Kultūros ir religijos kritika

The Way of The Berdache

Kate Devlin

Introduction

Some, but not all Native American tribes had a social role for what we call a berdache, a transgendered person .Not much is really known about these people. Many Native American cultures were wiped out, first in a series of epidemics brought by the Europeans and then by the European Conquest itself. Much of the culture of the surviving Indians was destroyed. White missionaries taught natives that transgenderism or alternate sexuality in general was “evil” and this tradition was largely destroyed or driven underground. Much of what we know about the berdache comes from journals or memoirs from some of the early European explorers and some oral traditions from Indians themselves. The berdache tradition seems to have survived today most strongly among some Pueblo Indians in New Mexico and Arizona. There were a few famous (and much photographed) berdaches from this area around the turn of the last century but today these people are very secretive about their traditions and culture.
It was somewhat frustrating to write this because it is difficult to find much specific documented information on the berdache. The information I found on the Internet was either well meaning but simplistic introductions on the one hand or academic anthropologists tediously analyzing each other’s methodology on the other hand and while all this is interesting in a way, it doesn’t really tell me much. It’s hard to find much specific documentation. I did the best I could and I hope you find this interesting.
Anthropologists studying American Indians have known about berdaches for a long time but traditionally this aspect of Indian culture was downplayed. Many writers assumed berdaches were “degenerate”, marginal people who were barely accepted in Native cultures. There’s been somewhat more research done on this in the 90s and today the social climate is somewhat more accepting. Many anthropologists today believe that berdaches actually played an important role in Native societies and were respected and honored.
It’s interesting (and sad) that most American CDs and TGs don’t know about this aspect of Native American culture. What we do as CDs is just barely coming to be accepted by mainstream society while the people who originally lived on this continent have been crossing gender boundaries for upwards of 20,000 years (that’s the currently accepted estimate of when the early American Indians crossed over the Bering Land Bridge from Siberia into Alaska and North America). I didn’t know about this at all myself until a few years ago when I came across a few very vague references to the berdache in some gay magazines I thumbed through and an old issue of Tapestry magazine. More recently I came across “The Spirit and The Flesh” by Walter Williams which is a good introduction to this, by chance in a bookstore . There are some really good books on Native Americans I’ve seen, but even the best of them have very little or no mention of the berdache.

Words
The term “berdache” (pronounced “bur da che-as in “cheese”) itself is actually a Portuguese word and goes way back in history. It originally came from the Persian/Arabic word “berdaj” and before that from the ancient Iranian “varta” which meant “seized as a prisoner” and came to mean a young captive prisoner, male or female. Later on different versions of this word entered European languages during the 1500 and 1600s, and were used to refer to a “catamite” a young boy used for sex (this term is in the Bible) in some Middle Eastern cultures, in this case the Ottoman Empire (what’s now Turkey) where Turkish sultans kept huge harems of both women and boys. In Italian this word was “bardascia”, in Spanish “bardaje” and in English “bardash”. When early European explorers found transgedered people in the New World they at first thought this was the same phenomena (which of course if you’re CD or TG, or know anything about this at all, you’ll know it isn’t-it is somewhat humiliating to be put in the same category as a “catamite”). Its complicated but we probably got the Portuguese version of this word from the French Canadians, where it was used as a frontier word. when French fur trappers encountered transgendered people, probably around the Great Lakes area, in the 1600s. A French writer named Deletier wrote a memoir in the early 1700s where he talked about these people and the word stuck. Many American Indian activists, especially among the Navajo people, don’t like this term because they feel it’s too “Eurocentric” and some people have proposed using the Chippewa term “hedayeh” instead. Because it’s more familiar I’ll stick with “berdache”. There are some other well-known terms. The Navajo called berdaches “nadle” or “two spirit people”, while the Shoshone called them “”tanowaip”, “woman-man”. The Lakota Sioux (the group in “Dances With Wolves”) called them “winkte”. The Zunis, a group who live in pueblos in New Mexico, call them”lhamana”. The Mojave called them “hwame”. I could go on and on but you probably get the point. There were about 200 different languages spoken in what are now the United States, and just as many words for a berdache.


Where Were They?

Contrary to what many people today think, Native American cultures were very varied in terms of culture and language. As I mentioned before there were about 200 different languages spoken in what’s now the US. (Today about 20 remain-I say “about” because estimates of what makes a seperate language or tribe vary a lot). American Indians could be as different from one another in terms of facial features as Italians and Swedes are in Europe today . Generally speaking American Indians(and anthropologists studying them) didn’t think in terms of separate “races” but more in terms of cultural groups. You were a member of a tribe if you lived with them and adopted their culture. Its interesting that it was easier, and far more common, for a European to be adopted into an Indian tribe than for an Indian to assimilate into white society. Largely because Indian societies gave everyone a specific role in society, it was common for Europeans to enjoy living in an Indian society (once they were accepted) than in their own European culture. They are many reports from the 1600s and early 1700s of aristocratic French explorers being adopted into Indian tribes in what’s now the American southeast-Mississippi , Alabama Georgia or Florida, and enjoying it far more than European society. Many tribes of the Southeast had –the Choctaw and other groups-had aristocratic, hierarchical cultures, which were probably heavily influenced by the Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico. Many early French explorers claimed these Native societies reminded them of the France of Louis IV, although that sounds a bit far fetched to me. Anyway there was a constant “gene flow” in many Indian societies-newcomers were often adopted into the tribe, kidnapped or captured. At the same time most Indian tribes was fiercely protective of their tribe’s territory and could be brutal, merciless, and cruel to trespassers.
Estimates vary as to how common the berdache tradition was. According to a history project by GAI (Gay American Indians-a gay Indian activist group, obviously) 133 American Indian tribes have been documented as having a berdache tradition while the American Anthropological Association puts it lower at 122. There were approximately 200 Native American tribal or cultural groups in what’s now the United States at the time of Columbus, so approximately ¾ of all Indian groups had berdaches .Two anthropologists studying the berdache tradition only found evidence for female to male berdaches in 30 tribes and its believed that this may have been less accepted and far less common. . Unfortunately there isn’t any documented evidence of a berdache tradition among Northeast Indians-the Iroquois of New York State and the Alkongquian speaking groups of New York and New England. Of course, just because it of course, just because it hasn’t been documented did not exits-a lot has been lost. Many writers think these groups probably did have such a tradition. Berdaches were common in agricultural Native cultures where women had a strong role in society, as these groups did. The Iroquois were a matriarchal people and women had a powerful economic role among the Coastal Algonquians, so it would be puzzling if they did not also have a role for berdaches . Algonquian groups living further to the west were known to have berdaches .It could be that the early New England Puritans freaked out about this. It is known that a little after the time of the Salem witch trials an Irish woman was burned at the stake in Massachusetts Bay Colony for speaking Gaelic to herself, which was thought to be evidence of satanic possession. (I’m not making this up!) The Puritans made Hester Pym wear an “A” for being an “adulteress”, so you could imagine how they would react to a young Indian boy who wanted to be a girl.
Other then the Northeast, where the evidence is sketchy, a berdache tradition has been documented in every other region in the US. According to Walter Williams the Cherokee, a group in northern Georgia and Tennessee, does not have a berdache tradition but were and are very tolerant of homosexuality.

Who Started Civilization?

Sorry, but if you guessed “Sid Meier” you’d be wrong. This may be a surprise but agriculture and farming in most cultures in the world was originally women’s work. At the time of the Neolithic (the New Stone Age) men would be out hunting woolly mammoth or rhinoceros or whatever while women would stay at home and plant crops . Many anthropologists think that in this way women actually started civilization. Early agriculture societies like this tended to be matriarchal or at least gave women a much greater role. These cultures also had a role for transgendered people. In a culture where women have a strong role, it’s easier and there’s more incentive for a young boy (or grown man) who has trangender feelings to switch roles. Its only when people started living in big cities (which required armies to defend them) that men took over and society became more patriarchal. Pastoral or nomadic peoples, tribes who made their living tending migratory animals and who would usually live in the north, in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres, tended to be more macho and aggressive. These people would look down on the settled people of the south. Farming was for sissies, while “real men” took care of sheep (yeah, yeah, I know-I couldn’t resist this). The nomads would often trash the more settled civilizations. If you play history simulation games like “Civ II”, or “Age of Empires”, you’ll know this is a very common recurring pattern in history. The Mongols trashed Central Asia, the Germans and Celts (my ancestors) trashed the Roman Empire, and Canadian shoppers trash northern New England on those weird Canadian holidays . Seriously though, you can see this ancient historical theme in American history, in the “range wars” of the 1880s in the prairie states when shootouts and small battles broke out between farmers and ranchers. The musical “Oklahoma!” talks about this in the song “Why Can’t The Cowboy and the Farmer Be Friends?”


What They Did (Part I)

The role of berdaches varied from tribe to tribe. In a quote from a website produced by the English Department of Reed College a berdache was a ”transvested male, who had permanently taken on the dress, language, and mannerisms of the female gender in their particular society. In homosexual relations the berdache took on the passive role The member of a particular culture “became” a berdache in varying ways, some at a young age and others at a later stage in life, possibly following warriordom, when they were no longer capable of fighting effectively”.
In most cultures berdaches were respected, fully integrated into society, and had a high status. There were female to male berdaches (“Amazons”) but male to female berdaches seem to have been far more common. Generally berdaches were associated with good luck, they were considered to be lucky people, not because of their alternate gender but because good things seemed to happen to them. In tribes that had trade and economic activity berdaches were considered to be good in business. Berdaches were also often associated with shamanism, or contact with the spirit world. Shamans are very common, probably universal, in tribal cultures. They are people who contact or enter the spirit world, usually after going into a trance state, and are involved in “healing” people, both physically and psychologially. More on this in a minute. Not all berdaches were shamans and not all shamans were berdaches, but berdaches were regarded as making especially skilled shamans. This is because they were thought to be skillful at crossing boundaries, gender as well as spiritual. In most cultures around the world that accepted transgenderism, TGs were often connected with religion and spirituality.
Since berdaches knew what is was like to be both a man and a woman, they were also looked to for advice on relationships. Both the Cheyenne hemaneh and the Navajo nadle were skilled at making love potions. Interestingly the hijra, transgendered people in India, also have this reputation.
Individual male to female berdaches ran the gamut from occasional crossdressers to people who “lived full time”. Walter Williams talks about a Shoshone Indian from the 1840s. This person sometimes dressed as a male, sometimes as a female.He/she was a skilled shaman and doctor and, when he/she wanted to be (which wasn’t often) was extremely good at being a warrior. While respected and accepted by his/her tribe this person chose to live alone in a tipi apart from his/her village and was regarded as being somewhat eccentric .One time the Shoshone were threatened by a coalition of other tribes and this person abruptly stopped living as a woman, became a warrior, killed a large number of the enemy, and when the threat was over began living as a woman again, at least for a while.There are other stories of people like this, who would switch back and forth. They were accepted and honored but also considered to be somewhat eccentric .Some of these people were married to genetic women. Often these people were extremely good at a skill-shamanism, medicine, warfare-having survival value for the tribe.There were also people both male and female, usually shamans, who partially crossdressed, wearing clothes of both genders, “mix and match”. This seems to have been especially common among the Zuni Pueblo Indians .From what I’ve come up with, which admittedly isn’t much (as I said before the documentation is very scanty) “living full time” among the berdache was far more common.
The Navajo nadle was considered to be an extremely lucky person, as I mentioned before. According to Navajo myth, nadles were originally given charge of wealth at the beginning of time It was believed that a family with a berdache member would be rich and financially succesful. There was a poplar saying among the Navajo “When all the nadle are gone, it will be the end of the Navajo”.
In the Lakota Soiux tribe the “wintke” were given the responsibility, also considered a privilege, of bestowing secret names to tribe members. The names “Sitting Bull”, “Black Elk”, and “Crazy Horse”, two famous warriors and a famous story teller, were given by wintke.
The Cheyenne hemaneh were regarded as sprirtual beings with supernatural powers. Hemaneh acted as leaders of scalp dances .The movie Little Big Man (which I haven’t seen yet) has a hemaneh as a main character. In this movie a white guy, Jack Crabb comes back to a group of Cheyenne Indians he spent part of his childhood with. He meets an old friend, Little Horse and is surprised to see that he is now living as a woman. Little Horse does a woman’s dance and is extremely good at it and is regarded by the other tribe members as a supernatural, godlike being .Little Horse offers to become Jack’s wife but is turned down, possibly because Jack (who isn’t gay) already had four wives. (I definitely have to study this culture more). Some anthropologists and literary critics think the book and the movie over romanticized the situation among the Cheyenne.
Its difficult to apply terms like “hetero-“ or “homo-“ sexuality to TG people. It appears though that most berdaches, especially if they lived as women from a young age were sociialized to have sexual relations with men .It was very common in Native tribes for a berdache to be married to a “straight” man. Neither partner would be regarded as “gay”. Polygamy was accepted in many Native cultures .It was especially common in the hierarchical cultures of the Southeast. It would be common for a high statues male, such as a powerful chief, to have many wives and it was very common for at least one of the wives to be a berdache. The berdache would often “stay at home” and take care of the children and do housekeeping while her sister wives would be farming and working in the fields. It was considered lucky to have a berdache wife. Walter Williams in “The Spirit and The Flesh” has a story about the Tlinglish, a group that still lives in British Columbia. These people had a hierarchical status oriented culture and were business and money oriented.There was a family who had a son, a young boy who was unusually feminine. His/her parents married him off to an older man who made a lot of money in the fishing industry, in order to make important business connections for the family. Neither the young boy or ”her” husband were considered to be homosexual and the marriage was considered to be a “smart move” by other people in the tribe.
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.There has been lot of debate over the sexual orientation of the berdache. Some writers feel that virtually all of them were “gay”, that is they were socialized to have sex with men. Other people disagree with this and feel that the role of the berdache was very varied., similar to transgender peole today. It is known that there were (maybe still are) “lesbian berdaches” among the New Mexico Zuni people.”The Spirit and The Flesh” by Walter Williams which came out in the early 90s, was one of the early “classics” about the berdache tradition. Williams is openly gay and takes a gay perspective. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this of course but many people might disagree with his interpretation. Williams (and other writers) seem to feel that the transgenderism of the berdache-the desire to look, act, or be treated as women is an expression of homosexuality and is not important outside of this. Many TGs and especially CDs would probably disagree with this idea. It’s a somewhat abstract but important philosophical idea. Gender identity and sexual orientation are two separate (although maybe related) things, one isn’t just an expression of the other. There was a big debate among anthropologists on this subject-the sexual and gender orientation of the berdache- thoughout the 1990s, the “berdache wars”. Andrew Sullivan, a conservative gay activist, wrote that berdaches were rare in Indian societies and were only common in cultures where women had a high status. His views have also caused a lot of debate.
I haven’t found anything about “lesbian berdaches”.I like to think they were common but I don’t know. Of course many Native Americans didn’t think in this rigid Western terms anyway.. Living in a tight knit tribal culture, guided by the spirit world and in which daily survival could be a struggle, diversity could be accepted and celebrated but at the same one wouldn’t have a lot of “lifestyle choices”. If one had TG or CD feelings and wanted or had to be a berdache, that person would be socialized into a specific role

As I mentioned earlier Native American cultures could often be much different from one another. They were usually much different from contemporary American culture, with a few exceptions. Modern American culture is very capitalistic-its based on individual achievement and (especially) accumulation. “He who has the most toys when e dies, wins”. Sad but accurate. Most Native American cultures were communal-people shared things. People had individual possessions but the concept of private property wasn’t highly developed. (The tribe in British Columbia I mentioned was an exception) Most Natives thought the concept of permanent ownership of real estate was especially absurd. This is why the Dutch were able to buy Manhattan for a few seashells and beads. (Every school child knows this story. Recent research however shows this was a little more complicated than most people think. What the Dutch paid for Manhattan was far higher than previously believed and it was the Manhattan Indians who thought they were ripping the Dutch off.)
Some tribes, particularly Plains Indians, were highly individualistic and were also very warlike-being a warrior was an important way of gaining status, while many of the Pueblo Indians were pacifistic and suppressed individual expression. Individual achievement and standing out from the group was considered bad among thee people. Some tribes were matriarchal; some were egalitarian and more or less democratic, while some, particularly in the southeast and along the Mississippi River were aristocratic. The way berdaches lived therefore varied according to the culture they were in.

Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen-Becoming A Berdache

People became berdache in many ways. According to the Reed College website I mentioned the selection of a person to become a berdache didn’t necessarily have anything to do with feminine predispositions. Just because someone enjoyed weaving or had a high voice didn’t mean they would be a berdache .Often people wee chosen by their parents or their tribe to be a berdache. A Spanish writer Fernandz de Piedrahita wrote about a village in Columbia in the mid 1600s where if a mother gave birth to five consecutive sons she was entitled to raise any other sons she would have as a girl. Another Spanish writer , Hernando de Alarcon wrote about berdaches he found along the lower Colorado River in 1541. In this society (I haven’t been able to find out which tribe) there were always supposed to be four berdaches in each village. When one berdache died, the next born boy would then be raised as a girl. In this particular society, according to Alarcon, berdaches worked as prostitutes but in reward for this had a high status in society and “were free to take from any house what they needed”.
Most Native American tribes regarded dreams and visions as being very important. In Plains Indian tribes a young man or woman would often go on a vision quest for several days as part of his or her initiation ritual into adulthood and to find his or her place in the tribe. In this way a young person with transgender feelings would have dreams or visions reflecting this. The tribal shamans would help him or her interprets this. Many of these cultures were very warlike and held skilled warriors in great esteem. A young man about to become a berdache would opt out of this. He/she would forego the sometimes painful male initiation rituals and be initiated as a female. Walter Williams mentions a story recorded in the 1920s about a Lakota Sioux berdache. In the early 1900s, long after the Sioux had been “pacified”, herded onto a reservation, and much of their traditions surppresed, a young boy who was unusually feminine, used to hang around his mother’s kitchen. One time after spending awhile talking about the Sioux wintke tradition with his mother, she asked him, “Do you think you are one of these people?” Her son said “Yes”, and he became a berdache. Unfortunately I haven’t found too many other stories of how people became berdaches..


Shamanism
Shamanism was often an important vocation for a berdache I’ve dabbled in shamanism myself although I’m not an expert on this. A shamanism is someone who enters the spirit world, usually though a trance state. There are many different ways of inducing a trance-drumming is the most popular, dancing can also be used. A good basic intro on this is “Shamanism” by Mircea Eliade, a famous Romanian religious scholar .If you’re interested in contacting the spirit world yourself, “The Way of The Shaman” by Michael Harner will show you how. It comes with a drumming tape-you nee to have a Walkman with Dolby noise reduction, which is hard to find. Anyway, shamanism does work. Native Americans also used fasting and drugs (peyote, mushrooms, jimson weed, etc.) to induce a trance state .I don’t at all recommend using these methods unless you really really know what you’re doing.. Drugs were more common in what’s now Latin America (you’ll know this if you’ve read any of the Carlos Castenada books) but were not used often by North American Indians.. Shamans used their knowledge of the spirit world to “heal” people, both physically, psychologically, and spiritually, acting as both doctors and therapists. They also helped provide guidance for a tribe during times of stress-a famine, a war, etc. Shamans played a very important role in most Indian societies Anyway transgenderd people because they traveled between genders, were considered to have a gift for shamanism. Not all shamans were berdaches and not all berdaches were shamans but a vocation as a shaman was very common among these people. It’s interesting that in most ancient and traditional cultures around the world TGs were connected with religion and spirituality. It is a major tragedy (I think) that until recently crossdressing and transgenderism has been condemned by a misinterpretation of Christianity, driving people like us underground. It is sad that people were made to feel guilty to be who they are. I’m digressing.

How They Lived (Part II)

In tribes that had settled farming villages berdaches seemed to have a high economic status and were often considered to be rich. In these villages they often lived and worked in groups and played an important role as priestesses. Theodore De brey, a Flemish artist who accompanied some of the early Spanish explorers wrote open berdaches in Florida and Central America especially Florida. He noted that among a tribe in Florida berdaches worked in the “caring professions”, took care of sick people, buried the dead, and worked as priests during important ceremonies and lived together as a group.. The anthropologist Alfred Bowers wrote about the Hidatsa, an Indian group that lived o the Northern Great Plains. The Hidatsa lived in earth lodge villages. According to Bowers each village would have between 15-20 berdaces, who often lived and worked together (I don’t know how large the villages were). The Cheyenne were another Great Plains group who was related to the Hidatsa. They used to live in farming villages but after they got horses from the Spanish they became nomadic. Among the Cheyenne berdaches also worked, traveled and camped together.
In many tribes berdaches didn’t specifically wear women’s clothing and weren’t “officially” considered women but had their own type of feminine clothing and culture. In religious functions and other social roles berdaches didn’t mirror women’s roles but had their own distinct role. One writer suggested that the fact that there were separate names for berdaches meant that they had a different role than genetic women. . Some anthropologists have suggested that rather than “changing gender” bedaches could be considered to represent a third (or even fourth or fifth) gender. Some people have suggested or implied that this might provide an alternate role model for modern Americans (or other people) struggling with transsexualism. People have suggested that surgery as a solution would be a “Western medical model” solution to these people’s problems and there have been alternate solutions practiced by tribal cultures. This is a complicated topic and I don’t have any answers.
Some Indian tribes, particularly in the Southeast and in Mexico and Central America were hierarchical and aristocratic. They had slaves, peasants, and a ruling class of aristocratic priests. Another common recurring pattern in history is the struggle between priests and shamans. Tribal societies usually have shamans, who are in direct communication with the spirit world. Societies that develop large cities begin to have a priest class-these people interpret messages from the gods, rather than communicate with the spirit world and often form an aristocracy. Priests usually mistrust and try to discredit shamans. This has been a very common recurring theme in almost every society in the world. As I mentioned before, berdaches were often connected with spirituality and religion .In some societies in Central and South America berdaches would act as a “passive sexual partner to religious leaders”, according to one website. This was especially true in the Inca Empire of Peru. Berdaches would act as temple prostitutes or as sexual partners to religious leaders. The Spanish conquistadors freaked out about this, both because they thought this was “sodomy” and because they regarded this as religious blasphemy, and they killed large numbers of berdache.
As I mentioned earlier the Flemish engraver Theodore deBray accompanied early Spanish explorers. He made several not entirely accurate pictures of berdaches .In his pictures the berdaches are shown doing traditional women’s work in large groups. They are shown as European looking, with apparently what was supposed to be long curly blond hair, probably to differentiate them from the other Indians, and were portrayed as the medieval European conception of “sodomite”. One of these is entitled “Balboa’s Dogs Attacking a Group of Panamanian Sodomites” and is a horrifying picture of just that. It’s disturbing to look at.

The Zuni Lhamana

The Zuni tribe is a group of Pueblo Indians who live in New Mexico. This is one group where the berdache tradition has been fairly well documented. Berdaches, called “lhamana” are fully accepted and respected among this tribe (they are still around). The Zunis, as I mentioned before, are an Indian tribe that is very group oriented and does not prize individual self-expression. The gender of children before the age of six is not emphasized. Kids that age are called by the same crude term meaning “child”. Berdaches are honored in Zuni culture but if a young boy shows inclinations towards this it isn’t forced on him-he’s allowed to develop this at his own pace. Some Zuni groups have a separate initiation ritual for a berdache, sometimes after the male initiation ritual, some don’t.
In the Zuni creation myth there was a battle between the Zuni agricultural spirits and rival spirits of hunting tribes. During this battle a spirit called “ko lhomana” was captured by the enemy and was transformed. This spirit then returned and acted as a mediator between the hunters and the farmers. Every year the Zuni have rituals where they reenact this cosmic battle and the role of the ko lhomana-who is closely connected with the berdache.-is closely associated with the berdache. Ko lhomana or the lhamana were considered to e a third sex and played an important role in religious ceremonies and in business.
There was a famous Zuni berdache, We’wha, who lived from 1849 to 1896. We’wha was highly respected among her tribe. “Her strong character made her word law among both men and women with whom he was associated. Though his wrath was dreaded by men as well as women, he was beloved by all the children…” We’wha was the tallest member of her tribe and was also one of the most intelligent members. We’wha was not really “effeminate” but was androgynous and apparently combined both genders. Not only were We’whaand and other berdaches accepted by their families but they provided a valuable role-they could perform important women’s work without having to go though child birth or menstruation. As I mentioned before there has been a lot of debate on the sexuality of berdaches. Among the Zunis, anyway, this seems to have been varied, and there were many “lesbian ilhamana”., although these people didn’t think in terms of these Western categories.

Conclusion/Where I Got My Information From

As you’ve seen many Native American tribes had a role for gender non-conformists, what we call berdaches. These people didn't think in terms of Western strict dualistic concepts such as gay or straight, or male or female. It appeared that the role of the berdache varied. Often they represented a “third gender”. They were often closely connected to religion and spirituality and were considered good at making money. There’s been very little specific documentation and much of the info I’ve been able to come up with is highly theoretical.
I didn’t include a formal bibliography because I didn’t want to feel like I was writing a college term paper .If you are interested, I could send an informal bibliography. Basically type in “berdache” on Yahoo or any major search engine and you’ll pretty much come up with what I came up with. ”The Spirit and The Flesh” by Walter Williams is a good introduction but as I mentioned his ideas and conclusions are very controversial. Also-if you are reading this and you feel I did not give you credit-please let me know and I will immediately rectify the situation.
A good introduction to Native American thinking is “My Heart Is Red” by Vine Deloria. Another great book, which talks about the Native American way of life, is “Lila” by Robert Pirsig. This is sort of a “part II” of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. I don’t agree with everything Pirsig says but it’s still a wonderful book. “Dances With Wolves”, directed and starring Kevin Costner (based on a German novel of the same name) is really good. “The Black Robe” about a Jesuit missionary in French Canada in the 1600s is really good.” Dead Man Walking” starring Johnny Depp is excellent, one of my all time favorite films, but also very weird. All these provide good introductions to Native American culture, but don’t mention the berdache.” Little Big Man” (the movie and the book by Thomas Berger) has a berdache main character and is supposed to be really good, but I haven’t seen or read it.

http://www.transpride.org/berdache.html

Arsenokoités and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences
by Dale B. Martin

The New Testament provides little ammunition to those wishing to condemn modern homosexuality. Compared to the much more certain condemnations of anger, wealth (sometimes anything but poverty), adultery, or disobedience of wives and children, the few passages that might be taken as condemning homosexuality are meager. It is not surprising, therefore, that the interpretation of two mere words has commanded a disproportionate amount of attention. Both words, arsenokoités and malakos, occur in a vice list in 1 Cor. 6:9, and arsenokoités recurs in 1 Tim. 1:10. Although the translation of these two words has varied through the years, in the twentieth century they have often been taken to refer to people who engage in homosexual, or at least male homosexual, sex, and the conclusion sometimes then follows that the New Testament or Paul, condemns homosexual "activity."
Usually the statement is accompanied by a shrugged-shoulder expression, as if to say, I'm not condemning homosexuality! I'm just reading the Bible. It's there in the text. Such protestations of objectivity, however, become untenable when examined closely. By analyzing ancient meanings of the terms, on the one hand, and historical changes in the translation of the terms on the other, we discover that interpretations of arsenokoités and malakos as condemning modern homosexuality have been driven more by ideological interests in marginalizing gay and lesbian people than by the general strictures of historical criticism.
In the end, the goal of this chapter is not mere historical or philological accuracy. By emphasizing the ideological contexts in which interpretation has taken place and will always take place, I intend to challenge the objectivist notion that the Bible or historical criticism can provide contemporary Christians with a reliable foundation for ethical reflection. Neither a simple reading of "what the Bible says" nor a professional historical-critical reconstruction of the ancient meaning of the texts will provide a prescription for contemporary Christian ethics. Indeed, the naive attempts by conservative Christians, well-meaning though they may be, to derive their ethics from a "simple" reading of the Bible have meant merely that they impute to the Bible their own destructive ideologies.1 The destruction is today nowhere more evident than in the church's mistreatment of lesbian and gay Christians.
Arsenokoités
From the earliest English translations of the Bible, arsenokoités has suffered confusing treatment. Wyclif (in 1380) translated it as "thei that don leccherie with men" and until the twentieth century similar translations prevailed, primarily "abusars of them selves with the mankynde" (Tyndale 1534; see also Coverdale 1535, Cranmer 1539, Geneva Bible 1557, KJV 1611, ASV 1901; the Douai-Rheims version of 1582 was a bit clearer: "the liers vvith mankinde"). A curious shift in translation occurred in the mid-twentieth century. Suddenly, the language of psychology and "normalcy" creeps into English versions. Although some still use archaic terms, like "sodomite" OB 1966, NAB 1970, NRSV 1989), several influential versions substitute more modem concepts like "sexual perverts" (RSV 1946, REB 1992) or terms that reflect the nineteenth century's invention of the category of the "homosexual," such as the NIV's (1973) "homosexual offenders." Some translations even go so far as to collapse arsenokoités and malakos together into one term: "homosexual perverts" or "homosexual perversion" (TEV 1966, NEB 1970). Modem commentators also offer a variety of interpretations. Some explain that malakos refers to the "passive" partner in male-male anal intercourse and arsenokoités the "active" partner, thus the two disputable terms being taken care of mutually.2 Some simply import wholesale the modem category and translate arsenokoités as "male homosexual."3 Others, in an attempt, I suppose, to separate the "sin" from the "sinner," have suggested "practicing homosexuals."4
Between the end of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, the translation of arsenokoités shifted from being the reference to an action that any man might well perform, regardless of orientation or disorientation, to refer to a "perversion," either an action or a propensity taken to be self-evidently abnormal and diseased. The shift in translation, that is, reflected the invention of the category of "homosexuality" as an abnormal orientation, an invention that occurred in the nineteenth century but gained popular currency only gradually in the twentieth.5 Furthermore, whereas earlier translations had all taken the term (correctly) to refer to men, the newer translations broadened the reference to include people of either sex who could be diagnosed as suffering from the new modem neurosis of homosexuality. Thorough historical or philological evidence was never adduced to support this shift in translation. The interpretations were prompted not by criteria of historical criticism but by shifts in modem sexual ideology.
As the debate over homosexuality and the Bible has become more explicit, various attempts have been made to defend the interpretation of arsenokoités as a reference to male-male or homosexual sex in general. A common error made in such attempts is to point to its two parts, arsLn and koitLs, and say that "obviously" the word refers to men who have sex with men.6 Scholars sometimes support this reading by pointing out that the two words occur together, though not joined, in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and in Philo in a context in which he condemns male homosexual sex.7 Either Paul, it is suggested, or someone before him simply combined the two words together to form a new term for men who have sex with men.
This approach is linguistically invalid. It is highly precarious to try to ascertain the meaning of a word by taking it apart, getting the meanings of its component parts, and then assuming, with no supporting evidence, that the meaning of the longer word is a simple combination of its component parts. To "understand" does not mean to "stand under." In fact, nothing about the basic meanings of either "stand" or "under" has any direct bearing on the meaning of "understand." This phenomenon of language is sometimes even more obvious with terms that designate social roles, since the nature of the roles themselves often changes over time and becomes separated from any original reference. None of us, for example, takes the word "chairman" to have any necessary reference to a chair, even if it originally did. Thus, all definitions of arsenokoités that derive its meaning from its components are naive and indefensible. Furthermore, the claim that arsenokoités came from a combination of these two words and therefore means "men who have sex with men" makes the additional error of defining a word by its (assumed) etymology. The etymology of a word is its history, not its meaning.8
The only reliable way to define a word is to analyze its use in as many different contexts as possible. The word "means" according to its function, according to how particular people use the word in different situations. Unfortunately, we have very few uses of arsenokoités and most of those occur in simple lists of sins, mostly in quotations of the biblical lists, thus pro- viding no explanation of the term, no independent usage, and few clues from the context about the term's meaning. But having analyzed these different occurrences of arsenokoités, especially cases where it occurs in vice lists that do not merely quote 1 Cor. 6:9 or 1 Tim. 1:10, I am convinced that we can make some guarded statements.
As others have noted, vice lists are sometimes organized into groups of "sins," with sins put together that have something to do with one another.9 First are listed, say, vices of sex, then those of violence, then others related to economics or injustice. Analyzing the occurrence of arsenokoités in different vice lists, I noticed that it often occurs not where we would expect to find reference to homosexual intercourse — that is, along with adultery (moicheia) and prostitution or illicit sex (porneia) — but among vices related to economic injustice or exploitation. Though this provides little to go on, I suggest that a careful analysis of the actual context of the use of arsenokoités, free from linguistically specious arguments from etymology or the word's separate parts, indicates that arsenokoités had a more specific meaning in Greco-Roman culture than homosexual penetration in general, a meaning that is now lost to us. It seems to have referred to some kind of economic exploitation by means of sex, perhaps but not necessarily homosexual sex.
One of the earliest appearances of the word (here the verb) occurs in Sibylline Oracle 2.70-77.10 Although the date of this section of the oracle — indeed, of the finished oracle itself — is uncertain, there is no reason to take the text as dependent on Paul or the New Testament. The oracle probably provides an independent use of the word. It occurs in a section listing acts of economic injustice and exploitation; in fact, the editors of the English translation here quoted (J. J. Collins) label the section "On Justice":
(Never accept in your hand a gift which derives from unjust deeds.)
Do not steal seeds. Whoever takes for himself is accursed (to generations of generations, to the scattering of life.
Do not arsenokoitein, do not betray information, do not murder.) Give one who has labored his wage. Do not oppress a poor man. Take heed of your speech. Keep a secret matter in your heart. (Make provision for orphans and widows and those in need.)
Do not be willing to act unjustly, and therefore do not give leave to one who is acting unjustly.
The term occurs in a list of what we might call "economic sins," actions related to economic injustice or exploitation: accepting gifts from unjust sources, extortion, withholding wages, oppressing the poor. "Stealing seeds" probably refers to the hoarding of grain; in the ancient world, the poor often accused the rich of withholding grain from the market as a price-fixing strategy.11 I would argue that other sins here mentioned that have no necessary economic connotation probably do here. Thus the references to speech and keeping secrets may connote the use of information for unjust gain, like fraud, extortion, or blackmail; and "murder" here may hint at motivations of economic gain, recalling, for example, the murder of Naboth by Jezebel (1 Kings 21). In any case, no other term in the section refers to sex. Indeed, nothing in the context (including what precedes and follows this quotation) suggests that a sexual action in general is being referred to at all. If we take the context as indicating the meaning, we should assume that arsenokoitein here refers to some kind of economic exploitation, probably by sexual means: rape or sex by economic coercion, prostitution, pimping, or something of the sort.
This suggestion is supported by the fact that a list of sexual sins does occur elsewhere in the same oracle, which is where we might expect to find a reference to male-male sex (2.279-82). The author condemns "defiling the flesh by licentiousness," "undoing the girdle of virginity by secret intercourse," abortion, and exposure of infants (the last two often taken to be means of birth control used by people enslaved to sex; such people proved by these deeds that they had sex purely out of lust rather than from the "nobler" motive of procreation). If the prohibition against arsenokoitein was taken to condemn homosexual intercourse in general, one would expect the term to occur here, rather than among the terms condemning unjust exploitation.12
A similar case exists in the second-century Acts of John. "John" is condemning the rich men of Ephesus:
You who delight in gold and ivory and jewels, do you see your loved (possessions) when night comes on? And you who give way to soft clothing, and then depart from life, will these things be useful in the place where you are going? And let the murderer know that the punishment he has earned awaits him in double measure after he leaves this (world). So also the poisoner, sorcerer, robber, swindler, and arsenokoités, the thief and all of this band. ...So, men of Ephesus, change your ways; for you know this also, that kings, rulers, tyrants, boasters, and warmongers shall go naked from this world and come to eternal misery and torment (section 36; Hennecke-Schneemelcher).
Here also, arsenokoités occurs in a list of sins related to economics and injustice: delighting in wealth, robbery, swindling, thievery. Note also the list of those who prosper by their power over others: kings, rulers, tyrants, boasters, warmongers. The emphasis throughout the section is on power, money, and unjust exploitation, not sex.
As was the case in the Sybilline Oracle, "John" does denounce sexual sins elsewhere in the text, and the word arsenokoités is absent (section 35). If this author took arsenokoités to refer generally to homosexual sex or penetration, we would expect him to mention it among the other sexual sins, rather than in the section condemning the rich for economic exploitation. Thus, here also arsenokoités probably refers to some kind of economic exploitation, again perhaps by sexual means.
Another second-century Christian document offers corroborative, though a bit less obvious, evidence. Theophilus of Antioch, in his treatise addressed To Autolychus, provides a vice list.13 First come the two sexual sins of adultery and fornication or prostitution.14 Next come three economic sinners: thief, plunderer, and defrauder (or robber). Sixth is arsenokoités. The next group includes savagery, abusive behavior, wrath, and jealousy or envy, all of which the ancients would recognize as sins of "passion": that is, uncontrolled emotion. Next come instances of pride: boastfulness and conceit or haughtiness. I take the next term, pléktés ("striker") to denote someone who thinks he can go around hitting people as if they were his slaves. Then occurs the term "avaricious," or "greedy." Finally are two phrases related to the family: disobedience to parents and selling one's children. These last three may all have been taken as belonging to the category of greed, surely in the case of selling one's children and also perhaps in the reference to parents, if the particular action is understood as a refusal to support one's parents in their old age.
arsenokoités is separated from the sexual sins by three terms that refer to economic injustice. Would this be the case if it was understood as a condemnation of simple male homosexual intercourse? Furthermore, as Robert Grant notes, Theophilus takes these terms, with the exceptions of phthoneros and hyperoptLs, from vice lists in the Pauline corpus. Therefore, it is notable that Theophilus places arsenokoités in a different position. Grouping it with economic sins, I suggest, reflects his understanding of the social role to which it referred and his rhetorical goal of grouping the vices by category.
Later in the same work, arsenokoitia occurs in another list: again adultery and porneia come first, then arsenokoitia, followed by greed (pleonexia) and athemitoi eidOlolatreia, referring to idolatry. This list is not very helpful, since the term could here be taken as a sexual vice, grouped with the two preceding terms, or as an economic vice, grouped with the following. One possible explanation is that it is both: it is economic exploitation by some sexual means.15
There are two texts in which one might reasonably take arsenokoitia as referring to homosexual sex. In each case, however, I believe a careful reading encourages more cautious conclusions. The first occurs in Hippolytus's Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.22-23. Hippolytus claims to be passing along a Gnostic myth about the seduction of Eve and Adam by the evil being Naas. Naas came to Eve, deceived her, and committed adultery with her. He then came to Adam and "possessed him like a boy (slave)." This is how, according to the myth, moicheia (adultery) and arsenokoitia came into the world. Since arsenokoitia is in parallel construction with moicheia, it would be reasonable for the reader to take its reference as simply homosexual penetration. We should note, nonetheless, the element of deception and fraud here. The language about Naas's treatment of Adam, indeed, which could be read "taking or possessing him like a slave," could connote exploitation and even rape. Certainly the context allows a reading of arsenokoitia to imply the unjust and coercive use of another person sexually.
The second debatable use of the term occurs in a quotation of the second — to third-century writer Bardesanes found in Eusebius's Preparation for the Gospel.16 Bardesanes is remarking that the peoples who live east of the Euphrates River take the charge of arsenokoitia very seriously: "From the Euphrates River all the way to the ocean in the East, a man who is derided as a murderer or thief will not be the least bit angry; but if he is derided as an arsenokoités, he will defend himself to the point of murder. [Among the Greeks, wise men who have lovers (er?menous echontes, males whom they love; "favorites") are not condemned]" (my trans.).
On the surface, this passage appears to equate "being an arsenokoités" and "having a favorite." But there are complicating factors. In the first place, the text seems to have gone through some corruption in transmission. The sentence I have given in brackets does not occur in the Syriac fragments of Bardesanes's text or in the other ancient authors who seem to know Bardesanes's account, leading Jacoby, the editor of the Greek fragments, to suggest that Eusebius himself supplied the comment.I7 Thus Eusebius's text would provide evidence only that he or other late-Christian scribes wanted to equate arsenokoités with "having a favorite." This fourth-century usage would therefore be less important for ascertaining an earlier, perhaps more specific, meaning of the term. Furthermore, we should note that the phrases occur in Eusebius in a parallel construction, but this does not necessarily mean that the second phrase is a defining gloss on the first. The point could be that "wise men" among the Greeks are not condemned for an action that is similar to one found offensive to Easterners. The equation of the terms is not absolutely clear. I offer these thoughts only as speculations meant to urge caution, but caution is justified. Especially since this text from Eusebius is the only one that might reasonably be taken to equate arsenokoitia with simple homosexual penetration, we should be wary of saying that it always does.18
I should be clear about my claims here. I am not claiming to know what arsenokoités meant, I am claiming that no one knows what it meant. I freely admit that it could have been taken as a reference to homosexual sex19 But given the scarcity of evidence and the several contexts just analyzed, in which arsenokoités appears to refer to some particular kind of economic exploitation, no one should be allowed to get away with claiming that "of course" the term refers to "men who have sex with other men." It is certainly possible, I think probable, that arsenokoités referred to a particular role of exploiting others by means of sex, perhaps but not necessarily by homosexual sex. The more important question, I think, is why some scholars are certain it refers to simple male-male sex in the face of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps ideology has been more important than philology.
Malakos
The translations and interpretations of malakos provide an even clearer case of ideological scholarship. For one thing, in contrast to the case with arsenokoités, in which we have too few occurrences of the term to make confident claims, we possess many occurrences of malakos and can be fairly confident about its meaning. Moreover, the changes in translation of malakos provide an even clearer record of how interpretive decisions have changed due to historical shifts in the ideology of sexuality.
Early English translations render malakos by terms that denote a general weakness of character or degeneracy, usually "weaklinges" (Tyndale 1534, Coverdale 1535, Cranmer 1539; see also Wyclif 1380, "lechouris ayens kynde," and Geneva Bible 1557, "wantons"). From the end of the sixteenth century to the twentieth, the preferred translation was "effeminate" (Douai-Rheims 1582, KJV 1611, ASV 1901). As was the case with arsenokoites, however, a curious shift takes place in the mid-twentieth century. The translation of malakos as "effeminate" is universally rejected and some term that denotes a particular sexual action or orientation is substituted. The JB (1966) chooses "catamite," the NAB (1970) renders arsenokoités and malakos together as "sodomite," others translate malakos as "male prostitute" (NIV 1973, NRSV 1989), and again some combine both terms and offer the modem medicalized categories of sexual, or particularly homosexual, "perversion" (RSV 1946, TEV 1966, NEB 1970, REB 1992). As was the case with arsenokoités, no real historical or philological evidence has been marshaled to support these shifts in translation, especially not that from the "effeminacy" of earlier versions to the "homosexual perversion" of the last fifty years. In fact, all the historical and philological evidence is on the side of the earlier versions. The shift in translation resulted not from the findings of historical scholarship but from shifts in sexual ideology.
This hypothesis is easy to support because malakos is easy to define. Evidence from the ancient sources is abundant and easily accessible. malakos can refer to many things: the softness of expensive clothes, the richness and delicacy of gourmet food, the gentleness of light winds and breezes. When used as a term of moral condemnation, the word still refers to something perceived as "soft": laziness, degeneracy, decadence, lack of courage, or, to sum up all these vices in one ancient category, the feminine. For the ancients, or at least for the men who produced almost all our ancient literature, the connection was commonsensical and natural. Women are weak, fearful, vulnerable, tender. They stay indoors and protect their soft skin and nature: their flesh is moister, more flaccid, and more porous than male flesh, which is why their bodies retain all that excess fluid that must be expelled every month. The female is quintessentially penetrable; their pores are looser than men's. One might even say that in the ancient male ideology women exist to be penetrated. It is their purpose (telos). And their "soft-ness" or "porousnes" is nature's way of inscribing on and within their bodies this reason for their existence.20
And so it was that a man who allowed himself to be penetrated — by either a man or a woman — could be labeled a malakos. But to say that malakos meant a man who was penetrated is simply wrong. In fact, a perfectly good word existed that seems to have had that narrower meaning: kinaedos. malakos, rather, referred to this entire complex of femininity.21 This can be recognized by looking at the range of ways men condemned other men by calling them malakoi.
As I mentioned, a man could, by submitting to penetration, leave himself open to charges of malakia.22 but in those cases, the term refers to the effeminacy of which the penetration is only a sign or proof; it does not refer to the sexual act itself. The category of effeminate men was much broader than that. In philosophical texts, for example, malakoi are those people who cannot put up with hard work. Xenophon uses the term for lazy me.23 For Epictetus and the Cynic Epistles, the term refers to men who take life easy rather than enduring the hardships of philosophy.24 In Dio Cassius, Plutarch, and Josephus, cowards are maJakoi.25 Throughout ancient literature, malakoi are men who live lives of decadence and luxury.26 They drink too much wine, have too much sex, love gourmet food, and hire professional cooks. According to Josephus, a man may be accused of malakia if he is weak in battle, enjoys luxury, or is reluctant to commit suicide (War 7.338; Antiquities 5.246; 10.194). Dio Chrysostom says that the common crowd might stupidly call a man malakos just because he studies a lot —that is, a bookworm might be called a sissy (66.25).
The term malakos occurs repeatedly in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomy, a book that tells how to recognize someone's character by body type and body language, including whether a man is really effeminate even if he outwardly appears virile. The word never refers specifically to penetration in homosexual sex (although men who endure it are discussed in the book). Rather, it denotes the feminine, whether the reference is to feet, ankles, thighs, bones, flesh, or whatever (see esp. chap. 6 passim). It always represents the negative female characteristic to which the positive masculine characteristic is contrasted. For example, if a man has weak eyes, it means one of two things: either he is malakos and thLlu or he is a depressive and lacks spirit (808a10). Each option contains a pair of synonyms: just as "depressive" and "lacking spirit" (katLphLs, athymos) are synonyms, so are malakos and thLlu, both referring to effeminacy. Malakia, therefore, was a rather broad social category. It included, of course, penetrated men, but many others besides. To put it simply, all penetrated men were malakoi, but not all malakoi were penetrated men.27
In fact, malakos more often referred to men who prettied themselves up to further their heterosexual exploits. In Greco-Roman culture, it seems generally to have been assumed that both men and women would be attracted to a pretty-boy. And boys who worked to make themselves more attractive, whether they were crying to attract men or women, were called effeminate. An old hag in a play by Aristophanes drags off a young man, saying, "Come along, my little softie" (malakion), although she has perfectly heterosexual things in mind (Ecclesiazusae 1058). The Roman playwright Plautus uses the Latin transliteration malacus to indicate effeminate men. But whereas in one comedy the term is cinaedus malacus, referring to a penetrated man, in another it is moechus malacus, referring to a man who seduces other men's wives (Miles Gloriosus 3.1 [1.668]; Truculentus2.7.49 [1.610]).
In the ancient world, effeminacy was implicated in heterosexual sex as much as homosexual — or more so.28 When Diogenes the Cynic sees a young man prettied up, he cannot tell whether the boy is crying to attract a man or a woman; in either case the boy is equally effeminate (Diogenes Laertius 6.54; the term malakos does not occur here, but effeminacy is the subject).29 Chariton in his novel Chaereas and Callirhoe provides a typical portrait of an effeminate man (1.4.9): he has a fresh hairdo, scented with perfume; he wears eye makeup, a soft (malakon) mantle, and light, swishy slippers; his fingers glisten with rings. Only a modem audience would find it strange that he is off to seduce not a man but a maiden.30 When the author of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomy wants to portray the "Charitable Type" of man, he makes him typically effeminate-and very hetero-sexual. Such men, he says, are delicate, pale, with shining eyes and wrinkled noses; they cry a lot, are "reminiscent," warmhearted, and with nice dispositions. They are particularly fond of women, with whom they have lots of sex, and they tend to produce female children (808a34).
Ancient sexist ideology was quite different from modem sexist-and heterosexist-ideology. The ancients operated with an axis that represented masculinity at one end and femininity at the other. All people theoretically could be assigned a particular place on the axis. The ancients could also assume, rather less often or obviously, an axis on which men-who-love-boys occupied one end and men-who-love-women the other, with most men assumed to fall somewhere in the middle as naturally omni-sexual. To some extent, therefore, we can recognize analogies to the modern axes of masculine-feminine and heterosexual-homosexual. But where as in modern ideology the two axes are usually collapsed together, with queer men of all sexual positions considered feminine and straight guys masculine (and even more masculine the lustier they are), the two axes had no relation to one another in the ancient ideology. A man could be branded as effeminate whether he had sex with men or with women. Effeminacy had no relation to the sex of one's partner but to a complex system of signals with a much wider reference code. Thus it would never have occurred to an ancient person to think that malakos or any other word indicating the feminine in itself referred to homosexual sex at all. It could just as easily refer to heterosexual sex.31
This can be demonstrated by analyzing those famous texts in which men argue about whether the love of women is inferior or superior to the love of boys. Each side accuses the other of effeminacy and can claim some logical grounds for doing so. In Plato's Symposium, where Aristophanes is made to relate his fanciful myth about the origins of the different kinds of loves, man for man, man for woman, and woman for woman, it is taken as natural that male-male love is the most "manly" (andreiotatoi) of all three (192A). In the Symposium no one attempts to argue the opposite, more difficult case. In Plutarch's Dialogue on Love (Moralia 7 48E- 771 E), the man defending the love of women does accuse the penetrated man of malakia and thLlu tes, but the speaker advocating the love of boys is given the stronger case. He says that the love of females is, of course, more effeminate (750F); the love of women is "moist" (hygron), "housebound," "unmanly" (anandrois), and im- plicated in ta malaka, "softness" (7 51A-B). Men who fall in love with women demonstrate their effeminacy (malakia) and weakness (astheneia, 753F; 7600) by the fact that they are controlled by women.
Similar mutual insults are exchanged in the Pseudo-Lucianic Affairs of the Heart. The man advocating the love of women is portrayed by the author as the more effeminate. He is said to be skilled in the use of makeup, presumably, the narrator comments, in order to attract women, who like that kind of thing (9). True, in his own turn, the "woman lover" complains that the penetrated man in homosexual sex is feminized; it is masculine to ejaculate seed and feminine to receive it (28, 19; note malakizesthai). But the man advocating the love of boys counters that heterosexual sex taints a man with femininity, which is why men are so eager to take a bath after copulating with women (43). Male love, on the other hand, is manly, he says, associated with athletics, learning, books, and sports equipment, rather than with cosmetics and combs (9, 44).32
I cite these texts not to celebrate homosexual love. What strikes me about them is rather their rank misogyny.33 But that is just the point. The real problem with being penetrated was that it implicated the man in the feminine, and malakos referred not to the penetration per se but to the perceived aspects of femaleness associated with it. The word malakos refers to the en- tire ancient complex of the devaluation of the feminine. Thus people could use malakos as an insult directed against men who love women too much.34
At issue here is the ancient horror of the feminine, which can be gruesomely illustrated by an example from Epictetus. In one of his especially "manly" moments, Epictetus praises an athlete who died rather than submit to an operation that would have saved his life by amputating his diseased genitals (1.2.25-26). Whereas we might think the paramount issue would be the man's wish to avoid an excruciatingly painful operation, the issue for Epictetus is the man's manly refusal to go on living if he must do so without his masculine equipment-the things that set him apart from despised femininity. It is better to die than be less than a man. Or, perhaps more to the point, any sensible person would rather be dead than be a woman.
There is no question, then, about what malakos referred to in the ancient world. In moral contexts it always referred either obviously or obliquely to the feminine. There is no historical reason to take malakos as a specific reference to the penetrated man in homosexual intercourse.35 It is even less defensible to narrow that reference down further to mean "male prostitute."36 The meaning of the word is clear, even if too broad to be taken to refer to a single act or role. malakos means "effeminate."
Why has this obvious translation been universally rejected in recent English versions? Doubtless because contemporary scholars have been loath to consider effeminacy a moral category but have been less hesitant in condemning gay and lesbian people. Today, effeminacy may be perceived as a quaint or distasteful personal mannerism, but the prissy church musician or stereotyped interior designer is not, merely on the basis of a limp wrist, to be considered fuel for hell. For most English-speaking Christians in the twentieth century, effeminacy may be unattractive, but it is not a sin. Their Bibles could not be allowed to condemn so vociferously something that was a mere embarrassment. So the obvious translation of malakos as "effeminate" was jettisoned.
Consequences
Being faced with a Pauline condemnation of effeminacy hardly solves the more important hermeneutical issues. Suppose that we wanted to be historically and philologically rigorous and restore the translation "effeminate" to our Bibles. What do we then tell our congregations "effeminacy" means? As I have already illustrated in part, in the ancient world a man could be condemned as effeminate for, among many other things, eating or drinking too much, enjoying gourmet cooking, wearing nice underwear or shoes, wearing much of anything on his head, having long hair, shaving, caring for his skin, wearing cologne or aftershave, dancing too much, laughing too much, or gesticulating too much. Keeping one's knees together is effeminate, as well as swaying when walking, or bowing the head. And of course there were the sexual acts and positions: being penetrated (by a man or a woman), enjoying sex with women too much, or masturbating37 the list could go on-and that contributed to the usefulness of the word as a weapon. It was a malleable condemnation.
Naturally, many of these things do not make a man effeminate today. If in trying to be "biblical," then, we attempt to "take seriously" Paul's condemnation, do we condemn what Paul and his readers are likely to have considered effeminate-that is, take the historical route? Or do we condemn only those things that our culture considers effeminate? And what might that be? Taking piano lessons? ballet dancing? singing falsetto in the men and boys' choir? shaving one's body hair for anything but a swim meet or a bicycle race? being a drag queen? having a transsexual operation? camping it up? or wearing any article of "women's clothes" (unless you are a TV talk show host trying to make a point)? refusing to own a gun? driving an automatic transmission instead of a stick shift? drinking tea? actually requesting sherry? Or do we just narrow the category to include only those people most heterosexist Christians would really like to condemn: "gays" and "manly men" who are careless enough to get caught? Condemning penetrated men for being effeminate would also implicate us in a more elusive and pervasive problem: the misogyny of degrading the penetrated. The ancient condemnation of the penetrated man was possible only because sexist ideology had already inscribed the inferiority of women into heterosexual sex. To be penetrated was to be inferior because women were inferior. Let us also be clear that our modem culture has in no way liberated itself from this sexism. This should be obvious every time a frat boy says "This sucks!" or "Fuck you!"-thus implicating both his girlfriend and possibly his roommate in the despised role of the penetrated. The particular form taken by modem heterosexism is derived largely from sexism. People who retain Paul's condemnation of effeminacy as ethical grounding for a condemnation of contemporary gay sex must face the fact that they thereby participate in the hatred of women inherent in the ancient use of the term. In the face of such confusion and uncertainty, no wonder modem heterosexist scholars and Christians have shrunk from translating malakos as "effeminate." I myself would not advocate reading a condemnation of effeminacy out loud in church as the "word of the Lord." But to mask such problems and tell our fellow Christians that the word "really" refers just to boy prostitutes or, worse, "passive homosexuals" is by this time just willful ignorance or dishonesty. Some scholars and Christians have wanted to make arsenokoités and malakos mean both more and less than the words actually mean, according to the heterosexist goals of the moment. Rather than noting that arsenokoites may refer to a specific role of exploitation, they say it refers to all "active homosexuals" or "sodomites" or some such catch-all term, often broadening its reference even more to include all homosexual eroticism. And rather than admitting the obvious, that malakos is a blanket condemnation of all effeminacy; they explain that it refers quite particularly to the penetrated man in homosexual sex. Modem scholars have conveniently narrowed down the wide range of meanings of malakia so that it now condemns one group: gay men-in particular, "bottoms." In order to use 1 Cor. 6:9 to condemn contemporary homosexual relationships, they must insist that the two words mean no more but also no Jess than what they say they mean. It should be clear that this exercise is driven more by heterosexist ideology than historical criticism.
My goal is not to deny that Paul condemned homosexual acts but to highlight the ideological contexts in which such discussions have taken place. My goal is to dispute appeals to "what the Bible says" as a foundation for Christian ethical arguments. It really is time to cut the Gordian knot of fundamentalism. And do not be fooled: any argument that tries to defend its ethical position by an appeal to "what the Bible says" without explicitly acknowledging the agency and contingency of the interpreter is fundamentalism, whether it comes from a right-wing Southern Baptist or a moderate Presbyterian. We must simply stop giving that kind of argument any credibility. Furthermore, we will not find the answers merely by becoming better historians or exegetes. The test for whether an interpretation is Christian or not does not hang on whether it is historically accurate or exegetically nuanced. The touchstone is not the historically reconstructed meaning in the past, nor is it the fancifully imagined, modernly constructed intentions of the biblical writers.38 Nor can any responsible Christian-after the revolutionary changes in Christian thought in the past twenty years, much less in the past three hundred-maintain that Christian interpretations are those conforming to Christian tradition. The traditions, all of them, have changed too much and are far too open to cynical manipulation to be taken as foundations for gauging the ethical value of a reading of scripture.
The only recourse in our radical contingency is to accept our contingency and look for guidance within the discourse that we occupy and that forms our very selves. The best place to find criteria for talking about ethics and interpretation will be in Christian discourse itself, which includes scripture and tradition but not in a "foundational" sense. Nor do I mean that Christian discourse can itself furnish a stable base on which to secure ethical positions; it is merely the context in which those positions are formed and discussed. Conscious of this precarious contingency, and looking for guiding lights within the discourse, I take my stand with a quotation from an impeccably traditional witness, Augustine, who wrote: "Who- ever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all" (Christian Doctrine 1.35.40).
By this light, any interpretation of scripture that hurts people, oppresses people, or destroys people cannot be the right interpretation, no matter how traditional, historical, or exegetically respectable. There can be no de- bate about the fact that the church's stand on homosexuality has caused oppression, loneliness, self-hatred, violence, sickness, and suicide for millions of people. If the church wishes to continue with its traditional interpretation it must demonstrate, not just claim, that it is more loving to condemn homosexuality than to affirm homosexuals. Can the church show that same- sex loving relationships damage those involved in them? Can the church give compelling reasons to believe that it really would be better for all lesbian and gay Christians to live alone, without the joy of intimate touch, without hearing a lover's voice when they go to sleep or awake? Is it really better for lesbian and gay teenagers to despise themselves and endlessly pray that their very personalities be reconstructed so that they may experience romance like their straight friends? Is it really more loving for the church to continue its worship of "heterosexual fulfillment" (a "nonbiblical" concept, by the way) while consigning thousands of its members to a life of either celibacy or endless psychological manipulations that masquerade as "healing"?
The burden of proof in the last twenty years has shifted. There are too many of us who are not sick, or inverted, or perverted, or even "effeminate," but who just have a knack for falling in love with people of our own sex. When we have been damaged, it has not been due to our homosexuality but to your and our denial of it. The burden of proof now is not on us, to show that we are not sick, but rather on those who insist that we would be better off going back into the closet. What will "build the double love of God and of our neighbor?"
I have tried to illustrate how all appeals to "what the Bible says" are ideological and problematic. But in the end, all appeals, whether to the Bible or anything else, must submit to the test of love. To people who say this is simplistic, I say, far from it. There are no easy answers. "Love" will not work as a foundation for ethics in a prescriptive or predictable fashion either-as can be seen by all the injustices, imperialisms, and violence committed in the name of love. But rather than expecting the answer to come from a particular method of reading the Bible, we at least push the discussion to where it ought to be: into the realm of debates about Christian love, rather than into either fundamentalism or modernist historicism.
We ask the question that must be asked: "What is the loving thing to do?"
Reproduced from Biblical Ethics & Homosexuality: Listening to Scripture, edited by Robert L. Brawley.
© 1996 Westminster John Knox Press. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press.

NOTES
I wish to thank Elizabeth A. Clark and Anthony Neil Whitley for assistance in the research for this chapter.

1. For a similar ideological analysis of modern interpretations of Romans 1 and homosexuality, see my "Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18- 32," Biblical Interpretation 3 (1995), forthcoming.
2. So most of the commentaries. See also Else Kähler, "Exegese zweier neutestamentlicher Stellen (Römer 1.18-32; 1 Korinther 6.9-11). Problem der Homophilie in medizinischer, theologischer, und juristischer Sicht, ed. Th. Bovet (Bern and Tøbingen: Paul Haupt, 1965), 33; Jiirgen Becker, "Zum Problem der Homosexualität in der Bibel," ZEE 31 (1987):51.
3. William F. Orr and James Arthur Walker, I Corinthians (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 199. While not tying arsenokoités to malakos directly, Wolfgang Schrage says that the former should not be taken to refer to pederasty alone but to all homosexual relations, this on the basis of Romans 1 (Der erste Briefandie Korinther [Zurich: Benziger, 1991], 1.432). Of course, unless we can be certain that arsenokoités refers simply to homosexual relations in general, an appeal to Romans 1 is irrelevant.
4. "Practicing homosexuals" was suggested several years ago for a Catholic lectionary translation. I do not know if the suggestion was finally adopted or published. The arguments by John Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality [Chicago: University Press, 1980]), while useful as a corrective to many overly confident claims that arsenokoités "of course" means a "male homosexual," are I believe flawed by overstatement and occasional interpretive errors. On the other hand, some of those arguing against Boswell seem not completely to understand his arguments, make textual mistakes of their own, and operate from uncritical linguistic assumptions (e.g., David F. Wright, "Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The Meaning of ARSENOKOITAI [1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim. 1:10]," VC 38 [1984]:125-53; see my comments on Wright in following notes). To enter into a detailed tit-for-tat with Boswell, Wright, or other individual treatments of the issue would result in a quagmire. I will, instead, offer my reading with an occasional note on those of others.
5. The history of the invention of "homosexuality" as a psychological, indeed medical, category is now well known. See e.g., Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality I: An Introduction (New York: Random, 1978); and David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York: Routledge, 1990); for a comparison with ancient concepts see Martha Nussbaum, "Therapeutic Arguments and Structures of Desire," Differences 2 (1990):46-66, esp. 49.
6. See note 2 and William. L Petersen "Can ARSENOKOITAI Be Translated by 'Homosexuals'?" VC40 (1986):187-91.
7. David Wright, "Homosexuals or Prostitutes?" VC 38 (1984):129; Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 85-86.
8. See James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: Oxford, 1961), 107-10.
9. Anton Vögtle, Die Tugend- und Lasterkataloge im Neuen Testament (Miinster: Aschendorffschen Buckdrockerei, 1936), 13-18; for comparative texts, see Ehrhard Kamlah, Die Form der katalogischen Parades imp Neon Testament (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1964).
10. The dates for the document and its different sections are uncertain. This section of the oracle quotes Pseudo-Phocylides (excepting those verses in parentheses). See comments by John J. Collins in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed.James H. Charlesworth (~rden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 1.330.
11. Dio Chrysostom 46.8; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.15.
12. Wright argues (136-38) that since Pseudo-Phocylides elsewhere shows his disapprobation of homosexual conduct, the term must here be a reference to homosexual conduct. Of course the second point does not proceed from the first.
13. I use the edition by Robert M. Grant: Ad Autolycum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970). Wright's quotation of this passage (134-35) has a different order for the vices because he is relying on the Greek text of Gustave Bardy, Théophile d' Antioche, Trois Livres a Autolycus; Sources chrétiennes 20 (Paris: du Cerf, 1948). There seems to be no textual evidence for Bardy's version-at least he gives none in the apparatus, and no edition I have examined suggests any textual variation here among the manuscripts. Bardy admits he is mainly following the edition by J .C. T. Otto: Theophili Episcopi Antiocheni, Ad Autolycum, libri tres. Co7pus Apologetarum Christianorum Saeculi Secundi 8 (Wiesbaden: Martin Sändig, 1969; reprint of 1861). It is not clear, therefore, why he gives a different order for the vice list than do Otto and the other modem editions. Perhaps Bardy altered the order to conform more nearly to that of 1 Cor. 6:9, or he carelessly placed arsenokoités after pornos because he assumed it belonged with the "sexual sins." If the latter is the case, it provides interesting evidence that the order of vices in the lists is important.
14. The term pornos would have been understood most often to refer to a male prostitute. See Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in At- tic Comedy (New Haven: Yale, 1975); Scroggs, The New Testament and Homo- sexuality, 40. Eva Cantarella takes it as such even in its occurrence in 1 Tim. 1: 1 0 (Bisexuality in the Ancient World [New Haven: Yale, 1992], 192-94). Pornos also seems to have become, at least in Jewish and Christian circles, a more general term for all sorts of persons considered "sexually immoral."
15. This reading may find support even from the position of the term in 1 Tim. 1:10, if pornoi there is taken to be a reference to male prostitutes rather than "fornicators" or sexually immoral persons in general (see Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality, 118-21). Since Cantarella does read pornoi in 1 Tim. 1:10 as referring to male prostitutes and the term following arsenokoités as a reference to people who enslave other people in order to prostitute them (andrapodistai), I am puzzled by her insistence that arsenokoités in the same pas- sage cannot refer to prostitutes but must instead be a reference to male-male sex in general (see Bisexuality, 192-94). If, on the other hand, we read pornoi as referring to prostitutes, the list supports my reading of arsenokoités, occurring as it does between two other terms that refer to sex and economic injustice. :
16. Preparation for the Gospel 6.1 0.2 5; Die Fragmenta der griechischen Historiker, ed. .I Felix Jacoby (Leiden: Brill, 1969), vol. 3C fr. 719.
17. Ibid.; see also Die Pseudoklementinen II Rekognitionen in Rufius Übersetzung, rev. 1 ed. Bernard Rehm, earlier ed. Georg Strecker (Berlin: Akademie, 1994), , 284-87.
18. I do not discuss other occurrences of the term mentioned by Boswell and Wright because I see no possibility that they shed light on the first-century meaning of arsenokoités. Its meaning in a ninth-century inscription, for example, is unclear, in spite of Wright's overconfident interpretation; besides, the usage is very late (Greek Anthology 9.686; see Boswell, 344, n. 22; Wright, 130). The meaning in the sixth-century "Penetential" of (perhaps) John the Faster (see Boswell, 363-65) is equally unclear. Though Wright accuses Boswell of .j "irrepressible resourcefulness" and "desperate reasoning" in this case (139-40), I find Wright's exegesis no less fanciful or strained. Such late and opaque 1 uses of the term should be set aside until we have clearer evidence about their j meaning and relation to first-century usage. '.
19. This is certainly true of the later translations of the Greek into other languages. But later translations provide little reliable evidence for the meaning of the term in a first-century Greek contest.
20. See my The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale, 1995), 32-34,222,230-31, 241-42.
21. Some scholars define malakos as simply a synonym for kinaedos, citing texts where the two terms occur together. See, for example, Gaston Vorberg, Glossarium Eroticum (Rome: "L 'Erma," 1965), s. v. Vorberg's citations do not sup- port his definition; in every such case, kinaedos is better interpreted as constituting a subcategory within the larger category of malakoi (Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.173) or simply another vice in a list of vices (plutarch, Moralia 88C; Vettius Valens, Anthologiae 2.37.54 [ed. David Pingree, p. 108, 1. 3]; Appendix 1.173 [p. 384, 1. 11]). I take arrLtopoios in Vettius Valens to be a reference not to homosexual sex but to oral sex-which could, of course, be performed on a man or a woman (see Artemidorus, Dream Handbook 1.79). No text I have found equates malakos with kinaedos or defines one term by the other. Note the list of terms for "fucked men" from Attic comedy: Henderson, Maculate Muse 209-15,222; malakos is not among them.
22. Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus 4.4; Cicero 7.5; Athenaeus 565E. Scroggs (The New Testament and Homosexuality, 42, n. 45) misuses such references to argue that dressing like a malakos would signal that someone was a kinaedos, and therefore malakos meant an "effeminate call boy." This ignores the fact that malakos more often occurs where neither homosexual sex nor prostitution per se is involved.
23. Hellenica 3.4.19; 6. 1.6; Apology 19; Memorabilia 1.2.2. Note that in this last case, the reference to malakos relates to work, and it follows a reference to sex (aphrodisiac akrateis); malakos here has nothing to do with sex.
24. Epictetus 3.6.9; 4.1.25; "Epistle of Crates" 19 (Malherbe, p. 68); "Epistle of Diogenes" 29 (Malherbe, p. 126): in both cases, sleeping and eating too much are important.
25. Dio Cassius 58.4.6; Plutarch, Pericles 27.4; Josephus, War 6.211, Antiquities 19.197.
26. Xenophon, Hiero 1.23; Plutarch, Moralia 831B; 136B; Pericles 27.4; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12.536C; 543B.1n one of Philo's condemnations of decadence, he includes remarks about penetrated men as being thus made effeminate (On Abraham, 133-36). The term malakos, however, is used of this entire process of degenerating decadence and effeminacy due to luxurious living-including the effeminacy of heterosexual sex; the aspects of homosexual sex play only one part.
27. In Dionysius Halicamassus, Roman Antiquities 7.2.4, people cannot tell whether a ruler earned the sobriquet "malakos" because he had allowed himself to be penetrated as a young man or because he possessed an exceptionally mild nature.
28. The "softness of the Lydians" (ta Lydon malaka) is reflected in their luxurious living, gourmet food, use of too many female prostitutes, and lots of indiscriminate sex with men and women (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12.540F). Plutarch relates the "Lydian mode" in music to softness and general decadence: Moralia 83F.
29. Note a similar assumption mentioned by Athenaeus; the Syracusans are re- ported as forbidding women to wear gold or colorful clothing unless they confess to being prostitutes; similarly, men were not allowed to "dress up" unless they admitted to being either adulterers or kinaedoi (Deipnosophistae 12.521b). Dressing up was considered effeminate, but that could mean an attempt to at- tract either men or women.
30. The suitors of a young girl arrive at her door adorned with long hair styled prettily (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 528d, citing Agathon, Thyestes). This entire section of Athenaeus is instructive for the ancient concept of effeminacy; it usually is related to luxurious and decadent living in general and is expressed far more often here by heterosexual activities than homosexual. For example, the Lydians, according to Clearchus, expressed their effeminacy by laying out parks with lots of shade, gathering the wives and virgins of other men and raping them, and then finally adopting "the manner of life of women," whatever that means (Deipnosophistae 12.515e-516a). There is no mention here of homosexual sex.
31. This point was made by John Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homo- sexuality, 340) but generally ignored by biblical scholars, who continue naively to assume that any concern about effeminacy would involve at least an unconscious anxiety about homosexuality. Thus, Paul's concerns about long hair on men in 1 Corinthians 11 must harbor a concern about homosexuality. See Scroggs, "Paul and the Eschatological Woman," The Text and the Times (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 88, n. 38; originally in JAAR 40 (1972): 283-303; The New Testament and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 53-55, 62-65; Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, "Sex and Logic in I Corinthians 11:2-16," CBQ 42 (1980): 482-500.
32. For a character in Achilles Tatius's novel Clitophon and Leucippe, male love is natural, frank, real, and lacking in any softness or effeminacy (2.38; ou malthassei). Even Dio Chrysostom, no advocate of male-male love, knows that love of a woman is liable to be thought excessively feminine (7.151-52).
33. Noted also by Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality, 46-48.
34. The degradation of the female comes to be linked with asceticism in general, especially but not exclusively in Jewish and Christian writers. Philo praises women who give up sex entirely, thereby becoming "manly," and Thecla, through celibacy, becomes masculinized and saved (On the Contemplative Life, 40-64; see Richard A. Baer, Jr., Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female [Leiden: Brill, 1970],99-100; Acts of Paul and Thecla).
35. A common practice among New Testament scholars has been to define malakos as the "passive partner" due to its proximity to arsenokoités, which is taken to be the "active partner" (see, e.g., Gordon Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987],243-44). But this is circular reasoning. The meaning of arsenokoités is famously problematic, and there is no evidence that it was a special term for the "active" partner in homosexual sex (even if one concedes, which I do not, that it is a reference to "men who sleep with men"). Furthermore, while there is no evidence that malakos was considered a special ("technical") term for the "passive" partner (as Fee admits), its general meaning as "effeminate" independent of sexual position or object is easily demonstrated. To define malakos by arsenokoités is to define something already clear by something that is obscure.
36. Every text cited by Scroggs in support of this reading, in his terminology "effeminate call boy" (The New Testament and Homosexuality), is better read as I have-by being penetrated, a boy shows his effeminacy, but malakos refers to the effeminacy, not the penetration; there were many other signs, many hetero- sexual, that could also reveal "effeminacy."
37. The list, of course, could be expanded. This is taken mainly from H. Herter, "Effeminatus," Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1959),4.620-650; for the associations of hair with effeminacy and decadence, see also Pseudo-Phocylides, Sentences 210-12, and the commentary by P. W. van der Horst, The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (Leaden: Brill, 1978),250; Hubert Cancel, Untersuchungen zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papianus Statius, Spudasmota 13 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 58. For masturbation as evidence of malakia, see Vorberg, Glossarium Eroticum s.v.
38. I say this to forestall one possible objection to my method. One might argue that although malakos and arsenokoités did not mean, in the common linguistic currency, the "passive" and "active" partners in homosexual sex, that was surely what Paul intended by his use of the terms. The goal of translation, however, is to translate the text, not some guessed-at authorial intention. See Ferdinand Deist, "Presuppositions and Contextual Bible Translation," ]NSL 19 (1993): 13-23, esp. 19-20. Furthermore, contrary to some assumptions of modernist historiography, the scripture for the church is traditionally the text, not a historically reconstructed authorial intention. Thus we translate and interpret not what Paul meant to say but what he said.

by Mary Ann Tolbert
Pacific School of Religion
November 20, 2002 - Lancaster School of Theology

Thank you so much for inviting me to speak today on the topic of "Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: Biblical Texts in Historical Contexts." Today we're going to look at a topic of intense current controversy, the Bible and homosexuality, but we are going to look at it from a rather different perspective, that of the cultural construction of gender and sexual relations in ancient Mediterranean antiquity. Underlying this different perspective are two foundational assumptions: first, that the writings of the Bible, whether we're talking about the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible with both Hebrew and Greek parts, are intimately connected to the ancient cultural systems in which they were produced; and second, that sexual roles are historical and cultural constructions differently understood and differently formed across history. These foundational assumptions—which, to be fair, are not without controversy in some, especially fundamentalist Christian, circles—are fairly well accepted by most classical scholars and Biblical historians. What they suggest for the particular topic of the Bible and homosexuality is that to understand the Bible's view of same-sex erotic relations one must understand the cultural construction of sexual relations generally which were operative in the world in which the biblical writings were produced. It is that ancient Mediterranean world which provides the context needed to explicate the meaning of the Bible's statements. Consequently, most of my discussion today will concern how sexual relations and gender roles were understood in the ancient Mediterranean cultures that produced the Bible.
However, before I move into the main body of my lecture I want to pose two caveats concerning the general topic of the Bible and homosexuality. The first caveat has to do with the fact that the Bible itself has precious little to say about same-sex eroticism, though one certainly might not guess this fact from the current level of national debate over its content. In the most generous estimate, there are only perhaps twelve verses in the entire Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament put together that could be construed as having any direct comment on same-sex erotic behavior. And that most generous estimate includes quite a few verses which contemporary Biblical scholarship has shown rather conclusively to be irrelevant to this discussion. Indeed the only uncontested verses that seem to be incontrovertibly linked to same-sex erotic behavior in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament turn out only to be four: two separate, one verse prohibitions in Leviticus, and one, two verse statement by Paul in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans. It is upon this tiny textual base that all of the direct arguments about the Biblical understanding of same-sex erotic relations must be based. Given the numerous references to the "Bible's view of homosexuality" found in both ecclesiastical and secular writings, one can easily be mislead into thinking that this was a topic of great importance to the Biblical writers. It was not. So, my first caveat is that same-sex erotic relations are noteworthy in the biblical texts primarily by their absence from discussion.
The second caveat I wish to raise has to do with the word homosexuality itself. The word "homosexuality" is a modern term; it was coined in the 1880s in Germany and first used in this country in 1892. The term grew up in the work of a group of researchers who were studying and classifying sexual behaviors at the turn of the last century. People such as Richard Von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis, and others developed the study of sexuality into a medical sub-specialty called sexology. Prior to the work of the sexologists, same-sex erotic acts were certainly well known, but by and large, just like cross-sex eroticism, they were believed to be acts anyone might perform. Out of the classificatory work of the sexologists of the late 19th /early 20th centuries came the proposal for a different species of person, the homosexual. No longer were individual same-sex acts seen as possible behavior for everyone; instead, now same-sex acts defined a special kind of person, the homosexual. This new kind of person was identified and defined by sexual object choice alone, a same-sex object choice. Consequently, homosexuality denotes a very modern way of looking at the construction of human identity as characterized primarily by gendered sexual desire. With this concept of homosexuality, the idea of sexual orientation was born, and predictably, not long after the discovery of the homosexual orientation, modern sexologists defined the existence of a more dominant heterosexual orientation. Consequently, beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, same-sex erotic acts were no longer the territory of all people but now the domain of only those of a particular orientation.
Besides its contemporary origins, the term homosexuality combines in itself contradictory elements. Not only is it composed of the merger of a Greek root with a Latin root—to the horror of classicists—but it also more seriously combines fundamentally contradictory meanings in its use today.1 On the one hand, when some people use the term homosexuality they seem to mean a kind of predisposition toward sexual intimacy with people of the same gender that is present at least potentially in the sexual make-up of everyone, the pre-sexology view, we might call it; in other words, the term homosexuality continues to bear a universal application. Because all people have the ability to be homosexual, for example, homosexuals can be portrayed as potential seducers of children and other adults into this same manner of erotic life, and thus for some, all information about homosexuality should be silenced for fear of attracting new adherents to it. On the other hand, the word homosexual is also used to refer only to a certain small percentage of the population who display a particular orientation. So, in addition to the continuing universal meaning associated with the term, there is also a minoritizing meaning related directly to the arguments of the sexologists.
In this perspective only a certain group of people who live life in a certain way are understood to be homosexual. This minoritizing view understands homosexuality to be at its core an unchangeable sexual identity, probably developed within early childhood from genetic predispositions, which only a small percentage of the population embodies in any generation. Under this meaning of the term, people who are not homosexual in orientation cannot possibly be "seduced" into that identity simply by knowing about it or knowing someone who is homosexual. The minoritizing and the universalizing meanings of homosexuality (that is, either something only a few people are or something everyone can be), though deeply incommensurate meanings, often appear together in contemporary usages of the word. This definitional incoherence makes discussions of homosexuality particularly frustrating and confusing. For these reasons, the modern origins of the term and its internal incoherences, in talking about the Bible or the Biblical world the word homosexuality is both anachronistic and unhelpful, to say the least. Consequently, in my discussion of same-sex relations in the ancient world and of those texts within the Bible that have been used to talk about modern homosexuality, I will try to avoid using that term and use instead the more general term homoeroticism because I do not want to assume at the outset that the construction of same-sex eroticism in the ancient Mediterranean world bears any resemblance to the construction of same-sex eroticism in the Western world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With these two caveats in mind let us turn now to a discussion of the construction of sexuality in the ancient world.
The single most important concept that defines sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world, whether we are talking about the kingdoms of Egypt or of Assyria or whether we are talking about the later kingdoms of Greece and Rome, is that approved sexual acts never occurred between social equals. Sexuality, by definition, in ancient Mediterranean societies required the combination of dominance and submission. This crucial social and political root metaphor of dominance and submission as the definition of sexuality rested upon a physical basis that assumed every sex act required a penetrator and someone who was penetrated. Needless to say, this definition of sexuality was entirely male—not surprising in the heavily patriarchal societies of the ancient Mediterranean. Nevertheless this assumption that the difference in status between the dominant penetrator and the submissive penetratee was essential to all sexual behavior is prevalent in most sources from at least the Egyptian empires of the Second Millennium BCE all the way through the late Roman Empire and beyond. Of course, we must recognize that the vast majority of the laws and other texts from antiquity that give us some insight into sexual roles were written by elite men. Whether or not the convention of dominance and submission as the defining aspect of sexuality was actually embodied in all sexual acts across these societies and not just in the writing about all sexual acts remains unknown. Our knowledge is constrained, as always in history, by our sources.
Because sexual acts were defined as the combination of dominance and submission, sexual acts between men could have and generally did have strongly political overtones. For example, the early Egyptian legend of the relations between the gods Horus and Seth demonstrate the political use of anal intercourse as a way of embarrassing a rival political power.2 As you may remember, Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris, and Osiris had been murdered by his brother Seth. So, now, Horus and Seth were contenders for supremacy among the gods. One of the episodes in the myth relates the time when Seth invited Horus to his home for what appeared to be a conciliatory meal. However, the real purpose of the meal was to further Seth's royal aims by providing him with a situation in which he could anally rape Horus while he was sleeping after dinner. Seth's sexual dominance over Horus would prove to all the gods that Horus was unworthy to be supreme among them and that Seth was the truly superior one. While this particular stratagem did not work out to Seth's advantage in this myth because of the fortuitous intervention of Isis to protect her son, the story does demonstrate what became a very common usage for male/male sexual intercourse in the ancient Mesopotamian world particularly, that is, the demonstration of the political dominance of one group over another.
A similar view of male/male sexual acts can be found in the Assyrian dream omen series entitled the umma ālu which includes 38 different omens that deal with various aspects of sexual acts.3 These dream omens, by the way, are quite similar to ones found much later in the writings of the very famous 2nd century C.E. text by Artemidorus called The Interpretation of Dreams. Among the omens listed in the umma ālu are the following:
1. If a man copulates with his equal from the rear, he becomes the leader among his peers and brothers.
2. If a man copulates with an assinnu (a special priest of the goddess), a hard destiny will leave him.
3. If a man copulates with his male courtier (secretary), terrors will possess him for a whole year but then they will leave him.
4. If a man copulates with a house-born slave, a hard destiny will befall him.4
From this list it can be seen that having sex with someone of equal rank in one's dreams was a matter of good fortune, for it meant that one will be superior or dominant over those of equal rank. On the other hand, having sex with someone in one's dreams who is of much lower rank, like a secretary or, worst of all, a slave, is a bad omen because it assumes only what society already allows to a free man. Now what was desirable in one's dreams was of course not at all acceptable from the standpoint of real personal action. The same Assyrian culture that produced the umma ālu also produced the Middle Assyrian Law codes, which had one section that said:
If a man has sex with his comrade and they prove the charges against him and find him guilty, they shall have sex with him and they shall turn him into a eunuch.5
In other words, in real life sex between equals at least for the one who perpetrated the act is punishable by sexually abusing him and castrating him to keep him from ever repeating his offense. The one who received the act is, of course, already disgraced and dishonored. So, while one might dream of achieving sexual dominance over one's equals, it was far better not to act out one's dreams, since such acts were judged as sexual and social violence.
While we have been talking so far primarily about ancient Mesopotamian culture, one can see the same political usage of male/male anal intercourse much later. There is a famous picture from Greece that celebrates the victory of the Athenians over the Persians in 460 BCE.6 In the picture a Greek soldier with erect penis in hand approaches from the rear a distressed, defeated Persian soldier who is bent over waiting to be raped by the Greek. The picture was intended to show, through the imagery of male-male sexual intercourse, that the Greeks now dominate the submissive Persians. This picture was not pornography; it was politics. In myth, law, treaties, monuments, and pottery decorations, political and military domination was often conventionally symbolized by sexual domination between men.
The Egyptian and Assyrian texts demonstrating the importance of male/male sexual acts in establishing political, cultural or social dominance over another provide a helpful context for understanding some of the possible homoerotic texts within the Hebrew Bible. For example, in the story of Sodom found in Genesis 19:1-11, the desire of all the men of Sodom to "know" the foreign visitors who are staying overnight in the house of that other foreigner, Lot, probably represents precisely this same scenario of political or social dominance. You may remember that the story depicts three angels coming to the city of Sodom and deciding to spend the night in the public square of the city. Lot who is himself a foreigner living in the city of Sodom begs the three visitors to stay instead within his house for the night, evidently fearing some untoward activity by the rest of the population. After much begging on Lot's part the three visitors agree to stay with Lot and his family. During the night all of the men of Sodom surround Lot's house and demand that he send his three male guests out that they might "know" them. The Hebrew verb yada‘ which simply means "to know" is occasionally used, as in this instance, in a sexual sense in the Hebrew Bible. Lot is appalled at what the men of Sodom request and instead of sending out his three male guests he offers the men of Sodom the use of his two virginal daughters that they might "know" them.
What in the world is going on in this very disturbing story? If we put this story in the context of the political or social consequences of ancient sexual acts, what the men of Sodom intend in raping these foreign visitors is to show their social and cultural dominance over those foreigners who would come to their city, in much the same way that the picture of the Greek soldier approaching the Persian soldier celebrated Greek dominance over Persian culture. As an added value, from the point of view of the men of Sodom, to this act of cultural dominance over foreign travelers, by humiliating visitors of Lot's, who was himself a foreigner in the city of Sodom, the men of Sodom could also show their dominance over Lot and in fact bring disgrace upon his house. Honor in antiquity was a "zero-sum game," in which one could only gain honor, if someone else lost it. If Lot lost honor, the men of Sodom would thereby gain it. Lot's offer of his two virginal daughters to the men of Sodom was still a loss of honor to his house but not nearly the disgrace that the humiliation of three male guests would bring it. Daughters, after all, are submissive women whose sexual use by men is "natural." Like the Middle Assyrian Dream Omen, having sex with those who are naturally passive—women or slaves—brings little or no honor to the penetrator.
That the purpose of the men of Sodom in this story was to show their social and cultural dominance over foreigners is confirmed by the vast majority of references to the acts of Sodom in the rest of the Bible. In other biblical texts (e.g., Ezek 16:49, Isa 110-17, 3:9; Jer 23:14; Zeph 2:8-11; Wisd. 19:13-17; Matt 10:15; Luke 17:28-29) Sodom's evils are listed as being pride, failure to help the poor, and lack of hospitality to foreigners, not sexual abuse. Indeed, the one reference in the Biblical material to the so-called "sin of Sodom" that might carry some sexual overtone is found in the tiny New Testament book of Jude, verse 7. In that text the author of Jude accuses the men of Sodom of seeking "alien flesh" (Greek: sarkos heteras). Given the context in Jude, which in the preceding verse has just alluded to the odd story of the sexual relations between angels and the daughters of men in Gen 6:1-4, this reference to "alien flesh" interprets the action of the men of Sodom as, not seeking simple dominance over foreigners, but instead seeking dominance over angels. After all, the Genesis story does indicate that the three visitors were angels, although Lot and the men of Sodom do not seem to recognize that fact in the story itself. From Jude's perspective, however, the men of Sodom were actually attempting to declare themselves dominant over the Divine, an act of incredible hubris.
It is possible that this same context of dominance and submission and the political and social ramifications of sexual acts between men should also inform our understanding of the prohibitions against male same-sex intercourse found in the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 both say categorically that a man shall not sleep with another man as with a wife. These two prohibitions fall within a body of legal material known as the Holiness Code. The Holiness Code itself was most likely written down in the post-exilic period, in other words probably some time in the late 6th or early 5th Century BCE. The post-exilic period was a time in which the Judaites who returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon were attempting to reestablish their national and cultural identity. The Holiness Code participates in that reestablishment by setting up legal boundaries between the behavior and social structure of the new Jewish community in Jerusalem and that of its half Jewish or non-Jewish neighbors. The two similar prohibitions (one in chapter 18 and one in chapter 20) about homoerotic relations among Jewish men may be, as the Biblical scholar Phyllis Bird has argued,7 an attempt to preserve the internal harmony of Jewish male society by prohibiting the use of anal intercourse as a form of expressing or winning social and political dominance. Jewish males were not to dishonor other Jewish males by treating them like wives. The underside of this law, of course, is that wives were normally and naturally to be dishonored, or perhaps, better said, that passivity, which was dishonorable for a man, was assumed to be the natural condition of wives. Besides preserving social harmony within Jewish male society by denying the transfer of honor through the sexual game, the prohibitions against same-sex male intercourse in the Holiness Code also distinguished these Jews as a national group from what the Holiness Code asserted was the common behavior of their neighbors, the Canaanites, who, according to the Holiness Code, approved all such activities. Consequently the rejection of intra-tribal same-sex male intercourse became another marker of the national and cultural boundary between the returned community of Judaites and their neighbors.
As with Egypt, Assyria, and other Mesopotamian countries, the later empires of Greece and Rome also defined proper sexual relations as occurring only between people whose status was unequal. However, both Greece and Rome developed the rules and roles of sexual activity in ways somewhat different from earlier Mediterranean models. It is in classical Greece that homoerotic relations between men became not only acceptable but indeed worthy and laudable. In Athens and in Sparta the socialization of free young Greek men was accomplished through the complex rituals of pederasty, or the love of boys. The Greeks believed that the hard work of education and socialization needed for the creation of a strong democracy of free citizens required powerful motivation. For the Greeks, that motivation was found in the erotic. Young boys, following puberty at around 12 or 13, were encouraged to accept older Greek male citizens as their patrons and educators into the social and civic life of the city state. These relationships between the older men and the post-pubescent boys were profoundly erotic in nature. The erastes, or older, active male lover courted his chosen beloved young boy (the eromenos) by bringing him gifts of dead animals, crops, or other similar masculine presents, vying with other men to entice the favors of the finest young boys available in each generation. In terms of preserving or enhancing the civic standards of the polis, this romantic game between men was ideal: Greek men, generally in their younger years prior to marriage, competed with one another through athletic, civic and political contests of honor to gain the notice and admiration of young Greek boys, who, at the same time, were being given superb models of the best forms of honorable civic participation. The whole ritual of pederasty was profoundly interlaced with rules and family oversight to protect particularly the boys from abusive relationships.
This pattern of boy-man erotic involvement was especially strongly encouraged in the military environment of Sparta. Indeed the Spartans believed—unlike the U.S. military—that the most indestructible army would be one composed completely of male lovers. They reasoned that a man's willingness to fight hard or even die for the sake of his lover, who was standing at his side in battle, would be far greater than a man's willingness to fight or die for the more abstract principle of national pride. So homoerotic relations between boys and young men were encouraged as a way of producing the most manly virtues of military prowess, courage, athletic ability, and political statesmanship. The educational and civilizing component of same-sex eroticism in the classical Greek city states was of such value that same-sex relations were actually prohibited by law in Athens between free citizens and slaves, the most common form of same-sex relations in most of the Mediterranean world. For most of the Greeks of the classical period, pederasty was the key motivational factor in the education and socialization of the next generation of city leaders. While pederastic relationships for many Greek men ended with their marriage in their late twenties or thirties, they were expected to continue their warm relationships with their former pederastic lovers throughout their lives, providing a deeply homosocial and indeed homoerotic context for Greek society as a whole.
While the Romans took on many of the cultural developments and religious beliefs of the Greek city states they conquered, they were never particularly pleased with the Greek ideal of pederastic relations. For the Romans, passivity or submission should never cloud the life of a free Roman man, even when that man was still a boy. There were, for example, a number of rumors about the early boyhood of Julius Caesar and his relations to certain royal families in other countries that persistently dogged Caesar's political career in the voice of his opponents. These rumored erotic proclivities of his youth toward submission in same-sex relations were suggested as indications of a character flaw that should undercut his potential as a ruler of Rome. Whatever the value of such rumors, the Romans, like the Greeks, were generally quite at ease with same-sex erotic relations when those relations involved people of unequal social status, that is, slaves or foreigners; but the Romans and the Greeks both found homoerotic relations appalling when they involved or seemed to involve people of equal social status since one man in the sexual relation would have to play the submissive, penetrated role. Why anyone of dominant social status—basically a free male—would want to be submissive to another man was difficult, if not impossible, for either Greeks or Romans to understand. Such desire, that is to be submissive or passive, was seen in a man as either illness or moral decay. Thus, for most Greek and Roman moralists the primary ethical or moral problem posed by same-sex erotic acts, even between social equals, concerned only explaining the personality or nature of the passive partner; the active, dominant partner in same-sex erotic relations was simply performing the natural sexual role of a free man.
To understand more fully the danger involved in same-sex erotic acts between equals for the Greeks and the Romans, it is important for us to spend a few moments thinking about the construction of gender roles in Mediterranean antiquity. The reason that the passive role in homoeroticism was disgraceful or shameful was because it was the role assumed to be natural for women. Women, slaves, children, and also foreigners (barbarians to the Greeks) were generally assumed by both Greeks and Romans to be by nature passive and submissive in contrast to the natural activity and dominance of free males. Women in particular were constructed as passive, submissive beings within Greco-Roman antiquity. Now whether individual women within the Greco-Roman world always behaved in passive or submissive ways is not really the point here—we know in fact that they did not—the point is that the cultural ideal dictated passivity. The submissive role was natural to women, it was argued, because of their creation as deficient men. In a fascinating study of gender construction in antiquity, Thomas Laqueur has shown that ancient Mediterranean understandings of the body posited the view that both men and women shared the same physical structure; that is, the one body had two forms, a perfect male one and an imperfect female one.8 All the organs and fluids that men had in their bodies, women also had; the difference was simply in the placement of those organs. Men's genital organs were exterior while the same genital organs in women were interior. As the famous 2nd Century C.E. physician Galen of Pergamum said, "Turn outward the woman's, turn inward so to speak and fold double the man's genital organs, and you will find the same in both in every respect."9 This one body shared by both men and women was only differentiated by the outward appearance of genitalia, the assumed heat or coolness of the body itself, and by rigidly enforced gender roles.
Because ancient men shared with ancient women the same body, the line between male and female was an especially fragile and anxiety-producing one. It is true that women, as defective males, were assumed to be cooler, so that in fact the seed planted in them would not burn up but come to fruition, while men were hotter thereby producing the spiritual concoction of fluids needed to transform the physical matter women provided in reproduction into a spiritual and physical being. But this difference in temperature could easily be undone should men spend too much time in the company of women; effeminate men were often assumed to like women too much, cooling their hard manly virtues into female softness. Alternatively, as Galen also remarked on a number of occasions, if a woman became too hot—as for example in running across a field—her genitals might suddenly pop out, and she would become a man. Since the physical, anatomical separation between the perfect dominant male and the imperfect submissive female was so strikingly tenuous, social differentiation needed to be strongly defended and heavily marked. Much of the disdain ancient Mediterranean moralists felt for same-sex erotic relations came less from the sexual acts themselves than from the gender role reversals they required. Male same-sex relations required one man to be passive and submissive, in other words to take on the gender role of a woman. Female same-sex relations, which are rather rarely discussed by ancient writers, are often classed as a type of monstrosity, since one female, it was assumed, would have to be acting as the dominant penetrator. Such a woman was a physical and moral monster, someone completely out of control. Consequently, discouraging homoerotic relations among any who might even vaguely be considered social equals was an essential way of policing the crucial boundaries between the genders in antiquity.
We can find in Paul's letters in the Greek New Testament several places where he seems very concerned to preserve gender role boundaries within the Christian communities to whom he is writing. Perhaps the most famous of these texts can be found in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verses 2-16. In this section of the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul attempts to make a very convoluted argument for why women should cover their heads whenever they are praying or speaking in public assembly. He argues that the order of creation, with God at its head, Christ under God, the man under Christ, and the woman under the man, witnesses to this requirement. If, Paul says, a man prays with his head covered, he dishonors his head, which is Christ, but if a woman prays with her head uncovered, she dishonors her head, which is man. Nature itself, Paul goes on to point out, shows that men's hair should be short and not long, and that women's hair should be long and not short. If that argument seems a bit illogical to you, you are in good company. Not only generations of commentators but probably the Corinthians themselves had difficulty trying to figure out what Paul was saying. However awkwardly phrased, what Paul intended to do in this passage was to underscore the importance of following the cultural dress codes that proper gender role performance required. Paul is trying to convince the Corinthian community to conform in their ecstatic worship services to the same set of gender role markers that the society in general enforced. This passage is particularly famous because it is so obscure and so very obviously culturally bound. As Paul's attempt shows, it is hard to come up with logical arguments for the often arbitrary social conventions demanded by gender role boundaries. These same concerns for gender role propriety may well lie behind the one clear reference in the Greek New Testament to homoerotic behavior, also found in one of Paul's letters, Romans 1:26-27.
In the first chapter of Romans, Paul describes those people who reject the true God in favor of idols. Even though this group, Paul argues, did not have the benefit of the Torah or law that was given to the Jews, nevertheless they had the benefit of the natural world in which they could, had they wished to, perceive the good works of the one God. Instead of worshiping the true God, Paul asserts, these people chose to worship "images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles." Because of this disobedience, Paul affirms, the true God gave these people up to their own passions, to their own shamefulness. It is at this point that Paul gives us verses 26 and 27. Let me quote them:
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural use for those beyond nature, and the men likewise gave up natural use of women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
In Paul's version of homoeroticism, it has become a punishment by God for idolatry. Because these people rejected the worship of the true God and turned to idols instead, God abandoned them to their own passions—now run wild and out of control. In this disordered state, these people "exchanged" natural roles for ones that were para physin, which is best translated as "beyond nature"—inordinate desires.
Paul's argument appears to be that because these idolaters do not recognize the true God as their head, they also do not honor the natural order of gender role behaviors, in which man is always dominant and woman always submissive. They exchanged that natural order for sexual reversals in which "their women" become the sexual aggressors (by the way many of the early Church Fathers who commented on this passage in Romans took Paul to mean that these women were dominating their male partners, not that they were having sex with other women) and the men desire both to penetrate other men and be penetrated by them. Some Greco-Roman moralists assumed that men who participated often in homoerotic acts became impotent as a result, and that view may be what Paul is referring to in his statement about "receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error." Or it may be, as other moralists assumed, the loss of virility and honor, associated with rejecting male gender role performance, were the penalties Paul had in mind. Such disordered sexual behavior, which blurred the vital boundaries between men and women, was totally repugnant to Paul, who, to be honest, was not a fan of sexual expression or desire at any time even in its most natural setting between a husband and a wife. Sexual passion itself was always a dangerous commodity because it could easily get out of control, and for Paul it always had the potential to distract the followers of Jesus from their proper spiritual vocation. Would that they could all be as he was: a man whose self-mastery of desire was absolute (see 1 Cor 7:7).
The connection between idolatry and homoeroticism is an important one for Paul. Since idolatry is the actual cause of homoeroticism, same-sex erotic acts were simply not encountered among those who worshiped the true God. Like his Jewish contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, Paul evidently believed that Jews did not participate in homoerotic behavior, only "foreigners" or Gentiles did.10 Since even the Gentile converts to Christianity now worshiped the true God through their faith in Jesus Christ, they, too, were freed from any danger of participating in homoerotic or gender reversing behavior. This assumption of a necessary connection between idol worship and homoeroticism may be the reason it is so rarely mentioned in Paul's letters and never mentioned at all elsewhere in the New Testament.
So much more could be said about the construction of gender roles and sexuality in Mediterranean antiquity, but even the little we have reviewed today places the few biblical texts that deal with homoeroticism in a quite different light from what most modern debates about the "Bible and homosexuality" seem to assume. The biblical writers knew nothing of sexual orientations, mutual erotic relationships, or sexuality as the expression of a passion for equality. Our world is not their world; and theirs is not ours—and as a woman, I have to say, "Thank Goodness" to that. If the Bible really is, as some have argued, America's iconic book, it becomes especially important to examine the values this icon encodes. The natural submission of women and the natural domination of men might not be the values most of us would like to see America emulate; yet, it is precisely those values that lie behind the very little the Bible does say about homoeroticism. In a very real way, to stand with the Bible in its rejection of same-sex erotic acts is also to stand with the Bible in its adherence to misogyny—and hatred of women is not a cultural value I will ever claim should be normative for contemporary culture, including Christian culture.
NOTES

1. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Epistemology of the Closet" in H.Abelove, M. Barale, D. Halperin, eds. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 56-59.
2. For a fuller discussion, see Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, translated by K. Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 19-20
3. Ibid., pp. 27-28.
4. Ibid., p. 27.
5. Ibid., p. 25.
6. Ibid., p. 48.
7. Phyllis Bird, "The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation concerning Homosexuality: Old Testament Contributions" in D. Balch, ed., Homosexuality, Science, and the "Plain Sense" of Scripture (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000) pp. 149-154.
8. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1990).
9. Ibid., p. 25.
10. See Philo, Laws 3: 37-42.

mąstau, kad ko gero antifeministų reiktų pagailėti kaip kokių narkomanų... nu niekaip jie negali atsikratyti poreikio, kad juos vis dirgintų kokie papai, kad kas nors juos švelniai globotų kaip kadaise, vaikystėje, mamytė... tiesiog fizinė ir intelektualinė priklausomybė, kurios nepatenkinus kyla kažkokia apgailėtina abstinencijos reakcija... nu niekaip negali susitaikyti su egzistavimu moterų, kurios negyvena vien tam, kad žadintų jų erotines fantazijas, ir įsivaizduoja, kad tos moterys kažkaip turėtų būti tokios pat nelaimingos, kaip ir degtinė, išpilta į klozetą, o ne į jų gerklę... keisčiausia, kad filosofai, kurie įsivaizduoja esą tokie jau nepriklausomi, taip priklauso nuo tų savo pimpalinių akinių, pro kuriuos tik ir sugeba žiūrėti į pasaulį..." (iš Aušros Pažėraitės pamąstymų kažkur facebooke)

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