Recent events have had me thinking about societal treatment of homosexuals. A Rutgers freshman committed suicide after his homosexual activity was filmed by a hidden web cam, and broadcast on the internet. In Iran, Ahmadinejad insists there are no homosexuals in Iran. Those who are found to be so are imprisoned, and have been killed.
For all our nominal societal openness and acceptance, there is not only antagonism toward homosexuals, they themselves are often ashamed and uncomfortable with their own sexuality. It is difficult to feel good about your sexuality when it is preached as a sin, laughed at by peers and attacked by strangers. Whether a gay man is murdered, as in the west several years ago, or commits suicide out of shame of exposure, the net result is homosexuals still die in the US for their sexuality.
The United States has also considered itself, even now, as a nation with a unique character in the world. This was true of our founders, who boasted in writing that the new republic would best the royal regimes of the old world. It remains true today, as we export democracy and Christianity elsewhere, believing ourselves to be right. It was most especially true when, in the name of 'manifest destiny', we destroyed the native population of the midwest and west, and consigned the remainder to reservations, nominally by 'treaty'.
Nazi Germany imprisoned and killed homosexuals as well. This is despite the clear homosexuality of one of its early leaders, Ernst Rohm, who was murdered on the Night of the Long Knives, and the alleged homosexual activities of several other Nazi leaders. Many gays were rounded up and placed in concentration camps, some of the earliest prisoners in them, along with communists and the mentally defective. They were required to wear a pink star, like the yellow star of the Jews.
Nazi Germany also believed it was a superior state, populated by a superior sort of being, the Aryan. It claimed the right to displace other cultures from Eastern Europe, inhabited by untermenschen (lesser men), to provide space and food for Aryan Germans. There were clear rules about what made it possible to claim Aryan status, based on appearance and parentage.
Today, we decry the Nazi racial, sexual and religious policies, not being willing to admit their basis in US books and science; indeed, not simply their basis, but the admiration expressed by German and international scientists for the extent scientific ideas were put into social practice. Similarly, in the US, we feel shame for our treatment of Indians, blacks and other non-Aryan groups, but we do nothing of substance to produce or inculcate a sense of true equality.
Our inspiration for moral values and revelation about God also speaks loudly on the issues of taking land and repressing homosexuals. Little quiz-
A revered culture and its documents advocated the killing of homosexuals. The land they conquered had been promised to them by God. They were not simply entitled to kill all the inhabitants of this land, they were enjoined to do so. Cooperation, intermarriage or the sparing of life by a king was punishable. What is the culture?
You have likely guessed that these are the rules of the Israelites. Leviticus unequivocally specifies death as the punishment of homosexuality. The Israelites are given overt permission to kill the occupants of the land they have been promised. Saul loses his kingship specifically over his sparing of helpless enemy soldiers, when God had commanded him that none were to be left alive.
It is interesting to me that we revere the Bible, are ashamed of our own treatment of gays and natives even while mistreating them, and condemn policies of Nazi Germany identical in substance to those of the Israelites. What is the difference between killing gays, murdering gays and imprisoning them? What is the difference between driving out and murdering Poles for land and driving out and murdering Canaanites and Edomites or Indians for land? What is the difference between being God's chosen people, ubermenschen and manifest destiny?
We must be very careful what ideas and words we put into the form of God. It is easy to dismiss the Old Testament as being irrelevant when the New was written, but this walks around the problem of God's decrees in the Old Testament. If they are irrelevant, then why not make them non-canonical, not recognized as the word of God, or inspired by God?
If Israelites who knew no better can place into the mouth of God ideas of murder, extermination and exclusion, there is no step at all to Germans, lost in a different kind of wilderness, putting their faith in a charismatic man advocating new room for Germans and the destruction of Germany's enemies, internal and external. Nor is there a difference in the US asserting its superiority in democracy.
God, autocrat, democracy. If the fruits are the same- violence, exclusion, death- we must then look carefully and do that which is just, kind, compassionate, helpful, in support of life.
I believe God is all of the latter, and none of the former. God is sadly blamed for all manner of calamity, and invoked to justify all manner of atrocity. We would do well to invoke God in helping us help others, rather than asserting our own superiority, moral, racial or otherwise.
Ted
For all our nominal societal openness and acceptance, there is not only antagonism toward homosexuals, they themselves are often ashamed and uncomfortable with their own sexuality. It is difficult to feel good about your sexuality when it is preached as a sin, laughed at by peers and attacked by strangers. Whether a gay man is murdered, as in the west several years ago, or commits suicide out of shame of exposure, the net result is homosexuals still die in the US for their sexuality.
The United States has also considered itself, even now, as a nation with a unique character in the world. This was true of our founders, who boasted in writing that the new republic would best the royal regimes of the old world. It remains true today, as we export democracy and Christianity elsewhere, believing ourselves to be right. It was most especially true when, in the name of 'manifest destiny', we destroyed the native population of the midwest and west, and consigned the remainder to reservations, nominally by 'treaty'.
Nazi Germany imprisoned and killed homosexuals as well. This is despite the clear homosexuality of one of its early leaders, Ernst Rohm, who was murdered on the Night of the Long Knives, and the alleged homosexual activities of several other Nazi leaders. Many gays were rounded up and placed in concentration camps, some of the earliest prisoners in them, along with communists and the mentally defective. They were required to wear a pink star, like the yellow star of the Jews.
Nazi Germany also believed it was a superior state, populated by a superior sort of being, the Aryan. It claimed the right to displace other cultures from Eastern Europe, inhabited by untermenschen (lesser men), to provide space and food for Aryan Germans. There were clear rules about what made it possible to claim Aryan status, based on appearance and parentage.
Today, we decry the Nazi racial, sexual and religious policies, not being willing to admit their basis in US books and science; indeed, not simply their basis, but the admiration expressed by German and international scientists for the extent scientific ideas were put into social practice. Similarly, in the US, we feel shame for our treatment of Indians, blacks and other non-Aryan groups, but we do nothing of substance to produce or inculcate a sense of true equality.
Our inspiration for moral values and revelation about God also speaks loudly on the issues of taking land and repressing homosexuals. Little quiz-
A revered culture and its documents advocated the killing of homosexuals. The land they conquered had been promised to them by God. They were not simply entitled to kill all the inhabitants of this land, they were enjoined to do so. Cooperation, intermarriage or the sparing of life by a king was punishable. What is the culture?
You have likely guessed that these are the rules of the Israelites. Leviticus unequivocally specifies death as the punishment of homosexuality. The Israelites are given overt permission to kill the occupants of the land they have been promised. Saul loses his kingship specifically over his sparing of helpless enemy soldiers, when God had commanded him that none were to be left alive.
It is interesting to me that we revere the Bible, are ashamed of our own treatment of gays and natives even while mistreating them, and condemn policies of Nazi Germany identical in substance to those of the Israelites. What is the difference between killing gays, murdering gays and imprisoning them? What is the difference between driving out and murdering Poles for land and driving out and murdering Canaanites and Edomites or Indians for land? What is the difference between being God's chosen people, ubermenschen and manifest destiny?
We must be very careful what ideas and words we put into the form of God. It is easy to dismiss the Old Testament as being irrelevant when the New was written, but this walks around the problem of God's decrees in the Old Testament. If they are irrelevant, then why not make them non-canonical, not recognized as the word of God, or inspired by God?
If Israelites who knew no better can place into the mouth of God ideas of murder, extermination and exclusion, there is no step at all to Germans, lost in a different kind of wilderness, putting their faith in a charismatic man advocating new room for Germans and the destruction of Germany's enemies, internal and external. Nor is there a difference in the US asserting its superiority in democracy.
God, autocrat, democracy. If the fruits are the same- violence, exclusion, death- we must then look carefully and do that which is just, kind, compassionate, helpful, in support of life.
I believe God is all of the latter, and none of the former. God is sadly blamed for all manner of calamity, and invoked to justify all manner of atrocity. We would do well to invoke God in helping us help others, rather than asserting our own superiority, moral, racial or otherwise.
Ted
Excellent analogies between ancient Israel, Nazi Germany, and the U.S. It is so easy to be hypocritical...
ReplyDeleteDavid