The Torah commands us to love our neighbor and treat them compassionately. But it also condemns the act of “man [lying] with man as with a woman.” How do we reconcile Judaism with LGBT issues? Also, what about women “lying” with women? – LB, Florida, U.S.
There’s a lot to unpack in this question: what the Torah says, what the Torah has been interpreted as saying – even the assumption that this discussion must be had in the first place deserves some attention. Suffice it to say this probably won’t be the most detailed analysis of the question, but it will be a jumping off point for further study. I’ll try to be as detailed as possible along the way.
Vayikra (Leviticus) 18:22 says, “Do not lie with a man as one does with a woman; it is an abomination.” This passage is widely understood to reference gay sexuality, particularly the act of anal sex. The text doesn’t mention lesbian sex in any form, though if an individual interprets this passage as has been done traditionally, it follows that women would also need to reserve their sex lives for heterosexual intercourse. After all, if men must be with women according to the word of God, then women must also willingly participate in the social heteronormativity.
Underscoring this interpretation of Vayikra is the story of the city Sodom in Bereshit (Genesis) 19:1-11, where two visiting angels are threatened by violent men of the city. These men demand that the angels (who they simply recognize as ordinary men) be sent out to them “so that we may know them” — in essence, to rape them. Spoiler alert: the men are eventually struck with blindness by the power of God through the angels. The city, along with neighbor city Gomorrah, is destroyed by God’s wrath. The passage is often used as a demonstration of the spiritual “blindness” created by engaging in gay or lesbian sex, where LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) persons are compared to animals, rapists, or perverts, like the men of the story.
These are the Torah’s most cited references to homosexuality. Clearly, they’re not among the cheeriest of Torah passages. For years, the discussion about LGBT persons within Judaism (or any religion or public sphere, really) was a slow, mostly hidden process. However, with the current political climate engaging the question of marriage equality, gays and lesbians are beginning to participate openly in their own life journeys, candid about their sexuality. This means that outside the “closet” of never telling anyone about one’s sexual orientation, LGBT persons wish to be treated with equal respect in the workplace, the religious sector, and the political process, as they marry, have children, and simply live alongside everybody else.
However, it is difficult for many to reconcile biblical passages that clearly condemn… well, something… with the knowledge that a brother, a friend, a co-worker—or even a fellow Torah scholar—may be LGBT. As the debate about how inclusive to be in the synagogue rages on, that level of inclusiveness operates on a spectrum, where Orthodoxy is typically less inclusive, and Reform and Reconstructionism are typically the most inclusive. Notice I say “typically” — there are trends in every movement to be more or less accepting of the LGBT Jews in our lives.
One sphere in which this discussion has taken hold is that of Torah scholarship. While much scholarship has acted as a defense of the traditional marriage/sexuality model, scholars like Jay Michaelson, whose earlier work Everything is God explored the concept of unity in Chasidic mysticism, have taken on the cause I like to call “LGBT apologetics.”
In Michaelson’s new book, God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality, he lays out a compelling case. What sets Michaelson’s book aside from other texts published on the subject is that he rarely strays outside the biblical and rabbinic texts themselves to make his argument that, yes, LGBT persons should be free to love and marry their partners. He spends most of his time debunking the myths and stereotypes surrounding sexual orientation, and how many of them are rooted in misinterpretations of our sacred texts.
For example, Michaelson argues that the sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t homosexuality the orientation. It was attempted rape, a crime against human dignity. He cites the prophet Ezekiel, who declared, “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door” (Ezekiel 16:49). And besides, when a heterosexual rape occurs, it isn’t seen as indicative of the dangers of straight sex. Quite the opposite—rape itself is the abomination, not orientation
Even Vayikra’s condemnation of “lying with man” takes on a different tone when it is seen as a prohibition against ritualized sex, a common practice at the time of the canonization of the Torah. The problem then, Michaelson purports, isn’t that LGBT persons are coming out about their sexuality, or that they express that sexuality. It’s that sexuality itself has been misunderstood almost completely, and that the weight of that misunderstanding has unfortunately fallen on the Torah.
Moreover, Michaelson argues for a sexual ethic that sees the act of two monogamous, consenting adults as inherently holy, which then spirals out and makes sacred the process of discovering one’s own sexuality. In this model, the coming out process becomes an act of Kiddush Hashem, whereby we affirm the goodness of God’s name through our choice to be honest about our sexual orientation, and life-affirming in how we express that orientation. Michaelson is elevating the discussion, making it about far more than “dos and don’ts.” Under his perspective, simply being a sexual being is holy, even if that sexuality is never expressed. To express it, however, is to participate in God’s story, to enjoy God’s gift of love.
God vs. Gay is an excellent resource for those struggling to reconcile their sexual feelings — or those of a loved one — with being a person of devout religious faith. Michaelson never panders, attempts to set aside all biases and simply lets the text speak for itself. What happens when he clears the smoke of punditry and bigotry is a beautiful thing, and the discussion over equality and human diversity is elevated because of Michaelson’s willingness to have faith in the words of the Torah — and in human dignity.
John Wofford is a junior at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the current editor of an upcoming interfaith arts hub, a Neo-Hasidic nerd and music journalist of five years. His column, The Godblogger, appears here on alternating Thursdays.
