02.13.07
Paul Was Queer
I’m certain that Paul was a closeted homosexual. Before I start with this, understand that I am not putting a value or a judgment on sexual orientation at all, because that is not the issue. The issue is that Paul put a value and a judgment on it.
I think Paul was gay, and as a Pharisaic Jew, he felt horrified and disgusted by it. This is why he talked so much about how much of a sinner he was- yeah, we’re all bad sinners, but Paul had a major concern, and it was a present concern, not just concern for persecuting Christians before he was converted. In fact, I imagine that Paul’s homosexuality was exactly why he was such a zealous pharisee- he was overcompensating for the fact that in his understanding, God saw him as an abomination.
This is what Paul was talking about when he was talking about his sins of the flesh, and what he wanted to do but could not. He was gay, and he thought it made him a monster.
Don’t get me wrong, Paul was an apostle of God and he not only taught us virtually everything we know about grace and salvation, but he is more or less personally responsible for the continued existence of Christianity. He might have been abraisive at times, but he was committed to Jesus Christ. But he was human.
I think that Paul’s repressed homosexuality and his convictions about it are excactly why he was not only so savage toward homosexuality in his epistles, but why he was so concerned with gender roles and appropriate gender idea. Does God really care who brings home the bacon and who washes the dishes? Seriously, the only indication that we have of any of that stuff is Paul’s epistles, and he was a guy who was massively overcorrecting for the fact that he was queer.
I don’t know what God’s attitude toward homosexuality and homosexuals is. If He’s anything like His Son, I imagine his furious love makes it almost a non-issue. Even if (and I say if) homosexual behavior is a sin (and it can only be the bahavior- who you are can never be a sin; that doesn’t make sense), not only was Jesus himself not concerned enough about it to mention it, but we all sin so often in so many ways that it’s ludicrous to fixate on one particular sin and imagine that God is so particuarly pissed about it. Especially when it seems that the things Jesus got pissed about were fundamentally different kinds of things.
Anyway, my point is that we’ve now got something like 2,000 years of mess about gender roles and sexual identity, and we owe it all to the personal hang-ups of one poor, mixed-up guy who was struggling inside in ways most of us will never imagine.
Iozz-Sothoth said,
February 14, 2007 at 4:27 pm
It’s possible; I’ve also heard it suggested that he had an unusually quiescent sex-drive, which might also account for some of his more extreme viewpoints. It’s tremendously difficult to say from the writings he left us; in addition, it’s possible that what he meant by homosexuality isn’t quite what we mean.
(On a related, but slightly tangiental note, one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had in my life was walking in on my Dad — an Anglican minister — and my sisters while they were engaged in earnest Socratic dialogue on the question of whether Jesus was gay… The general conclusion was that whether he was gay, married or celibate was rather irrelevant, which is likely true, IMO.)
WhoreChurch said,
May 22, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Byz,
I’ll post more over at my blog re:your comment, but I wanted to add a post to this thread (though it might just muddy the waters.)
Knowledge of Greek pedastry may have been a part of Paul’s education and/or experience. As such it is possible he saw difference between homosexual behavior between two adults, an older man and a post-pubescent young man and between an older man and a pre-pubescent child as three distinct acts and not necessarily all being sinful.
It is possible he, as a young man, had been exposed to pedastry as part of his personal education, though like your ideas it is based purely on speculation.