In his treatment of homophobia in Christianity, i am glad to see that John Shelby Spong did not shrink back from admitting that certain texts in the Bible are homophobic. I haven't read his previous book on the topic, but i feared that he would try to rework or revise our understanding of these passages instead of just admitting that they are bad and wrong, the way i have seen some liberal Christians do.
At one time i believed in, and even formulated myself, arguments that passages like Romans 1 or I Corinthians 6 have been misunderstood and misapplied, and should actually be read in ways that are much more narrow than the conservative interpretation of applying them to all forms of homosexual love and sex. I am wary of such arguments because i fear they are selectively revisionist, and i fear that they defend a kind of text-centric approach that will ultimately fuel literalism.
He suggests that in Paul's writing, and i have noticed this myself, there is a distinct contradiction between his understanding of Christ as the bringer of universal redemption, and his passages of moralizing condemnation.
Spong then mentions a mentor of his who went through a time of being idologically rigid and fanatically pious, before breaking down and admitting that he was gay. He argues that many of the most ardently anti-gay preachers are projecting outwards their own inner struggle with homosexuality -- an argument that has some precedent in psychological research.
Paul, he says, was doing this: projecting outwards his own inner struggle against homosexuality. I've seen this argument before, and i think it is a good one. There is another possibility that occurred to me a while back: that Paul's disapproval of men who have sex with men stems from having been sexually preyed upon at gumnasium.
The problem with either of these theories is that they cannot really account for Paul's disapproval of lesbian sex. Paul would have known that Jewish law specifically bans gay male sex, but does not mention lesbian sex. Paul's disapproval of homosexuality did not stem from his understanding of the law -- Paul NEVER moralized against something from the basis of its being against the Mosaic Law. That would contradict his understanding of the Law as something that Christians have transcended. (Never mind how dangerous this notion is to the fundamentalist program -- ::gasp!:: you mean God's law can change?) But even so, his thinking would have been influenced by it.
It's possible that his own inner conflicts or his own rage at being molested might extend to lesbians as well as gay men -- but it does not strike me as intuitive. Especially given that the Mosaic Law says nothing about lesbian sex.
No, his disapproval stemmed from something new: he believed that gay sex is not expedient.
Now, i've argued in the past that the reason gay male sex seems inexpedient from an economic point of view is that it reduces the reproductive potential of the family. (In the ancient way of thinking about pregnancy, at least.) An act of male masturbation has the same effect -- and both are prohibited in the Old Testament, while lesbian sex and female masturbation (neither of which directly reduce reproductive potential) is entirely overlooked.
So, what kind of expediency does he think is reduced by lesbian sex?
Paul believed that sex itself, on the whole, is not expedient. Like any good authoritarian, he believed that sex must have consequences to prove that it's better to avoid it. And like any good dualist, he thought of flesh and its needs as something that impedes the proper functioning of the mind.
He stopped short of telling Christians that having any sex at all would lose them a spot in the Kingdom of God. For one thing, children have to come from somewhere. He treated marriage, and marital sex, as a concession, but stated his strong preference for universal celibacy.
But gay and lesbian sex are slippery, in that they do not have consequences the same way that heterosexual sex does. It can't result in pregnancy. It can result in venereal disease, but that's not special to gay or lesbian sex. So in his authoritarian mind there's nothing to stop people from having gay/lesbian sex.
Furthermore, he saw homosexuality as a consequence of having the wrong thoughts about God. This must have explained, in his mind, why the Jews rejected it while the Pagans accepted it.
SO, Paul may have been emotionally conflicted or angry, but i don't think this is the ultimate cause of the conflict in his writing. I think it stems, ultimately, from his instincts as an authoritarian, clashing with the inherent radicalism of the early Christian message.
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