This Book is Gay (11 page)

Most people of religion see their sacred texts as a general guide for life – moral guidance, as it were. The problem comes when a minority take the written words literally – and the meaning of some of these words may even have been misinterpreted. Sacred stories and poems were written down by humans hundreds of years ago and so may have errors or mistranslations or additions. It's sort of like playing a game of Chinese whispers that's lasted for centuries – some things are bound to get lost along the way.

The closest thing I personally have to a prophet is Madonna. Now what if I went around taking everything she said literally?

Look at the lyrics to ‘Express Yourself' and ‘Material Girl'… contradictory at best, I'm sure you'll agree!

Let's take a look at the main world religions and examine their traditional views first on homosexuality, then transgenderism.

So what's the big problem? Well, it's all about TRANSLATION and LANGUAGE. There are lots of translations of the Bible (the Christian holy book), and all of them are slightly different. The odd word here and there looks pretty bad for homosexuality. The issues stem from two key parts of the Bible. The quotes below are from the King James Bible, and I've put them in a SCARY FONT. No reason …

‘AND THEY CALLED UNTO LOT, AND SAID UNTO HIM, WHERE ARE THE MEN WHICH CAME IN TO THEE THIS NIGHT? BRING THEM OUT UNTO US, THAT WE MAY KNOW THEM.'
Genesis 19:5 (In this instance, ‘to know' is thought to mean ‘to bum'.)

‘EVEN AS SODOM AND GOMORRAH, AND THE CITIES ABOUT THEM IN LIKE MANNER, GIVING THEMSELVES OVER TO FORNICATION, AND GOING AFTER STRANGE FLESH, ARE SET FORTH FOR AN EXAMPLE, SUFFERING THE VENGEANCE OF ETERNAL FIRE.'
Jude 1:7 (‘Strange flesh' is thought to mean, in this case, ‘bum'.)

So what's goin' on here? In a nutshell, the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah used to be in the Jordan valley until divine judgement was passed and they were destroyed by heavenly fire. Sounds like an awesome episode of Buffy until you realise that people use this story to persecute people.

In some interpretations of the Hebrew text (versions of this story appear in the Torah, Bible and Quran) it's thought the behaviour that displeased God so much was homosexuality.

This is WIDELY open to interpretation as we shall soon discover.

More eye-roll inducing admonition from the book of Leviticus:

‘THOU SHALT NOT LIE WITH MANKIND, AS WITH WOMANKIND: IT IS ABOMINATION.'
Leviticus 18:22

‘IF A MAN ALSO LIE WITH MANKIND, AS HE LIETH WITH A WOMAN, BOTH OF THEM HAVE COMMITTED AN ABOMINATION: THEY SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH; THEIR BLOOD SHALL BE UPON THEM.'
Leviticus 20:13

Way harsh.

So if you have the misfortune to stumble onto a literalist, homophobic Christian, how do you go about defending yourself? Knowledge is power, my friend.

There's some fairly convincing evidence of gay love IN THE BIBLE almost three thousand years prior to Queer as Folk. That's right. In the book of Second Samuel, besties David and Jonathan may have been a little more than friends! Check it out:

‘I AM DISTRESSED FOR THEE, MY BROTHER JONATHAN: VERY PLEASANT HAS THOU BEEN UNTO ME: THY LOVE TO ME WAS WONDERFUL, PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMEN.'
2 Samuel 1:26 (You go gurlz!)

And the gals were getting on board the sexy Bible love train too. The story of Ruth and Naomi reads like an episode of
Desperate Housewives
on crack – there's a LOT of husband swapping – but some scholars read their journey as same-sex love.

Finally, there are various bits of the Bible that are conveniently missing – see the Gospel of Mary – so, as ever, we mustn't wholly trust such ancient sources of information.

The good news is that the Quran is on your side. NOWHERE in there does Allah state a punishment for homosexual behaviour. What's more, the Quran actively encourages diversity, as Allah created that too:

Regarding the Hadith, as with Leviticus, there are various rules that very few people would follow today – seduction by women is on a par with homosexual acts, so it would seem, as is drinking wine. I'm sure we wouldn't kill people for these things. Moreover, the sharia law sets no specific punishment for homosexual behaviour – recommending the death penalty only be used for adultery, renouncing the faith and murder. Most Muslim countries don't enforce these punishments (side eye at those who do).

* * *

Apparently as a boy of around 4 or 5 years old there was an occasion in which I came home in tears from school – someone had told me that God didn't exist.

As a child I was also known for my re-enactments of Disney films and performing Cher's ‘Shoop Shoop Song' for anyone that would sit around long enough to endure it; this led my parents to believe that I'd either be a Vicar or an actor (why actor and not Drag Queen I'm not sure, I'm told I played the part of Cinderella wonderfully). It turns out that I'm neither Vicar nor actor (nor Drag Queen, although I do have the legs for it) but I still retain that same faith I had 20-odd years ago.

I grew up not in a traditionally Christian family but we began to attend Church when we moved to Sussex shortly before my 9th Birthday and it soon became a very important part of my life and my development. Much of my free time as a teenager was spent volunteering with the children's and youth work at our local Baptist Church and I had a close group of friends who would do the same. The painful irony was that they only knew just one aspect of me, no matter how much time we spent in each other's company.

Growing up and from a young age knowing that you're gay (I asked out my first “boyfriend” aged 10) yet being reminded fairly consistently that “God's best is man and woman” is a damaging place to be. It causes many people to lose their faith, many to self-harm and many to take their lives. It's a hurtful place that countless young people and adults' alike still find themselves in today and the Church has a lot of work to do to make amends there.

However, this being said I consider myself to be in an incredibly privileged position now that I've come through those imposed dark places. I came to own my faith personally and not have it prescribed to me by dogmatic teaching; my Theological studies aided this journey and allowed me to realise I belong to two beautiful, charismatic, joyful and alive communities that in spite of their differences often look at life in just the same way.