In 2005, I wrote a short editorial regarding events occurring in Israel in what could be viewed as extraordinary. There the leaders from three major monotheistic world religions that were often at odds with one another — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — joined in a united demonstration to protest and to prevent a 10-day international LGBTQ Pride festival planned for Jerusalem in August that summer.
While the Middle East has been a flashpoint of conflict and warfare for millennia, this coalition between religious leaders indicated that agreement, at least of sorts, was possible. In bringing these leaders together, I, therefore, nominated the International LGBTQ Community for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, an award well deserved for converting warring parties into allies and for reducing tensions that have traditionally separated them.
My point, though filled with irony, was simple: the prime stimulus keeping oppression toward LGBTQ people locked firmly in place and enacted throughout our society — on the personal/interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels — are the destructive doctrines and judgments emanating from primarily orthodox and fundamentalist religious communities.
Fortunately, however, there exists no monolithic conceptualization of religion, for other faith communities’ policies and values are progressively welcoming toward LGBTQ people, our sexuality and relationships, and our gender identities and expressions. These communities are working tirelessly to abolish the yoke of oppression directed against us.
Throughout the ages, however, individuals and organizations have employed “religion” to justify the marginalization, harassment, denial of rights, persecution, oppression, and murder of entire groups of people based on their social identities. At various historical periods, people have applied these texts, sometimes taken in tandem, and at other times used selectively, to establish and maintain hierarchical positions of power, domination, and privilege over individuals and groups targeted by these texts and tenets.
Prior to the concept of a single God and the creation of holy texts, which followers purported were “inspired” or written directly by this God, condemnations against same-sex sexuality were relatively rare. This changed radically with the writing of the Jewish Bible and extended in the Christian gospels, and to an extent later in the Quran.
Such texts related to same-sex sexuality and gender non-conformity include but are certainly not limited to:
- Jewish Bible: Leviticus 18:22: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.
- In Orthodox Judaism, same-sex sexuality, including male-male anal sex, is in the category of yehareg ve’al ya’avor, “die rather than transgress.”
- Christian Bible: Romans 1:26: In consequence, God has given them up to shameful passions. Their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural.
- Christian Bible: Romans 1:27: Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
- Christian Bible: Timothy 1:10: For whoremonger, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.
- Christian Bible: 1 Corinthians 6-9: Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.
- Roman Catholic Catechism 2357: “…Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life [reproduction]. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
- Quran: 26:161: Your Lord is the Mighty One, the Merciful, Lot’s people, too disbelieved their apostles. Their compatriot Lot said to them: “Will you not have fear of Allah? I am indeed your true apostle. Fear Allah then and follow me. I demand of you no recompense for this; none can reward me except the Lord of the Creation. Will you fornicate with males and leave your wives, whom Allah has created for you? Surely you are great transgressors….”
- Quran: 27:54: And tell of Lot. He said to his people: “Are our blind that you should commit indecency, lustfully seeking men instead of women? Surely you are an ignorant people.” Yet this was their reply: “Banish the louse of Lot from your city. They are men who would keep chaste.” So We delivered him and all his tribe, except his wife, whom We caused to stay behind, pelting the others with rain; and evil was the rain which fell on those who had been warned.
But what if Leviticus had not included 18? Would the Christian gospels and Quran have had nothing on which to pattern their homophobic discriminations? In this event, would they have invented their own, or would there have never been these “religious” justifications to persecute people for the past several millennia based on same-sex sexuality?
Biblical scholar Idan Dershowitz believes that 18 did not appear in the original text of Leviticus:
“Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer,” Dershowitz wrote. “Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed.”
Well, maybe God simply had not decided to condemn homosexuality on first draft and it took another Earth century to come to a decision. Much more likely, though, this thing we call “God” is simply a human creation in our often-desperate attempts to make sense of the mysteries of the universe regarding creation and existence.
More ultimate questions need to be raised as the world spins around, as individuals and nations since recorded history have attempted to explain the mysteries of life, as spiritual and religious consciousness first developed and carried down through the ages, as people have come to believe their way stood as the right way, the only way, with all others as simple pretenders, which could never achieve THE truth, the certainty, the correct and right connection with the deity or deities, and as individuals and entire nations raped, pillaged, enslaved, and exterminated any “others” believing differently.
In reality, all religious doctrine stems from uncertainty and conjecture, from multiple gods, hybrid gods and humans, from Mount Olympus and before, to Earthly deities and the heavens, to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to the Burning Bush, to the Covenant and the parting of the Red Sea, to the Immaculate Conception and Resurrection, to Muhammad’s rising to Heaven from the Rock, to the Golden Tablets, all beginning with the human creation of god(s).
“Truth” is what the dominant group declares to be “Truth.” “Knowledge” is anything the dominant group defines as “knowledge,” though “knowledge” itself is socially constructed and produced.
How many wars are we going to justify in the name of “God,” our “God” versus their so-called “false gods”?
Someone once told me that throughout the ages, more people have been killed in the name of religion than all the people who have ever died of all diseases combined. I don’t know whether this is the case, but I do think it highlights a vital point that we continually reject, oppress, and kill others and are killed by others over concepts that we can never prove.
When religious leaders preach their damaging interpretations of their sacred texts on issues of same-sex relationships or identities and gender non-conformity within and outside their respective houses of worship, they must be held accountable and responsible for aiding and abetting those who target and harass, bully, physically assault, and murder people perceived as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer.
In addition, they must be held accountable as accomplices in the suicides of those who are the targets of these abusive actions, and who grow up in religious denominations and larger societies that teach them to deny, to hide, and to hate themselves.
Anyone can believe anything they wish, whether others find those beliefs laudable or offensive. When, however, the expression of those beliefs denies other individuals or groups their full human and civil rights, a critical line has been crossed, for their actions have entered the realm of oppression.
—
Do you want to be part of creating a kinder, more inclusive society?
Photo credit: Pixabay