What Does God Really Say About Homosexuality?

Let's start with the meat of it: Leviticus 18:22 says, "You shall not lie with a man in the same way that you lie with a woman. This is detestable." ... Or does it? Well, Leviticus was written in Hebrew, so no, not really.

What does Leviticus 18:22 say? A year or so ago, I became troubled by that. This argument is hardly new, after all. And the more I flippantly said, "When a man lies with a man, it is nothing like when a man lies with a woman," I started thinking that it was less and less flippant and more and more true. So I did a little research.

Did you know that there's a web site that has the whole bible in it? And that that web site has multiple translations and multiple languages? It's called "biblegateway.com", and one of the languages it has a bible for is Hebrew. Is it the original Hebrew? I don't know, but it was a place to start. According to biblegateway, the Hebrew of Leviticus 18:22 is apparently

וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תֹּועֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ 

I copied these Hebrew letters into the Google search field --- which was not easy, let me tell you; Hebrew is written backwards --- and found a blog written by a Rabbi who was trying to defend the anti-gay stance. What this Rabbi revealed blew me away.

First, to make the above markings a little readable, the phonetics for the above Hebrew are, " Ve'et zachar lo tishkav mishkevei ishah to'evah hiv," which admittedly is little help to those of us who don't speak Hebrew, but it lets us begin our approach. Taking each Hebrew word in turn...

Ve'et (may mean) "and with". I've also seen it translated as “Additionally/in the same way” and "likewise"

zachar (seems to mean) “male-kind”

lo - no or not

tishkav comes from the root “lie down” and is in the second person imperfect, signifying persistent or on-going action.

mishkevei is a noun, “lying down; bedding”; the word’s root is the verb "shkav", just like in tishkav.

ishah - “female-kind” or woman

to'evah - active participle of “to be hated” or "abomination".

hiv - "he" or "it".

So, putting this together, we get "And with / additionally / in the same way / likewise male no shall lie down lying down / bedding female hated / abomination it." Now, if those of us who love grammar can stop cringing, we see one of the problems in translation, that languages with different roots may not use the same sentence structure. And, of course, Hebrew writing didn't use punctuation ... or vowels ... or the present tense of the verb "to be".

So, through centuries of what may amount to homophobic bias, we have been given "You shall not lie with a man in the same way that you lie with a woman," which just isn't supported by the original text. It also doesn't make sense to me because, as I've flippantly said many times, a man doesn't lie down with a man in the same way that he lies with a woman. At least, not if the man and woman ever hope to reproduce.

Instead of just claiming a better translation, I'm going to look to the experts and a little linguistics. The form "zachar" is an indefinite form. In English, that would be expressed as "a man". The form "ishah" is a definite form, "the woman", which, according to the experts, is used to refer to a wife. (We do that today --- or, annoying people do ;-) --- when we refer to "the little woman".) So, looking at the meaning of the original text, we get a little closer with "Likewise male shall not lie bed wife is hated it". Fixing the grammar just a touch can give us a better translation of "Likewise, (you) shall not lie down with a man in (your) wife's bed. It is hated."

This actually makes sense in the context of the entire chapter, which also prohibits incest of various forms, and other sections of Leviticus that prohibit adultery. Many Christians don't realize that some men today will pretend that homosexual sex isn't adultery because it's not "real sex"; I wouldn't be surprised if this was going on in the days of Moses as well. And of course, it makes sense that the Bible would prohibit same-sex adultery. What doesn't make sense is why the Bible would prohibit two males from having sex (under any circumstances) and not prohibit two females. On the other hand, if God were trying to protect the sanctity of the marriage bed, then it makes sense that all of Leviticus 18 is written from a male perspective.

It also makes more sense to me that God would want to protect the marriage bed than that God would want to prohibit love just because it was between two men.