Thread by @RabbiHarvey

Well since Sodom is trending AGAIN and a ridiculous Christian nationalist CRIED on the floor of congress about allowing Gay marriage be a thing, let's talk seriously about LGBTQIA in the Bible. #Thread #threadstorytime #Threads

Let's start off with the obvious point. Whatever's in the bible, good or bad, doesn't matter. America is not a Christian nation, and representatives uphold the Constitution (a secular document) not any particular bible. So, that should be the end of it. Sadly it's not. /2

While Christians sure love to talk about how the Torah and its laws are something Jesus "fulfilled" for them so they don't have to obey anymore, they sure do like coming back to Torah law when it suits them. The Torah law was given to the nation of Israel, not to Christians./3

The Torah laws, such as in Leviticus no longer apply to Christians, as "Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2, or: Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith.../4

...would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." Galatians 3:23–25. Romans 10:4 states: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness/5

...to everyone who believes." or perhaps: "by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace," Ephesians 2:15. AND YET, they keep reaching into our old texts! Confusing? nah. /6

We all know this is an act of Eisegesis. Christians found nothing in their texts condemning LGBTQ+ so they needed to find stuff in ours but without any context, they pull out verses like fortune cookies! Amazing! So, from the Jewish side: yes, it's true, Leviticus states.../7

(כב) וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תּוֹעֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃
"And with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman, it is a to'evah (abomination)" - Leviticus 18:22
Understanding of this verse is needed from a Jewish perspective as it is a Jewish law. /8

So, let's forget all the supersessionaism arrogance that "Christians know our texts better than we do" cause that's nonsense. They just took our texts and ran with them interpreting NOTHING as explicit and EVERYTHING as a hint of Jesus' coming. So the idea of strong exegesis/9

...in theory SHOULD appeal to the Christian mind as they are so hell-bent (pun intended) on seeing things beyond the face reading. So let's start with the fact that there are two words for "male" here in the verse which both mean male BUT were chosen for a reason. /10

The idea that the author (whether divine or priestly) specifically chose two words to describe the same thing is...absurd. Any Christian should be able to see that. Two words meaning two different KINDS of men. Why? Possibly because the verse prohibits the kind of sex /11

...between men that is designed to effect the power and mastery of the penetrator. Sex for the conquest, for shoring up the ego, for self-aggrandizement, or worse, for the perverse pleasure of demeaning another man is prohibited. We should also note lesbianism, bisexuality.../12

...nor any other kind of LGBTQ+ lifestyle is explicitly prohibited in the Bible. Only men and only this kind of man on (different kind of) man sex. This should raise eyebrows of suspicion for those that even care to read the Hebrew and not just trust the English. /13

Christians are masters of the arguments from silence, so why not join in and say, "where is the condemnation of women/women or bisexuality or transgender"? etc. I'm sure they have answers but I'm not interested in them. What I am interested in is this one text in Leviticus. /14

Leviticus as we know it, and we know it from scholarship, comes from a priestly manual (proto-Leviticus) wherein laws were created only for the Israelite Priests to follow. Why? Well if they even followed them at all or if this was just a wishlist, it would be because priests/15

...were held to a much higher standard than most Israelites. And most of those laws involve sacrificial things or purity laws for priests. HOWEVER, it is the Holiness Code, Leviticus 17-26 that Christians seem to hover over. These were MORAL laws given to the priests.../16

...before they were canonized into the Torah as for all Israelites to follow. Leviticus 18 is big on "uncovering nakedness" meaning sex in the purity sense. 18:19 is about not having sex with a woman on her period. 18:20 is about adultery. 18:21 is about "offering children"/17

...to Molech. Christians might have trouble with this as it looks like child sacrifice. But, Molech is the name of an image (idol) and a general term for all whom a person accepts as a king over them. Again if Christians bothered to read the Hebrew they would see that.../18

...The word le-ha’avir (to set apart) is to burn, for that was the way Molech was worshipped. Some say that they used to pass their sons over the fire. Some lived and some died. In view of the fact that the verse does not mention fire, some explained le-ha’avir lamolekh .../19

...(to set apart to Molech) as meaning to cause to pass over from the Torah of God to another religion. You will defile the Lord who is known as your God when you give from the holy seed to Molech. It is after this verse that the prohibition of power sex between men is listed/20

One should not lie with a man as he does with a woman because men had power over women in Israelite culture (patriarchal and property and all that) and to do that to a man would lower his status. This is then followed by a prohibition against beastiality. But the verse.../21

...after is what is important for context. Remember the first verse is prefaced by references to Moloch, another people's idol. The verse directly after is Lev. 18:24    "Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations that I am casting.../22

...out before you defiled themselves. 25 Thus the land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants." In other words, these two things, power sex between men and beastiality were aspects of other nations in Canaan. /23

The Levitical author (or God whatever) says don't let your kids convert to another religion (Moloch), here's what they do (power sex between men and beastiality) and then again don't defile yourself that way, follow MY laws. The context is pretty darn clear if you read it/24

Finally, let's talk briefly about WHY else Priests wouldn't want men sleeping with men but sleeping with women instead. I wrote an entire thread on this but can't find it. But basically the Priests also wrote Genesis 1, and they're all about order and chaos. BINARY things./25

Light/Darkness, Day/Night, Sky/Water, Evening/Morning, Sun/Moon, Man/Woman.
They knew that binaries can get muddy and wanted to maintain the categories, as if things get too muddied then the categories of creation, brought into the world, might also collapse. /26

Priests believed the worlds began in Tohu va’vohu, a swirl of energy and God came through It and made categories so they (the priests) had to maintain the categories, or else God would pull the natural ones and we'd go back to Chaos. We see this in Leviticus 19: /27

"Your animal, you are not to [allow to] mate [in] two-kinds;* your field, you are not to sow with two-kinds;
a garment of two-kinds, of shaatnez,* is not to go on you." In other words, two men together caused the same issues as two kinds of the same garments. There was.../28

...nothing hateful in what the Priests felt. They saw it as an order/chaos issue.
So, in conclusion, we no longer need to worry about the Order/Chaos thing because it's 2022, we no longer have to worry about our children becoming idol worshippers and thus emulating them.../29

...and we no longer have to associate power sex between men with an outside nation.
As for Sodom, Ezekiel 16:49 states explicitly, "Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity; yet she did.../30

...not support the poor and the needy." Now that's explicit and clearly had to be written because OTHER people were confused by the sin of Sodom also. Though they seem to recall that the mob of Sodom asks for men but gets women to rape instead are just fine...so.../31

...It's absurd to think the "men" issue was the real issue there, but Christians gonna Christians.
In any case, I'm a proud rabbi, a proud Jew, and a proud supporter of the LGBTQIA+ family and all their equal rights because I read, I study, I care, and I live in 2022.
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