Homosexuality in the Abrahamic Traditions

Loved or hated? Accepted or rejected? The story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom is told in Genesis 19, in Judaism’s Torah. Moreover, Leviticus 18:22 reads (in the Contemporary English Version), “It is disgusting for a man to have sex with another man.” This is repeated at Leviticus 20:13, but in that verse, the death penalty is added: “...and those who do will be put to death, just as they deserve.” Recall that Leviticus was written about 1400 B.C.E. when the Israelites were in the desert, having just escaped from Egypt. “In practice, the death penalty has not been practiced in Judaism for over 2,000 years.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_homosexuality retrieved 3 February 2010)

In Islam, homosexuals (called qaum Lut, the "people of Lot") are condemned in the story of Lot's people in the Qur'an (15:73; 26:165). Of the four legal schools in Islam, at least two would punish homosexuals as adulterers. In fact, since its Islamic revolution, the Iranian government has executed more than 4000 people charged with homosexual acts. (See http://www.religionfacts.com/homosexuality/islam.htm, retrieved 31 January 2010)

While many Christians welcome gays, others definitely do not. Perhaps you saw this news story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?scp=1&sq=uganda%20homosexual&st=cse ((retrieved 31 January 2010) “Last March, three American evangelical Christian preachers, whose teachings about ‘curing’ homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks...The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was ‘the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda’ — and the threat homosexuals pose to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.”

Those American preachers said they never meant to “help stoke the kind of anger” that led “a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, [to introduce] the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals...” Perhaps they didn’t mean it, but the connection between their presentations and the Ugandan bill looks quite direct.

From my personal perspective, those three Americans, and the Ugandan, hold extreme views, and preach and act on those extreme views. I don’t understand what “threat” homosexuals pose to Bible-based values and the traditional family, but I do understand the threat extremists pose to homosexuals.

Apparently some American Christians want to put homosexuals to death too. Frederick Clarkson describes one movement or philosophy, called “Christian Reconstructionism, whose founders favor executing (exterminating) homosexuals.

“Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or ‘Biblical Law,’ is the basis for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth...Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of Biblical Law...So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality." (http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html, retrieved 31 January 2010)

Homosexual people continue under threat in some branches of Islam and Christianity; and their status in Judaism varies, depending on whether the group is Orthodox, Conservative or Reformed. We must be watchful, ready to act to prevent the application of “Biblical Law” against gay and lesbian citizens.

The common ground? The liberal subgroups of each of the three Abrahamic traditions express more tolerance for homosexual people and homosexuality than do the conservatives.