Gays today compared to Biblical times

I've had a series of blogs that attempt to help readers, especially young people, to be more intellectual in their discernment of fact from fiction, and in making mature decisions regarding their policy decisions. Here is one that helps gays, especially young ones, better understand that they are victims of a great misconception.

Let us compare gays today to gays during Biblical times, since much of the misunderstanding and hot debate is around "what Jesus would think" and "what the Bible says." But you cannot possibly interpret the Bible without understanding it's "lingo," in other words, the language it is written in during the cultural times within which it is set.

Gays today live in a society where people either earn their living via jobs and paychecks, or through social services, private wealth, or some other support network. In Biblical times the family unit was your ENTIRE source of "income." No one "had jobs" or "earned paychecks." The "treasure" was your family, both the size of it (more hands and feet to feed more people) and the agricultural or craftsman know how that was entirely taught from parent to child.

Gays were not "oppressed" and the last thing that they wanted was to be "free to be gay." Gays were family men. They would have dropped their "gayness" in a New York minute if it meant that they no longer had a family. A man and a woman's wealth was their children. Examples of where dowries and so forth meant additional children were a burden was a minority position in remote cultures during Biblical times. 99% of society could not wait to get married and have children. Children were loved and treasured, if not for the reasons that some do in more affluent times (when you can just dote on them and raise them privileged) nowadays, then certainly for the two reasons that 1) your family heritage, whether it was farming, shepherding, or even being a slave was passed on, with hope that the next generation could purchase one's way out of slavery, or till a larger field, or gather a larger herd and 2) more hands could do more work. Remember, there were no "mod cons" back then. Both men and women needed children to help with food gathering and preparation, kindling for fire, drawing water, making clothes, hunting, helping their parents in their craft trade, etc.

So what is condemned in the Bible is the vast minority of people who would want a lifestyle that was completely unproductive. This is why it's called "spilling the seed on the ground" and other what you might think are quaint phrases. But what they meant is that they understood that the vast majority of people who have a gay tendency were also able to have families and indeed, would starve and perish without them. So it was only the few who wanted to live a total hedonistic "gay" style that would have been forbidden and to whom these quaint phrases really address themselves. Trust me, if a guy was married, had kids, but then also had a gay tendency on the side, this was not so uncommon nor was this a threat to his own survival (as far as having a family to support and in turn be supported by, such as agriculture for example) nor to the community. What people did not want, and this is where both God and Jesus are quite clear, is that the "gay" sexual drives overcome the common sense reality that people needed families with children in order for themselves and the entire community to survive. Remember, the Bible is just as tough on prostitutes. Notice the Bible does not zing a woman who gets a little action on the side (not that this would be approved of, or happen a lot, but the stuff that makes it into the Bible and has God's attention are things that are anti-life and anti-human survivability).

I hope this helps you in your personal contemplation and research to better understand the context of the reality of how to scratch out not only a living but survival in those days. No sane man who was "gay" would have traded having a wife and children to run around and have his "gayness." Men with "gay" tendencies back in Biblical times would think, for the most part, that gay men today are insane and irresponsible, and have a death wish. (And that would be even more so true with women who had what we would call "lesbian" tendencies today. They would never have given up having a normal family and children in order to "actualize their lesbian sisterhood.") The poorest Biblical man had enormous pride in his family, both his wife and his sons and daughters, and that is true if the Biblical times man was totally straight or had what we would call today "gay" tendencies. Life was very short back then (someone who lived into their fifties was considered old). Rich or poor, one's legacy and reason for being (and means of survival) was having a spouse and having children.

This is why in the only passage that one can glean Jesus' attitude toward gays he calls them "eunuchs." Jesus is not being literal, as in these are castrated men, because he says "some are born that way." Jesus calls them eunuchs because anyone who could not or would not have children (unless they were of a hermit or otherwise austere religious life choice) really stood out as a rarity in that society. In other words, "gay" men did not by and large choose to be "eunuchs," which means someone who cannot father a child. Jesus uses the word "eunuch" because the disgust with a totally gay lifestyle would come from their shirking their own family survivability and that of their whole community (everyone depended on each other for water, farming, and pastoral livelihoods). So Jesus says that there are three types of eunuchs, where eunuch means "men who do not father": ones who are born that way (so gay that they cannot be aroused by a woman or totally biologically, like a testical birth defect, unable to father children), made so by society (castrated) or by choice (here he refers not to gays but to those men who refuse to be fathers because they have dedicated themselves to a life style that is solitary, usually for contemplative religious reasons). There were lots of single Jewish men without children, but they were not gay, they were usually men who were very zealous regarding religion. An example of this would be Saul who became St. Paul. The other obvious example and role model for many is St. John the Baptist. Biblical times had a rich community and tradition of male single men who were hermits, zealots, preachers or scholars. They therefore were "eunuchs" "by choice" because they would not father children. Jesus is saying this is OK, because a calling is worth pursuing, even if it means that not everyone is to "be fruitful and multiply." "Choice" in the Bible does not mean what choice does today. Choice today tends to mean "options." In Biblical times people had few options and did not want options. They wanted a spouse, children, and a way to expand and support their family and its holdings, or gain freedom if they were slaves.

See, you must understand that the Bible and God's entire interest is toward the survivability and wholesomeness of humanity. God is less concerned with individual intimate acts than he is about the destruction of the family and of love for children turning to indifference or even hatred. So during those times the vast majority of men who had some sort of gay tendency would never have thought of themselves as either "gay" or being "eunuchs from birth" because they would virtually all of them been happy to have a wife and children. Doing so was their survivability, their treasure, and their vocation. Gay urges would not at all represent either their overall personality or their "lifestyle choice."