These poems have been published at dates far apart on my McCleary’s Alternatives site, but for those who may never have visited there or who have but would like to see these related but very different poems together in one place, I am putting them on this much less busy site. The poems are entered in order of composition and publication and without the illustrations of the main site. If I have been more generous with notes than one would normally reckon to be with verse, it’s because this is a poetry of ideas. The aim is to inform and open conversations not just to entertain, though hopefully it might do something of that too.
SONGS OF PURITANIA ON A GAY THEME
ALTERNATIVE WASTELANDS PRELUDE
O O O O it’s that American rag
It’s so inelegant, so unintelligent [1]
Here a sin, there a sin, everywhere a bit of sin
Original or otherwise, talk it till you make a din
Sounding off like cymbals and a tinkling of brass [2]
O O O O it’s that American rag
It’s so inelegant so unintelligent….
And full of belief in a very special covenant,
It makes for good fortune and also what doesn’t
Like we was Abram’s sons when you know that we wusn’t.[3]
O O O O it’s that Athenian rag
It’s so elegant, so intelligent….
When the men were handsome and the youths looked pretty
They fell for one another, for philosophy and art
And if you didn’t know it, that’s how culture got a start.
BOB
Stop that jazz…!
It’s time to start and listen hard to me now
Are you man enough for what I’m gonna say?
‘Cos it’s lust and what’s unnatural is the kind of stuff you do
Paul said it’s all degrading, you know that must be true [4]
He knew so many things and he always got ‘em right
Like women being covered up and keeping mouths shut tight. [5]
And Paul was all a man’s man, so he wouldn’t tell a lie
He says hell’s ready waiting for your kind when you die;
But if you’re not a reprobate, deliverance is sure
God and Exodus can help you find the way to perfect cure.
Only doctors, shrinks and cynics – and they are simply liars –
Would tell you there’s no way to be healed of your desires.
CAROL
Just as God wants us with guns to protect us
So we need laws against gays to correct us
But people who don’t accept six day creation
Can’t see that gay means plague and destruction.
My child is at risk and even my nation
From lies and legalized toleration
Of what they should know – it’s really no mystery –
Left Greece, Rome and everywhere nothing but history.[6]
On Sodom fire rained and also Gomorrah,
I’m praying real hard, but allow paranoia.
It was Hitler and gays brought the ruin of days,
There’s a stock market crash, it’s the curse on pink cash,
There are problems with mortgage, it’s all the gay marriage,
There’s been a tsunami due to gays in the army
Our climate is changing, but fags keep parading.
If you fear a tornado, stop their pride and bravado.
Homophobia’s holy, it keeps a roof on the home…
There’s nothing more sure or more certain than that
If you haven’t read Paul, there’s the TV and Pat.[7]
But if you still care for a heavenly crown
Prayer warriors arise, strike the gay evil down!
ALICE
Don’t say you’re born gay, for gay equals sin
My own fourth husband could not let you in
To our house, his walk is too close with the Lord;
And though I’m anti-abortion I give you my word
If our son turned out queer we’d wish him unborn
And throw him outside like best clothes when torn.
Gay is nothing at all but an evil that’s chosen
Not a mind, not an outlook, not an orientation.
What gays have and they are is a sinful lifestyle
True Christians would shun it by more than a mile,
Gay love and desire have no function or meaning
Such could not define you, they’ve nothing redeeming.
Don’t give me those lies about Hebrew and Bible
David and Jonathan “married”, it’s nothing but libel. [8]
The King James may refer to a “covenant” made
But speaking the truth, calling a spade a spade
Is what the Bible’s about; that pair had an agreement
It wasn’t love, that’s sick, it was really quite different.
And “raca” never meant pervert, the KJ says “fool”,
If Christ helped gays like that he’d be Satan’s own tool.
Remember the Lord was a proper man’s man
Not some pale and limp hippy outside of God’s plan
Eunuch means castrate not someone who’s different [9]
(Why it’s said some are born it, I’ll think in a minute).
TED
Let’s get it clear, you’re an abomination, [10]
That’s the bible’s very own proclamation;
But we’ll help you to struggle and right to the end,
I can’t quite accept you, but you are my good friend.
I don’t have dealings with fornicators
Or for that matter adulterers and masturbators
And you’re not a whit better than any of them
So don’t give us gays are God’s gentlemen.
Don’t press me too far to state who you are
It’s not like I’m talking to some movie star,
If there’s no bible term defines “homo” just right
Then I’ll use one instead – the word’s “sodomite”.
I’ll love you for Jesus, that’s to say if I can
As it’s hard, since you are an odd kind of man,
And I don’t care for singles in church anyway, really,
But pay us your tithes and we’ll treat you sincerely,
Though I pray you meet a fine girl and right early
She could cure you for good or at any rate nearly.
For the rest remain silent, be inactive as death
That alone pleases God who has given you breath.
Whatever’s outside of straight marriage is wrong
Don’t imagine gay “marriage” could ever belong.
I fancy you knew there was Adam and Eve –
Plain as day no room intended for Steve.
Eden’s model is law, a solid foundation
God can’t understand the word variation.
You can talk of revision [11] and argue the toss,
I’m not standing down from the old rugged cross
And plain truth of the Word. Say I’m a bully you may
But resistance will give God more glory today.
You can make me a martyr, to prison I’ll go
But declaring gay sin will help the faith grow.
Meanwhile we need to support propaganda
In havens of light like Cameroon, Uganda.
They aim to imprison and execute gays.
Being nearer to heaven and holier ways.
I don’t say I agree with Balboa [12] who threw
Gays to wild dogs, as I’m sure that he knew
We must love gays for God; but if people will sin
They are bound to accept what fate they fall in.
It’s not quite the same with youth suicide
But there’s no cause to blame us we do not provide
Counsel to those naturally young and unstable
When declaring the truth the best we are able.
Any choices gays make are entirely their own
There was never a right to make protest and moan
It was hard to find places of work or of dwelling
Those defying God’s laws must find they’re compelling.
It was right to reject them so they’d leave us in peace
Migrating to ghettoes where sin would increase.
Like Calvin we strive for God’s kingdom on earth
Let sinners go live where they build for God’s wrath.
Our concern is not with exception and difference,
What isn’t of family makes unhappy nonsense.
A person alone is soon led astray;
If people talked less there’d be more time to pray.
WISDOM
And for what is your prayer when belief has supposed
That justice and sense can be freely opposed?
The fact is, believers, your straight mind’s too small
You speak for a God you scarce know at all
And cite from a Bible swung and hit like a bat
With your mind so pedantic you render it flat,
No poetry left or ambiguous sense
So literally real it can finish quite dense,
Not to say often monstrous and merely unjust.
You’re unable to grasp that the same God you trust
Is both Logos and Wisdom, two sexes in one, [13]
Whose bride is two genders when history is done.[14]
Christ was male in his body but female in soul
In short he was gay to incarnate whole; [15]
That way he could speak for more persons and life
And offer examples to silence mere strife.
It’s the reason Christ sent homophobia to hell [16]
And blessed the centurion and made his boy well [17].
But science can’t tell you, it will not reveal
The spiritual laws esoterics conceal
Why some are born gay and others are straight [18]
Knowledge needs wisdom, the full truth must wait.
It’s not prejudice only, not tradition or history
Obscure truth, but mindsets closed to all mystery.
Of such you know nothing for shouting too loud
And insisting your customs stand hetero proud
With translations distorted to fit your poor vision
Which everywhere make for hate and division.
The facts can be proved beyond reasonable doubt [19]
But truth is precisely what you would cast out;
And though of Christ’s nature the matter is proved
You need to repent so your hearts can be moved.
Having too long delivered all gays to perdition
Your churches are left torn apart in confusion
So that enemies choose the terms of revision.
God is refusing your prayers, first learn toleration;
Aquarius comes, know the times and the seasons [20]
What’s gay is of God,[21] try to discover the reasons.
(Copyright Rollan McCleary, 2013.
The text of this poem has been added to a new edition of Puer Poems, See: amzn.to/11i5hkI )
NOTES
[1] The words echo T.S.Eliot’s “OOOO, That Shakespearean rag/ O so elegant, O so intelligent” in The Wasteland, but here the Wasteland is the one of confused American Puritan values.
[2] I Cor 13:1 If one speaks the truth without love “I am become as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal” (KJ) though a modern version is: “I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (NRSV).
[3] The issue of homosexuality in American Christianity is often confused with controversial notions that America is a second Israel in special covenant with God, hence at special risk of divine judgement for even tolerating gays.
[4] Rom 1:24. To whatever and to whoever Paul precisely refers, and scholars dispute, it is thought he regards same sex behaviour as degrading. It is most likely his subject is Rome’s recreational bisexuality but his assessment of this and other sexual behaviour is coloured by not just moral but social values of his time that not even conservative Christians would accept if they understood them. Especially passive homosexuality was used as social humiliation. Thus masters had a right to use their male slaves sexually.
[5] 1 Tim 2:9, 1 Cor 13:44. Though much quoted on the silence of women, in fairness to the apostle he may not have meant much more than that in a typically gender segregated church women would not interrupt services shouting over to their husbands for explanations.
[6] William Lecky was the historian and eccentric tutor of Oscar Wilde who popularized a theory that homosexuality was the downfall of Rome and civilisation. Gays are only ever a minority and the fall of Rome was due to over extension of both wars and the system of slavery.
[7] Pat Robertson of The 700 Club, notorious for attributing hurricanes and disasters to toleration of gays in especially Florida.
[8] The word used for the covenant, b’rith, between David and Jonathan can be used for marriage in the bible. The pair were obviously what today would be thought bisexuals. Saul’s tirade against Jonathan (1 Sam 20:30) makes clear he thinks his son is a pervert bringing “shame” on the family for the love shared with David. On David’s bisexuality see my The Great Circle: Asia, David and God Consciousness.
[9] It is often said the Bible has no word for “homosexual”. In modern terms it doesn’t, but the nearest would be Christ’s word “eunuch” (Heb. Saris) in Matt 19:12. By his time the word no longer automatically designated castrate or even celibate, but could be anyone out of the family way. Raghnild Schanke, a Norwegian theologian, is one of those who have demonstrated the gay associations in ancient literature. The eunuch is the outsider and his outsider consciousness is something all believers “not of this world” somewhat need to be Christian to be at all. That’s one and surely a major way of understanding a difficult text.
[10 Many things are “abomination” (toevah) in the Bible, even proud eyes, but the primary meaning is ritual impurity and the prime reference in the Leviticus ban on male to male relations is to the ritual impurity of pagan sacred prostitution.
[11] Gay theology is deemed a branch of “revisionist” theology of which feminist theology is the main branch today.
[12] Balboa – Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475-1519), a conquistador and notorious persecutor of Amerindian gays.
[13] Christ is referred to and represents the male as Logos (Word) and female as the Wisdom (Sophia).
[14] The fact that the Church as “Bride of Christ” is comprised of both sexes undermines and even denies the idea a marriage/union can only be between a man and a woman. Some medieval churches used to bless unions of brethren. What’s controversial about modern marriage equality movements, religiously anyway, is that it is based more on secularist demands for equality rather than rights accorded to difference as such. (It can also involve children adopted or acquired by IVF and notions of family beyond unions). St Aelred of Riveaulx considered Christ as though married to John the Beloved.
[15] The formula “a female soul in a male body” derives from earliest gay lib claims in nineteenth century Germany, but drawn as it first was from Jewish kabbalistic mysticism it has real meaning at a spiritual/”occult” level. It has importance for understanding Jesus’ identity and incarnation. Though my reasons and proofs are original, speculation on a gay Jesus is not original. It has even been espoused by Christian Jews like Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Ostreicher though neither they nor I, like some radicals, propose Jesus was other than celibate. Jesus cannot like the fallen angels cross orders to be involved with either female or male intimately, but that does not automatically imply as some maintain, that the imperatives of an exceptional role means the sole behavioural model for gays is lifelong celibacy on the basis Christians imitate Christ.
[16] Matt 5:21,22. The section of the Sermon on the Mount dealing with anger as a source of murder. It is never properly translated. The Peshitta version of the Eastern Churches realizes that Aramaic “Racah,(“thou fool”, KJ)’ is an insult like “faggot” or, “effeminate pervert”. Jesus opposes any rage of the homophobic, racist, anti-social kind against outsiders, here summarized and symbolized by the effeminate, which easily leads from exclusion to violence even the murder that damns. Since ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel to this day have practiced violence and attempted murder against gays, given a teaching that makes sex behaviour a capital offence (Lev 18:22) and which would thus sanctify rage and prejudice, Jesus’ attitude is tacitly undoing the law. The ruling looks originally to have been directed against Semitic sacred male prostitution with its cross dressing ( to lie “as with a woman”). It had never been consistently or literally applied and was perhaps symbolic law, since it’s clear from Deut 23:17 that Israel did not execute even its male prostitutes (Deut 23:17). The old law did however foster enduring prejudices in a society where fertility was a leading ideal with the result homosexuality in Israel works or looks more like bisexuality.
[17] Matt 8:5-13, Luk 7:1-10. Pais means boy or servant and the word frequent associations with “homosexuality” of the more aesthetic or “pederastic” kind. If the gospel’s boy was only a servant the master was unusually attached to him and centurions often had male lovers.
[18] The esoteric rather than biological factors behind homosexuality, which have a lot implications for spirituality and art and are a matter of soul before body, are considered in especially my Temple Mysteries and Spiritual Efficiency Chapter 10.
[19] Jesus’ “homosexuality” is suggested by the bible itself, especially notions contained in John’s gospel and then backed up by the eloquent birth data (see Testament of the Magi ) whose data people in and out of religion and publishing have never even wished to consider. Speculation about an essentially gay Jesus is not new; it has even been espoused by Jewish Christians like Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Oestreicher.
[20] Whether or not the coming or just dawning age of Aquarius is the apocalyptic Utopia of the Millennium itself, Aquarius is much associated with difference, the alternative, the utopian and the gay. It’s ruling planet is the gay associated planet Uranus. This age will accept homosexuality and more people are being born gay and feeling gay as it approaches whereas conservative Christians perceive only decadence of a declining era in the phenomenon.
[21] Meaning gay is not a result of the Fall, wholly contra naturam or an intrinsic imperfection. This is not to say all expressions of homosexuality are godly. One would say that a lot of, for example, S&M wasn’t, but then heterosexuals also practice it, it’s not gay specific.
A SAINT’S MISTAKE: A POEM OF ST PAUL
From birth those energies defining life
May be transformed but keep their force,
There’s limit set upon the chance for change.
The angry youth may live to father revolution
But, lifelong, yearning visionaries may never
Grasp all truth; the times, society, a weakness of
The vehicle determines where and how each will
May grow. Light can enlighten when not blind,
But sight may need what’s heard to truly see.
Let eyes be opened, ready for the sun
Of Truth, but still recall that Logos speaks
Across the universe of space and time
Through ages, not one age alone which ends,
As ours, its spiritual life enfeebled,
Lacking true prophetic view, even
Ignoring such as you, St Paul, wilful,
Doubting or perhaps confused, refused
The words of Agabus. [1]
Upon Damascus road met by great Light,
You saw, you gazed, you fell and then
Three days remained alone in darkness, blind,
Till, helped by human hands, scales fell like leaves
From off your eyes. But what was that your ears
Had heard? Your mind in shock no doubt turned much
Upon a sacred history, ancient Law,
The Lord, but had you in that solitude
Absorbed the fullness of the uttered words
And even when preaching soon the Christ as
Son, repressed and left unlearned what echoed
Through the flashing of celestial light?
Even God had seen you on the road
Not just as Jew devout to last extremity,
But kin to pagan Pentheus face set against
The worlds of women and of difference
And spoke to you the words of question and
Rebuke once given by Agathon’s lover to the god
Of ecstasy and the flourishing vine.[2]
Of this, though Christ alone is truly he,
The shadow also speaks to depths of mind for
In yourself and God a Gentile dwells as
In the Gentile there’s a Jew. To soul within
And world without your call was to a wider field
Than even you would quite allow, lands and lives
Not only to address with a new gospel
Of deliverance and transcendent Law
But in their essence to reclaim. Such would require
Not only persons of the Way not fall sad victim
To persecutions of your policy
But – what and who are more remote to
The conservative, devoted mind – also
Minorities, the outsider, the enslaved.
The stubborn ox resists the goad, so hard
It is for even the good to heed God’s voice;
But harder life then weighs on many more
If that same voice is disregarded or misheard.
It draws a canker to redemption’s rose,
It hid a poison in the new and good,
And justified whole centuries of harm,
Of inquisition, secrecy and dull despair
Of suicide, of souls denied the family home,
Of youth made objects of improper cure
Confused by a false loathing of the self,
Lives lived as though beneath a curse,
And so because you never learned, not even
From Jeremiah in his difference,
That never the leopard lost his spots
Nor did the Ethiopian his skin.[3]
The pedantry and prejudice of one once
Proudly Pharisee, stayed blind to what
In nature, art, and even just humanity
Might teach. You failed, as even great Luther
Later failed the Jews. [4]
Within a Roman world whose ruling might
Your angry will alone could hope to oppose,
Scarce noticing the slavery and pleasure
Taken in refinement of all cruelties,
You made a scapegoat and the symbol
Of most vice and sin, (almost the fall
Of this whole world and worthy of death itself),
Those whose eros and whose loves inclined them
To one side, their own, by this made
Enemies of a “Law” – transcended and fulfilled,
You taught – yet holding you still much in thrall.[5]
Not only was the scapegoat harmed but also
Spiritual lives identified most narrowly
With nature’s way. [6] Vague rumour, petty hate
In place of information or of love, worldly
Obsession with oppressive law and politics
Sometimes rank violence on the streets,
Such was and is the legacy to those
Whose loyalty is wholly to “God’s word”
And your authority, all ignorant
Of just how little the Spirit spoke
To you on the contested theme but
Rather echoes of Apocrypha, pressures
And customs of your familiar world.[7]
Like Peter struck with vision by the sea
But who denied the wisdom shown because
It seemed to oppose a written source, [8]
Likewise idolatry of tradition and of text
Chokes inspiration of the Living Word.
Oh Spirit who should lead to Truth and who
In your own being is the Truth, descend
Upon the human mind that thought
May rise to judgements on a higher plane,
Not timeless only but aware of time, its cycles
And those changes they intend. [9] Together let
Inspiration, scriptures and the kairos speak,
And not one source alone lest faith’s whole vessel
Run aground or sink.
No theory, no philosophy, no abstract
Statement of a rule will summarize
The Spirit’s truth whose will embraces
Situations and hurt souls as even
Holy Law was forced to do for daughters
Of Zelophehad.[10] Alas that Tarsus
Was the home not just of you, St Paul,
But to that Stoic thought defining
Nature, pleasure and a universal law
Too abstractly in the face of plain
Reality and human need. How hard
It was for you to accept the nature of
Even that youth, the gospeller Mark. [11]
11
These facts despite, the Good can redirect
And heal what harms. But wrong’s a wild weed
Reproduced and strong, and stronger still
When unacknowledged where it grows. Within
The fields of faith yet worse than choking weed
Stands visible and alone the bending,
Stricken tree of noxious fruit. It should
Be left to perish in its place, but those
Encircling it for its defence as though to guard
A relic’s power, and then their foes (seeing
More the persons than the tree), both these
Partake in what corrupts at root and branch.
Truth is feared and inconvenient to both;
Those who defend the tree will not admit
Beyond all claims of justice and of evidence
Their saint and scripture might be wrong – even while
They do not dare to cite them now on
Due obedience of slaves. They are themselves
Enslaved to Paul, so much they’ll even join
Their voice and vote with unbelievers in Christ’s
Name if only still to impose their way. [12]
Their mouths speak lies and foolish summary:
Difference becomes but “lifestyle” and a “choice”,
Let none admit it should exist lest youth be
Tempted to perversion; talk of discrimination,
Harassment can be ignored, just as indeed
They always were, the righteous mute before
While witness to a thousand wrongs, even
Approving marriages in name alone
(But these deemed holy – other kinds impure).
This way “the unnatural” could be simply
Punished or erased and heaven’s blessings,
Not its wrath, shower down upon a Pauline
World sore needing knowledge more divine
Of being and persons in themselves. For
Grace itself is para physin – Paul
Deemed it work against the natural. [13]
Those who attack tradition’s tree and tribe
Are but soul brothers of their tyranny.
They’re almost what was so long feared
Or banned or damned, emerged like hell’s
Own self to manifest in monstrous style
A beast conformed to worst imagination.
Revenge lends savour to its policies
And once again an abstract value – now
“Equality” – spreads widely a new chaos.
The sacred, soon a target for the secular,
The atheist and hedonist demand full
Equal rights for ceremony and employ
All places from the college class to
Altar’s rail. Appeals to conscience, failures [14]
To welcome well or grant request,
All can be deemed new forms of insult
Or discrimination, grounds to pursue
A case at law, if need be, ruin livelihoods
And lives. For now what’s spiritual seems only
False and what is ethical but relative
Though what is sexual can seem true –
Even honest as pornography,
Itself a model for new modes of life.
It’s why beyond love’s rights, sometimes
Demanded with fanatic zeal, too often
Lies what’s scarcely more than sex as sport,
And heartless exploitation of the young.
And while the theorist and the litigant
Hold forth, indifference meets the
Youthful homeless and perplexed. But then,
Beyond “acceptance” at all costs, what
Will the monster’s tribe provide for life
And health beyond its empty round of
Party revel or narcotic haze?
III
Enough! The false can only bring forth
Lies again. The conflict of inflexible minds,
Harms everything and everyone, disturbs
The life of faith and human rights alike
With argument too close to cavil and to kvetch. [15]
Both parties see repeatedly but
One another to their shame in that dark
Mirror of St Paul. [16] In him, amid
Deep revolutions for the mind and age
And strivings with a hostile world, what seemed
Like sordid issues round the few, bore little
Weight save something to dismiss, deride,
Though history would prove that wrong
Like any utterance on a theme
When one admits to “think”, not fully know,
Just what the Spirit of God declares [17]
Or by pure silence does not judge. Even so…
Unless to say it can be that the first
Are last [18], amid the sufferings and long
Martyrdom of life, let none too quickly
Judge the words of you, St Paul. For scarcely
Will the saint or sage (and others less)
Attain full knowledge with perfection.
Each soul needs a Damascus with its light…
Yet there, let even saints not only see
But hear what makes for life and should set free.
NOTES
[1] Acts 21:10. The prophet Agabus warns Paul against going to Rome and the Christians beseech him not to go but he goes anyway. It is not clear how much he believes the forecast and how much God is understood to give a choice in the matter through the warning, but anyway Paul remains adamant. He had always intended or wanted to go to Rome (Acts 19:21) though it is not specifically stated the Spirit told him to go there as opposed to Achaia.
[2] Jesus is self-described as the true vine (Joh 15:1) so by implication the vine god, Dionysius (whom Gentiles believed was the God of the Jewish Temple) is the false. However the archetype is still relevant. We now know even pious Jews attended the pagan theatre and there is reason to suppose both Jesus and Paul could have known the celebrated Bacchae of Euripides (“the lover of Agathon”, Agathon being one of Athens’ most beautiful men). In the play Dionysius manifests like Christ to Paul, to accuse Pentheus of disregarding and persecuting him…”a man defying god”. Although Acts 24:16 says Paul heard in Hebrew, the apparent quote from Euripides’ Greek is exact. It has unnecessarily kept the dramatist’s plural form of kentra goad/necessity (which would fit rather with a common proverb in the singular) that Euripides employs when Pentheus says, “You disregard my words…and kick against necessity/the goads”. Euripides has only pluralized to make his poetic metre go. It is also important to note that the necessity/the goad could have sexual implications which the KJV bible’s “kick against the pricks” accidentally reflects. Though I don’t accept theories Paul was a closet gay, it’s possible the conversion narrative contains a hint Paul needs to examine his sexual being and attitudes at deep levels, as otherwise they could affect his teachings, treatment of people and understanding of what Jesus himself is like.
[3] Jer 13:23, On the basically gay/queer character of Jeremiah see for example Chapter 8 of my Cosmic Father: Spirituality as Relationship. It is beyond present scope but contained in my writings that some persons do, or appear to make, at least partial change from their orientation. There are reasons for this but in most instances persons are what they are and remain what they are from childhood.
[4] Luther reformed much and lit a torch for liberty in Europe generally, but his record of anti-Semitic prejudice (he proposed synagogues should be burned down) left a legacy in Germany facilitating Nazi attitudes centuries later, a case of a great man making great mistakes.
[5] It could be that Paul’s famous/infamous Romans 1 describes male prostitution, paedophilia, recreational bisexuality or just blasts the extreme indulgence of ancient Rome. Practically however, this is rant influenced by the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon on sex and idolatry. But by referring to whatever precisely same sex as “degrading passions”, “shameless acts” “degrading of the body” etc “for which they deserve to die” this part of scripture works out as hate speech and a life sentence if not a hell sentence for anyone remotely same sex attracted. It is what makes for a great proportion of the homeless of America being gays thrown out of the house by “good” Christians. Christian rejection was the reason of the now eternally remorseful Linda Robertson’s son took to drugs and overdosed at eighteen. Romans 1 would have been better never written and it should be excised from our bibles for the damage it does. For vastly less good reason even the sola scriptura Luther declared the epistle of James “an epistle of straw” that should be censored from our bibles. At the same time, it must be allowed Paul and Christians past and present have a perfect right to maintain that “homosexuality” like heterosexuality can be the basis for excessive, immoral, decadent behaviour (such as really does exist in America as in ancient Rome) It is troubling that the defence of gay rights now so often today also seeks to indite all and any criticism of gay behaviour as “homophobic”, even an indictable offence. Queer theory doesn’t accept the notion of morality in any normal sense and there is much to legitimately question in the work of leaders of gay/queer theory.
[6] i.e. associating sex with nothing but reproduction like the pagan Stoics which is scarcely biblical – Paul seems not to have read or absorbed the Song of Solomon..
[7] Paul’s diatribe is owing to the Apocyphal Wisdom of Solomon and is not untypical of his society and times – numbers of pagan writers like the satirist Juvenal spit out hatred of effeminates or any male who seems “different” from some militaristic masculine norm. The subject was confused by various class and military factors that no longer apply today. Any male passive towards another male was disgraced, the reason sodomy was used on prisoners of war. Masters could use slaves sexually. Doubtless because so many non gay persons were made to function that way that St Paul confuses values to this day by talking about “and such were some of you” ( 1 Cor 6:11) still the scriptural basis for praying or exorcising the gay away.
[8] Acts 10:14. Peter wrongly rejects the vision given him (three times!) because it contradicts or modifies scripture.
[9] The point is little stressed hence unfamiliar, but that the Spirit is God as Truth is indicated by 1 Joh 5:6. It is suggested here that the Spirit oversees/interprets the ages and cycles of time which promote changes and the new which are meant to be accepted.
[10] Numbers 27 recounts how these women petitioned to have the inheritance laws changed. This would imply the Law, (apart from core covenant with its Ten Commandments), is not written to be and beyond questioning and negotiation. All secondary law is besides for organization of the society of the covenanted Jews. It is not presented as any universal prescription and it is controversial if St Paul (and various Popes and councils) privilege and universalize only items almost at random following generalizing philosophical principles which is what Paul does re laws even his Jewish contemporary Philo believed applied to sacred prostitution.
[11] St Paul did not get on well with the young John Mark, probably because his character was different in some way – perhaps gay/queer. Various controversies around Mark like The Secret Gospel, however heretical nonetheless likely reflect traditional suspicions around this gospeller’s character.
[12] In India minority Christians have successfully joined with Muslims (who elsewhere persecute their faith), to campaign for a recriminalizing of homosexuality laws against which were repealed in 2009. In 2014 conservative Christian pastor and politician Danny Nalliah who has been constantly opposed by or opposed to Muslims in Australia has recently supported them in opposition to gays.
[13] Paul fails to see the irony that at the same time as he will approve whatever is unnatural, God works against his nature (his perfection) in grafting Gentiles onto the tree of Israel and salvation. Rom 11.24
[14] Politically correct Gay/Queer rights are theoretically inclusive of atheist or libertarian gays having the right to teach religion classes or run church and university religion clubs etc or, in some radically liberal churches, to be priests without beliefs or usual moral standards. While religious people can be blinkered bigots,even the individual bigot may still appreciate and support a larger community sense of the sacred which the rationalist libertarian may not. A community should have the right to retain what makes for the sacred, and arguably the owner of property (such as a hotel) should have some right to set the rules which may include a preference against gay couples? Conscience should be educated rather than state coerced by laws, and where gays conspire to coerce Christians they are not better than those they oppose. Presently churches are just being split apart and charity services curtailed due to arguments and court cases over gays and their rights.
[15] kveth is Yiddish for ceaseless outlandish complaining, grumbling, blaming. It is suggested St Paul somewhat indulges this in Romans 1
[16] St Paul famously states we see through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12), a principle forgotten when writing on things and persons “unnatural”!
[17] 1 Cor 7:39. It seems controversial that in pronouncing on marriage and divorce St Paul can only say he “thinks” he has the Spirit of God on the matter. He should surely know in making rules so vital to people’s lives, though one could say it’s liberating in that it leaves the door open for alternatives and exceptions. But if he only “thinks” re divorce, how much more likely is it he would have “thought” what he claims about same sex loving and lovers about which even just humanly and socially he would know so much less?
[18] Matt 20:16