The task of a gay reading thus entails a multiple strategy of interconnected readings of texts. By attending to the distinction between and relations among these strategies, we become better acquainted with the biblical text itself as well as with the varied aspects of liberationist readings generally. In the material that follows, we cannot hope to accomplish more than to provide examples of the kinds of readings that may be employed. But the results of these readings may be useful not only to people who are concerned with the question of homosexuality, but also people who seek to understand the Bible in a fresh way and to liberate the tradition not only from homophobia and heterosexism but also to open the way to a non-erotophobic understanding of faith.
This Project
In this book, my intention is to break with the defensive strategy of dealing primarily with passages that are alleged to support homophobia and gay bashing. This strategy gives greater plausibility than is deserved to the traditional (mis)reading of the Bible. Instead I focus on examining what is, in fact, the preponderance of the evidence: that which includes and affirms homoerotic desire and relationships.
Most scholars today accept the drastic reduction of biblical texts that have been used to justify the condemnation of same-sex relationships and practice to a couple of verses of Leviticus together with a couple of verses of Paul. Even so, this approach has not generally led to the abandonment of the homophobic expropriation of the Bible. Instead the fallback position has been something like, “No matter how often or seldom the Bible speaks of same-sex activity (or homosexuality), it always condemns this practice.” Thus the slenderness of the evidence supportive of homophobia is compensated for by an alleged unanimity. No one seems to be embarrassed that one could make the same case (with a far greater number of texts) for, say, the institution of slavery.
But I will seek to show that this alleged unanimity is a product of willful blindness to the Bible itself. In fact, the preponderance of biblical texts relevant to the discussion affirm and even celebrate same-sex relationships and practice.
In order to make this case as clearly as possible, I focus this study on an investigation of the traditions about Jesus that are passed down through the Gospels. Legend holds that a book was published entitled Everything Jesus Said about Homosexuality. When opened, the book consisted of nothing but blank pages. The point is well made but is also misleading. I contend that the Jesus tradition contains a good deal that is relevant to the discussion of same-sex erotic relationships, and that all of it is positive.
In order that this conclusion be seen as sharply as possible, I have taken the risk of beginning with the question: “Was Jesus gay?” I admit at the outset that the question, as thus posed, does not lend itself to a simple yes or no answer. First, the contemporary idea of gayness, like the modern idea of homosexuality, does not fit well with first-century ideas and perspectives. Ideas associated with talk of homosexuality or gayness today—ideas like the classification of persons according to supposed sexual orientation, the alleged dissimilarity between homosexual and heterosexual (or between gay and straight), the supposition that relations between persons of the same sex are also relationships between persons of the same age and status, the notion of a particular lifestyle or culture associated with sexual practice, and so on—would have been puzzling, even absurd, to people of antiquity (as they are to people of many cultures in the world today) and perhaps especially to those who engaged in and celebrated erotic relationships among persons of the same sex.
Not only do modern categories not fit well on ancient evidence, but any evidence we may have about the “personal” lives of historical persons from so long ago is generally suggestive and inferential rather than explicit and definitive, whether we think of Socrates or Plato, Alexander or Julius Caesar, Athanasius or Augustine. But such uncertainly is all the more true of Jesus, whose life, teachings, and deeds are filtered through a process of reflection and reconstruction that eventuates in the production of the primary documents, the Gospels, upon which we must rely for evidence.
Despite these difficulties the question, “was Jesus gay?” has important benefits as a way of directing and organizing our investigation of biblical texts.
First, as I indicated, this question provides a way of definitively breaking with the defensive hermeneutical strategy that has accomplished much, but which has the unfortunate appearance of pleading for some special exemption for or toleration of persons who identify themselves as gay or lesbian or bisexual.
Second, the question as thus posed allows us to focus attention on texts that have been largely ignored in the discussion, above all the material with which this study begins: the relationship between Jesus and the man identified as the disciple Jesus loved in the Fourth Gospel. As we shall see, the least forced reading of the texts that concern the “beloved disciple” is one which supposes that they refer to a relationship of love expressed by physical and personal intimacy—what we might today suppose to be a homoerotic or a “gay” relationship. Because this reading has been so marginal in the history of interpretation, and has in fact been virtually silenced by homophobia and indeed by erotophobia, some care is needed in developing the interpretation. This is the task of part 1.
In part 2, we turn to additional evidence from the traditions about Jesus from other Gospels. Thus we will look at material in the Gospel of Mark that seems to confirm what we have seen in the Gospel of John: that Jesus was remembered as having an erotic relationship with another man. While other Gospels do not reflect this strand of the material, we see that Matthew and Luke do suggest that Jesus was accepting, even approving of, a person whose chief characteristic is his love for his “boyfriend.” Finally we see that the Gospels agree in suggesting that Jesus was not troubled by the gender role issues that are sometimes used to discredit same-sex relationships. Thus, in various ways, the Gospels present us with considerable evidence of the “dangerous memory” of Jesus as one who both accepted and modeled the intimate love of persons of the same sex.
In part 3, we turn to an issue that in the modern period has often been used to discredit same-sex relationships. In contemporary homophobic Christian rhetoric, homosexuality is regularly opposed to “marriage and family values.” Same-sex relationships are said to undermine these key values of civilization, and allegedly of Christianity. While this claim would have been absurd to most people of antiquity, it nevertheless merits particular attention today because of the way it is used to assert that biblical values are destroyed by the acceptance, let alone celebration, of same-sex relationships. In this section, I simply demonstrate what is obvious to any reader of the Gospels: that Jesus, far from defending marriage and family values, was adamantly opposed to the institution of the family. The contemporary arguments about the importance of marriage and family values or the older notion that sex is proper only for procreation cannot be used to obfuscate the evidence concerning the Jesus tradition.
Such then is the outline of our study as it has been directed and organized by the leading question, “was Jesus gay?” This question helps to demonstrate that homophobic appropriations of the Bible depend upon blindness to the homoerotic elements of biblical narratives, especially the narratives concerning Jesus. On the other hand, reading the biblical narrative as “gay friendly” not only does no violence to the text, but actually illumines it in the sense of making good sense both of the episodes in question and also of the general point of view of the narratives as a whole. Indeed this approach may permit the Bible to be read as it was intended to be read by at least many of its authors: as good news for all, but especially for all those violated by the prestigious and the powerful.
Terminology