Jesus came to correct the false understanding of Moses’ Law. There were plenty of things the Jews of His day got right. For example, there was no blatant idolatry. It wasn’t much of an issue, so Jesus only noted in passing that there was a subtle form of idolatry in the obsession with material wealth among Jewish upper classes. Still, there were plenty of other things Jesus didn’t have to address because it wasn’t a problem.
Another of those things is homosexuality. There was a lot of trouble over romance and marriage, and lots of trouble with adultery and prostitution, but Jews didn’t struggle with being gay. That is, the Law of Moses was pretty blunt about homosexual relations and even cross-dressing. Those with gay tendencies knew it was a sin. That’s nothing special, since lots of human desires are sinful and we just have to live with that. There was room for forgiveness with most things, but homosexuality was a serious threat to social stability as God defined it. It wasn’t having a gay orientation that got you killed; it was giving in to the temptation that made you dangerous to the Hebrew social structure. The history of Hebrew experience with it was enough proof of that.
Even then, homosexual relations in the Ancient Near East was an entirely different thing from what we have in the West. We can’t even get that right. For the most part, ANE men of power and wealth would have sex with just about anything; most people hardly gave it a thought beyond the standard dirty jokes. The real issue with specifically preferring sex with the same gender was typically a matter of heathen religion. That is, whenever it showed up in Hebrew history, it was invariably an expression of idolatry, and idolatry was often connected to what we would consider a partisan politics. If anything was a threat to the covenant with Jehovah, that would do it.
Consider how shocking a difference it was that Hebrew women were granted ownership rights over their husbands’ sexual energies. This against the background of Canannite depravity that even Greece and Rome found disturbing. Sexual depravity was a religious requirement in the worship of Canaanite deities. This is part of the prophetic grousing about worship of Baal and Astarte in that land.
However, it doesn’t take much to realize that a normal tribal society cannot tolerate that kind of thing because it cannot tolerate any sort of sexual impropriety. But more than the obvious social disturbance that arises, it’s a serious threat to the moral power of adhering to God’s character. How blunt does it have to be? In the Garden narrative, there was one man and one woman. Genesis makes much of this and is careful to note they had nothing to hide being nude in their sinless state. The Fall ruined everything, in part by removing from their normal daily consideration the revelation of God written on their hearts. By placing the human intellect on the throne of decision, the heart was blocked from having much input. Nudity became a problem because humans no longer had that power to live morally by instinct. It now became a matter of privacy and covering. They had to have clothing because they were now morally stupid, and human sexual relations became very complicated.
Yet, one of the few outright open gifts of the moral fabric is the possibility of having a wonderful marriage and sex life. As previously noted, getting this right is pretty much the key to getting everything else right. It’s not a question of locking up your sexuality behind harsh restrictions, unless you have serious trouble with uncontrollable hormonal urges. Rather, the issue lies in settling almost every other human difficulty by getting the foundation of human life correct. A proper sexual union based on your clear sexual identity is the power to live in communion with Creation. Get this right and most the Laws take care of themselves.
This is the path to securing the two things Jesus said to summarize the Law of Moses: A right relation with our divine Father Sheikh and proper engagement of our fellow humans. The key to that is getting your sexual identity on the right track by embracing God’s revelation.
