Located at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Catholic Handbook PURL: http://purl.oclc.org/NET/lgbh/ [A PURL is an OCLC maintained "Persistant URL" which will always point to the real location of a website] Tue, 20 Jul 1993 Paul Halsall What if Romans 1:26-32 is About Gays and Lesbians? The TEXT Rom 1:26-32 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. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God's decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die--yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them. COMMENT If it, despite all the arguments about the text, Roman I:26 is a discussion of lesbian and gay people, I know, experientially that it is not true.. Gay people simply are not like that, although I do not deny cliques and gossip exist amongst gays as elsewhere. I also know that this passage is used perniciously. Sometimes by Catholics, but very often by Protestant fundamentalists - eg. that minister in Topeka KA who is quite literally going round celebrating the deaths of people with AIDS. I have a list pinned on my wall of all the people I know who have died. Peter, who escaped Hungary in 1956, Steve, who even as he was dying ran a social service out of Dignity/NY to help others who were ill; Allan, a Black man who marched in Selma, was beaten, and still could be the friend of so many white men; George, who devoted his life to exploring the connections between Celtic and Byzantine Christianity: Benedict, who was monk who never quite knew about his vocation: Jon, who worked so hard to get information about lifesaving treatments to others: and David, 30 years old, who worked to end violence in New York. I have other friends, musicians, and people who have had no time to develop any particular skill, who are ill at the moment. One of the things about AIDS, is that it makes you sit down and evaluate the lives of 30 year old men. This is not something we have to do very often. And what I have discovered is the hug number of lies told about gay people, who they are, what they are like, and what they can do. Many of these lies had in act long been believed by gay people themselves. Now I know they are untrue. I think St. Paul perhaps saw some things he did not like in Antioch or some other fleshpot, and generalized without any realiaation of the harm he was causing. Sometimes Paul saw evil where there was none, other times he did not see evil where it existed. Where is his prophetic voice on slavery - certainly a much more violent practice in Greco-Roman society than the slavery allowed by Jewish Law. In short, I think Paul needs forgiveness for this passage's ill effects.