Ep 10: Adam and Steve (what the Bible says about homosexuality)

00:00In 1 Corinthians and in Thessalonians we have this idea, it's better to be celibate, but

00:07if you can't hack celibacy, go ahead and get married.

00:10However, sex within marriage should be without passion, because that's for the dirty, dirty

00:15Gentiles.

00:17And it should be basically prophylactic.

00:20You only have enough sex to keep a lid on sexual desire.

00:25Not to say you must keep it at a level zero at all times, but to say whenever it starts

00:31bubbling up, you don't want it to boil over.

00:34And so sex is really prophylactic within Paul's sexual ethic, but he would prefer people

00:40just didn't have it.

00:43Yeah, consider me Team Dirty, Dirty Gentile on that one, but that's just me.

00:49Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beecher and you are listening to the Data

00:56Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase public access to the scholarly study of the

01:03Bible and religion and combat misinformation about the Bible and religion.

01:08How are you today, Dan?

01:09I'm doing great.

01:10I'm just I'm just ready to combat some misinformation or, you know, expose people to scholarship.

01:18You never know what's going to happen here.

01:20Little from column A, little from column B, we're going to look at it.

01:23Yeah, exactly.

01:24And this week we are, we're having some fun.

01:27We're only doing one segment because it's an important issue.

01:32It's a complex issue.

01:35It's a difficult one and we're going to dive into it head first.

01:40Okay.

01:41Are we not?

01:42We are.

01:43All right.

01:44So Dan, what are we talking about?

01:46I think today we're going to be talking about homosexuality in the Bible.

01:51Oh, scum-dum-dum.

01:53Yeah.

01:54Something that comes up.

01:55Grish yourselves.

01:56Comes up all the time.

01:57Everybody buckle up.

01:58Yeah.

01:59My family and I watched Airplane last night.

02:02We I was just stumbling around HBO Max and they happen to have Airplane on there and

02:07I was like, awesome.

02:08So I got to introduce my kids to a show that I grew up just loving.

02:14So I don't know.

02:15But you reminded me of that the buckling up, well buckling up, but don't don't don't

02:20also.

02:21Oh, yeah.

02:22That's exactly.

02:23All the things.

02:24Yeah.

02:25All the things.

02:26And don't call me Shirley.

02:27Yeah.

02:28That's the, my daughter loved that.

02:31All right.

02:32So go ahead.

02:33Good Lord.

02:34We are just on top of each other today.

02:36Yeah.

02:37It is.

02:38It's a mess.

02:39So let's, let's start with, I think we need to start with sort of a basis.

02:44Yeah.

02:45It's not ground us in what we're talking about in terms of sexuality in terms of, you know,

02:52biblical times.

02:53Mm hmm.

02:54Help us out with that.

02:55Well, I want to start with trying to explain that.

02:59Ancient they thought and talked about sexuality and organize their society around sexuality

03:07very, very differently from the way that we do today.

03:10And so when, in our public discourse and discussions with other people in the ways that we think

03:15about sexuality, science and our culture and media and a bunch of other things have kind

03:23of created the, the structures that we use to kind of give flesh to the skeleton of

03:30what sexuality is, what human sexuality is, including homosexuality.

03:35And just, ancient they did it in a very different way. And when we look at the biblical text

03:40and we superimpose those frameworks, those interpretive lenses, if you will, that we

03:47use today, if we superimpose them on the biblical text, we are going to distort what

03:53those authors were trying to do with their texts. We are going to misunderstand how they

03:59thought and talked about sexuality. And so I want to provide a couple of insights from

04:04the broader study of sexuality in the ancient world to help us kind of reorient our thinking.

04:11And one of the main things that I think we need to understand is that we try to think

04:15of sexuality today, sexual relationships, as reciprocal, as equal partnerships, as two

04:24people doing something together. And this is, I mean, ideally, that's what we mean.

04:32Disparationally, that's what we would like everyone to, to how we would like people to

04:38talk and think about sexuality. And it was much less so, anciently, in the ancient world,

04:45there was a social hierarchy of domination and one of, and I'm, I'm still trying to find

04:54the right terminology for this, but I refer to a social hierarchy of domination and penetration.

05:01Although I'm going to use when I refer to, to this later on, to be a little more, a little

05:08more discreet. I'm going to talk about active slash insertive roles versus passive slash

05:18receptive roles. But anyway, sexuality was not something that two people did together.

05:24It was something that one person did to another person, someone lower down on that social

05:31hierarchy of domination and penetration. The roles, the social roles, sat a lot closer

05:37to the surface and were a lot more, were a lot more normative. They were a lot more important

05:47to how people function socially. And so men, particularly freeborn citizen men in most

05:56societies in the first millennium BCE were at the very top of the social hierarchy of

06:02domination and penetration. And there was, and then you had grades below that. You had

06:09men who may not be freeborn, slaves were below that women were below that children were below

06:16that there were a lot of different ways this hierarchy could be structured. But across ancient

06:22Southwest Asia, the cultures that we are going to be talking about freeborn citizen men were

06:28at the very top of that social hierarchy. And for a freeborn citizen man, to take a role

06:38that might be considered submissive or subordinate within a sexual relationship was considered

06:45to violate that hierarchy, which was problematic. And this is manifested in a lot of different

06:52ways. And I think one of the most interesting ways that is something when we think about

06:56sexual propriety today, we don't really get too upset about this. But, anciently, if a

07:04man was on the bottom during intercourse with his wife, that was considered inappropriate.

07:12And we have ancient Mesopotamian texts that talk about how that renders a man ritually

07:16impure for a month. And we have a Talmudic text that actually says that that will give

07:25a man diarrhea. Wow. And so that this is how

07:32I didn't see that coming to be perfectly honest. But there's a there's a guy named David Heyward

07:38who does a I think he calls himself. He does a cartoon, I think it's naked pastor cartoon.

07:45They're pretty basic drawings, but he did he did one where it was a woman was was on

07:51top. They're in bed. You know, they got the blankets covering them. But I think the man

07:58stops her and says, wait a minute, is woman on top biblical? And it's a and it's a joke.

08:04But I responded to when he tweeted this out, I was like, probably not. Yeah, because of

08:10this disturbingly, no. Yeah, this social hierarchy meant that for a man to take a submissive,

08:17even just sexual position in a socially acceptable act of sexual intercourse was considered problematic.

08:26Well, it's a darn good thing that many thousands of years later, we have evolved so that nobody

08:32has these kinds of thoughts. I can't believe I honestly can't believe how much I encounter

08:38this kind of thinking still today. Like, yeah, we still see it in a lot of, you know, this

08:43alpha male, you know, dominating blah, blah, blah, here a lot, interestingly, from people

08:50calling themselves in cells. So like, you know, if you're saying you're involuntarily

08:56celibate, and yet you have big feelings about who's supposed to be on top and who's supposed

09:01to be dominating and who's supposed to be, you know, important. Maybe you maybe maybe

09:06find a link there. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Well, and and I think it's it's interesting.

09:12It's because the people who are the most concerned about it are the people who are also most

09:17adamant that there is something essential about gender roles. Right. When it's like, you all

09:24you ever talk about is the performativity of gender roles. Yeah. And so you are acknowledging

09:30that gender is something that you do not something that you are, which yeah, the and just the

09:37obliviousness of folks who try to try to have their cake and eat it to regarding that is

09:44just yeah, just just the concept of saying, Oh, you guys are all beta males. I'm an alpha

09:49male and all these other guys are beta male. Well, if there's that many beta males, then

09:55that's part of masculinity. That's part of maleness. Isn't it? Question mark? Yeah. Are

10:00you going to compartmentalize it up? Is there are there grades of masculinity? If so, then

10:06it's not that binary. Right. Exactly. But this idea that's this this notion of a social

10:13hierarchy of domination and of penetration, it is still active today, but we see it back

10:19in the end of the second millennium BCE, the beginning of the first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia,

10:25we see it in Talmudic literature a thousand years later, we see it in the alphabet of Ben

10:31Syrah, which is a medieval text written somewhere between probably the year 701,000 or excuse

10:38me, CE. And this text, this tells the story of where Lilith came from. And according to

10:46this text, Lilith was Adam's first wife in the Garden of Eden. And she didn't want to

10:51be on the bottom. She wanted to be on the top. This is all the text says she refused to be

10:57on the bottom. She said, I wanted to be on top. And Adam said, it's not in your nature

11:01to be on top. And she gets upset and storms out of the Garden of Eden. And then says,

11:10I'll tell you what's in my nature. Thank you very much. Yeah. And she leaves and then God

11:15sends these three angels after her to try to convince her to come back to the Garden of

11:19Eden. And she's like, I'm not doing it. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna go be this succubus

11:24that's going to, I'm going to afflict newborn babies. And I'm going to give men wet dreams

11:32and things like this. And I'm gonna, the only way that babies will be protected from

11:38me as if they're wearing an amulet with the names of these three angels on them. And this

11:44is likely a very complex etiology for why people were using amulets on their babies to

11:51try to protect them from evil spirits. But Lilith, the first wife of Adam, is one of

11:57the main ones of these evil spirits. We have to talk about Lilith at some point. Oh yeah,

12:02we'll definitely need to talk about Lilith. Lilith, excuse me. But you can, you can see

12:05that this is socially salient. This is something that people are aware of and something that

12:11is important within literature, within society, for thousands of years. And so this is what's

12:19governing what people think of as appropriate and inappropriate sexual acts is this hierarchy

12:27of domination and penetration. And there are a lot of other aspects of it, you know, when

12:31it comes to incest and other things like that, there are boundaries around that as well.

12:37But when it comes to why in the first millennium BCE, they're getting, they're not happy about

12:43this idea of male same sex intercourse. That's the primary driver of this, of rationalizing

12:51why it's wrong. I want to take a step back for a second though and say that the primary

12:56driver is an intuitive one is this just kind of subconscious, intuitive of version to the

13:03idea of male same sex intercourse on the part of those who are not oriented in that direction.

13:12And so that's going to bubble to the surface socially as that kind of ickiness. This is

13:18weird. We don't like this. And then you have to come up with a reason why you have to explain

13:23why it's wrong. It's bad. And the explanation that is most central to most of the rationalizations

13:30is this idea of this hierarchy of domination and penetration.

13:34Yeah, it does feel like there is a, I mean, when when that power differential is has any

13:44kind of when there's anything that sort of causes someone to question it or causes someone

13:49to to flip it on, you know, when it's flipped on its head in any way, it seems like that's

13:55when people start to really freak out. Yeah. And so, and so when they, you know, when it

14:01makes sense to me that when somebody encountered an act that seemed to be non normative in

14:09terms of the power differential, even if it's just something as intimate as two people having

14:14sex in the way that they want to have sex, I can see how that would kind of kind of upset

14:21some folks. Yeah. And, and I want to add that I think I would say that the size of the society

14:27involved has something to do with how acceptable versus unacceptable these things are if because

14:35a larger society is going to be stronger socially, but you're going to have a lot more interactions

14:41between people who live very, very different lives. The smaller society, the society, the

14:46kind of more homogenous things are. And so the more shocking something that is non normative

14:56is going to be to that society, whereas a larger society like the empires of Egypt and

15:01of Mesopotamia and places like that, you're just exposed to a lot more difference and

15:08a lot more pluriformity, a lot more diversity. And so things that would shock small towns

15:15are not going to be as shocking. And so there tends to be more tolerance because people

15:20have more experiences with these things and they're not new, they're not different, and

15:25they're not as icky. And so when we look in the legislation of the rest of ancient Southwest

15:31Asia, we really don't see any concerns with there. There's no legislation that is prohibiting

15:39same sex intercourse. Interesting. The closest you get is a middle Assyrian law that it's

15:45a little difficult to interpret. But what it seems to be saying is if a freeborn citizen

15:51man, and we're not sure if this is coerced, if it's forced, or if it's consensual, engages

16:01in an act of same sex intercourse with another freeborn citizen man, they have victimized

16:07the, the other freeborn citizen man. And when it, when it talks about engaging in the act,

16:13what it means is that the original, the first freeborn citizen man taking the active slash

16:19insertive role and victimizing the man who is taking the receptive slash insertive, or

16:27sorry, reslep, a passive slash receptive role. It was understood as more natural for someone

16:36to seek out another body to penetrate. It was considered more unnatural for someone to

16:46a man to seek out someone else to to take the insertive role with them. And so there were,

16:54there were different values associated with each role. And I think that's, that's also

17:00important to keep in mind that these two different roles, the active slash insertive role, and

17:04then the passive slash receptive role, they had different explanations for each of these,

17:09and the two were kept very separate. They were compartmentalized. Okay. So it wasn't,

17:14they didn't have anything remotely like our modern concept of a homosexual orientation,

17:20or sexual orientation in general. That's something that we've developed, our understanding of

17:24it today has developed since the 19th century. They absolutely had people we would describe

17:31today as having a homosexual orientation, or a bisexual orientation, or other kinds

17:36of orientations. But when they, when they thought and talked about those, those people,

17:42they described what they were doing in very different ways. And they, they reasoned about

17:48their motivations in very different ways. And so the one who sought out other men to, to

17:57penetrate, that was considered a little more understandable and a little more normative,

18:02whereas the one who sought out the receptive slash passive role, that was considered a,

18:10an a barrancy. I don't even know if that's a word, a barrant, that was considered more

18:14of a pathology. And so those people were considered to be victims and to be victimized. And it

18:20was, it was, they would never think of someone seeking that out. They would only think of

18:27somebody else victimizing them in that way. It is interesting how a little imagination

18:35some people had about what people might want. Yeah. Yeah. Well, everybody bases their understanding

18:41of what everybody else wants on assumptions that everybody wants the same thing as them.

18:46So they needed, they needed an internet is what they need. They'd learn real quick what

18:51people want. Yeah. And I just want to point to a handful of books, because that, that people

18:58can go look at if they want to research this more for themselves, because I'm kind of distilling

19:03this down to my understanding of what is ultimately a complex field. Right. And so some really

19:09good book books, Ruby Blondell and Kirk Ormond, edited a book called ancient sex, new essays

19:18from 2015. That is, is a good one. Bernadette Bruton's 1996 book Love Between Women, Early

19:25Christian Responses to Female Homo Eroticism is an excellent book. Lewis Crompton from

19:332003, Homosexuality and Civilization is a good book. A really good book is Benjamin Dunning's

19:39book, The Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender and Sexuality. That's a really good one.

19:46Judith Hallatt and Marilyn Skinner's 1997 book Roman Sexualities for the Roman world. And then

19:54Thomas Hubbard in 2014 published a book called a Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities.

19:59That's really good. So just for general kind of background about ancient sexuality, those are

20:05some good texts. Another one. Wonderful. Mark Masterson from 2015 Sex In Antiquity,

20:11Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World. All right. So with, so that's a background.

20:18That's a foundation. Let's, we can move on. But we've got to dive into this into the Bible here.

20:25We've got to get biblical with this thing. So with all of that as the sort of the background

20:32of what's going on, let's get into what people say about the Bible and what the Bible says itself.

20:42So a lot of people, as a matter of fact, it's very interesting. Just this morning,

20:46a friend of mine posted a thing on Facebook where she was talking about how she reached out to

20:54her parents new church to ask about their views on the LGBTQ people in, because she's queer and

21:08wanted to know what her mom's new church was going to say about people like her.

21:15And they wrote back and said, we follow the Bible exactly. And therefore we are against gay people.

21:25That's the thrust of it. So when they, when they talk about following the Bible exactly or

21:33whatever, you know, you and I have discussed plenty of times that there's, the Bible doesn't say one

21:38thing about almost anything. But there are a lot, there are some very, very prominent verses

21:47that lots of Christians use to justify or to, the word justify isn't what I want to say here,

21:58that support their idea that legitimacy is not okay. So, you know, we can start with Genesis,

22:09just in Genesis two, at the very end of the chapter, this is, you know, the second

22:15account of the, of the creation. And, you know, Adam has just, God has just created Eve for Adam.

22:27Adam has said, she's flesh of my flesh. This is great.

22:30And it says in verse 24, therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,

22:38and they became, they become one flesh, which seems to indicate that this is making, that it is,

22:44that's, that's what you're supposed to do. Not that, not that either Adam or Eve had a father and

22:52mother to leave, but, but it does seem to be a sort of prescription.

22:59It's, it's used that way quite frequently. And, and I think that goes back to the early centuries

23:08after the New Testament, at least. I don't think we see this passage being used as a

23:13prescriptively regarding marriage in, shoot, during the New Testament. But today we see it used all the

23:22time as this prescribes what marriage is, it is between one man and one woman. And that's how

23:28it's used. However, there's nothing prescriptive about the text. It is a thoroughly descriptive text,

23:35and specifically one that's functioning as an etiology. It's not, and you can already tell

23:41that it's, it's looking backwards. It's talking about a man who doesn't have a father and a woman

23:46who doesn't have a father or a mother. It's talking about the two of them, and then it basically says,

23:53"And this is why we do this now." Right. And so it's just describing the origins of that. It's,

23:59in a sense, this is kind of an aesop's tale of why it is that a man will leave his parents' household,

24:09and a woman will leave her parents' household, and they will create their own household. And

24:15this is, this is an etiology for independent kinship units, why a man will go off and start his own

24:22household. And the explanation is basically, since woman was taken out of man and they originate

24:28in a single body, then it's natural for the two of them to come together and form a single body,

24:37an independent kinship unit, an independent household. However, this text is also being

24:42written in a time period when polygamy was perfectly normative, where men who had the money, the resources

24:51were not prohibited, frowned upon in any way, shape, or form whatsoever, from taking additional

24:59wives. I'm always baffled by people saying, you know, I believe in biblical marriage, one man, one

25:07woman. It's just like, have you read anything in the Bible? Because there's, do you remember Solomon?

25:13That's, that's not a one man, one woman situation. Yeah. And, and, and so when you take this text

25:20prescriptively and say, therefore means one man, one woman and say, wow, that this text was in

25:26circulation. It was authoritative for several centuries while it was frequently one man and

25:32multiple women. And they had their independent relationships with the man and, and one of their

25:40given wives. But a man could be married to multiple different women. And in the Bible, the Bible

25:47even describes God as arranging some of these marriages. God tells David, I have given you

25:54many, your master's many wives. And this is a divine endorsement of polygamy. And so to read

26:02this prescriptively is a renegotiation of the text. And one that is intended to rationalize,

26:08legitimize, authorize a, a post biblical worldview, whatever that may be, whether that's the early,

26:16early Christians trying to rationalize why they didn't like polygamy anymore, or whether that's

26:21someone today trying to explain why they don't think that's two men or two women ought to be able

26:27to marry each other. Right. So that's, yeah. Well, all right. So, so that's not prescriptive,

26:35but then we get to Jenna, Genesis 19, which we've already talked about, we have Sodom and Gomorrah,

26:43they get destroyed. And the order of events could very easily lead one to believe that the reason

26:51that it is destroyed, that these cities are destroyed, is that everything was so debauched

26:59in these cities that men were like the one thing we hear about in the story specifically is angels

27:06come into the city and a mob gathers to want to rape them. Yes. Presumably men wanting to rape

27:15these men. Yes. And so that seems pretty solid. Like it seemed, if you draw the lines, it feels

27:25like what that story is about is men wanting to rape other men and God destroys the city.

27:32It's the fact that the threatened sexual assault is between two agents of the same sex

27:43is kind of incidental. Well, it's not totally incidental. If the main characters were women

27:52and they went into the city and all the men gathered around and said, bring out the two women

27:58because, you know, we want to know them. We're going to sexually assault them. Would you then say,

28:04well, turns out heterosexuality is obviously the problem in this story. No, you wouldn't say that.

28:13So it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to say, well, because they're men and they're wanting to

28:20sexually assault other men, the problem is the fact that they're, they're both men. No, the problem

28:26is the threatened sexual assault. And the reason it is significant in the story is because in the

28:32Bible, you wouldn't really have a story where the angels are women or where women are the main

28:40character, because most of the time there are some rare exceptions, but they don't have to do with

28:45with this kind of scenario. Most of the time women are kind of NPCs in the Bible. They are not full

28:54autonomous persons. They are not fully autonomous agents unto themselves in the Bible, and certainly

29:00not in sexual situations either. They are the, the passive agent. They are the one who is acted upon

29:08in a sexual encounter. And so what? Very lucky to be even get a name in the Bible. Yeah, if they,

29:15if they are named, they are, they're certainly in the minority. And so one of the rhetorical

29:23points, one of the ways that they're showing the depravity of Sodom is to show that the men of the

29:31city are going to forcefully overturn that social hierarchy of domination and penetration and basically

29:39force the male angels into a submission, a submissive subordinate sexual act. And basically that's a

29:49way to shame, to dominate and to disgrace these men who are, according to the narrative, who are

29:58angels. And so it's not just a threat of sexual assault. It's also a threat of violating their

30:04status, their station as men, to say we are going to overturn that hierarchy. And you see the same

30:14kind of threats today when men are emasculated or feminized in rhetoric today. It's doing the same

30:23kind of thing. And there are a bunch of different ways that men today try to feminize or emasculate

30:30other men to try to assert their dominance over them. And so it's the same kind of thing. And as

30:36we discussed in the previous, when we discussed this in a previous episode, we have a very similar

30:42story in Judges 19, where again, the problem there is not, oh, this is men wanting to have sex with

30:50men. The problem is this is men sexually assaulting. And this is men using the threat of sexual assault

30:57as a means of shaming, of disgracing, of emasculating, of overturning that hierarchy of domination and

31:06penetration. So the problem here is not the fact that this is men who want to have sex with other

31:13men. In fact, in the Judges 19 story, they end up sexually assaulting the man's concubine, the

31:19woman. And that still cause for concern for that man. He's pretty callous and heartless in the

31:27morning stepping over the dying concubine and telling her to get up because they're in a hurry

31:33before finally cutting her up into 12 pieces and sending these pieces to the 12 tribes of Israel,

31:40not to say, Hey, these men tried to have sex with another man, but to say, look what they did to

31:46to my concubine. They sexually assaulted ultimately, what is my property? And so that's

31:53still a very, very bad thing for within that story. So when you try to reduce it to

32:01a threat of same sex intercourse, you're misreading the story, you're misunderstanding it

32:09because it's far more than that. It's about social status. It's about social position. It's

32:15about the use of the threat of sexual assault. All right. All right. That's

32:21I hear you on that point, but now it's time to get into some laws. We're going to Leviticus,

32:29we're going to lay down some real laws here. And it feels pretty definitive. So I'm eager to hear

32:38what you have to say about it because Leviticus 18 verse 22 says, you shall not lie with a male

32:48as with a woman. It is an abomination. Yeah. And Leviticus 2013 says something similar. It says,

32:57if a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination,

33:02they shall be put to death. Their blood guilt is upon them. Yeah, that's pretty hardcore.

33:08It's pretty harsh. It is a part of these two chapters that discuss basically laws regarding

33:20sexual relationships. And there's a lot to the context that we need to talk about here. The first

33:26thing I want to say, however, is there are some folks who make the argument that this is a reference

33:31to that the word Zachar at the beginning at Zachar low tishkav means, and with a male, you shall not

33:39lie. There's an argument that Zachar refers to young men, to boys, to youth. And there's not really

33:49anything that supports this argument. I think that is a conclusion in search of an argument. Zachar

33:54just means male generically. And unless it is qualified in some way, the most stereotypical

34:02male within this society and within the text that use this word is an adult citizen male.

34:11So man, a man. So this is a, this is not a reference to pedophilia. This is a reference

34:18to male same sex intercourse. Now there are other folks who want to draw from the context,

34:25which some of the context has to do with acts that can be argued to be cultic in their nature,

34:35in their context. And so some people want to try to take that reading and impose that context

34:41onto these passages and say, well, we need to understand this in the context of cultic acts.

34:47Therefore, this is prohibiting cultic sex between two men. So maybe this is about cultic prostitution

34:57or something like that. That is also an argument that I don't think has much support. I don't think

35:04the scholarship is in, is in support of that argument. So these two passages, Leviticus 1822

35:11and Leviticus 2013, I think are very clearly prohibiting male same sex intercourse, just generic

35:18male same sex intercourse. Now they understood it much differently back then as I, as I stated,

35:24this is sex is something that one agent does to another. And so they probably didn't think about

35:32this as something that was mutual, something that was consensual on the part of both parties.

35:39And so in Leviticus 1822, the prohibition is on the one who is taking the active slash

35:46insertive role. So what it is saying is, hey, you don't you go and have sex with another man

35:54as if he were a woman. In other words, don't take the active slash insertive role. So Leviticus 1822

36:01is, if we're going to draw, if we're going to try to draw clear lines about what this is

36:06prohibiting precisely, Leviticus 1822 seems to be prohibiting taking the active role,

36:13the insertive role in an act of male same sex intercourse, which is pretty limited when we

36:20think about all potential kinds of same sex intercourse. That is a pretty limited subsection

36:27of that. Now, Leviticus 20 verse 13 expands it and seems to identify the passive slash receptive

36:36role as culpable as well. There's an argument to make that Leviticus 20 is copying Leviticus 18,

36:43but then adding condemnation of the other partner to this, because there are a handful of passages

36:52in Leviticus 20 where it starts off in the singular, and then you awkwardly have this pivot to the

36:58plural and Leviticus and chapter 13, or not chapter 13, excuse me. And verse 13 is one of these

37:04examples where it starts off in the singular, and then the grammar suddenly is in the plural.

37:09And this is not standard in Hebrew. This is not how we usually do things. And so a lot of scholars

37:14think that Leviticus 18 is probably the original prohibition. And then somebody repeated these

37:20and say, and said, no, we also need to impose the death penalty upon the other partner in this act.

37:29So some of the women who are mentioned who are having, you know, the Leviticus 18 says,

37:35hey, men, don't sleep with a person who is a woman who is X, Y or Z. Leviticus 20 then says,

37:41hey, men, don't sleep with a woman who's X, Y or Z, and also the woman is killed as well.

37:45And so we seem to have a later alteration of the standard here. Whoever wrote Leviticus 20

37:51was a grump. Well, the what they seem to be doing is both of these chapters seem to be

37:57concerned with maintaining the purity of the land, because these these actions are

38:02anciently were thought to have kind of created a metaphysical contamination that

38:10went on to the land and literally defiled, rendered in pure, contaminated the land.

38:17And the threat you see in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 is that you're going to defile the land,

38:22and the land is going to kick you out is going to you're going to be expelled from the land

38:28if you defile it too much. So when we go back to kind of intuitive concepts of morality and right

38:35and wrong, we all have kind of an inbuilt system of contamination and understanding of what

38:41contaminates and what doesn't. And we're very sensitive to things that

38:45that we intuitively feel like are contaminating. And this is one of the reason,

38:52one of the reasons most people don't have a problem smelling their own gas. But

38:57sooner they smell somebody else's, it's like, oh, because we have this intuitive sense that

39:04this is getting into my body and this is going to contaminate me in some way, shape, or form.

39:10We all have a sense of, oh, no, contamination. And so this is kind of rationalize these,

39:16these moral social indiscretions, the ways we're violating these compartments that have been set

39:24up for our social existence is being framed as something that creates a metaphysical contamination.

39:32And that's going to spill onto the land and the land is going to kick us out. And so like the idea

39:39of a men not wearing women's clothes, women not wearing men's clothes, the idea of mixing fabrics,

39:43these are all violations of socially conventionalized compartments and boundaries, everything in its

39:51place. And if you spill over the boundary into the other compartment, oh, no, that's a problem

39:59that creates this kind of metaphysical concept of contamination. And therefore that's prohibited.

40:04So mixing fabrics prohibited, men wearing women's clothes prohibited, eating the wrong kinds of food.

40:09They somehow they came up with compartments for different types of foods. These were okay,

40:16these other ones were not, but it's all based on this idea that if we're violating boundaries,

40:21that produces this contamination. And so Leviticus 18 seems to be saying, hey, man,

40:26don't do that. That creates this contamination. And then Leviticus 20 is saying the other person

40:32is also creating the contamination. And so they also need to go. And that is how we purge

40:38the land of that contamination. And so these two passages are condemning male same sex intercourse,

40:47one specifically the active slash insertive role. The other is saying, now we're going to expand

40:52it to the other role as well. But it's still only male same sex intercourse and conspicuously,

41:00the Hebrew Bible nowhere says a single thing whatsoever about female same sex intercourse.

41:06And if they extended this idea to females, they would have said something because the very next

41:13verse in chapter 20, or no, both of them chapter 18 and chapter 20 talks about

41:21bestiality. And there it explicitly says, guys don't do this. Oh, yeah, also women are also

41:29prohibited from doing this. Yeah. And so two things I want to note there,

41:34if the problem were just same sex intercourse across the board, this is all wrong and all for

41:41the same reason women would have been included there. But they were not conspicuously, they would

41:47have been. Yeah, if you've read Leviticus, you know, it's, it's thorough. Yeah. They cover a lot

41:54of stuff, stuff that you wouldn't think you'd need laws for. Yeah. They cover a lot of stuff. So

41:59it would be weird for them to skip it. Yeah, which means lesbians, you're totally good.

42:05And there's, and there's a stream of Jewish thought that has no issue with female same sex

42:11intercourse. Interesting. Yeah. The other thing to note about the next passage that talks about

42:17bestiality is that the only passage in these two chapters that prohibits women or that prohibits

42:24the sexual partner that a woman can have is the only passage that refers to a sexual partner that

42:31could possibly be below her on that hierarchy of domination and penetration. And that's because

42:38that sexual partner is an animal. Wow. In other words, we can tell that we're referring to people

42:44higher up on the, on the hierarchy. Don't do this to someone else somewhere on that hierarchy

42:51because that's wrong. And the only time that the agency of a woman is even considered

42:57is when that's about somebody lower on that's on that hierarchy because they are not the active

43:02agent in any other kind of sexual encounter. They are the passive. They are the one having it done

43:07to them, except when the other entity is an animal. Wow. So it clearly that hierarchy is in play here.

43:18Yes. Well, all right. You know what I think we should do is take a bit of a moment

43:26to to cleanse our palettes and then we'll dive into the New Testament and and see if we can make

43:34some sense out of that. Let's do it. Hey, everybody. Have you ever wondered how you can support the

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44:11foot the bill for everything that we have to do here helps make the show go. And we sure would

44:17appreciate it if you'd considering becoming a patron. Thanks. Thank you. All right. So we've

44:25covered the Old Testament. We've covered Levitical law. But let's get into the New Testament. Let's

44:33talk about what Jesus's people had to say about all of this stuff. I think to start, however, we need

44:42to talk about the the socio-cultural foundation of what's going on in the New Testament. What

44:48are they building on? And I think the argument is strong that they're building on a foundation

44:55of Greco-Roman period Jewish conventions. And particularly in Paul, Paul is really the only one

45:03who's addressing same-sex intercourse in the New Testament. And then the the person who is

45:11pretending to be Paul who wrote first Timothy. And and that's an issue. We're gonna have to get

45:16into that. We're gonna have to do a whole yeah a segment on that in and of itself. But Paul seems

45:23to be writing from a perspective that is informed not only by Greco-Roman period Judaism, but also by

45:30some of the philosophical traditions that were in circulation at the time. Now Paul is not a

45:37textbook Stoic or a textbook Platonist, but Paul is clearly influenced by some of the streams

45:46of Stoic Platonists, probably Pythagorean ideas that were in circulation. And so there were people

45:54who borrowed a little bit from here a little bit from there and kind of created their own

45:58philosophical mashup. And and I think Paul, there's a good case to make that Paul is one of them.

46:05Interesting. And when we look at Greco-Roman period Judaism, some of the most representative

46:10texts are one Philo of Alexandria, who talks a lot about philosophy and talks a lot about sexuality.

46:17Now in the in the Hebrew Bible, we saw that there was a concern for male same-sex intercourse.

46:23Female same-sex intercourse was conspicuously absent. In the Greco-Roman world, there was a

46:32there was a place for same-sex intercourse, but it was primarily for male same-sex intercourse.

46:38Female same-sex intercourse was something that didn't really fit comfortably into their rationalization

46:45of male same-sex intercourse. I think the the most the easiest way to understand what was going on

46:50was men who were at the top of this hierarchy of domination and penetration were basically walking

46:56around. They were walking talking hammers looking for nails and those nails could take a lot of

47:04different forms. And so basically you had the ideal of a penetrable body and then you had other

47:12kinds of bodies that had different degrees of proximity to that ideal penetrable body. And so

47:20young men pre-pubescent were considered to be kind of close to that ideal penetrable body.

47:28And so within the broader Greco-Roman world, it was considered perfectly understandable

47:32and perfectly acceptable for men to have young boys as lovers. And now frequently these would be

47:41they were from lower social classes or they were slaves because it was considered inappropriate

47:49to engage in that kind of relationship with someone of equal social status. Again, social hierarchy

47:54of domination and penetration. And so there was a carve-out for that. It was understandable that

48:02a man would want to penetrate a body that was close to that ideal. And there was there were

48:12relationships that were considered inappropriate. Female same-sex intercourse didn't really fit into

48:17that very well because nobody was really doing the the penetrating there. And so they didn't know

48:23where it fell on that hierarchy. And so you had female same-sex intercourse was there were aspects

48:31parts of the society that's considered it more acceptable. But for the most part it was considered

48:36more of a pathology as would a man who sought out the passive/receptive role in an act of male

48:45same-sex intercourse. So again, we have compartmentalized roles that are understood in very different

48:52ways and that had different degrees of acceptability within society. Now on the Jewish side of things

49:00they were very conservative and so they didn't like same-sex intercourse at all. And Fylo rationalizes

49:10it as a problem because it interrupts it obstructs procreation. And that's the primary purpose of sex.

49:20And so if you're not having pro-creative sex, it is inappropriate. There's some parody that is

49:26achieved between men and women in the sense that female same-sex intercourse is now condemned to

49:32the same degree that male same-sex intercourse is condemned. But the rationalizations are entirely

49:38different. Sorry, help me out with who is this? Fylo of Alexandria is a Jewish philosopher who's

49:46writing at the end of the first century BCE and at the beginning of the first century CE. Actually,

49:51I think probably mostly at the beginning of the first century CE. And I want to say he dies

49:57around the same time period as Paul. And he wrote tons and tons of texts, primarily commentaries

50:07on the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible. And so Fylo is one of our most important

50:15kind of windows into Greco-Roman period Judaism because he's doing a lot of commenting. And he was

50:25also a diplomat. He was sent on missions to Rome to try to convince the emperor to lay off

50:33the people in Alexandria and Jerusalem and things like that. So there are tons and tons and tons

50:40of works by Fylo of Alexandria. And if anybody is interested in looking this stuff up, there's

50:46a scholar named William Loder who has published several texts on sexuality in Fylo Josephus and

50:56the testaments, the New Testament, the pseudopegrifica, done a lot of really, really good work on how

51:03all these writers in this period address sexuality. And so in the Greco-Roman period Judaism was like,

51:10we don't like anything except for sex that is being done for the purposes of procreation.

51:16And this is why they rationalize why sex during menstruation was considered inappropriate in the

51:23Hebrew Bible. But they also extend it to sex during pregnancy and other kinds of sex that is

51:30done for any reason other than procreation. And you had different degrees of severity. Some people

51:38were like, absolutely no sex whatsoever, unless the purpose is procreation and other people who are

51:44like, you know, sometimes it's okay. But for the harm, calm down. But for the most part,

51:53we want to keep it to sex for the purpose of procreation. Man, they were killjoys back then.

52:00And part of this was because of this idea that developed within some Greek philosophical thought

52:08that sexual desire was a problem, that sexual desire was one of the kind of baser

52:16passions that was symptomatic of our corrupt, fleshly existence. And so particularly within

52:27platonism, but also within Pythagoreanism and to some degree within stoicism, you wanted to

52:34you wanted to overcome the vicissitudes of the flesh, and you wanted to have a more spiritual

52:41experience. And so there were schools of thought that like the idea of celibacy, because you were

52:47basically flatlining that sexual desire, you were not going to let that sexual desire bubble to the

52:53surface, you were going to keep it under wraps. I feel like we're transitioning to Paul.

52:58We're transitioning to the New Testament, because we do have in Matthew and in Luke, we have this,

53:04I don't know if you remember, but one of them asks about divorce. And Jesus is, you know,

53:11basically gives this, this more strict rule. And they're like, wow, it would be better not to get

53:17married. And Jesus is like, you know what? And then says, funny, you should say that.

53:23Yeah, says not, this is a tough saying that not everyone can accept, but then goes on to say,

53:30there are men who are born eunuchs, there are men who are made eunuchs by others. And then there

53:34are men who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. So that's Matthew 19.

53:39And most scholars would say this probably isn't talking about self-castration. It probably means

53:49there are men who are swearing off sex. They are adopting a life of celibacy for the sake of

53:56the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus is like, I mean, you know, that's hardcore. Not everybody can accept

54:04that, but those who can, you know, got to hand it to them. Basically saying celibacy is a higher

54:10ideal. And this is, and this is what Paul is saying as well. Paul was an unmarried man,

54:15and the majority of scholars would argue that Paul does not have a particularly

54:21good understanding of, or not good understanding, but Paul doesn't have a high view of the value of

54:30sex. And he talks about sex as something that is problematic, that can get out of control,

54:37can be misdirected, sexual desire can be misdirected very easily. And so in First Corinthians and

54:44in Thessalonians, we have this idea, basically that's it's better to be celibate. But if you can't

54:50hack celibacy, go ahead and get married. However, sex within marriage should be without passion,

54:57because that's for the dirty, dirty Gentiles. And it should be basically prophylactic. You only

55:03have enough sex to keep a lid on sexual desire, not to say you must keep it at a level zero at all

55:12times, but to say whenever it starts bubbling up, you don't want it to boil over. And so, you know,

55:19come over and do whatever you got to do to get the the the boil back down in the pot. And so sex

55:30is really prophylactic within Paul's sexual ethic. But he would prefer people just didn't have it.

55:37Yeah, consider me team dirty dirty gender on that one. But that's that's just me.

55:43Yeah. And a lot of translations will will render this passage in First Thessalonians. I think it's

55:48four, four, maybe verse five, where it talks about not every man should possess his vessel

55:54in honor and holiness and not in the Greek literally says the passion of desire,

56:01like the Gentiles who don't know God. But a lot of translations will say lustful desire to make it

56:06sound like there's desire that's okay. And there's desire that's that's lustful and inappropriate.

56:13But Paul is is really saying no sexual desire, no, no passion of desire. So let's let's let's

56:20stick with Paul, but let's get to Romans one, okay, where Paul in in verses 26 and 27, Paul says this

56:28for this reason, God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse

56:36for unnatural. And in the same way, also the males giving up natural intercourse with females

56:43were consumed with their passionate desires for one another. Males committed shameless acts with

56:50males and received their own per received in their own persons, the due penalty of their for their

56:57error. Yeah. What are we talking about? Well, one note I want to make here is natural intercourse

57:03is an awful translation of Greek, because the Greek there refers to the utility, the usefulness

57:13of the women. So it says, the men gave up the natural utility of their women and the women gave

57:20up their own natural utility. And what is the natural utility here? Well, Paul doesn't really

57:27care about procreation, because Paul thinks Jesus is coming back too soon for any of that to matter.

57:31And he commands all of his congregations, stay in the circumstances, the life circumstances you

57:36were in when God called you. In other words, if you don't have kids, don't get pregnant.

57:41So so while Greco-Roman period Judaism was like sex is only for procreation, Paul was like not

57:50even for that. We don't care about procreation. And so the natural usefulness of a woman is just

57:55as a basically a sexual receptacle. And this is what possess your vessel means in in Thessalonians.

58:03The vessel is the sexual receptacle that is a man's wife. And so the idea here is that men are

58:13giving up what a woman is good for in order to go engage in male same sex intercourse. Women are

58:21giving up what they are themselves good for to go engage in same sex intercourse. And Paul is

58:30basically adopting a pretty run-of-the-mill idea from Greco-Roman period Judaism, that same

58:35sex intercourse, whether it is male or female, is wrong because it is it's violating what

58:41the purpose of sex was, which was procreation. But Paul can't really say that because Paul doesn't

58:48care about procreation. So Paul is just saying this is nature. Nature says you're not supposed

58:55to do this. And and what that means is basically when you look at genitals, what does it seem like

59:00they're there to do? Therefore, that is natural. Therefore, if you're doing things unnatural,

59:05that is that is bad. Now, another interesting thing to note about this is in Romans 1,

59:14Paul is talking about how the Gentiles refuse to acknowledge God, who is manifest within creation.

59:22And so they have no excuse. God is is testified to them by the natural world. And so they have

59:30refused to worship the Creator and instead are worshiping the created things. And it says that

59:37that God gave them over to their passions. In other words, God puts a kind of a governor, a limit

59:44on these, these fleshly passions. And because they were not worshiping him, but were worshiping

59:51the created order, God said, all right, I'm taking the lids off and watch what happens. And so

59:58basically their their sexual desire is boiling over, is being misdirected, everything's going

60:03wrong to the degree that men are having sex with men, women are having sex with women.

60:08It's pandemonium everywhere you look. And so it's interesting that Paul is not saying,

60:13hey, don't do this. Paul is saying the Gentiles worship the wrong thing and look what happened

60:18to them. So it's kind of using it as as kind of an illustration rather than a direct condemnation.

60:26Yeah, that feels a lot like a, please don't throw me in the Breyer patch moment to me.

60:33But, but I think it's, it's interesting to note here that, uh, folks who try to transfer Paul's

60:39ideology, sexual ethic from Romans one into today already are having to negotiate with Paul's

60:47sexual ethic because Paul didn't like sex at all. Paul was like, look, don't do it.

60:52Only get married if you can't hack celibacy and then just have enough, enough sex to, to keep down

60:59the, the urges and nobody today thinks about sex that way within Christianity among those people

61:07who consider Paul's writings authoritative. So they've already negotiated away the majority of

61:12Paul's sexual ethic. Uh, but for some reason they take this as non-negotiable, even though we can

61:18account for the, the conceptual, the philosophical, uh, origins of this concern. And it's based on

61:26social hierarchies and conventions, uh, that simply don't exist anymore.

61:32All right. Let's look at some other, uh, scriptures here, uh, first Corinthians six versus,

61:39verse nine says, do you not know that wrong doers will not inherit the kingdom of God?

61:46Do not be deceived. The sexually immoral idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes,

61:54excuse me, women who engage in illicit sex and then 10 goes on to say thieves, the greedy drunkards,

62:01revilers, dwellers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. So I mean, we've got, we've got

62:09sexually immoral, uh, which seems to be a catch all phrase and we've got male prostitutes and men

62:16who engage in illicit sex. Yeah. So we, we've got two words here in, in Greek and they're

62:25one of them's a little easier to understand than the other. One of them is Malachi or Malachoy,

62:30according to the Erasmian pronunciation. And, and it basically to, to be, um, a little crude,

62:37the, this would be translated as softies. And it's a reference to somebody who is, uh, socially

62:47soft, which can refer to nonsexual, um, kind of a, effeminate things, but here very certainly as a

62:57reference to men who take the passive or receptive role in an act of male same sex intercourse. And

63:04then the next word is arsenal, kete, or according to the Erasmian pronunciation, arsenal, koi tai,

63:10which would be men betters. And this is, uh, this is a neologism. This is something that Paul

63:16invents this word. And it seems to be taken from the Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18 and Leviticus

63:2220, uh, where arson, um, is men. And that, uh, arsenal, koi tai is, is basically men betters.

63:30And this would refer to the one who takes the active or the insertive role in an act of male

63:36same sex intercourse. So where Paul is as with, uh, Leviticus 20 verse 13 is condemning both sides

63:44of this act of same sex intercourse. However, it's still maintaining that compartmentalization,

63:49that the malachoy are one group who are motivated by one thing. And then the arsenal, koi tai,

63:57are an entirely separate group, uh, motivated by an entirely separate thing. And so these are,

64:04there is no versatile role in Paul conceptualization of, of human sexuality,

64:10which in, um, my understanding, that is the majority of, of men who identify as homosexual today would

64:16identify as, um, having a, um, preferring a versatile role rather than, um, confining themselves to the

64:24insertive or the receptive role. And so the, the understand that we know about that.

64:30The, the understanding that Paul has of human sexuality is outdated, inaccurate,

64:38and is based on this assumption that nature dictates the way it's supposed to be. And we know now

64:45that, uh, nature is a little less binary than Paul would have it. Uh, and that's, this is not

64:53something that is a choice. This is not something that, uh, is fundamentally built on, uh, the nurture

65:02side of the, the nature nurture divide, but it's something that is driven primarily by nature.

65:08And so Paul's, Paul's rationalization for why he supports the kind of traditional Greco-Roman

65:15Jewish position on this is based on entirely outdated frameworks. And I know that, uh,

65:22first Timothy is the other one that talks about this as well. And it only uses the word

65:26arsenal koi tai. It does not use the other word. So we're back to just referring to the

65:32insertive role. Uh, but there's nothing different to address about that text. We've, we've addressed

65:38this word already. So I think we can, and also first Timothy was not written by Paul. Again,

65:43something we can talk about in another. But, um, so I think we can, uh, we can consider first

65:49Timothy addressed as well. Sure. Uh, and then finally there's, there, there's Jude, uh, who goes

65:56back to Sodom and Gomorrah, says likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in

66:02the same manner as they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, uh, serve as an, as

66:10an example by undergoing punishment of an, of eternal fire. So the, the unnatural lust there,

66:16that's translating a, a Greek phrase. Um, I believe it is sarcos heteros, um, which actually means other

66:25flesh. Um, and while some people understand this to refer to unnatural sexual acts, uh, the context

66:35here, the verse before the verse after makes clear that we're talking about some kind of

66:39problematic relationship between humans and angels. And so what Jude one seven is condemning

66:45is humans wanting to have sex with angels because that does sound unnatural. It is,

66:52and this is other flesh, like the sarcos heteros, heteros, heteros, like it's, it's very definitely

67:00not talking about, um, same sex intercourse. Uh, but this is a debate that was going on at the time

67:07because we had, we were having debates about Genesis six, the book of Enoch is talking about

67:12the angels, the fallen angels. And there were debates at the time about, wait a minute,

67:16can one, can angels disobey God to our angels sexually compatible with humans? And so when Jude

67:25was being written, there were people on all sides of this question saying, no, angels aren't sexually

67:30compatible. They can't disobey. That must have been humans. And obviously the author here is

67:36reading Genesis 19 as a reflection of one of these inappropriate attempts to try to bridge the

67:42unbridgeable sexual gap between humanity and the angelic world. And so this is, this has absolutely

67:51nothing to do with same sex intercourse. This is a reference to humans, uh, desiring inappropriate

67:58sexual relationships with divine entities. So the conclusion that we have to come to in all of this,

68:08is that we don't have to come to any specific conclusion, I think. I think that, you know,

68:14there are definitely scriptures that have laws, you know, specifically those, uh, Levitical laws

68:21against at least male, uh, homosexual acts. But, uh, in order to hold to those, in order to say,

68:35to make the case that those are applicable to a modern society, it sounds to me like we have,

68:41you have to, you have to get past a whole lot of other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I, I would argue that,

68:48one, uh, Leviticus is only about the land of Israel or the house of Israel. And so if you are not

68:55either Jewish and or living within the land of Israel, Leviticus has no application to you anyway.

69:01And so if you're wanting to leverage Leviticus, you're already renegotiating the text. You're already

69:08saying, I want to use this text just because I want to use this text, not because the text

69:13requires it of me. And so many people point out, like Leviticus also prohibits, you know, the eating

69:20of shellfish, wearing of mixed, uh, fabric clothing, all of that sort of stuff is, is also condemned.

69:26If you do those other things, you're already rejecting Levitical law. Right. Yeah. So it is,

69:32it is, uh, transparently a renegotiation. And additionally with Paul, Paul is taking a very

69:39conservative stance. Uh, Paul is promoting a sexual ethic that has been overwhelmingly rejected by

69:46the modern world. Uh, celibacy is not something that the majority of people who, who consider the

69:52Bible and authoritative texts live. It's something, there are some folks who do that. But overwhelmingly,

69:59Paul's sexual ethic has already been negotiated away. The Bible is negotiable. There is nothing

70:05in here that cannot be negotiated away. Um, and even if you try to, uh, lump it all together into

70:14one thing, say, we're going to take it all seriously. It is not univocal. It is not consistent. You're

70:19going to find contradictory, um, aspects of, of trying to do so. And so everybody is already

70:26negotiating with the text. Much of that negotiation is driven by structuring power and values and

70:34engaging in boundary maintenance to serve the interests of one's social identities. Uh, and

70:40when we negotiate away part of Paul, but then say, no, this other part of Paul is non-negotiable,

70:46we're just doing that because it serves our interests. It makes the text meaningful or useful

70:50for us. And I would argue that we are well past the point when the lives of LGBTQ plus

70:59people are far more important than the deployment of these texts, uh, to engage in identity politics

71:07or boundary maintenance, uh, for the sake of, um, your community, uh, very clearly the lives of these

71:16people are, uh, more important than that. And they are under threat. They are being marginalized.

71:22They are being devalued. And there is untold abuse and harm and, and self harm arising from

71:30the way people are trying to use these things to structure power that will be renegotiated away

71:35sometime in the future. I personally don't have a doubt about that. I don't know how far in the

71:40distant future that will be, but the only thing that is stopping us from negotiating that final

71:47aspect of Paul's sexual ethic away is the fact that it's still useful for some people. And I think

71:53that is, uh, pretty sad. All right. We'll leave it at that. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd

72:02like to, uh, become a, a patron of the show, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

72:11You can also, uh, contact us if you wish to contact at dataoverdogmapod.com is the email address.

72:21Dan, thanks so much for this. This was, uh, a very enlightening episode. Well, thank you. I'm, uh,

72:27I'm sorry for going on, uh, a handful of rants there, but, uh, the rants are the important part. We,

72:34you come, you come for the rants. You stay for the, for the Bible stuff. Uh, thanks everybody for

72:40tuning in. We will talk to you again next week. Have a wonderful week everybody.