it's only sinful if you don't take pleasure in it

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Feb 04, 2010

This just in: Homosexuality has been discovered!

OK, I admit it's stale news. It turns out that people have known of homosexuality for "about 125 years." This wisdom is vouchsafed to us by the world's first openly homosexual Episcopalian bishop, Gene Robinson.

Robinson was responding to a question about how he could reconcile his behavior with the exhortations of St. Paul to the Romans. No problem, the Anglican divine replied. St. Paul was "absolutely correct in his own context given what he knew." But the Apostle-- even with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in his favor-- couldn't possibly imagine that some men would lust after men. Which is odd, because that seems to be exactly what St. Paul wrote. But evidently the interpreters of the past 20 centuries have been missing something, because Robinson tells us: "It never occurred to anyone in ancient times that a certain minority of us would be born being affectionally oriented to people of the same sex." Remarkable, isn't it, that Sappho would have had such success writing about a condition that was inconceivable to her. A bit like H.G. Wells on time travel, I suppose.

What was it, I wonder, that happened in 1885 or thereabouts, to bring the human race to the unprecedented realization that some people are homosexual?

But leave aside that historical question for now. Our primary focus should be the Scriptural exegesis that has been provided by Gene Robinson-- who, casting his personal interests aside, helps to explain what the poor benighted St. Paul would have thought, if he had had at his disposal all the analytical tools that are available to an Episcopalian in New Hampshire in the early 21st century.

It's true that St. Paul condemns homosexual acts. And rightly so, Robinson tells us. But wait for the crucial distinction: "St. Paul was talking about people that he understood to be heterosexual engaging in same-sex acts."

Aha! So the Apostle was giving his readers the very useful advice that they shouldn't do things that they don't feel inclined to do. Heterosexual people should not commit homosexual acts. We can all agree on that at least, can't we? And teetotalers definitely shouldn't get drunk.