The Greeks Had a Word For It

Recently there circulated reports that some Salvation Army official had said that "Gays Need to Be Put to Death", which were duly referenced on Facebook.  Then a friend posted a link to the evaluation of the reports by Snopes.com, who found the claims to be "a mixture" of truth and falsehood.  It turned out that an Australian Salvation Army Media Relations Director, Major Andrew Craibe, had the following exchange with a radio interviewer.

RYAN: If I go and read that [Handbook of Doctrine], and I connect with my [homo]sexuality, then that says, according to the Salvation Army, that I deserve death.  How do you respond to that, as part of your doctrine?

CRAIBE: Well, that's a part of our belief system.

RYAN: So, we should die.

CRAIBE: Well, we have an alignment, but that's our belief.

I don't think it's just "according to" the Salvation Army that Romans 1:26-32 says that men who lust after and have sex with other men (not "gays" or "homosexuals") deserve to die: the text says so, quite explicitly, just as Leviticus 18:22 requires the death penalty for sexual relations between males.  Paul's remarks should be read in context, however, for he also says that

²⁹ Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
³⁰ Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
³¹ Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
³² Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Which gives us homos plenty of company at the gallows, or on the chair, in the gas chamber, or in the burning lake of fire -- whatever.  It would include many if not most Christians.  I'll see you in Hell, bitchez!

Before anyone objects that I'm being literalistic here, I submit that a little healthy literalism is useful when dealing with the Bible, since it means paying attention to what the text actually says.  What it means is another matter, open to a great deal of dispute, and has been for thousands of years.  In this case, I don't see that Paul was even directly calling for the execution of such people, though he might well have desired it.  After all, in Paul's (and later orthodox Christian) theology, everybody is "worthy of death," because all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God, yadda yadda yadda.  So I don't feel singled out here.

On the other hand, it is open to debate whether the offenses Paul enumerates really do deserve death, even the death by "natural" (that is, God-ordained) causes that most human beings succumb to -- let alone the spiritual "death" by torment in Hellfire that Christianity fantasizes about.  And it's a legitimate question besides, whether people who identity themselves as Christians, whether they accept the authority of the Bible or not, should be challenged on why they align themselves with a tradition that has such values.  As Antony Flew (I think -- I must track down the exact reference) once remarked, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it is to condemn anyone to eternal torture for any reason.  Since Major Craibe and the Salvation Army generally refuse to separate himself from such a tradition, they're open to criticism; they can't simply pretend that they are stuck with whatever is in the Bible, especially since they don't accept its mandate for the execution of men who have sex with each other.  What is the difference between disobeying God's command to kill sodomites, and denying that sex between males is a sin at all?  In for a penny, in for a pound.  "It's part of my belief system" isn't an excuse; it's an abdication of responsibility.

The Snopeses went on to note that "interpretations of the referenced portion of Romans vary widely, with various theologians and writers arguing that it condemns anything from homosexuality to child sexual abuse to all non-procreative sex."  This is true, but it hardly lets the Salvation Army off the hook, though it also affects any other interpreters, including pro-gay ones.  Where the treatment of other real-world people is involved, let alone one's eternal destiny, it's not enough to point out that interpretations vary.  Why should I take anyone's interpretation of this, or any other Biblical passage, seriously?  Liberal Christians think that they deserve points for sidestepping troublesome Bible teachings because their interpretation is possible.  Anything is possible, but is it likely?

The Snopeses linked to a site of interpretations of the "referenced portion of Romans", to support their relativism on this matter.  I clicked through to see what sort of stuff it included.  The site appears to include any and all interpretations, whether they're well-argued or not.  Mostly they're not, though I can't be sure whether the incoherence is due to the interpreters or to those at the site who paraphrased them.  My favorite was this one:

The passage may refer to child sexual abuse:

Some interpret the "men...with other men" clause to be a translation of the original Greek word for "pederasty" which was commonly practiced at the time by adult males with male children (often slaves). Thus Paul might have been criticizing child sexual abuse.

This is marvelous in its own small, daffy way.  The "original Greek word for 'pederasty'" is, basically, "pederasty" -- paiderastes, or 'lover of boys.'  I can't tell whether whoever wrote this reference thought that Paul's original Greek text included "the original Greek word" which was translated sloppily into English, or whether Paul wasn't writing in Greek and so had to translate "the original Greek word" into some other language (Hebrew, maybe?), or what.  If Paul had wanted to condemn pederasty, he could simply have used the word.  Unlike "homosexuality," or even "sodomy," it was one of the current words in his day.  Or he might, like some other early Christian writers, have referred to "them that corrupt [or abuse] boys" or some such.  He didn't: he wrote about males who, "leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."  This sounds much more like the supposedly modern, "egalitarian" conception of homosexuality, where what matters is that both participants have male bodies, not the roles they play in the sexual act, than it sounds like pederasty.

(Bonus fun fact: some modern interpreters have suggested that "that recompense of their error which was meet" referred to some venereal disease.  Maybe so, maybe not, but I doubt it.  In context, Paul probably meant that they eventually died, like everybody else, which was God's punishment for Adam's sin.  But it's possible; who knows for sure?)

The interpretation right after this one is that Paul was condemning all non-procreative sex.  It has no basis in the text except for a confused and ahistorical understanding of Paul's "against nature." 

Oh! Oh!  I have to include the next one:

The passage may refer to dominant/submissive relationships

... Thus, Paul may be writing of men involved in dominant/submissive relationships and/or of heterosexuals involved in sex with male youths. Neither has any connection to modern-day, consensual, committed same-sex adult relationships.

First, modern "dominant/submissive relationships" are consensual: the partners consent to play out certain stereotyped, ritualized dramas of dominance and submission, obedience and discipline.  Whether such relations occurred in the ancient Mediterranean world, no one knows, and there's no reason to believe that Paul was sophisticated enough about human sexuality, even in his own historical/cultural terms, to understand them.  Second, Paul (like most ancients and most religious teachers down to the present) was in favor of dominant/submissive relationships.  He did not consider heterosexual marriage to be a bond between equals, but between a dominant husband and a submissive wife.  All human relationships for Paul were modeled on a dominant God/submissive believer model; as he says explicitly, a woman's head is man, a man's head is Christ, and Christ's head is God.  I know of no evidence that Jesus was any more interested in egalitarianism than Paul was.  And so on.  The Stupid -- It Burns!  In Hell.

The Value of Human Life

I'm listening to Democracy Now's coverage of the vigil outside the Georgia prison where Troy Anthony Davis, accused of killing a police officer in 1989, is scheduled to be executed. It's now over an hour past the time when Davis was supposed to be killed, but apparently the execution has been delayed.

There is strong evidence indicating that Davis was wrongly convicted: several witnesses have recanted their testimony, and several jurors at his trial have said that they would decide differently now. Even if this turns out to be wrong, there seems good reason for another trial. It's remarkable how many Republican law-enforcement people agree, including William Sessions, FBI Director under Ronald Reagan. Going by reports during DN's coverage tonight, there is hope for a stay of execution tonight. That possibility could be disproved before I finish posting this, so I'll update it if necessary.

(One of Davis's sisters just told Amy Goodman that the delay in the execution shows that "God is still in control." I hate to be cynical in a situation like this, and I know that people will say the most embarrassing things under stress, but: Girl, please. If God were in control, the whole mess would never have gone this far.)

But listening to this broadcast reminded me of another execution ten years ago, which I wrote about for the student newspaper. The execution of Timothy McVeigh, for the 1995 Oklahoma City terror bombing that killed 168 people, took place in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 11, 2001. I got only negative responses to this column, and from people whose disagreement surprised me a little. None of them could explain why they disagreed, and ten years later I still think I made a good argument here. Unlike Davis, there was no real doubt of McVeigh's guilt, but I believe that makes this piece just as relevant now.

Now that Timothy McVeigh has been executed, it's moot whether the death penalty should be applied in his case. I was struck, though, by one local columnist's comment that "McVeigh was not a good poster child for people opposed to the death penalty. ... If anyone deserved to die, that was the guy."

This comment misses the point of opposition to capital punishment. I suppose the best "poster child" would be an innocent person, someone falsely convicted of a capital crime; it takes very little soul-searching to agree that such a person should not be executed.

Next would be someone properly convicted but repentant, who can appeal to Christian values of forgiveness and personal renewal. But, as that writer's remarks suggest, it's quite possible to be moved by such people while still holding that there are people who deserve to die.

Someone who really opposes the death penalty will oppose it even to dispose of a remorseless criminal like McVeigh. In that sense, McVeigh is an ideal "poster child" -- not because he's appealing, but because he isn't.

The core question is this: what can justify killing anyone? Tim McVeigh believed that while the deaths of 168 men, women and children in Oklahoma City were regrettable, they were also necessary. This is not, unfortunately, as unusual a belief as I wish it were. It echoes -- deliberately, I suspect -- the infamous claim of a military spokesman in Vietnam that it was necessary to destroy a village in order to save it.

McVeigh was a military man, a Gulf War veteran, indoctrinated in a system which treats human lives as tokens to be used up in the pursuit of military and political goals. The U.S. killed far more than 168 civilians in the Gulf War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, in World War II and in any number of smaller actions around the world. More than 168 civilians were killed in Panama during George Bush\'s invasion of Panama in 1989, even by official U.S. estimates; human rights groups claim a death toll in the thousands. Of course, these deaths were regrettable, but we are assured they were necessary, not only by our government but by ordinary citizens who support its actions.

But again, who gets to decide this? American troops under orders have killed unarmed American civilians on American soil numerous times since the Civil War. The Bonus Army of 1932 (two World War I veterans and one baby), Kent State (four students) and Jackson State (two students) Universities in 1970 are among the more famous. These deaths too were regrettable but necessary, and since they were official killings no one was executed for carrying them out.

McVeigh, by contrast, decided on his own which lives were expendable, without orders from above. If he had exploded his bomb in Iraq, or in Waco, Texas, as part of an official military or paramilitary action, his life would not have been forfeited.

How many people are needed to validate the taking of human life? One lone bomber, apparently, is not enough. Two? Three? A dozen jurors? The President, the Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff? The 535 members of Congress? At what point, and for what reason, does taking a life, or 168 lives, or 168,000, stop being a crime and become regrettable but necessary in the eyes of most citizens?

Please understand that I'm NOT saying that McVeigh didn't commit a terrible crime. I'm saying that bringing him to justice is only a beginning. If Americans really believe that McVeigh deserved to die for his crime, we should also bring to trial other American criminals whose hands are far bloodier than McVeigh's: the men who gave the orders which killed millions in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. If the lives of mere foreigners don't count, these men's victims included thousands of Americans as well -- 55,000 in Vietnam, for instance. Will supporters of the death penalty call for the execution of (among others) Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Oliver North and Bill Clinton?

I was being sarcastic when I wrote that it takes "very little soul-searching to agree that such a person [who is innocent of any crime] should not be executed." Quite a few people refuse to consider the possibility that a guilty verdict could be mistaken, especially when it could provide an execution.

After Timothy McVeigh was executed, a local newspaper printed a photograph of one of the celebrants outside the prison: a fat white man wearing a wedding dress, dancing with joy at McVeigh's death. I'd bet that he, like others who celebrate outside executions in the US, considered himself a Christian, a question I'm not competent to judge. But it reminded me of something Walter Kaufmann wrote in Without Guilt and Justice (Wyden) in 1973:

In Paul W. Tappan's massive standard text on Crime, Justice and Correction, for example, all ten references to Freud (in seven hundred fifty pages) concern the light he shed on criminals. But Freud ... also turned a searchlight on respectable society, illuminating the unedifying motives that come to the fore in punishment. Not only is the criminal a human being like you, but you, alas, are like the criminal [49].

P.S. 11 p.m.: The Supreme Court has unanimously denied a stay of execution, and according to Democracy Now! the execution of Troy Davis is proceeding tonight, and (P.P.S.) Davis died at 11:08 p.m.