Two secular Bible scholars try to explain the Torah in way that permits homosexuality.
“If a man lies with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done an abomination. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” – Leviticus 20:13
“‘Do not lie with a man as one does with a woman; it is an abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22
Here's how biblical scholars Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky (The Bible Now, Oxford University Press, $27.95) explain these two biblical verses (as reported by Adam Kirsch in Tablet Magazine):
…[F]rom Israel to Assyria, Egypt, and Greece, Friedman and Dolansky observe that these other Near Eastern societies generally had nothing against homosexual acts per se. They reserved their odium for the passive partner in anal sex, the man who was penetrated. A “Middle Babylonian divination text” instructs that “If a man copulates with his equal from the rear, he becomes the leader among his peers and brothers”; on the other hand, Plutarch writes, “We class those who enjoy the passive part as belonging to the lowest depths of vice.”
Never mind that these texts were written more than a thousand years apart, in two very different civilizations, neither of which was Israelite. Friedman and Dolansky use them to establish “the wider cultural context” of Leviticus, from which it follows that “what the authors of Leviticus … may be prohibiting is not homosexuality as we would construe the category today but, rather, an act that they understood to rob another man of his social status by feminizing him.” Why, then, does Leviticus, uniquely among ancient Near Eastern law codes, prescribe death for both partners in homosexual acts? Because, Friedman and Dolansky argue, quoting another biblical scholar, Leviticus “emphasizes the equality of all. It does not have the class distinctions that are in the other cultures’ laws.…The prohibition in the Bible applies only so long as male homosexual acts are perceived to be offensive.”
But wait: Doesn’t Leviticus also say, in Chapter 18, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination”? Here too, Friedman and Dolansky have a reassuring response. “The technical term to’ebah,” they write, is usually employed in the Bible not for absolute moral laws, but for cultic taboos: “an act or object that is not a to’ebah can become one, depending on time and circumstances.” Maybe homosexuality was once to’ebah, but “Why do people assume that things relating to God must be absolute and unchanging? Even for a person who believes in God wholeheartedly, why should that person assume that God is never free to change?”…
Kirsch rejects this attempt to kasher male on male anal sex as do I. But Kirsch, Friedman and Dolansky err when they presume the ban is on homosexuality.
Why?
Because it isn't.
What the Torah is prohibiting is male on male anal sex, not homosexual feelings (or other forms of homosexual sex) – a point a growing number of Orthodox and haredi rabbis quietly make to homosexuals – but often without the point in parentheses.
I do think Friedman and Dolansky have a valid point when they point out that neighboring cultures viewed the passive male role as degrading.
I believe this is because the act of penetration was viewed as domination. It was a way of taking ownership of women. It was the original way of Jewish marriage before there was a huppa or a ketubah or a wedding ceremony. It signaled that the man had acquired property and the woman had been acquired. (Biblical rape can be understood as an act of acquisition done without the intent to actually acquire and without compensating the woman – a form of deception or theft rather than violence.)
Because women were viewed as property and free men were not, a free man acting like a woman was lowering his status to that of property.
While other societies looked on that feminine man with disdain because he willingly lowered his status, they looked at the powerful man who penetrated him as unchanged. After all, what he had done with the man is what he would also do with a woman, and therefore his status remained the same.
But the Torah views a person who causes another to stumble or sin negatively, which is why it condemns the dominant male and presents the prohibition through the dominant male's actions, not the passive male's.
That said, what about homosexuality? Is there a way to read the Torah that allows it? Is there a way that allows it and includes male on male anal sex?
There have been many attempts to do this.
The most convincing I've heard from within the halakhic tradition involves permitting oral sex between two men and mutual masturbation on the basis that the prohibition against wasting seed is not in play if the man would never be attracted to or sleep with a woman.
But male on male anal sex would still be prohibited. (Yes, there are those who apply the same logic to male on male anal sex and argue that it should be permitted, but I haven't heard of any Orthodox or haredi rabbis agreeing with this.)
But I think history can provide an answer to this question that is better than what Friedman and Dolansky propose.
The Documentary Hypothesis (recently verified by a unique computer experiment) posits several schools of authors for the works that were later edited and combined into what we now call the Torah or the Five Books of Moses.
Both of the verses condemning male on male anal sex are found in Leviticus and are attributed to the Priestly Author, as is most of Leviticus.
Just like the works of the other three primary schools that wrote what became the Torah, the Priestly Author's work was edited and woven with the others into a unified whole.
It is possible – I would argue probable – that the Priestly Author's work was originally a code of holiness for the cultic priests of the early Israelite religion, and its prohibitions were originally meant primarily for priests. The population at large may have been viewed as work in progress, so to speak, which needed to be brought fully under the influence of the priests. Or the people may have been exempted entirely from the prohibitions in the Priestly Code.
But by the time the various books were combined into a unified whole hundreds of years later, no out was included for the masses.
“You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation…" – Exodus 19:6.
This verse is from the E source, associated with the Northern Kingdom and the Levites of Shiloh. It can be understood to mean a change in the status of the people, so that everyone – not simply the Aronoid priests – could be holy. And in context it appears to be ordering all Jews to follow what could be understood to be the Priestly Code.
So I think it could be argued that the original intent of the two verses prohibiting male on male anal sex was to be part of a holiness code for priests who were expected to be more "holy" than the average Israelite, and that they therefore do not prohibit homosexuality per se or any form of homosexual sex for non-priests.
And because we have no Temple, and because the role of priests (kohanim) today is only symbolic, it could be argued that even Kohanim have no actual prohibition against any form of homosexual sex.
And what if the messiah comes today and the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem? What would happen to homosexuality then?
That's for the messiah to figure out.
Lets all hope God gives him the opportunity to solve that problem today along with the wisdom to do it.
For possible practical application of any of these attempts to find ways to permit male homosexuality, please consult your rabbi.