Last night in talking about toxic communities I mentioned the Sodom and Gomorrah story and put in a side note about how if you're reading it as being about homosexuality, you're reading INTO it, and screw right-wingers who keep citing as a basis for their homophobia. Here's why:
So the problems with Sodom and Gomorrah in the actual text, in what the words on the page actually SAY, are fairly enigmatic. It just says that their sin/offense is very great. Then Abraham spends a lot of time bargaining for the cities to not be destroyed.
And then the "camera" of the narrative heads into Sodom, where the two messengers head to the gate of the city and meet Lot, who ushers them into his house. And the people of the city demand that he send them out so they can have their way with them.
A couple things to note about what the text actually says here. First, although English translations usually say the "men of Sodom" demanded it, the term used is אנשים which, like collective nouns in many gendered languages, can be an all male OR mixed group. "Men" or "people."
The text goes on to specify, "young and old, ALL the people" (כל-העם), so I mean, I suppose you can assume that "ALL the people" doesn't include women, but that seems forced.
The term used for what they want to do, "to know," (ידע) does have a sexual connotation. So yes, we're talking about sexual assault, and that definitely includes men assaulting men. But to get from "send out those strangers so we can rape them" to "the problem was gay sex" is...
If the text wanted us to take away the idea that Sodom was destroyed for gay sex, it could have shown us *consensual* gay sex. Like, the text has no problem showing villains in good relationships and still casting them as evil. Ahab & Jezebel have a great marriage.
(See also, as a side note, my discussion last night about toxic communities and how without a critical mass of good people the community turns good people bad rather than letting them improve it. Lot offers them his daughters. This is the best the city has to offer in "good" ppl)
So there's a lot of midrash and commentary around the story, and as is customary, it picks up on a strange note in the text and worries at it, tells stories to explain it. In this case, that strange note is that the Lord mentions hearing a cry, and that's what starts all this off
So if Lot, Mr. Don't-Rape-My-Visitors-Rape-My-Daughters-Instead, is the best the city has to offer, he's probably not crying out. And everyone else is terrible, so who's crying out?
There are two stories here that attempt to explain what was so wrong with the place. The first is that when visitors came, they were told they had to use the coin of the city to purchase food. So they'd trade their money or sell their things for coins from the residents.
And each resident that gave visitors a coin would scratch their name into it. And the merchants would see those coins and refuse to sell food to the visitors. And after they died of starvation, all the residents would come and take back the coins with their names.
And the second is that everyone was prohibited to give any food to visitors. But there was a young woman who snuck food to starving travelers in her water jug. And when the visitors weren't dying on schedule, the residents got suspicious.
They figured out it was her, so they smeared her body with honey and tied her to a rooftop so hornets came and devoured her. And it was her cries that start off the whole destruction story.
(Incidentally, those people railing about how the US is a modern-day Sodom might be right in the comparison, but not because of pride parades in San Francisco. If there is a parallel, it's to the fatal cruelty of greed.)
Point being, the reading of the story as a condemnation of homosexuality isn't universal, and it isn't in the actual text. So next time your conservative uncle goes off on Teh Gays and those liberal cities as modern-day Sodoms, feel free to tell him the text doesn't support him.
