The night I landed in Botswana there was a dinner party. Such good luck! A lively, warm gathering of Africans from Zimbabwe, Togo, Kenya, Zambia and Botswana -- university professors of theology, Pentecostal pastors, and NGO workers dealing with HIV and AIDS. Good conversation, great Botswana beef and South African wine.
I don't remember when the conversation turned to the issue of homosexuality, but I was deeply impressed with how it was conducted. The issues here run parallel to their history in the U.S. Homosexuality is still illegal in most countries of southern Africa, though South Africa decriminalized it in 1998. In the U.S. the process of decriminalization began 1983 with Wisconsin and in 2003 a Supreme Court decision effectively decriminalized male homosexuality for the nation.
In the U.S. the cultural notion of homosexuality as deviant was justified scientifically when the American psychiatric profession designated it a mental illness (a position they reversed in 1973). In Africa where kinship systems create the social order and tradition has greater authority than law, same sex relations are condemned "because they are not our tradition."
However, the more powerful justifications are religious, both in the U.S. and in southern Africa. Soon after the discussion began out came the Bibles and the pastors started preaching. One of the women read Romans 1:25-27 aloud -- off a Kindle, the NIV version:
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
One woman told the story of a deaf boy, raised by his grandmother. As a young man he discovered he was aroused by men. "How did he learn that? Where did he learn it? He was cut off from the community of men by his deafness. Is it simply part of how he was created?" she pondered.
One of the men, a Zambian, told this story: the first Zambian President, Kenneth Kaunda, the father of the nation, built the new state, gave it a solid foundation, promoted the welfare of the whole society and was widely admired, loved and respected for his contribution. Yet, when it was learned he had same-sex relations and promoted decriminalization of homosexuality, his legacy was erased. Did he become a different kind of person because he had same sex relations?
What is this human nature? How do we understand it within our respective cultures? What role does religion play in defining heterosexual or homosexual relations as "natural or unnatural?" Feminist biblical scholar Bernadette Brooten ("Love Between Women") asks what influenced Paul's notions of "natural and unnatural" sex.
In Paul's Greco-Roman cultural world sexual relations were important signifiers of social dominance. Sexual relations mirrored social relations -- a power differential between an active partner (penetrator) and a passive partner (penetrated). Whether between a male and female, or a master and a slave, or a man and boy, sexual dominance should correspond with social dominance. Sexual relations between women were unnatural because neither was superior to the other socially, both were culturally inferior; sexual relations between men of the same age or social class were unnatural because they undermined the social superiority of men.
Three centuries after Paul appealed to traditional Roman ideas on same-sex relations, Augustine worked out a Christian theology of sex that created a new cultural framework within which to understand same-sex relations. Augustine uses the creation to craft a new understanding of human nature with his doctrine of original sin as concupiscence. Because of the first sin of disobedience in the garden (rebellion against God's prohibition), God's punishment was the condition of concupiscence (lust), the rational mind is constantly beset by the rebellion of irrational sexual desiring. This sinful concupiscence, inherited by every human being, makes every sexual act inherently sinful, a manifestation of disordered desire. Paul's statement, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another" at this point is understood in terms of an original sinful, sexual human nature. Birth control, sex after menopause and homosexuality, are all sexual relations that cannot procreate and are therefore reduced to sinful, sexual excess. The idea of human nature as infected with original sin has provided a theological justification to the cultural notion that homosexuality is deviant for Christians in the West.
The differences of views on homosexuality were great between the Africans around the table. The tone was intense and thoughtful, but what surprised me was that the conversation was continually peppered with laughter. I've been in these conversations at home and they have been tense, polarized and polarizing. That didn't happen.
The position that many took was that they were in process; they were struggling with the question. Because they shared their own processing rather than their positions the conversation did not become a debate, there was more space. What I was witnessing was how a community works. First a volunteer facilitator asked speakers to speak from their own experience, from their heart, and second, everyone around the table was called on to express their views. The end was not a resolution of the question but a process of listening and speaking that kept the community together and kept the process open. All kinds of learning was happening around the table and some of it my own.
Noah Tsika: Notes on Anti-Gay Camp
Nicole Greer: How LGBT Summer Camps Shaped My Faith
John Shore: Christians and LGBTQ Equality: There Is No Middle Ground
As for the Bible... Well it says a lot of things about a lot of stuff.. But I believe it's core messages are those of Love, Respect and Tolerance to your fellow man.
Unless you follow everything the Bibles says to the letter in your life (no pork, no mixed fibres, no haircuts, taking slaves, stoning disobedient to death etc) then I'm sorry to say, you haven't got a leg to stand on when you call Gay people "sinners". Simply put, anyone who tries to justify their hostility to Gay Rights on religious grounds are hypocrites, with a pick and mix attitude to the Bible.
Thus, if God is the same yesterday, today and forevermore~ it should be obvious that God can give DAMN as to what a hindsight revisionist states, especially after the fact~ albeit a so called theologian of old or contemporary preacher of I'll day!
Alas we both know it's pointless, but it is such FUN watching them squirm and jump through mental hoops to try justify their bigotry.
Here is a link to a great article by a Rabbi I think you would enjoy. He definitely nails in on the head when he says that anyone who use religion to justify their hostility to homosexuals has a (hypocritical) pick and mix attitude to the bible:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/05/31/rabbi-jonathan-romain-chastises-religious-opponents-of-equal-marriage/
The first part is largely true, though less explicit, but "nothing else" is not even implied within the Bible.
When I read commentary like this, I really wonder whether there were any gay people at the table. I, as a gay person in the U.S., find very few occasions serious (and mixed; meaning gay/straight) conversations about my own rights, dignity, and well-being to find any room for laughter. In the U.S. they are tense and often polarized and polarizing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I feel as though the professor here is romanticizing "community" and over-valuing a certain lightness in these kinds of conversations. For my own part, I find it very difficult to engage in conversations where basic issues of humanity and fairness are actually being debated and the people there find it reasonable to be doing so. I realize this needs to go on, but perhaps instead of encouraging this kind of ethic across the board by comparing this environment to the more polarized or polarizing (and thereby judging the moral beliefs and foundations of large swaths of other people living in different places), perhaps a more thoughtful analysis of culture, context, and expectation sets are in order.
"Against the Romance of Community" by Miranda Joseph
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/against-the-romance-of-community
More, more, more! I know it's really hard for many queers to be anti-social (it certainly makes me literally sick in trying...), but intellectualizing about the social is entirely different!
I really don't care about how nice and polite they are to each other as they try to work through how to maintain their prejudices in the fact of reality.
Your attitude is also incredibly patronizing, by the way. If you hadn't been so surprised at how thoughtful and articulate they are, and how adorable that is, (They think! And they talk! And they reason! And they're polite! Wow!) you might have concluded that (guess what?) they're adult enough to handle your at least asking questions -- even if making arguments would have been counterproductive.
For example, "I know that American culture may seem radical, but that doesn't mean we do not value tradition. It's just that every tradition started for a reason that is more complex than 'just because,' and sometimes we find that the reasons no longer hold, or that the tradition is so old that people have forgotten why it was started in the first place. Could that possibly be one answer to your dilemma?"
Did you say anything during this exchange?
The author of this piece (I assume that she's you, but I don't know) was so awed that people in Africa have access to modern telecommunications equipment and are capable of holding a civil conversation on a controversial question involving the intersection of sexuality, the law, and tradition, that this animates the entire article. (And by the way, when tradition is, as she says, more important than law -- it is law. If she'd truly studied the various African systems of tribal and traditional law, she wouldn't have been surprised by the level of sophistication she observed.)
I was struck by the fact that the author was so amazed at the civilized coversation she overheard that it never occurred to her that these are grownups who could at least handle a question or two.
Even if she was in anthropological non-interference mode, at the point she realized that was listening to a group of people at a level of sophistication equal to her own, she could have interacted wtih them. Instead, she wrote an article belaboring the blindingly obvious.
Sometimes bias manifests itself, not in hatred, but in condescension. That, thankfully, can easily be outgrown.
There is some value in her observations of how this conversation unfolded, but knowing the opportunity to interject some thought provoking ideas was available to her, and was missed, is frustrating because, let's face it, neither you nor I would be allowed in that room (or at least the conversation would not have unfolded the way it did if the participants knew we were there).
I work in civil rights and social justice and have for the last 25 years, sometimes on my own civil rights and most of the time on those of others (although I find that the different areas all dovetail together eventually anyway). If I could make a suggestion about the anger you feel, we're never going to win this without effective persuasion. If you want people to move from Point A to Point B, standing at Point B and yelling at them isn't nearly as effective as joining them at Point A and walking them in the right direction.
I'm frustrated because she as at Point A with them, and simply described the landscape. We can't use that. She could have moved them off the dime at least a little.
By the way, no one can claim to know what African traditions were thousands of years ago. Anyone who claims to know is lacking in intellectual integrity or is ignorant.
The hateful and prejudice "Christians" have designed God in their own image, instead of the other way around. I always thought Jesus talked about love and tolerance of others. Actually, the only people he railed against were the Pharisees, and these modern day evangelicals more closely match them than Jesus.
I know that my creator made me gay and I know that I couldn't feel the intense love I feel for my partner without the Creator's blessing. These "Christians" don't follow any of the teachings of their namesake, nor do they use the critical thinking skills or the boundless capacity to love that God endowed them with. So what we have is a whole group of people completely run by hatred and fear. Hatred and fear, two things their own religion would tell them are the work of Satan. They don't get it though. They are arrogant, prideful and epically stupid, it's just a shame that so many innocent gay people and their families have to suffer at the hand of their epic stupidity.
I believe they know better, I believe their moral compass tells them they're wrong. I also believe they are so invested in their own
Of course, that can be argued against but it can't be disproven. I usually say that I know God made me gay and I know it's ok because of the intense love I feel for my partner. I couldn't feel that type of pure love for someone unless my creator was a part of it. I don't believe in a hateful and vengeful God though. Jesus taught love and tolerance, love and tolerance fly in the face of base human nature. We are violent and hateful creatures but many of us try to rise above it. Those of us that can't or won't have designed God in their own image, rather than the reverse.
All I know is that I am what I am and there is nothing sinful about it
I think that anytime you launch - verbally or mentally - into these kinds of ruminations, you have departed from really considering the level of human nature. What this person is doing is really thinking about "what causes homosexuality" and then looking at a particular case that challenges her/his understandings of nature/nurture. That's not really a reflection on human nature and sexuality. It's a social-sciency approach that, at best, gives you a way to deal with a certain logic-game or problem. In order to reflect on human nature and sexuality, I think that one has to stay within him or herself.
Now it's gone!
All they should be evaluating is if they have the legitimate right to pass laws against/incite people against other citizens, when those pose no direct harm to other citizens. That is the question. The answer is no.
Look at South Africa, a country with high levels of homophobia but equality before the law in terms of protection from discrimination, marriage, adoption etc for gay people. The government enshrined equal rights in the constitution, including for different genders, religions, disabilities, races, cultures and sexual orientation. It was bucking the trend, and it had to do some clever politicking because over 70% of the country was against it.
But they did it. This is because their personal beliefs on the origin, justifiability or sanctity just don't matter when creating an equal society based on human rights. Human rights are an all or nothing decision in principle. These countries are quick to defend against racism, for example, but often silent on women's rights and vehemently opposed to gay rights. But you can't pick and chose. The principle that you want YOUR rights protected is the same principle that forces you to extend the same protection to others.
But they did it SO POLITELY.
S.L.A.V.E. M.O.R.A.L.I.T.Y. That is what it is.
Very well said!
"It's not part of our tradition, you see?" So now we'll just go on treating gay people like non-humans...
(See comments below.)