." The Catholic Church has used that quotation to justify requiring celibacy and non-sexuality of its priests.

But eunuch means a man who can't reproduce, not a man who isn't sexual. Indeed some men were castrated in the old days specifically so they would stay young and pretty and could be sexual. Alexander the Great's lover Bagoas (The Persian Boy) is a prime example.

So eunuchs are men who choose the Kingdom of Heaven over marrying and raising a family. Eunuchs are men who choose to live in the present--where the Kingdom of Heaven is to be found.

Many modern gay men would fit that definition of eunuch.

If you’re going to play the scriptural one-upmanship game you need to be prepared to accept at least the possibility of the mutual validity of contradictory interpretations. No one has a monopoly on the truth. What you believe isn't more valid than what i believe even if you believe it RRRREEEEAAALLLY hard. I tend to think about Truth as something we can live a small piece of when we discuss these things openly and honestly. Besides, have a little integrity. Show a little backbone and express your prejudice and bigotry in a rational and articulate way. Don't use god as an excuse for you to be an asshole.