Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, t deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, convenant breakers, without natural
affection, implacable, unmercifuclass="underline"
Who knowing the ju d gm en t o f God, that they which com mit such
things are w orthy o f death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in
them that do them . % (Italics mine)
Romans 1: 22-32
indicated by a footnote reference are slightly different in the Revised Standard Version and are perhaps clearer in meaning, as shown in the following notes.
* Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and men likewise gave up natural relations with women. . .
* To a base mind and to improper conduct.
X Strife.
§ Though they know' God’s decree that those who do such things deserve
to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.
There is nothing like this in the Old Testament. According to
Maimonides:
Women are forbidden to engage in lesbian practices with one
another, these being the doings o f the land o f E gypt (Lev. 18: 3),
against which we have been warned. . . Although such an act
is forbidden, the perpetrators are not liable to a flogging, since
there is no specific negative commandment prohibiting it, nor
is actual intercourse of any kind involved here. Consequently,
such women are not forbidden for the priesthood on account of
harlotry, nor is a woman prohibited to her husband because of
it, since this does not constitute harlotry. It behooves the
court, however, to administer the flogging prescribed for disobedience, since they have performed a forbidden act. A man should be particularly strict with his wife in this matter, and
should prevent women known to indulge in such practices
from visiting her, and her from going to visit them . 1
I asked the minister how Christians who value obedience to God’s
literal word justified such a radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament. The New Testament, he said, was concealed in the Old Testament; nothing in it was really new in the sense of being original; the New Testament made God’s real meaning clear; the Jew s had become blind to the spirit of the law —enter the Holy Spirit
and the revealed word. I suggested that the anti-Jewish tone of
some of the New Testament might be considered new and that it
was possibly related to what I at least considered a new attitude
toward lesbians: Jew s and female homosexuals, politically united
by damnation for the first time. In Romans, Jew s are abandoned
by God the Father; the covenant of manhood, sealed by circumcision, loses its meaning:
For he is not a Jew , which is one outwardly; neither is that
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
But he is a Jew , which is one inw ardly; and circumcision is
that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter. . . *
Romans 2: 28-29
The Gentile gets God’s masculinity (a new God, God the Son)
without an outward mark. The cutting of the penis no longer
means masculinity; it begins to resemble castration. All the feminized creatures—Jews, unnatural women (lesbians), unnatural men (homosexuals)— are linked together in Romans and are promised
God’s “indignation and wrath” (Romans 2: 8). The Jews who obey
the law are replaced by the Christians who know the law not by
learning it but by being it. The first Christian hit list of sinners is
compiled: lesbians, male homosexuals, Jews.
Talk of the Jews animated the minister. He was married to a
Jewish girl. He supported the state of Israeclass="underline" see Amos, ninth chapter. The Jews were up on his pedestal. But the Jews, I insisted, did not abhor lesbians or forbid lesbian acts or damn or search out or
ostracize lesbians: not by law or by actual practice. Christ, he said
at some length and with no small amount of bitterness, had died
because the Jews had overlooked a lot. The Jews had had some
funny ideas until Paul came along.
But where, I asked him, did he get his sense of personal repugnance? Didn’t I see how vile a sin it was, he asked, referring back to the New Testament, which condemned not only lesbians and all
homosexuals but also those who accepted in others this most
heinous of sins? And didn’t I understand what lesbians and male
homosexuals were by nature: filled with wickedness, covetousness,
maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; backbiters,
haters of God, inventors of evil things, without natural affection,
unmerciful. Romans, it must be apparent, is not kind in its estimation of homosexuals, male or female. Any Christian who meets homosexuality in the pages of the New Testament for the first time
* Revised Standard Version: “real circumcision is a matter of the heart,
spiritual and not literal. ”
is likely to fear homosexuals, hate homosexuals, and despise any
liberal tolerance for that viciousness that God abhors. The New
Testament damns those who tolerate homosexuality; and the New
Testament does say that homosexuals “are worthy of death. ”
In the course of m y conversation with the minister, a group of
women had gathered around us. The weather was beautiful, the
convention exciting, the women were high on goodwill and feminist dreams of sisterhood and solidarity. The women, it must be said, were nice and happy and enthusiastic and everyone was
pretty from radiant smiles and high hopes. The minister’s style
was nice too—outgoing, sincere, warm, expansive, full of prejudiced conviction but without meanness. He did not want to hurt anyone. He hated sin, and especially he found lesbian sin loathsome; but it was a conviction pure in its detachment from individual human beings— he had never seen one. M any of the women listening giggled as he and I talked. But what about these women, I
asked, or what about me? Are we all damned? Are we bad? Do
you know which of us is lesbian? Are we all full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit, m alignity? Are we without natural affection or unmerciful? He looked up and around and his skin crawled. He reacted to the sight of us suddenly as frightened girls do to mice or bugs or spiders.