Joshua Kennon » gay and lesbian

My Reflections on Christian Legal Society Chapter of University of California Hastings College of Law v. Martinez Supreme Court Ruling

Joshua Kennon — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:49:41 +0000

Back in college, when I was the student body treasurer and chairman of the finance board, a Christian group known as Campus Crusade for Christ threatened to sue the university because they wanted to be officially recognized. The problem was they required that their elected leaders leaders sign a personal “Statement of Beliefs” pledge that included a provision affirming that homosexuality was a sin and the leader did not engage in immoral sexual conduct.

This went against the university’s non-discrimination policy and caused a lot of problems for us. As a result, the administration did not want the Christian group recognized unless that provision was removed from their by laws. This led to a lot of meetings with people from both sides and a request that until the matter was resolved, I stopped issuing checks to this group, yada yada yada.

At the exact same time, across the country in California, a law school was going through the same thing. We resolved our issue in-house. The folks on the west coast didn’t and they sued. Their case went to the Supreme Court and was decided this morning, which I blogged about earlier. I just finished reading the entire opinion in Christian Legal Society Chapter of University of California Hastings College of Law v. Martinez. Here are my conclusions.

My Own Personal Background with a Similar Case

First, you all know that when I went through this, my official position was that any group should be able to discriminate as long as the opportunity to form an organization was open to everyone. That way, if one group was a “I hate pastries” group, other students could form a, “I love pastries” group and free speech reigned. The free market of ideas would sort out which group was more popular. It was a libertarian-leaning position and I thought about it carefully, even calling home to talk to my parents about it for several hours as I worked out my opinion on the matter.

Thus, my official view on the matter was that Christian group should be allowed to restrict membership and the next morning, a group of students who opposed it should create a counterbalance group for gay religious pride or something along those lines. Everybody wins. That way, just like campaign finance funding, the university political setting resembled the real-world.

I tend to lean libertarian and support the side that allows for the greatest free speech expression. However, in Christian Legal Society Chapter of University of California Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, I could rationally support both the majority and the minority. That is extremely rare.

Part of the reason our situation was unique was that each organization could only request money for events that were open to everyone. That way, their individual membership may have been discriminatory, but they couldn’t get funding from the student activity fee unless everyone could come and partake. Thus, no one was forced to subsidize discrimination.

Fortunately for all involved, the matter was settled and went away despite the threat of Campus Crusade for Christ sending in lawyers and getting us involved in a very unpleasant legal fight. I got to go about cutting checks to student groups and counting money like Scrooge McDuck. The villagers rejoiced.

I understood, however, both points of view. It was one of the few cases in life where I think each argument was entirely rational.

The Supreme Court Ruled Against the Christian Group

After reading the ruling and dissent in Christian Legal Society Chapter of University of California Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, it looks like it is a double-edge sword. On one hand, organizations and groups with unpopular philosophies or opinions will have a difficult time getting equal access to funding or facilities, whereas on the other, it allows society to determine what it is willing to accept in terms of decency standards.

I do not think it is a “heart in the dagger of religious liberty” as Alito and the dissenting minority inferred. Religious groups can still form outside of the university, they can have Bible studies, throw events, start websites, and recruit new members, even if their beliefs are unpopular. They cannot demand that the school and the state legislature give them benefits that it has made contingent upon compliance with certain community ideals; as Justice Ginsburg put it, Hastings “is dangling the carrot of subsidy, not wielding the stick of prohibition.”

The bottom line is that Justice John Paul Stevens showed tremendous wisdom and in a few sentences, cut to the heart of the matter in his concurring opinion:

In this case, petitioner excludes students who will not sign its Statement of Faith or who engage in “unrepentant homosexual conduct,” App. 226. The expressive association argument it presses, however, is hardly limited to these facts. Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women – or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities. (emphasis added)

According to Gallup, which has been tracking the issue for years, 52% of Americans now believe that gay relationships are moral and good, showing a slow, steady, demographic shift that has taken place among the youngest Americans. In fact, if only those who were 29 years old and younger voted, gay marriage would be legal in 3 out of 4 states.

He’s absolutely correct. This is about a university determining whether or not it will lend its name, reputation, and megaphone to a group that is in conflict with basic decency ideals.

The California legislature has decided that state colleges cannot discriminate against gay and lesbian students. The university incorporated the non-discrimination policy into its own rules since it is state-funded. This is consistent with shifts in American public opinion.

According to a new Gallup poll, which has been tracking American’s view on sexual morality for 20+ years, for the first time in the nation’s history, a majority of people in the United States believe that it is morally acceptable to be gay and that it is perfectly equal to being straight. In fact, it currently stands at 52%. Other studies of demographic trends have shown that if only people 29 and younger voted, gay marriage would be legal in 3 out of 4 states.

The reality is that for many of us in the 35-and-younger crowd, discriminating against gays and lesbians is as screwed up as discriminating against blacks, women, or Jews as Stevens stated. These groups should be allowed to exist because it is a free country. That doesn’t mean they have an inherent right to be supported when their beliefs go against the majority.

As a result, I understand the majority ruling and the reasoning.

There Seems to Be Disgust Dripping from the Dissenters’ Words

The most self-evident thing in the dissent is that the four members of the court who ruled against the university believe that gays or lesbians are defined by behavior, or a sexual fetish. They don’t think of gays and lesbians as a group of people who are wired to be attracted to the same gender in an immutable way like race or sex. Alito’s constant harping on “sexual mortality” underscores the belief that he, like a lot in his generation, can’t get passed what these folks do in bed.

In other words, they seem incapable or unwilling to discern between sexual orientation and sexual behavior.

Put another way, in my book, if a man is predominately attracted, both emotionally and physically, to other men, he is gay regardless of the total women he sleeps with or how many children he has. That’s just reality.

Likewise, if a man who is emotionally and physically attracted to women has sex with another guy, that doesn’t make him gay. His behavior is gay, but his orientation isn’t. A man trapped in prison who has sex with another man after ten years without being with a women is still straight, even though his actions weren’t. He wants nothing more than to hold a beautiful woman, make love to her, and be connected to her emotionally and physically.

Saying that people who are gay must remain celibate or force themselves into a relationship with the opposite sex (would you want your daughter, sister, or mother marrying a man who wasn’t attracted to women?) is cruel and irrational.

Things Are Changing

The Bible fully supports slavery yet we decided, as a nation, that was no longer morally acceptable. The same thing with second marriages … we now allow them, with only the catholic church remaining faithful to scripture.

We are doing the same thing now with sexual orientation. In ten or twenty years, being gay will be about as interesting as having blond hair or green eyes. Those who oppose it will be branded bigots exactly like those who hate people for being black. Facts don’t lie. Even James Dobson was smart enough to realize this a year or so ago in his retirement speech, when he went through upcoming demographic changes.

Why Can’t People Do Basic Math?

Joshua Kennon — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:36:11 +0000

The archie cartoon isn't that big of a deal. Why are the newspapers freaking out? I mean, Snagglepuss was the biggest queen in cartoon land. Seriously, didn't everyone realize he was gay?

I was doing my daily newspaper reading and in the Chicago Sun or Tribune (I don’t recall which one), this guy was very upset about the fact that the comic strip Archie has a gay character. Since gays only make up 6% of the population (he rejected 10% and said the smaller number seemed more likely so I’ll take his number on faith, even though the Centers for Disease Control showed that a staggering 10% of married, self-described heterosexual men had engaged in sex with another male in the past 12 months despite being in a relationship with a woman … seriously, read the copy of the study WebMD has posted on their site), he demanded to know why “they” have to appear everywhere; isn’t “anywhere safe”?

Now, I don’t even care about the topic per se. I’m a privileged , rich, white, Christian guy who lives in the Midwest and pretty much can do anything I want as long as I continue to pay my taxes and avoid breaking the law. What I care about is the inability of most people to do basic math functions. He called 6% a “tiny, tiny minority”. Seriously?

Okay … 6% translates into 1 out of 16.67 people. (You just have to take 1 and divide it by 6 to perform the inversion!)

Still don’t get it? Let’s put it into terms you can understand:

It is estimated that the average person really knows about 250 people (not recognizes, but knows – who they are, where they work, what they do, etc.) That means that the average person knows 15 gay people, they just don’t realize it. (Case in point: Some of the gay people they know are married to the opposite sex according to the CDC study.)

Your child’s elementary school class probably has around 30 kids unless you go to a private school. That means that your child (if not your child themselves) have at least 2 gay classmates in every class.

When you walk into Wal-Mart Super Center, if there are 200 people in the store at any given time, 12 of them are gay. That is just how the math works.

Seriously, guys. This isn’t difficult. Just invert the question like Charlie Munger taught us. Ask, “what do my assumptions mean in a real-world context?” and you can see if they are rational or not. In this case, the notion that it is a political agenda to make a comic character reflect the broader world is absurd. It is the broader world. Thinking it’s not is just denial.

No wonder it is so easy to make money. Most people don’t think using numbers and statistics, meaning it’s like we are dueling and they are using a cardboard sword and I’m using a stealth bomber. The schools are failing! This has to be fixed.

People Who Are Drowning in Student Loan Debt

This Is Funny … Jesus, Gays, and Prostitutes

Joshua Kennon — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:53:58 +0000

C.S. Lewis talked about how we excuse almost anything for the sake of humor. I’m sorry, but this is funny. It caught me so off-guard I almost swallowed my coffee wrong.

And this one … because it’s true (it is completely Biblical for a husband to stone his wife if she isn’t a virgin on the wedding night):

Does Religion Have a Responsibility to Look to Science?

Joshua Kennon — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:55:51 +0000

Here’s an interesting question: Does religion have just as much responsibility to examine scientific evidence as it does religious tradition and scriptural text?

Responsible religion cannot ignore scientific discoveries. Do you think the Christian church thought they were wrong when they were punishing Galileo? Of course not. But it doesn't change the fact they were.

Put another way: Throughout history, religion taken as a whole has lagged behind scientific discovery and development, only to redefine itself decades, or even centuries, later. In the case of Christianity, the Bible, specific passages in it, as well as long religious tradition were used to justify:

Slavery (not only of whole races but the ability of fathers to sell their daughters, which still goes on in the world and is perfectly biblical)
The inferiority of women as evidenced by the prohibition of female preachers and female led households. Up until the 1970’s, a woman really couldn’t even open a bank account without her husband’s permission in the United States. That is a staggering thought.
The inferiority of different races. (We’ll talk about this in a moment.)
The inability to earn interest on money loaned. The entire American banking system and economy is directly in violation of biblical teaching. Every time you put money into a savings account or certificate of deposit, you are earning interest from your share of the interest charged to borrowers, in some case outright usury at 30%+ on credit cards.
Child abuse. There is absolutely nothing un-biblical about requiring 7 years olds to go to work to support the family (almost all of the children in the bible did), rebellious sons and daughters were stoned, and existed more for the benefit of the parents than having any real chance at self-actualization.
The torture, imprisonment, and murder of scientists. We all saw what happened to Galileo for daring to discover that the Earth is not only the center of the universe, it is circling a star, which itself is part of a solar system that itself is circling a galaxy that is circling the center of the universe, which we are nowhere near.

Cognitive Dissonance in the Christian Church

Racism and Christianity

For the longest time, race was probably the most powerful example of cognitive dissonance in the church. To this day, some misguided religious groups believe that African Americans are the cursed decedents of Cain.

From scientific evidence, however, we know that every human being on the planet started out as black. By extension, for those who believe in a 100% literal interpretation of the bible, Adam and Eve had to be black. There is no way around the DNA evidence because it shows that humans came from somewhere in Africa, close to where the Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe God created mankind, and that being “white” developed as people migrated north into areas with less sunlight and those with paler skin had the ability to absorb certain nutrients, making them healthier and more successful in a reproductive sense.

Thousands of years of in-breeding among these cultures then led to certain traits and looks – flaming red hair in the Vikings, porcelain skin, blond hair, and blue eyes in the Nordic people, etc.. It was a case of adaptation, not evolution. (This is why something like 75% of the world’s population is lactose intolerant except Anglo-Saxons! Why? Our ancestors lived off of cow milk and those who were better able to absorb the nutrients survived, while those that couldn’t died off and didn’t reproduce. It’s the same concept.)

When was the last time you saw a church have a stained glass window depicting Adam and Eve as they were – fully, completely, and totally black? I mean, 44% of the world is Asian, 17% is East Indian, 16% is White, 14% is Black, and 8% is Hispanic. So even if we didn’t have the DNA evidence, common sense would tell you it wasn’t likely Adam and Eve were white. I mean, even in the paintings showing the “end of days”, it’s ordinarily a see of white with multi-cultural tinges despite the white people would be a minority in heaven. When most Christians picture heaven, though, they probably think of being surrounded by white people. Statistics and common sense should inform us otherwise.

The same people who believe the Bible must be interpreted literally often have paintings or statues of angels around their home, many of which are female. Women only existed after being taken from Adam and were thus a part of humanity and every angel mentioned in the Bible is male. Thus, a literal interpretation means that there cannot be female angels. That sort of cognitive dissonance ticks me off - don't they realize they are also violating the rules against having images of the "things in heaven"? You cannot stake your soul on a book you're not willing to read, yet it seems like most people in the world do this every day without having any basis for their faith.

Furthermore, the same people who believe the bible is literal in every sense of the word will have paintings of female angels, despite the fact that every angel in the bible is male because females only came into existence because of God’s desire to give a partner to Adam. They also ignore the strict prohibition of having any artwork, statues, or other icons because God forbid it. So having a marble statue of an angel in your house? A sin according to the bible. It’s female? Total fantasy made up by European artists. I cannot stand intellectual laziness. This should be perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever read the book and has any common sense understanding of the world.

The Current “Big Two” Social Issues That Have Dominated the News Over the Past 10 Years

Now, let’s get to the so-called “big two”. Over time, these issues changes. For most of the 19th century, the issues were slavery and the role of women. Those having been resolved we’ve moved on to the following two:

Abortion

I could never participate in an abortion. I just couldn’t do it and sleep at night (with three notable exceptions, which are so statistically unlikely they are meaningless and merely theoretical so I don’t want to get into them here).

Nevertheless, we have to talk about the inherent cognitive dissonance on the issue in Christianity.

I mean, let’s take the belief that life begins at conception (it may very well). We know from biology that for every one child a woman has, at least one other egg was fully fertilized, began to divide, and started to develop. Unfortunately for the egg, it fails to attach the the wall of the uterus. Perhaps the mother was rock climbing and fell. Perhaps she ate something that caused a chemical reaction in her body. We don’t know all the reasons, yet. However, she menstruates like normal, never having realized that she has just had what amounts to an abortion if life begins at conception.

The implication of this would be that when she dies and gets to heaven, she will have twice as many children as she had on earth, and half of those children will have never experienced temptation and would have gotten a “free pass” to salvation.

Yet, if you were to ask a Christian woman, “How many children will you have when you get to heaven?” It’s unlikely she will factor in all of the unknown miscarriages she’s had scientifically despite absolutely protesting that “life begins at conception”. She also won’t discuss the religious and spiritual implications of fully fifty percent of humanity never going through any temptation at all, whatsoever, under any circumstances, and getting a free pass to eternal salvation.

In other words, most of the Church has not yet reconciled the gains in biology knowledge over the past 70 years with religious knowledge. (Many Jewish groups, on the other hand, teach that the fetus is nothing more than “water” until the 40th day when God gives it is a soul. This would solve almost all of the problems we just discussed.)

In other words, if life begins at conception as some Christians believe, then fully 50% of humanity will never be tempted and got a “get out of hell” free card. That means Jesus would have been incorrect when he said the way to the Kingdom of Heaven was a narrow gate because hell would be the minority. That is cognitive dissonance.

The same goes for Christians who attempt to have in vitro fertilization. Embryos are created and the “left overs” destroyed. You often see otherwise anti-abortion Christians perfectly willing to do this for their own selfish ends, namely have a child. I personally don’t have a problem with artificial insemination because it allows couples to have children who otherwise could not have. I do have a problem with cognitive dissonance. It makes me angry because refusal to resolve it is intellectual fear, cowardice, or laziness.

Gays and Lesbians

The same cognitive dissonance happens on the issue of gays and lesbians in the church, as well. My mother once said that “being gay is a choice.”

I asked her, using a Charlie Munger rational framework: “So you believe that if you took a gay man and strapped him down in a chair like Daniel Craig in James Bond, totally naked, and showed him film of the most beautiful drop-dead gorgeous women on the planet, that he would get sexually aroused and that he would choose not to do anything about it, showing remarkable restraint?”

She said she didn’t know. When you ask the question in reverse, as Munger said quoting the mathematician Jacobi (Invert, always invert!), you are often better able to understand a problem.

When discussing this particular cognitive dissonance in Christianity and religion with my family, I used the Daniel Craig analogy in James Bond. If being gay or lesbian is a choice, then people must believe that if a gay man were strapped to a chair and forced to watch film of beautiful women having sex, he would get aroused and want to join in the festivities; they just show a level of restrain most men don't and choose not to partake to make a political point. If they don't get aroused, then how can it be a choice? Married men are wired to want to turn their head when a beautiful woman walks by, but they have no interest when an ugly woman does. How is it any different?

For example, the belief that being gay is a choice implies several things:

Being straight is a choice and that you – the person making this claim – are equally sexually attracted to your own gender and just fight off those urges.
That gay people get sexually aroused by the opposite gender and show a level of self-control that most people don’t by refusing to indulge their sexual desires, instead making a choice to rebel to get attention or make a political statement.

Going one step further, if being gay is not a choice, most Christians would say it is a cross they have to suffer for salvation. Yet, do you really believe that if the situation were reversed and a fully heterosexual young man were told to marry another man because “that’s what God wanted”, he’d get any emotional fulfillment out of it or be willing to keep up the charade for long? Sure, he could force himself to have sex, but what kind of life is that?

By looking at the underlying assumptions of the statements the Church has made regarding this topic, none of them make sense in light of what we know from science and human experience. I mean, when my brother stole a Playboy from the grocery store at 8 years old (for which my parents made him go back and apologize to the older lady that ran the store!), he wasn’t “choosing” to be straight. His DNA, like the DNA of virtually all men on the planet, began to run the software sequence that started prepping for sexual maturity. Even today, he says he didn’t know why he wanted to look at the pictures of Jenny McCarthy naked he just knew it was right. If, instead, he had brought a Playgirl into the house, it requires a special level of stupidity and denseness denial to believe that he was making a choice any more than his hair color or eye color.

Personally, I think the obsession over homosexuality in the church is a primitive manifestation of the “fertility cults” that originated at the dawn of humanity in Africa and the Middle East. It is a genetic imperative to reproduce. Parents panic about the notion that their children won’t pass on their genetic material. It is visceral and in the “reptilian mind” as Dr. Clotaire Rapaille would say. As Ian and I were discussing in the comments of The Drunkard’s Search, maybe it does all go back to food and reproduction success.

Some Final Thoughts

Religion is clearly a vital part of the human experience (if it wasn’t necessary, it wouldn’t still be around because it unquestionably fills a need that nothing else does for billions of people). Responsible religion cannot ignore developments in the scientific world without becoming a mockery and something has to be done about the cognitive dissonance in religion.

I will go on record as saying that 50 years from now:

Abortion will have migrated into a more complicated issue because we will have the ability through somatic cell nuclear transfer to have children born from 3 or 4 different adults (even part animals), and genetic testing that creates ethical problems we cannot even comprehend.
Gays and Lesbians will be considered neither moral or immoral any more than blond hair or brown hair, tall or short, Asian or Indian will be. It will simply be another descriptive factor in the makeup of people that expresses itself at a consistent rate, affecting somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 30 people to some degree on a varying scale of influence. Gay marriage will be fully legal and anyone who opposes it will be treated exactly like someone who uses the “n” word now to describe African Americans. The demographic data shows this based upon age groups. It’s inevitable.

My job as an investor is to anticipate the future based upon the evidence and research. It is nothing but investigative journalism with a lot of math. These conclusions were derived in the same matter. Mark my words and remember them. I’m willing to bet a substantial sum of money that I’m right, whether some people like it or not.

Rainbow Pancakes

Joshua Kennon — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:51:12 +0000

I came across these rainbow pancakes when reading the blogs and thought it was a really cool idea. Of course, the fact that it reminds me of either a Christian Bible Camp or a gay pride parade is funny. There's nothing like a little dichotomy with breakfast (although I suppose the dichotomy itself may be a construct of Western Civilization but I've got better things to think about right now - like figuring out whether a 3% expense cap for a fund is too high until we reach $15 million in assets).

I happened to be sitting at the dining room table, a cup of coffee in one hand, writing out plans for potentially launching a mutual fund this year (this time around, it’s a Parker Duofold rollerball in an amber check pattern from the recent shipment of fine writing instruments we received at Kennon Home Accessories and its retail store, Kennon & Company). As I was mulling over some ideas in my head, I happened to be reading the blogs, which is my customary morning routine that began back in the day when I had to consolidate a lot of information to share with my readers at Investing for Beginners at About.com. Somewhere after the op-ed page in The Wall Street Journal and seeing that General Electric was at $16.68 and Berkshire Hathaway Class B at $74.36 per share, I came across a page about a Christian mom that baked rainbow pancakes for her children.

First, this is really cool. The idea of a mom taking the time to do this for her children is awesome. As a grown adult, though, I had to laugh because the first thing I thought when I laid eyes on the rainbow pancakes was one of three things

This is the most Christian breakfast ever, complete with Noah and the Ark action figures, or
Toucan Sam has expanded from Fruit Loops to other breakfast foods. I need to get the Kellogg’s annual report again (last I knew, we owned a few hundred shares in our blue chip reserve portfolio so I could monitor it, along with a few dozen other companies), or
This is the gayest, most rainbow-fabulous breakfast that has ever been created. Like, rainbows and unicorns are going to burst out from the center when you put a fork in the stack of rainbow pancakes, a disco ball will lower from the ceiling, and you’re going to hear Daft Punk’s “One More Time” start blaring at 100 decibels.

This was funnier because Aaron came upstairs to talk to me about something and, upon seeing the rainbow pancakes, said he would have loved to have those as a kids because kids love color. So, in addition to our Julia Child Beef Bourguignon dinners, gourmet red wine chili, and chicken in cream sauce over rice (another Julia Child favorite), I think there’s a real possibility that there will be rainbow pancakes for breakfast one of these days just for the novelty of it. Maybe we can have my niece over because this seems like something Kelsey would want to do.

The original author of the rainbow pancakes is at a blog called i am mommy. She said she used this recipe to bake the rainbow pancakes, just added food coloring. She has a lot more great pictures at her site so if you are interested, head on over there and check it out for more details.

The Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah

Joshua Kennon — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:53:30 +0000

Discussing the Sin of Sodom at a Family Dinner

After we left St. Louis, I stopped by to visit family and spent an afternoon at my grandmother’s house having dinner, discussing politics, and Christianity in general. The conversation was great and had many of the same topics that the younger generation of Christians have been discussing on everything from abortion rights to international trade.

One of the things that came up was how often Christians spout scripture that they believe they know, yet have little or no understanding of where it occurs in the Bible, the cultural traditions of the times, or why it’s important in the broader scheme of the historical record. Most Christians don’t even realize that the Catholic Bible used for thousands of years, and the more recent Protestant Bible that became popular after Martin Luther rebelled against Rome, have different books in them! If you need a reference tool, see this site, which lets you look up every translation for any given verse.

Using the Sin of Sodom as a Case Study

A perfect case study is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the often referenced sin of sodom. Please note that before we proceed, this has nothing to do with the current political debate – I’m not even going to go there right now. Instead, it is an easy to understand illustration using a story that everyone who grew up in a Christian environment should know and be able to understand instinctively, making it a perfect tool for explaining our criticism with the state of the collective Church in the United States at this moment in time.

The background: In Hebrew, the word Sodom means “burnt” and the word Gomorrah means “a ruined heap” so the names that we now use to refer to the cities must have been given after the disaster and not the original names used by the people who lived there.We also know that Sodom and Gomorrah were not the only cities God destroyed in this manner – Admah and Zeboiim were also destroyed in judgment (see Deuteronomy 29:23).

For thousands of years, the word “Sodomite” literally meant “someone from Sodom”, just as American means someone from the United States. In fact, the word “Sodomite” didn’t have any sexual connotation until the 13th century when the word came into the English language. Yes, you read that right … the definition didn’t come into existence until 1,300 years after Jesus Christ walked the Earth.

I think the worst part is that most Christians are so uneducated they don’t realize that sodomy includes oral sex, including oral sex among married couples (go pick up a damn dictionary). For centuries, man and wife, in the marriage bed, having oral sex was an unspeakable, filthy, abomination that required total repentance thanks mostly to the preaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that sex should exist only for procreative means. Modern American culture, however, has conveniently forgotten this definition and now the same Christians that hold signs condemning sodomites go home and commit sodomy a few times a week, talking to friends and family about the holiness of their marriage bed. It’s baffling people stake their soul on a book that most of them aren’t even willing to read in its entirety (that’s one of the reasons that my freshman year in college, I worked by way through every word from cover-to-cover over the course of eight or nine months).

The Reasons Sodom Was Destroyed (Or What Was the Sin of Sodom the Bible Discusses?)

With that said, most Americans think they know the actual reason the cities were destroyed – the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house and wanted to rape the travelers who were angels sent by God. For most, that’s it. They believe the entire sin of Sodom consisted of a mob committing sexual sin. Yet, the angels were already sent there to save Lot and his family before the judgment came so this could not have been the event itself that caused the judgment. As we’ll see in a moment, Jewish tradition and writings support that – it was something entirely different that resulted in the process of judgment beginning.

Looking at the three most authoritative sources: 1.) Scripture, 2.) the Talmud (which is the oral tradition of the Jewish rabbis and teachers passed down for thousands of years – and yes, it’s relevant because if it’s important enough that Jesus Christ spent his time in the temple courtyard reading and studying it at 12 years old to develop his understanding of God’s law, it certainly has value to us), and 3.) historical texts at the time such as the work of famed historian Josephus, we know several things.

1. The two cities were so wicked that travelers would be given a bed and if they were too short, their feet would be cut off. If they were too tall, they would be stretched on the wrack.

2. Merchants refused to sell bread or goods to the visitors in their land, causing some to starve to death in the town square.

3. There were four judges in Sodom named Shakrai (Liar), Shakurai (Awful Liar), Zayyafi (Forger), and Mazle Dina (Perverter of Justice). The justice system was so corrupt and evil that it documents cases where a pregnant woman was attacked and miscarried so the husband sued to the attacker in court. The judges ordered the attacker to rape the woman in front of the husband to make her pregnant again and restore her to her original condition.

The “cry” that rose up from Sodom to the Lord and was the final straw came from a hand maiden that was punished for showing compassion and mercy. There are generally two accounts as to the details. According to The Talmud (Ref Sanhedrin 109a):

“A certain maiden gave some bread to a poor man, hiding it in a pitcher. On the matter becoming known, they daubed her with honey and placed her on the parapet of the wall, and the bees came and consumed her. Thus it is written, And the Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, because it is great (rabbah): whereupon Rab Judah commented in Rab’s name: on account of the maiden (ribah).”

There are some scholars that believe that in another case, the sin of sodom reached a tipping point when a blood descendant of Abraham was burned for showing compassion and also cried out to God for justice, just as the blood of Abel cried out to God after his brother Cain struck him down in the field.

Rabbi Jehudah said: They made a proclamation in Sodom saying: Everyone who strengthens the hand of the poor or the needy with a loaf of bread shall be burnt by fire. Peletith, daughter of Lot, was wedded to one of the magnates of Sodom. She saw a certain very poor man in the street of the city, and her soul was grieved on his account… Every day when she went out to draw water she put in her bucket all sorts of provisions from her home, and she fed that poor man. The men of Sodom said: How does this poor man live? When they ascertained the facts, they brought her forth to be burnt by fire. She said: Sovereign of all the worlds! maintain my right and my cause (at the hands of) the men of Sodom. And her cry ascended before the Throne of Glory. In that hour the Holy One, blessed be He, said: I will now descend and I will see whether the men of Sodom have done according to the cry of this young woman, I will turn her foundation upwards, and the surface thereof shall be turned downwards.

Josephus, writing in Antiquities I:194-5 far earlier than almost every modern day text used by Christians, said his research concurred with the Jewish findings that the sin of sodom was as follows:

The Sodomites, overweeningly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the Divinity, insomuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him, hated foreigners and declined all intercourse with others. Indignant at this conduct, God accordingly resolved to chastise them for their arrogance…

For those who believe that versus in the Bible should be directly referenced, the Sin of Sodom was specifically spelled out later in scripture, word for word, in Ezekiel:

Your elder sister is Samaria who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways, and acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, says the Lord GOD, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.

- Ezekiel 16:46-50

So, Ezekiel breaks the sin of Sodom it down for us:

Prideful
Excessive food and prosperity but no support for poor and needy
Haughty
Did abominable things

The term abomination means “unclean”, and it is typically used to refer to things that God hates. So, let’s take a look at everything that was considered an abomination. The word appears roughly 67 times in the Bible, with 65 of those occurring in the old testament (depending on the translation you use, this number will be a bit higher or lower). I’ve sort of grouped them together and avoided listing those that are just repeats of earlier references found in later books.

New Testament Abominations:

Jesus defines the love of money as an abomination to God (an important distinction because this is often misquoted by people who haven’t read it as “money is the root of all evil”. If that were the case, Christ wouldn’t have been friends with people like Joseph of Arimathea, in whose tomb he was later buried, who happened to be one of the richest men in the middle east; the problem was people like the rich young ruler, who made money his god). – Luke 16:15
Those who practice abominations will not enter the kingdom of heaven – Revelations 21:27. Since only one abomination was mentioned in the new testament that is applicable to every day human living, we have to look to the book of the law, with which both the author of Revelations and Jesus Christ were familiar.

Old Testament Abominations:

Egyptians considered it an abomination to eat with a Hebrew. (Genesis 43:32)
Shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians because they considered farming dirty work. (Genesis 46:34)
Anything in the oceans or rivers that does not have fins and scales is an abomination. This covers lobster, shrimp, scallops, etc. (Leviticus 11:10-19)
All winged insects that go upon all fours are an abomination. (Leviticus 11:23)
Anything that swarms is an abomination. (Locust, bees, etc. Which is interesting because John the Baptist ate wild honey and locusts according to Mark 1:1-8). (Leviticus 11:41)
Whatever crawls on its belly, goes on all fours, or has many feet. (Leviticus 11:42)
Anything eaten on the third day. (Leviticus 19:7).
Those who eat swine flesh. So, put down the bacon, sausage, and pork chops. (Isaiah 66:17)
Coveting silver or gold in the temples of other gods. (Deuteronomy 7:25)
Sacrificing anything imperfect to God. (Deuteronomy 17:1)
Burning your son or daughter as an offering. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)
Practicing witchcraft, sorcery, or speaking with the dead as a necromancer. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)
Secret idols. (Deuteronomy 27:15)

Let’s look specifically at some more common abominations that are committed every day in the United States:

Remarrying your first wife if she has remarried since you divorced. (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). So, the Parent Trap movie by Walt Disney? Had the woman remarried since the divorce and then been widowed or divorced from her second husband, it would literally cause the judgment of God to come upon a nation.
Adultery is an abomination. (Ezekiel 22:11)
Men sleeping with one another. (Leviticus 18:22)
Cheating your customers and being dishonest are abominations. (Deuteronomy 25:13-16 and Proverbs 11:1, Proverbs 20:10, and Proverbs 20:23). In the small town where I grew up, the son of the grocer once told his social studies class that they soaked the meat in water every day to increase the weight, causing the price to be higher for less meat. That’s precisely what this verse is describing. In fact, this is quoted as an abomination more than nearly everything else in the entire scripture.
A woman wearing masculine clothes or a man putting on a woman’s dress. So, blue jeans and pants on the ladies? Yeah, it’s an abomination. (Deuteronomy 22:5)
Rape and murder are an abomination. (Judges 20:6, referring to a crime committed by the men of Gibeah earlier in the text)
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, shedding innocent blood, devising wicked plans, feet that run quickly to evil, bearing false witness, or sowing discord among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16-19)
Arrogance is an abomination. (Proverbs 16:5)
If someone fails to follow the law, even his prayer is an abomination. (Proverbs 28:9)

The Sin of Sodom Committed Again in the Book of Judges

A near exact replica of the Sodom story occurs hundreds of years later in the book of Judges, Chapter 19, when a man and his wife were traveling through the countryside, a stranger took them in to protect them so they didn’t have to stay outside, showing hospitality, just as Lot did. Then, the story takes a familiar turn …

²²Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.

²³And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.

²⁴Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.

²⁵But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

²⁶Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light.

²⁷And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.

²⁸And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.

²⁹And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

So, here again, in the city of Gibeah, we have a case where the men surround a house, attempt to rape the travelers, and instead they offer to send out the women (because, you know, the women were less valuable, which everyone conveniently skips over, unwilling to discuss). Yet, God doesn’t come down and destroy Gibeah for committing the exact same sin. Why? Because the sin of Sodom was so grievous, and covered so many areas from money lending to the justice system to sexual impropriety.

What I find even more disturbing is that we just accept as a matter-of-fact that this dude chops up the dead woman’s body and sends it out to the four corners of Israel. That is not acceptable behavior.

The Law as Protection

Most of the laws detailed in the Bible were for the protection of Israel. Take the earlier verse we discussed, Leviticus 11:41: Anything eaten on the third day is an abomination. Now, the children of Israel didn’t know about bacteria and viruses thousands of years ago. By declaring anything older than 3 days an abomination, their standard of living was likely improved because sickness was avoided. In other words, this seemingly odd verse protected the children of Israel from a danger they didn’t know existed.

Today, of course, thanks to the industrial revolution, we have canning technology and refrigeration units that can keep food good for weeks, if not years. The three day rule doesn’t cross any of our minds when we walk into Wal-Mart and pick up bread, milk, cheese, and eggs. Why? Because advances in our civilization have made the original precaution unnecessary. To say that may be uncouth, yet your actions say it every time you buy something that wasn’t prepared in the past few days.

The questions this raises are important: If we are no longer under the law, why do we still pick and choose those to which we adhere? My father once made a very wise observation: We whitewash the sins with which we ourselves are familiar. The adulterer or divorced woman will sit in church or a restaurant and call gay people wicked abominations as they themselves eat lobster, have oral sex with their second or third spouse, and wear mixed linens (we didn’t even get into that, but American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch, which I’ve made a lot of money trading in my lifetime, are technically unclean because they mix the materials used in the construction of their shirts and pants). Fifty or sixty years ago, they would have said the same about ‘whites’ marrying ‘blacks’.

In other words: The state of laziness in the church is such that what we call Christianity is, in many cases, nothing more than popular American culture wrapped in a flag and a cross, changing with the social mores of the day. Theology is ordered up like a mocha cappuccino with extra foam to fit whatever circumstances or beliefs your parents passed down in thirty-second sound bites without any analysis as to the truthfulness or accuracy of interpretation. At least the devout Buddhist monks trek thousands of miles in devotion – we can’t even pick up a book.

Random Fact on the Apple of Sodom

There is a plant called the Vine of Sodom, which is referred to in Deuteronomy 32:32. Many believe that it is the osher of the Arabs, which grows in the Middle east, although others believe it could be colocynth. Anyway, the fruit of this plant are known as the “Apple of Sodom” because they are beautiful to the eye, tempting you to eat them, but bitter to the taste. The implications inherent in that naming is awesome and poetic, whether or not you agree with the interpretation of the traditional story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It could be used for virtually any sin under the sun.