Homosexuality in Judaism
Rabbi Don Levy
Colorado Springs, USA
Leviticus, chapter 18 verse 3 admonishes: “Do not perform the practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled; and do not perform the practice of the land of Canaan to which I bring you, and do not follow their traditions.”
Continuing one’s reading of the chapter, one finds a litany of 14 unacceptable sexual unions. One is not permitted to “uncover the nakedness” of one’s mother, one’s father’s wife, one’s sister, and so on.
Then we reach verses 22 and 23, which state: “You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination (to’eva). Do not lie with any animal to be contaminated with it; a woman shall not stand naked before an animal for mating, it is a perversion (tevel).”
The terms to’eva/abomination and tevel/perversion do not appear earlier in the chapter, to describe all the other forbidden sexual unions. It is clear, therefore that these two are singled out for particular opprobrium. The Torah’s author(s) see these last two acts as particularly loathsome and worthy of singling out in a list of forbidden acts that most of us, reading in our age, would think unnatural.
Unnatural or not, the chapter in its outset clearly states that these were acts characteristic of the pagans among whom our people lived in Egypt and Canaan. Implied by the inclusion of the list is that they were acts that were, if not common then at least known among the Israelite people; had such acts not had an attraction so that the people engaged in them, it would not have been necessary to admonish against them. We don’t know how widespread these practices were among the Israelites. Do the attachment of the pejoratives ‘abomination’ and ‘perversion’ to male homosexual acts and bestiality respectively, imply that these two were particularly attractive to the people?
I don’t have an answer. I do, however, know that the Torah is all about boundaries. The text repeatedly admonishes against the practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites. The leaders of the Israelites had to continually fight the people’s tendency to go whoring after the pagan gods of these people. It is clear from a number of passages that these leaders, starting with Moses and continuing to Ezra and Nehemiah and beyond, saw the adoption of the pagans’ social customs as a prelude to being seduced to worship their gods. Clearly, avodah zarah – worship of foreign gods – is considered to be one of the worst sins imaginable in our Tradition. It’s even included in the Seven Laws of the Children of Noah, one of the six proscriptions (one law is a PREscription, a ‘positive’ law) that are considered to apply to all of humanity.
I know this isn’t easy reading for some, especially if you are gay or have a close family member who is. Understand, though that it is necessary to try to understand the Torah’s concern with such practices. A full understanding is not possible. Clearly, though male homosexuality is considered a particularly loathsome offense.
While female homosexual behavior is not mentioned, the rabbis have generally considered it also proscribed by implication. Through gezera shava (the equivalent decree), one of the 13 rules by which the Torah is interpreted, one draws out that lesbian sex is also forbidden. The decree doesn’t carry quite so much weight, though; an edict d’rabbanan (of the rabbis) is not so strong as one d’oraita (of the written Torah). Even so, the prohibition exists.
It happens that I have a close relative who is a lesbian, one of my nieces. Her coming out, and her partnership with another woman occasioned considerable soul-searching by her parents and the extended family. It is practically impossible for straight people to understand the compulsion that produces homosexuality. We want to accept our relatives, but we also want to understand them. But most of us are ‘stuck’ with having to accept, since understanding is beyond us.
Those who lobby for an acceptance of homosexuals and their practices, yet who still revere the Torah, return to the text and try to understand where its authors were coming from. When one reads Leviticus 18.22 closely, one notices that it is not talking about homosexuality, but homosexual acts. It is not talking about sexual orientation. Of course, even in our day the phenomenon of homosexual orientation that leads one to homosexual acts is controversial. Is it something deeply ingrained in the human genome? Many people accept the existence of such a thing as sexual orientation without question, even though there’s no scientific proof of it. But gays and lesbians frequently tell of trying to act 'normally' in the sexual realm, until at some point in their lives they realize that they are different and have to struggle to accept themselves for what they are. We wish to honor the struggle that is the narrative of so many gays and lesbians. As a friend who is a Catholic priest once told me: “For all the priests I know who have realized they were gay, that realization was at first devastating to them.” From this and similar anecdotal evidence, many of us try to see that homosexuality is not just a form of perversion that certain people enjoy. For many of us, the struggles of the gay or lesbian person in our lives point not to some enjoyment of acts that the rest of us would not think of partaking, but rather an often-reluctant acceptance of something within themselves that cannot be fully understood.
This disconnect, that the Torah only speaks of homosexual acts – and only among males – and not homosexuality as a phenomenon, leads one to ask, “so what’s at the root of the Torah’s singling out of male homosexual acts as ‘abomination’?” That’s when it is important to know something about the cultic practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites.
In the temples of the pagan gods, all kinds of bacchanalian practices comprised the ways that members of the cults used to communicate with, and please, the cult’s god. These included cultic sex, especially man-on-man sex, and sex with animals. So contextualized, it is easy to separate the monogamous relationships of many gay and lesbian people today from the Leviticus prohibition of man-on-man sex. Perhaps the Torah was talking about something entirely different. That there’s no mention of homosexual orientation, buttresses the argument. Of course man-on-man sex is likely to seem unnatural to one who is of straight orientation. And if homosexual relations were connected to the practices of a pagan cult that also sacrificed children to Moloch, how much more so?
So that, in a nutshell is the argument for greater tolerance of homosexuality. It explains why religious people, who come out as gay or lesbian, often don’t see an essential conflict between their religiosity and their homosexuality. The ‘straight’ (no pun intended!) reading of Leviticus 18 is that homosexuality is an abomination. The more nuanced reading is that pagan practices, including cultic homosexual acts, lead people from worship of the One G-d to avodah zarah. So one can be homosexual and religious, just not ‘fundamentalist.’
Unfortunately, many gay and lesbian people don’t help the situation. Please read the following as loving criticism. Annual Pride parades and festivals occasion gays and lesbians engaging in all manner of public sexual behavior calculated to shock the straight-laced. Behaviors calculated to shock, buttressed by an attitude of “we’re queer, we’re here, get used to it” do not help straight folks to learn to give homosexuals the benefit of the doubt. The argument for tolerance of homosexual members of our congregations, especially same-sex couples is that they’re just like the rest of us: people working hard to live a good life and raise families. The perverse public behavior of some gays and lesbians on certain occasions is not helpful.
Reform Judaism has taken a very unambiguous stand of support for gay and lesbian members of our congregations, that they should be accorded full rights membership especially as families in our midst. This is certainly a worthy stand on a number of levels; we who are not homosexual should tolerate gays and allow them the peace to quietly celebrate the important moments in life without having to feel ashamed. I can’t tell you how many gays and lesbians choose to affiliate with Reform congregations; it may be very few, or it may be a significant number. We don’t have any who belong to my congregation, although at least a couple of families have a son who is openly gay. I can’t assure the reader that, if a gay or lesbian individual or couple came to join my congregation, they would feel completely welcome. I would hope that they would. Of course, there are some members for whom the idea of openly homosexual members would be novel and difficult to swallow. I would hope that, as these (usually older) members would work to learn to be tolerant, the gays and/or lesbians themselves would be equally tolerant and lovingly patient with those who are not quite ready for them yet.