Grace & Peace!
Buffalo, you are quite wrong in this regard. Here is Ezekiel 16:49: “Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and to the poor.”
Note also (contrary to your source) that iniquity is singular, but a multitude of sins are understood by it. It is convenient to say that the “sin of Sodom” must be homosexuality because sin is singular, but convenience, as I’m sure you’re aware, does not make something true.
Furthermore, let’s look at Isaiah 3:8-9: “For Jerusalem is ruined, and Juda is fallen: because their tongue, and their devices are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his majesty. The shew of their countenance hath answered them: and they have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it: woe to their souls, for evils are rendered to them…” These verses indicate that Sodom’s great sin is the pride they took in their own wickedness. No mention of homosexuality.
If you insist on seeing homosexuality as the sin of Sodom, you must see it within the context of the Levitical sexual prohbitions. It is clear (I would refer you to Gaca’s “The Making of Fornication”) that what the ancient Hebrews understood as fornication was any sexual activity which compromised the religious integrity of the people of Israel (which is different, I may add, from what we generally call fornication). That is–fornication occurs when one has sex with an idolator. Paul understood it similarly, which is why he had such a problem with the Ephesians–Christian men were marrying pagan women, joining the true temple to a false temple, implicating the Christian in his very marriage and through thesexual act in an act of idolatry. Such an act was understood to be an act of fornication. The prohibition against “lying the lyings of a woman” in Leviticus must be understood within this context as well–and the context of Leviticus bears this out: homosexual activity was activity other cultures did, and, moreover was associated with idolatry. Anything bearing the taint of idolatry was forbidden, and homosexual acts were forbidden not because they were “un-natural” but because they were seen by the ancient Israelites as idolatrous. Even so, many scholars have indicated that the acts prohibited by Leviticus were penetrative acts which resembled heterosexual intercourse–that is, intercrural sex, anal sex. Other forms of sexual expression between men were evidently not proscribed.
Which is all to say that even if you (wrongly) understand the principle “sin” of Sodom to be homosexuality and NOT (based on the evidence of scripture) pride in wickedness or pompous cruelty which comes from a lack of charity (otherwise known as inhospitality), then all evidence must lead you to see homosexual activity in the story as shorthand for blatant idolatry. As RyanML has repeatedly mentioned, the story of Sodom is not a story illustrating that homosexual activity is bad.
By the way, the idea that sex is primarily for procreation (and should only be practiced with as little frequency as possible by husband and wife) is apparently a Pythagorean invention (again, I would refer you to Gaca), not an idea which finds its origin in Judaism per se. The Stoic position was that the genitals are naturally ordered toward reproduction, but that the sex act is prinicipally ordered toward relationship or friendship. This seems to point in the right direction, to me, and seems quite reasonable. How the Pythagorean notion of sex (which was incredibly puritanical and somewhat arcane–as witnessed by the calculation of the nuptial number which would determine the appropriate time to procreate in order to beget moral children) came to be regarded as the norm is beyond me, unless there is some veracity to the rumors of Christianity being, in part, the development of Essene-type spirituality through contact with Pythagorean/Therapeutae influences via Hellenized Judaism.
Ryan, thanks for your support. I’d be interested in some discussion on those points, but I don’t think it’s likely to happen! Ultimately, it is much more culturally advantageous to continue to believe in the homosexual-as-scapegoat paradigm as witnessed by the insistance on the sin of Sodom being homosexuality, than it is to believe that we, as a culture, have a responsibility to hospitality which we obstinately refuse to take seriously. If we focus on homosexuality and ignore the imperative to hospitality (which, by the way, speaks directly to our understanding of the Eucharist), then we can continue on with business as usual. Again: it’s all about power.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is grace and mercy! Deo Gratias!
