Consider these two very basic facts: the Bible condemns homosexuality, yet lots of Jews are homosexuals. How is Judaism to understand these two things in light of each another, as well as in light of modernity?
For this essay I will only deal directly with male homosexuality, since that is the kind of relationship that the Bible expressly prohibits. (I will take it as read that the prohibitions on male homosexuality extend also to female homosexuality, since they have been understood that way by both Jews and Christians for centuries. Don’t give me any nonsense about the Talmud simply dismissing lesbianism as “foolishness”; female homosexuality is tolerated just the same as male homosexuality in virtually all religiously observant communities today: not at all. Whether or not this is supported by the texts is irrelevant.) I don’t aim to be exhaustive in this essay; only to give something of a flavour of several different methods of dealing with the specific Biblical prohibition of homosexuality, as well as to explore some modern approaches to the problem as practiced by Jewish communities today.
The primary source text for the biblical prohibition of homosexuality is Leviticus 18:22, which occurs in a long list of forbidden sexual relationships (all translations are my own):
וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תּֽוֹעֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃
You shall not lie with a man in the manner of laying with a woman; this is an abomination.
This prohibition is echoed two chapters later in the so-called “holiness code” at Leviticus 20:13, in another long list of forbidden sexual relationships:
וְאִ֗ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יִשְׁכַּ֤ב אֶת־זָכָר֙ מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֔ה תּֽוֹעֵבָ֥ה עָשׂ֖וּ שְׁנֵיהֶ֑ם מ֥וֹת יוּמָ֖תוּ דְּמֵיהֶ֥ם בָּֽם׃
As for a man who lies with a man in the manner of laying with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon themselves.
Throughout history, there have been people who have engaged in this kind of forbidden relationship—the very fact that the Bible deems it necessary to prohibit testifies to the fact that people did engage in it, for whatever reason. But today, in a culture where a category of “homosexual” exists, with which people make their primary sexual identification, the Bible’s prohibition needs to be reexamined and rethought: this holds true for both the most religiously observant person alongside the most liberal individual. And this is the challenge of modernity: assuming the Bible’s injunctions and prohibitions still hold some meaning for us today, how do we understand them in light of our current world?
Essentially, it all comes down to one of three positions: (1) do you ignore the Bible for the sake of modernity, (2) do you ignore modernity for the sake of the Bible, or (3) do you try to find some “happy medium” between these two positions? I will argue that both (2) and (3) are endeavours doomed to failure, while (1), though workable and well-attested in the modern world, has its own set of problems.
Position (2), that is, ignoring the modern knowledge of that homosexuality is not unnatural in favour of the Bible’s contention that it is an “abomination”, is employed in virtually all extremely observant communities, both Jewish and Christian. People who reject the modern understanding of homosexuality and its origins in nature will often reject the underlying science as flawed, or not “Torah-true”, or what have you. There is no way for homosexual behaviour to be accepted with this type of thinking: since homosexuality is not a part of nature, it is by definition aberrant, and the Bible—which is taken to be divine and inerrant—defines it as an “abomination”: therefore, homosexuality should be shunned and punished.
Position (1), on the other hand—that the Bible should be ignored in favour of modern understanding—poses its own set of problems. If one truly believes it, one must follow it in every instance. What’s the use of holding, for instance, that the prohibition on homosexuality should be overturned because science holds homosexuality to be natural, but the Biblical account of the creation of the universe should be taken as true? This reduces to position (3)—the “happy medium”—and, as we will see, should be dealt with for its arbitrariness. So let us define position (1) as complete rejection of the Bible’s truth. This solves the problem of homosexuality, in a way: since the Bible is not true, there is no problem with homosexuality from a religious perspective. Yet there are problems here: how would a religious community based on the untruth of its fundamental text survive? What would it mean to be a Jew who disbelieves in the Bible? How would matters of ritual and law be adjudicated? (There are answers to all of these questions; I will leave them as an exercise for the reader.)
However, the most attractive position, on the surface—position (3), finding a “happy medium” between literal acceptance of the Bible and acceptance of modernity—is extremely complicated and requires a great deal of mental gymnastics to function. If we are to say, for example, that the Bible is “divinely inspired” but not “the literal word of God”, who is to say which parts of the Bible are correct and which are not? Homosexuality might be condemned by one believer in this methodology but condoned by another: whose decision is it? This method may work for some people, but it will not work for others: everybody will choose different things, based primarily—and this is key—upon what he or she wants to be true. If one person wants to permit homosexuality, he or she will rule that the bits of the Bible prohibiting homosexuality were the product of a different time and should therefore not be taken as true. But another person will assert that these parts are in fact divinely composed and are therefore binding. When individuals or communities make these judgments for themselves, the results are an arbitrary smorgasbord of what people wish the Bible said rather than what it does say.
But this isn’t the only way of attempting to find a “happy medium”. One of the tricks that is sometimes employed by people who wish to retain some sense of the Bible’s truth while themselves permitting homosexuality goes something like this. The verses in question use the phrase “in the manner of laying with a woman” to refer to the prohibited sexual act. The thinking goes: women have a vagina, men do not—therefore the act in question is totally different, and homosexual intercourse is not “in the manner of laying with a woman”. Again, while this kind of sophistry works for some people, there are two major problems with it. First, it’s painfully obvious what the verses actually mean, especially when taken in their context of lists of prohibited sexual relationships. Second, again, the efforts to find a “happy medium” reveal themselves to be completely arbitrary. They are reflections, as I have said, of what the individual making the judgments about the text wish it said rather than what it does say. All the wishing in the world won’t make the Bible not say that homosexuality is an immoral abomination.
Another way of dealing with the problem is to recommend celibacy: since the Bible only prohibits homosexual intercourse but not homosexual attraction, one may be homosexual as long as one does not have gay sex. The thinking goes that everybody has his or her own “crosses to bear”, as it were, and that a desire to engage in homosexual sex could be one of them. Some very influential people—including both gay and straight rabbis from various walks of Jewish life, including the Orthodox world—advocate this view, at least in part. Yet this position is a disaster. This punishment of dooming homosexuals to a life without any sex at all, which is mentally, spiritually, and physically oppressive. What an awful judgment to impose on human beings.
There is another way of dealing with this problem: homosexuals may be exempted from the requirement to follow the Biblical prohibition on homosexual intercourse because it would be an undue burden on them. In Jewish law, one may be exempted from an obligation on the grounds that it would be an undue burden. (This is how, incidentally, women are traditionally absolved of their obligations to follow positive time-bound commandments, such as daily prayer: it would be an undue burden for them to follow these regulations, since they’re supposedly too busy keeping house to pay attention to the proper times for prayer, etc.) Using this logic, homosexuals may be exempted from their requirements not to engage in homosexual intercourse because to forbid a human being from ever having sex constitutes an undue burden. This position is somewhat attractive because it recognizes that gay people are human beings too, and does not attempt to deprive them of their right to have sex. Yet its drawback is that it seems to view homosexuality as some kind of disability that entitles one to special dispensation to disobey the law of the Bible. While this approach does produce an inclusive effect, it reinforces the continual problem of second-class citizenship for homosexuals within the religious community.
There are many more ways of dealing with this problem; I won’t go into them all. (A good exploration of some of them, as well as a fuller explanation of the history behind the prohibition, can be found in Rabbi Steven Greenberg’s book Wrestling with God and Men, although I disagree with the conclusions put forward by this otherwise brave and forthright gay Orthodox rabbi.) But all these approaches to homosexuality boil down to one of the three positions I have outlined. Either you accept the Bible as the binding word of God, or you don’t, or you bend over backwards to try to make your own vision acceptable in terms of a millennia-old tradition that does not share your values or your vision of which things should be permissible.
And there is another problem on top of all of this. What if you have a religiously observant person who is a homosexual who wishes to remain religiously observant and be a participant in a religiously observant community, and yet transgress a law that the rest of that community views as binding? This problem is explored in the marvellous documentary Trembling Before G-d, and it has no real solution (besides celibacy and perpetual refusal to admit one’s homosexuality openly). The obvious question—why don’t these people join a denomination of Judaism that permits homosexuality?—is not even really a question to many of the people involved: they were raised Orthodox or Hasidic or some in some other kind of observant community, and that is where they wish to remain. Short of denomination-wide change in their religious communities, they will have to live in secret, in un-acceptance, in intolerance.
For Reform Judaism, which represents the largest number of American Jews, this has not really been a problem: since the Torah’s laws are not seen as legally binding, the prohibition on homosexuality can be safely ignored. And indeed, Reform Judaism (along with smaller liberal denominations like Reconstructionism and Renewal Judaism) is where gay and lesbian Jews thrived the best over the past few decades. For Orthodox Judaism (largely), this is also a non-issue: since the Torah’s laws are binding, homosexuality is regarded as illegal. However, there are a courageous few, like the aforementioned Rabbi Greenberg, who are openly gay and Orthodox—yet their numbers are small and the position they represent is not widely accepted at all within Orthodoxy. As for the middle-of-the-road Conservative Movement, it still maintains policies of some ambiguity: openly gay and lesbian rabbis are now ordained, but the decision of whether or not to perform gay marriages or commitment ceremonies, as well as decisions on what honours should be allowed to gay and lesbian Jews in the synagogue services, should be left up to individual rabbis and congregations. (Part of the reason for this ambiguity is the way the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is set up: any teshuvah, or religious responsum, that is officially adopted by the Committee becomes valid halachah, or Jewish law, within Conservative Judaism. Therefore, one teshuvah may be adopted permitting ordination of gay rabbis and another may be adopted forbidding it, and both are valid Conservative Judaism. Confused? So are many Conservative Jews.)
So there we have it. It’s still very much an open question as to how Judaism will regard its Jews who happen to be homosexuals, but what we have seen is that there is everywhere, at least, a framework for attacking this question. It will be interesting to see, as science continues to move ahead with the notion that homosexuality is not a “lifestyle choice” but an inborn characteristic and is therefore not “unnatural”, whether and how Judaism will be able to keep up.