The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.
While there is nothing explicit in the New Testament about homosexuality, there is substantial evidence that the sins for which Soddom and Gomorrah are punished in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament do indeed have to do with sexual deviancy, including same-sex sexual behaviour. Jesus as a person seems to be a different matter, but I'm uncomfortable when people present these texts as if they don't in fact contain examples of God expliciting condemning certain harmless sexual behaviours while also condoning when appropriate slavery, genocide and sexual violence.
You're right about the OT. I thought some theologians had reasoned that Soddom and Gommorah were destroyed because of rape and violence, but maybe that's not true? Im not a fan of the OT anyway, but it does have important stories in it. But you're right about the condoning of genocide, slavery, etc. Like when Noah condemns his son Lot to 5 generations of slavery. That's just evil. So, in my confusion with the OT God who seems to make mistakes and blame us for them, I really like to stick to what Jesus said in the Gospels. What do you think this disconnect between the OT and NT means?
There are deffo a bunch of modern exegetes and theologians who contest that the sins for which Sodom and Gomorrah were punished included homosexual behaviour, as the passage in the Old Testament doesn't explicitly say that it has to do with male-on-male sexuality activity Sexual violence and violence in general, as well as pride and mistreatment of the poor are more clearly cited, and it's indicative of how fucked the dominant groups in history have been that they did not emphasize this while they did emphazise homosexuality. These exegetes often cite a later passage: Ezekiel 16:49–50 "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it." It's true the Bible also contains many more references to the evil of the rich who do not aid the poor, and even seems to consider, at points, poverty as a form of social violence. The Talmud also references sexual violence and lack of hospitality explicitly. Ofc we can also ask what is meant by 'abominable' in this passage. It could be using it in the same sense as the word (the same word, which we translate often in English as 'abomination') used in Leviticus 18:22 - "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Chapter 18 verse 22 - and 20:13: "And if a man also lies with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." In the NT, we have Jude 1:7 which says that Sodom and Gomorrah "indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." This isn't conclusive but it is suggestive imo. I guess it also depends on what we understand as 'adultery' here.
Philo (d. AD 50) and Josephus (37 –c. 100) were the first to explicitly say that the sin of Sodom was same-sex sexual behaviour.
Personally, although it's weaker as evidence, I think the fact that by the 1st century AD, and later in Islamic societies, it seems to have been a mainstream view that at least one, if not a main, sin of Sodom et al. was same-sex sexual activity, perhaps indicates that it may have been so interpreted earlier, and in any case tells us relevant info about the religious cultures in question. Also, as noted above, Leviticus still seems pretty unequivocal to me, though I could be wrong, as I'm not a Hebrew scholar.