Let's take stock before plunging on

I've covered a lot of ground in the past number of posts. I've been reasoning as closely and as thoroughly as my inadequate brain allows. The use of my 'theology from the ground up' approach (rather than relying on established schools of thought) comes with all the risks of being only one person's opinion.

At this point, I feel that I need to take stock of what I've covered thus far before entering into any new territory. So bear with me, oh faithful reader. I'm learning as I go. Here are some of the key questions I have been addressing regarding the biblical teaching on homosexuality, the relevant biblical material, and a few helpful summary quotes from identified sources (in italics).

A. Which sins were punishable by death in the Old Testament legal material?

The Old Testament prescribed the death penalty for the crimes of murder, attacking or cursing a parent, kidnapping, failure to confine a dangerous animal resulting in death, witchcraft and sorcery, sex with an animal, doing work on the Sabbath, incest, adultery, homosexual acts, prostitution by a priest's daughter, blasphemy, false prophecy, perjury in capital cases, and false claim of a woman's virginity at the time of marriage.

B. Where does homosexuality rank among the moral issues in the Bible? Whether homosexuality, in and of itself, is a moral question at all is what I'm exploring, of course. But in terms of its frequency of mentions in the Bible compared to other issues, where does it stand?

1. Idolatry - 169 instances
2. Self-righteousness - 79
3. Murder - 57
4. Adultery - 52
5. Theft - 42
6. Greed, avarice and covetousness - 40
7. Lying and false testimony - 30
8. Hatred - 21
9. Homosexuality - 7

While we're doing lists, note that the Christian's responsibility to care for the poor and work for justice is mentioned over 300 times, and the proper use of wealth over 250 times.
  
C. What else besides homosexuality is called an 'abomination' in the Bible?
(source: http://www.dragonlordsnet.com/abomination.htm)

Of the sixty-five occurrences of the word 'abomination' in the Old Testament, and two in the New: 

1. Five refer to something as being an abomination to another people. 

2. Thirteen of the things labeled "abominations" are dietary restrictions.

3. Seventeen refer to improper sacrifice. 

4. Outright adultery and adultery cause by divorce account for three of the verses. 

5. In addition to Jesus' comment in Luke 16:5, the love of money is decried as an abomination in two Old Testament passages. 

6. Four related verses cite dishonest trading practices as abominations. 

7. Twelve other verses list behaviors ranging from murder to women wearing "anything that pertains to a man". 

8. Eight passages, including one from Revelation 21:27, are not clear about what they mean by 'abomination'.

9. Two refer to homosexual behavior of some sort.

D. In assessing why homosexuality is included among the Old Testament 'abominations', are there any clues from the original meaning of the Hebrew term employed?

In every reference that I consulted, the Hebrew term tow' ebah is understood as follows: a disgusting thing, abomination, abominable

1. in ritual sense (of unclean food, idols, mixed marriages)
2. in ethical sense (of wickedness etc.)  

(Source: http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/hebrew/nas/towebah.html)

In the Old Testament, homosexual activity was strongly associated with the idolatrous practices of the pagan nations surrounding Israel. In fact, the word "abomination," used in both mentions of homosexual acts in Leviticus, is a translation of the Hebrew word tow' ebah which means something morally disgusting, but it also has a strong implication of idolatry. Thus, many Bible scholars believe the condemnations in Leviticus are more a condemnation of the idolatry than of the homosexual acts themselves. However, that interpretation is not certain. (Source: http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_homosexuality.htm. 

E. What are the seven verses regarding homosexuality?

a. Associated with rape

1. Genesis 19:5 - They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them."
2. Judges 19:22 - While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him." 

Except among conservatives who understand the emphasis to be on the act of homosexual intercourse itself, there is broad consensus among scholars on both the left and the right that these passages have nothing to do with homosexuality per se, but rather with hospitality and justice. That is, both scenes represent hosts protecting their guests from severe humiliation and outrageous injustice. Some other parts of the Bible interpret these passages just this way. Ezekiel, for instance, refers to the sin of Sodom not in terms of sexual immorality but rather justice: "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy" (16:49). (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-lose/what-does-the-bible-reall_b_990444.html)

Note as well that victors would commonly rape male captives in ancient times, humiliating them by  treating them like subjugated women. This might explain the strange incident of David's men being humiliated when a neighboring king had their robes cut off at the buttocks (suggesting rape) and their beards shaved (thereby 'womanizing' them). See 2 Samuel 10:4-5: So Hanun seized David’s envoys, shaved off half of each man’s beard, cut off their garments at the buttocks, and sent them away. When David was told about this, he sent messengers to meet the men, for they were greatly humiliated. The king said, “Stay at Jericho till your beards have grown, and then come back.”

Significantly, Ezekiel was much harder on his own countrymen than on the people of Sodom, citing God's declarations that Jerusalem and Judah were far worse than Sodom for their abominations: idolatry and ignoring Sabbath; sex with (step-)mothers, sisters, in-laws, neighbor's wives and menstruating women (all heterosexual acts); charging interest, making profits which destroyed others' lives, and ignoring the disadvantaged (Ezek. 8, 16, 18, 20, 22). Jesus similarly vows that cities that don't welcome his disciples and their message will be judged as being more sinful than Sodom (Luke 10).

b. Associated with prostitution and pederasty (i.e., intercourse between a man and a boy) 

1. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 - Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers--none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

This verse has been translated in as many different ways as there are different versions of the Bible, so we have to look at the original Greek to see what Paul was really saying. The word translated here as "male prostitute" is the Greek word malakos which literally means "soft to the touch." However, it was used metaphorically to refer to a catamite (a boy kept for sexual relations with a man) or to a male prostitute in general. The word translated here as "homosexual offender" (rendered "sodomite" in the version I've recorded above) is the Greek word arsenokoites which means a sodomite, a person who engages in any kind of unnatural sex, but especially homosexual intercourse. Some believe this use of arsenokoites referred specifically to the men who kept catamites, but that is not certain. (Source: http://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_homosexuality.htm)

c. Undefined

1. Leviticus 18:22  Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.  
2. Leviticus 20:13  If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.      [Deuteronomy 27 repeats many of the abominations listed in Leviticus 18-20, although the reference to a man lying with another is missing. This is also true of Ezekiel's list of abominations in chapters 16 to 22. The two references in Leviticus are quite isolated instances.]
     With respect to the verses in Leviticus, there is considerable debate about three matters. 1) Do these passages refer to consensual homosexual practice (and whether that was even a recognized option in the ancient world), or do they describe the cultic practice of Israel's neighbors and adversaries? 2) Are these regulations contingent because they derive from particular challenges and situations the Israelites faced at that time (the importance of procreation, for instance, given that Israel was a nomadic people dependent on increasing its population for survival), or do they intend to establish universal sexual norms? And 3) even if these regulations were normative for Israelites, do they continue to be for Christians given how many other Levitical codes are contradicted later in the New Testament or have historically been ignored by Christians. (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-lose/what-does-the-bible-reall_b_990444.html)   
   
3. Romans 1:26-27  For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women   exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. 
4. 1Timothy 1:8-10  Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching.

Paul's reference to gay sex as being unnatural has to be interpreted carefully. In Romans 11 the same apostle who some think condemns homosexuality as unnatural, praises God for going against nature by including the Gentiles among his chosen people (v. 24 If you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!). On the other hand, Paul says that it is disgraceful, because it is unnatural, for a man to have long hair in 1 Corinthians 11:14--hardly a biological truth. [And what could be more unnatural than circumcision, which was required by God of his followers in the Old Testament!]  
It could be that Paul's use of the term 'unnatural' is more akin to 'outside the norms of our culture'. According to David Lose (referenced below), arguing from nature was a common rhetorical device in Paul's day, employed by many contemporaries of the Apostle, and was similar to saying today, "The conventional wisdom is..."

F. What are the difficulties in coming to a conclusion about what the biblical teaching means?

David Lose provides this good summary of the issue (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-lose/what-does-the-bible-reall_b_990444.html):

Most Christians I have talked to fall into one of four groups regarding these verses, depending on how they address two questions. The first we've named directly at several points already: Do the passages refer to anything like the phenomenon of life-long, monogamous or mutually consensual same-gendered relationships that we know of today? (It's worth noting that the word "homosexual" was not present in the ancient world but was instead invented in the 19th century.) The second issue we've only alluded to: Whether or not the passages refer to the phenomenon we are describing today, are we bound to ethical determinations made by persons living in vastly different cultures and times and whose understanding of the world and of God's activity was shaped and limited by their own cultural viewpoints.

Depending on how you answer those two critical questions, you will likely fall into one of our groups.

• The passages in question refer to homosexual practice in all times and cultures and so universally prohibit such practice.
• The passages do not refer to homosexuality as we know it today and so cannot be seen as prohibiting it. Other passages therefore need to inform our discussions about sexuality in general and homosexual relationships in particular.
• The passages may or may not refer to homosexuality as we know it, but they -- and the larger witness of Scripture -- imply a view of nature and creation that supports sexual relationship and union only between man and woman, and so homosexual practice is prohibited.
• The passages may or may not refer to homosexuality as we know it, but they -- and all of Scripture -- are conditioned by the cultural and historical realities of the authors and so offer an incomplete and insufficient understanding of creation and nature and so cannot be used to prohibit homosexual practice today. Rather, one needs to read the larger biblical witness to discern God's hopes for caring, mutually supportive relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual.    

On the issue of sexual orientation, a statement by the Bishops of the Church of England (Issues in Human Sexuality) in 1991 pointed out that "the modern concept of orientation has been developed against a background of genetic and psychological theory which was not available to the ancient world."
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_New_Testament#1_Timothy_1:9-10)

G. So what's next?

On the basis of this and earlier posts, what do we have?

1. We are dealing with a physical act that is rarely discussed in the Bible. The contexts of the few
   
   relevant passages are different enough, and the language sufficiently ambiguous, that knowing the precise meaning of this 'abomination' is quite difficult.
2. The moral quality of the act may have more to do with important contextual factors (e.g., idolatry and pagan forms of worship, ritual purity, social norms such as hospitality and social justice, etc.) than with the sexual matters themselves.
3. There is no hint in the Bible of an awareness of differences in sexual orientation. The biblical writers, in discussing gay sex, would have assumed that virtually everyone was heterosexual by nature; therefore, a person engaging in homosexual relations would be seen as deliberately violating his/her own nature, by choice, for sexual self-indulgence or some other unacceptable reason (and we know that such was not uncommon in Roman society and among the variety of fertility cults). Monogamous gay relationships characterized by love, fidelity, support, commitment, and so on are simply never discussed (along with a host of other modern issues ranging from free markets to political parties to reproductive technologies to social media, to name but a few).
4. The New Testament writers and church leaders, particularly the Apostle Paul and to a lesser degree Peter and James, radically re-oriented Old Testament legal material. While the principles underlying the legal material were maintained, specific behaviours were largely set aside in favour of proper motivations, attitudes, and goals. Consequently, many practices that were forbidden in the Old Testament were permitted in the New.
5. Homosexuality's significance is very much overblown among conservative Christians today. 

So let's take it from there.