Sodomy and the Bible

John Rankin submitted an amicus brief in Obergefell v. Hodges, and posted a version online. It’s a rare instance of an effort to give an overtly biblical argument against same-sex marriage, one that is simultaneously grounded in the founding documents of the American system.

The argument, in a nutshell, is: Our Declaration of Independence says that rights come from God, and the only plausible “God” in that statement is the God revealed in the Bible. No other text than the Bible serves as a basis for equal human dignity and a notion of human rights: “The only source in recorded history for unalienable rights is the Creator identified in Genesis 1-2.” To reject that God and that text is to reject the very basis for making rights-appeals. The same text that lies at the basis of the American view of rights uniquely defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. 

Along the way, Rankin briefly responds to the arguments now being made from the Bible in favor of same-sex relations. Brief as it is, it’s fairly devastating. He is describing a discussion on the topic at Yale Divinity School: “In order for homosexuality to be regarded as biblical, all they had to do was show its presence in Genesis 1-2. . . . No one there could make the case despite some creative attempts extraneous to the text (one being a double negative argument from silence).” 

The rest of the Old Testament upholds Genesis 1-2 on the nature of sexual union: “In Genesis 6, the judgment of the flood is due to the reification of women in the building of harems by the ‘sons of god’ (an ancient Near Eastern expression for human kings who claimed pagan divinities as their ancestors, and thus set themselves up as gods with arbitrary power over other people). This was the very mockery of marriage. In Genesis 19, the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah is due to a sexual anarchy (with its apex example being an attempted gang rape by de facto ‘bisexual’ or ‘pansexual’ men) that morphs into social anarchy, lawlessness and the trampling of the poor (per the 24 principal references to Sodom and Gomorrah across the whole Bible).”

Rankin contests the notion that Jesus said nothing relevant to the issue: “1) Jesus affirmed marriage as defined in the biblical order of creation, 2) he fulfilled the Law of Moses that says no to homosexual actions, and 3) the apostle Paul ratified the same.” Besides, “Jesus explicitly opposing porneiai, a koine Greek word rooted in classical Greek literature for a ‘sexual immorality’ inclusive of homosexual actions. Jesus was a quintessential rabbi where pedagogy begins with the teaching of how to ask hard questions, with the ability thus to separate the primary from the secondary and superfluous, and in order that evidenced answers can be fully owned.”