Homophobia in the Bible

Yeah! Three cheers for suffocating,
moralistic theocracy!

Murder, slavery and misogyny are all evils which the Bible supports but most Christians today would strongly condemn. In contrast, homophobia and anti-gay sentiment are still rampant within modern Christianity, which makes the biblical support for this kind of bigotry all the more significant. Let's start by examining such references in the Old Testament:

"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." (Leviticus 18:22)

"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:13)

Notice the intensity of the language: few if any words could condemn homosexuality more forcefully than "abomination." And OT law is both unambiguous and gruesome: the punishment for gay sex is death. Apologists (perhaps with a hint of relief) are quick to argue that Jesus rendered this law obsolete, but that's of no consolation to those who were oppressed and killed beforehand. For example:

"Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens. So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground." (Genesis 19:24-25)

In the story, the male population of Sodom tries to rape Lot's male companions—a bigoted portrayal which implies that all homosexuals are depraved monsters. But since everyone in multiple cities is killed, the attempted rape can't be the reason for God's wrath. God is incinerating the inhabitants of these cities for their "sexual immorality," including the horrific crime of... being gay. Jude offers further commentary:

"...as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 1:7)

The people of Sodom, Gomorrah and the surrounding cities have "gone after strange flesh," presumably a euphemism for the ostensibly "unnatural" act of gay sex. Jude even takes it a step further: their crimes are worthy not only of death, but of endless torment in the flames of hell. Finally, let's take a look at one more common anti-gay theme in the Bible:

"[T]he law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars..." (1 Timothy 1:8-10)

"...For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind... filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:26-32)

Homosexuality is not merely condemned, but repeatedly associated with truly horrendous acts like kidnapping and murder, not to mention every negative character trait imaginable. In Romans, Paul claims that people who reject God are inclined to commit all kinds of sin, and that homosexuality is thus correlated with everything from boastfulness to deceit to violence. And for good measure, we have another candid pronouncement that gay people deserve death.

Conclusion
As homophobia becomes less acceptable in modern society, it's likely that Christians will try to downplay and explain away instances of anti-gay sentiment in the Bible, just as they did for slavery and misogyny once black people and women began gaining rights. They have no basis for doing so. The Bible quite unequivocally condemns homosexuality as disgusting, immoral, and worthy of death and eternal suffering. No amount of rationalizing or evasion will change that.

Murder in the Bible

Killings are rampant in the Old Testament, and I'd like to spend a bit of time focusing on some of the more contemptible examples, including a few of the many involving kids. Here are two examples of God killing innocent children in the OT:

"And it came to pass at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he, all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead." (Exodus 12:29-30)

"But of the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you." (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)

Here God personally kills thousands of children, and commands the Israelites to completely destroy six entire nations (children included). If God absolutely has to kill people, why not kill only those people who could actually take responsibility for their actions?

The standard Christian response is that God was "saving" the children from growing up in an evil society. There are two problems with this. First, remember that God is omnipotent and omniscient—he can supposedly do anything. Are we really expected to believe that the best way he can come up with to save these innocents is to massacre them? Second, this is in complete contradiction with another Christian idea: that God highly values free will and wishes for humans to freely choose him. By killing those children, God would have ensured that they had no choice whatsoever.

Later God promises to make Israel's enemies eat themselves and even their own children:

"I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine. All flesh shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." (Isaiah 49:26)

"And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair." (Jeremiah 19:9)

Perhaps this is meant as poetic metaphor. Perhaps not. Either way, trying to reconcile this vicious, bloodthirsty being with the loving God of the New Testament is an exercise in futility. And here is yet another example of killing children:

"He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. The two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys." (2 Kings 2:23-24, NRSV)

Christians say two things to try and soften the blow of this passage. The first claim is that these were not children, but young adults. This is simply incorrect. The Hebrew words used to describe these children are "na'ar" and "yeled," both of which mean "child" or "boy." While they were occasionally used to refer to young men, in this instance "na'ar" is accompanied by "qatan," meaning "small" or "young," thus ruling out any such interpretation in this case. This translation is accurate.

The second claim is that to "go up" was to die, and to mock someone's baldness was a particularly cruel insult. This may well be true—the question is, why should it matter? I don't care how shocking their ridicule was. Having 42 young children mauled by bears is a vile and ruthless way to respond. I'll end with this passage, one of the worst in the entire Bible:

"If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which you have not known...you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him with stones until he dies, because he sought to entice you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage." (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)

First I'd like to point out that this command is not merely theoretical. It was essentially carried out in Exodus 32: following the creation of the golden calf, God forced the Levites to kill 3,000 of their own friends and family members.

I'd like you to imagine that you and your dearest loved one were Israelite relatives living at this time. Imagine that they came to you and suggested that you worship some other god. You would then gather up a crowd of people, and together you would stone them. Stoning is a slow and torturous way to die. They would be bloodied, screaming, begging you to stop, and you would continue to pelt them with stones until they were a crimson heap on the ground, their agony giving way to sweet death.

This is the true face of the God of the Old Testament. He does not merely decree gratuitous, barbaric punishments. He also causes even more needless suffering by forcing those who love and care about the offender to carry out those brutal judgments. Christians, if you find yourself trying to explain this away, imagine how you would react if you read this passage in the Quran, with "the LORD your God" replaced with "Allah." You would find it absolutely despicable, and this in itself would probably be all you needed to reject Islam completely. Truly, the best word I can find to describe the God depicted in this passage is monstrous.

Misogyny in the Bible

The way in which the Bible advocates treating women is often nothing short of horrendous. I will examine just a few examples of this treatment here. Let us start with the laws of the Old Testament:

"When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hand, and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her and would take her for your wife..."

At this point I'd like you to stop and think about what words should come after this in a just and rational society. I would expect something like "you shall by no means do so, and if attempt to, you shall be severely punished." Instead we find:

"...then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money; you shall not treat her brutally, because you have humbled her." (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)

Some context is useful here: in the previous chapter (v. 13-14) God commanded the Israelites to kill all of the men of the enemy nations. This woman's father, brothers, and male friends would all have been dead. Then she is forced to become the wife of one of the men who killed them. Then, as if this would not already be a living nightmare, she is raped. Yes, the Bible allows the rape of female captives—and it definitely is rape. And just to head off any objections from apologists, I'll lay out here why we know this to be the case:

1. The man is clearly having sex with the woman. The phrase "go in to" is a common Old Testament euphemism for sex, and the precise phrase "because you have humbled her" is used sexually just one chapter later (v. 28-29).
2. "Anah," the Hebrew verb translated here as "humbled," is used in its sexual connotation eleven other times in the Bible. All eleven refer to a sex act that degrades the woman, and at least six refer to rape in particular.
3. There is no reason that consensual sex would have degraded or humbled the woman, so it had to have been non-consensual.
4. Most importantly, no woman in her right mind would willingly have sex with a man who has just aided in killing her family and forced her to be his wife.

Here's an issue that's relatively minor, yet is still indefensible because it's both harmful and completely unnecessary:

"Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'If a woman has conceived, and borne a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her customary impurity she shall be unclean. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. She shall then continue in the blood of her purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled. 'But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her customary impurity, and she shall continue in the blood of her purification sixty-six days." (Leviticus 12:1-5)

Why this discrimination? What is it about giving birth to a baby girl that makes one twice as unclean as giving birth to a baby boy? This arbitrary distinction in the law has absolutely no upside, and would probably have made the Israelites more resentful towards baby girls. This is a suspiciously human law—one that seems far more likely to originate from an ancient tribe with primitive ideas about gender than an infinitely enlightened God.

There are many other instances of inequality and misogyny in the OT, but I want to keep this to a reasonable length. Let's move on to the NT:

"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." (Ephesians 5:22-24)

Do Christians ever stop to think about why this should be? Certainly women are no less intelligent. While they may be physically weaker on average, this shouldn't have any impact on a social relationship. And while there is an analogy presented in this verse, it only clarifies the woman's role rather than giving a reason for it. To be blunt, there simply is no good reason. (In case this verse wasn't clear enough, its command is repeated in Colossians 3:18 and 1 Peter 3:1.) And finally:

"Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church." (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)

"Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." (1 Timothy 2:11-14)

So in summary: women are to be silent in church, they are to learn in silence, they are to be submissive, and they are not to teach or have authority over men.

Why is this? What exactly is shameful about women speaking in church? What is it about women that makes them poor teachers? I wonder why many Christians who think women shouldn't have authority in the church also think it is perfectly fine for women to be mayors, senators, governors, or even president? Surely the office of president is filled with far more problems than a position of authority in the church. If they're going to treat women as second-class citizens, they ought to at least be consistent—especially since the Bible itself portrays female rulers as a bad thing in Isaiah 3:12.

Look at the bizarre non-sequitur rationalization Paul gives in 1 Timothy. Women should be silent and should not teach because Eve came after Adam and was deceived? Paul seems to think that because Eve was deceived, all women are naturally gullible. This is a clear example of the genetic fallacy: drawing a conclusion based entirely on someone's origin. It should make no difference where women came from; they should be judged based on their own merits.

Again, this is just a sample of the misogyny in the Bible—there's plenty more. Of course, apologists try to downplay these instances in any way they can, but if we use their same standard of acrobatic reinterpretation, we can also excuse the rampant anti-woman sentiment in the Quran. With enough leeway, anything can be made to say the opposite of what it originally meant. If we treat the text with any degree of honesty, the image we get is not of a loving God, but of bigoted men who used religion to subjugate women.

Slavery in the Bible

Although the Bible discusses slavery on many occasions, it never actually condemns the practice. Christians sometimes claim that slavery in the Bible was more like servanthood than what we think of as slavery, but this is simply untrue. Servants are not held against their will, they are not property, and they most certainly are not beaten:

"Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property." (Exodus 21:20-21, NIV)

Under Old Testament law, masters were allowed to beat their slaves. Viciously. Ruthlessly. The slave could be collapsed on the ground, covered in welts and bruises, moaning in agony... but it didn't matter, as long as they recovered within two days. And here's the kicker: as brutal and horrible as such a beating would be, the NIV (which sometimes tries to "soften" unpleasant passages) is actually the best-case translation. Many of the more literal translations instead say that if the slave remains alive for a day or two, there is no punishment. In other words, the master would get off scot-free as long as the slave clung to life for one or two days before dying.

Christians rationalize this system by claiming that God was "working within" an imperfect Israelite culture. They apparently forget that God is supposedly omnipotent and could easily have outlawed such a practice if he wanted to. He imposed hundreds of other laws in the Old Testament, whether the Israelites wanted them or not. He God could easily have done the same with the abolition of slavery, and certainly didn't need to let the extreme cruelty described in these passages go unpunished.

Christians also try to justify OT slavery by claiming that it was only a temporary condition, but this applied only to non-Israelites:

"And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property. And you may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession; they shall be your permanent slaves. But regarding your brethren, the children of Israel, you shall not rule over one another with rigor." (Leviticus 25:44-46)

And while Israelites can normally be enslaved for "only" 6 years, OT law also provides a loophole that lets Israelites enslave each other permanently. Exodus 21:2-6 says that if a master gives his slave a wife, who then bears that slave's children, the wife and kids belong to the master. If the slave wants to stay with them, he must become a slave for life. The master is essentially holding the slave's family for ransom, and all of this is blithely endorsed by the Bible.

Jesus also implicitly endorses slavery by discussing its cruelty without condemning it. He says in a parable: "And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." (Luke 12:47) While the morality of slavery was the not the point of the parable, the fact that he let this cruelty pass without comment speaks volumes. And then there is this passage:

"Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God." (I Peter 2:18-20)

In other words, the slaves get no credit for enduring beatings if the punishment is "justified"—and regardless of how harsh their masters are, slaves should not try to escape from them. Imagine how slaves in the old South and elsewhere in the Americas felt when they heard this passage (and they probably would have; Christian slave owners often used the Bible to justify slavery). Many slaves who would otherwise have escaped probably continued to suffer due to the influence of a bronze-age book.

Bible says: If this slave is being beaten for his faults... well, that's just to be expected.
But either way, he should lay there submissively for the sake of pleasing God.

In summary, biblical slaves are nothing like servants. According to the Bible they are property, they can be held for life against their will, they can be violently beaten, and they are not to run away even when they are mistreated. This is not a matter of differing cultures, and apologetic claims to this effect would be hilarious if they weren't so despicable. Slavery is undeniably a grossly immoral practice, sanctioned and regulated by the Bible.