P.O.V. - Family Fundamentals . Chapter and Verse (Leviticus 18:22;20:13 & Homosexuality)

PBS ^ | 2003

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS:

Leviticus 18:22 (excerpt) [22] Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

Leviticus 20:13 (excerpt) [13]If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Dr. James B. DeYoung: This passage occurs in a section of Leviticus called the "law of holiness" (chs. 18-20); the emphasis is on moral precepts rather than ceremonial and ritual matters as in the rest of the book. In literary form, chapter 18 resembles the universal texts containing the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5).

The pivotal verse (18:22) says: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable" (or "an abomination"). This prohibition and evaluation is repeated in 20:13, with the addition that the penalty of death is assigned. Not even homosexual apologists deny that homosexual behavior is forbidden here. Yet these interpreters dismiss this text as ritualistic, as limited to Israel's concern for purity and having no universal significance. This misses the mark. Universality is in these chapters, since the second greatest commandment (19:18: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself") is derived from this section of Leviticus and is cited by Jesus (Matthew 22:37-40), James (2:8) and Paul (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14). In addition, Paul cites 18:5 (Romans 10:5; Galatians 3:12) and 19:19 (2 Corinthians 6:14ff.); Jesus cites 19:12 (Matthew 5:33); and Peter cites 19:2 (1 Peter 1:14-16). Clearly the New Testament found this section meaningful for Christian morality and behavior. Even within chapters 18 and 20 the Canaanites and Egyptians are indicted for the sins listed and punished for them (18:3, 24-30; 20:23), even though they had not been given Israel's ceremonial and legal statutes. The word "abomination" or "detestable" is from to'eba and covers, in the Old Testament, not only ritual impurity but idolatry and here in chapter 18 homosexuality, incest, child sacrifice, bestiality, etc. (see v. 29). Of all the sins, only homosexuality is twice identified as "detestable." While the prohibition of eating unclean food is also here (20:25), along with other stipulations affecting only Israel, these are not assigned a penalty in chapter 20 and are distinguished from the universal sins (as confirmed by their never being repeated in the New Testament).

Finally, no Israelite man or woman was to serve God in the temple by being a prostitute. Since this usually took the form of men called "dogs" who serviced males in their devotion to pagan female deities, it was especially "abominable" or "detestable" to do this in a religious place, God's temple (see Deuteronomy 23:18; 2 Kings 23:1-7ff.). This suggests that it is particularly detestable to use the cloak of religion to mask homosexual behavior.

Dr. David M. Carr: These texts are the only explicit prohibitions of homosexual acts in the Old Testament. Both focus exclusively on one activity: male-male intercourse where a man "lies with another man the lying down of a woman." Most scholars believe it aims to preserve the purity of Israel through protection of male hierarchy and honor. In honor cultures like ancient Israel it was/is a severe affront for one man to have sex with another man like a woman. This would help explain the exclusive focus here on male-male intercourse.

Of course, many now live in quite different cultures. But that has not stopped some from selectively using regulations like Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to support their condemnation of homosexual intimacy. Meanwhile, the Bible prohibits sex during menstruation in the very same chapters (Lev 18:19; 20:18), but few Christian conservatives have mounted a campaign to expel people who violate that commandment.

Readers of the Bible's diverse sexual regulations — whether liberal or conservative — are and need be selective. The Old Testament allows married men to have sex with prostitutes, slaves and other unmarried women not under the protection of their fathers. It never condemns female homosexuality, nor does it condemn male-male sex aside from intercourse. The Bible's world of sexual mores is not ours. Anyone claiming to be advocating pure Biblical ethics has not taken a close enough look at them. Prayerfully, Christians must build on and beyond the Bible.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

P.O.V. - Family Fundamentals . Chapter and Verse (Genesis 2:4-25 & Homosexuality)

P.O.V. - Family Fundamentals . Chapter and Verse (Genesis 19:1-29 & Homosexuality)

[kerryusama04]

Bump

[Daffy]

"The Bible's world of sexual mores is not ours."

Sadly true. A reason why the Nazis so hated the Jews, the Nazi leadership was largely homosexual (of the super-masculine variety).

[gemelk]

On what substantiated historical evidence do you base that statement? Yes, there is evidence that some, a very few, high ranking NAZI party members were homosexual, that did not make for the anti-jewish policy. Certainly Ernst Rohm was executed for his gay philandering. Given that many of Hitlers senior staff were not only married but frequently had a female mistress, I think your history is in error.

Eric

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

Of course it was, read the “Pink Swastika.” You’ll find an assortment of information that was never before mentioned such as the fact that Hitler was a male prostitute according to police records in Austria. Also, go to "Hitler was a Leftist."

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

The Nazi Party was rampant with homosexuals, not just a very few, and there is plenty of data available on the subject. Rohm was not killed because of his flagrant homosexuality, he was killed because it was Hitler’s ticket to becoming Chancellor. Rohm posed a threat as the leader of the brownshirts. Your history is in grave error.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

1. The favorite meeting place of the SA was a "gay" bar in Munich called the Bratwurstglockl where Roehm kept a reserved table (Hohne:82). This was the same tavern where some of the earliest formative meetings of the Nazi Party had been held (Rector:69). At the Bratwurstglockl, Roehm and associates-Edmund Heines, Karl Ernst, Ernst's partner Captain Rohrbein, Captain Petersdorf, Count Ernst Helldorf and the rest-would meet to plan and strategize. These were the men who orchestrated the Nazi campaign of intimidation and terror. All of them were homosexual (Heiden:371).

2. Indeed, homosexuality was all that qualified many of these men for their positions in the SA. Heinrich Himmler would later complain of this: "Does it not constitute a danger to the Nazi movement if it can be said that Nazi leaders are chosen for sexual reasons?" (Gallo:57). Himmler was not so much opposed to homosexuality itself as to the fact that non- qualified people were given high rank based on their homosexual relations with Roehm and others. For example, SA Obergruppenfuhrer (Lieutenant General) Karl Ernst, a militant homosexual, had been a hotel doorman and a waiter before joining the SA. "Karl Ernst is not yet 35," writes Gallo, "he commands 250,000 men...he is simply a sadist, a common thug, transformed into a responsible official" (ibid.:50f).

3. This strange brand of nepotism was a hallmark of the SA. By 1933 the SA had grown far larger than the German army, yet the Vikingkorps (Officers' Corps) remained almost exclusively homosexual. "Roehm, as the head of 2,500,000 Storm Troops," writes historian H.R. Knickerbocker, "had surrounded himself with a staff of perverts. His chiefs, men of rank of Gruppenfuhrer or Obergruppenfuhrer, commanding units of several hundred thousand Storm Troopers, were almost without exception homosexuals. Indeed, unless a Storm Troop officer were homosexual he had no chance of advancement" (Knickerbocker:55).

4. In the SA, the Community of the Special's Hellenic ideal of masculine homosexual supremacy and militarism was fully realized. "Theirs was a very masculine brand of homosexuality," writes homosexualist historian Alfred Rowse, "they lived in a male world, without women, a world of camps and marching, rallies and sports. They had their own relaxations, and the Munich SA became notorious on account of them" (Rowse:214). The similarity of the SA to Freidlander and Brand's dream of Hellenic revival is not coincidental. In Gay American History, Jonathan Katz writes that Roehm was a prominent member of the Society for Human Rights (SHR), an offshoot of the CS (J.Katz:632).

5. In 1945 a Jewish historian by the name of Samuel Igra published Germany's National Vice, which called homosexuality the "poisoned stream" that ran through the heart of Nazism. (In the 1920s and 30s, homosexuality was known as "the German vice" across Europe because of the debaucheries of the Weimar period.) Igra, who escaped Germany in 1939, claims that Hitler "had been a male prostitute in Vienna at the time of his sojourn there, from 1907 to 1912, and that he practiced the same calling in Munich from 1912 to 1914" (Igra:67). Desmond Seward, in Napoleon and Hitler, says Hitler is listed as a homosexual in Viennese police records (Seward:299). Lending credence to this is the fact, noted by Walter Langer, that during several of those years Hitler "chose to live in a Vienna flophouse known to be inhabited by many homosexuals" (Langer:192). Rector writes that, as a young man, Hitler was often called "der Schoen Adolf" (the handsome Adolf) and that later his looks "were also to some extent helpful in gaining big-money support from Ernst Ro[e]hm's circle of wealthy gay friends" (Rector:52).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

6. Langer, a psychiatrist, was commissioned by the Allies in 1943 to prepare a thorough psychological study of Hitler. His report, kept under wraps for 29 years, was published in book form in 1972 as The Mind of Adolf Hitler. Langer writes that Hitler was certainly a coprophile (a person who is sexually aroused by human excrement) and may have practiced homosexuality as an adult. He cites the testimony of Hermann Rauschning, a former Hitler confidante who "reports that he has met two boys who claimed that they were Hitler's homosexual partners, but their testimony can hardly be taken at face value. More condemning," adds Langer, "would be the remarks dropped by [Albert] Foerster, the Danzig gauleiter, in conversation with Rauschning. Even here, however, the remarks deal only with Hitler's impotence as far as heterosexual relationships go, without actually implying that he indulges in homosexuality. It is probably true that Hitler calls Foerster 'Bubi,' which is a common nickname employed by homosexuals in addressing their partners. This alone is not adequate proof that he has actually indulged in homosexual practices with Foerster, who is known to be a homosexual" (Langer:178). However, writes Langer, "Even today, Hitler derives sexual pleasure from looking at men's bodies and associating with homosexuals" (Langer:179). Too, Hitler's greatest hero was Frederick the Great, a well-known homosexual (Garde:44).

7. Reportedly, Hitler Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach was bisexual; Hitler's private attorney, Reich Legal Director, Minister of Justice, butcher Governor- General of Poland, and public gay-hater Hans Frank was said to be a homosexual; Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Bruckner was said to be bisexual;...Walter Funk, Reich Minister of Economics [and Hitler's personal financial advisor] has frequently been called a "notorious" homosexual ...or as a jealous predecessor in Funk's post, Hjalmar Schacht, contemptuously claimed, Funk was a "harmless homosexual and alcoholic;" ...[Hitler's second in command] Hermann Goering liked to dress up in drag and wear campy make-up; and so on and so forth (Rector:57).

8. Igra, who confidently asserts that the above men were homosexuals, cites still other Hitler aides and close friends who were known homosexuals as well. He states that Hitler's chauffeur and one-time personal secretary, Emile Maurice, for example, was homosexual, as well as the pornographer Julius Streicher, who "was originally a school teacher, but was dismissed by the Nuremberg School Authorities, following numerous charges of pederasty brought against him" (Igra:72f). SS Chief Heinrich Himmler's "pederastic proclivities [were] captured on film" by Nazi filmmaker Walter Frenz (Washington City Paper, April 4, 1995). Reinhard Heydrich, mastermind of the first pogrom, Kristallnacht, and of the death camps, was homosexual (Calic:64). In The Twelve Year Reich, Richard Grunberger tells of a party given by Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, which degenerated into a homosexual orgy (Grunberger:70). A recent biography of Albert Speer by Gitta Sereny speaks of a "homo-erotic (not sexual) relationship" between Speer and Hitler (Newsweek, Oct. 30, 1995). Langer notes that Hitler's personal bodyguards were "almost always 100 percent homosexuals" (Langer:179). Hitler's later public pronouncements against homosexuality never quite fit with the lifelong intimacy-sexual or otherwise-which he maintained with men he knew and accepted as homosexuals.

9. In light of the above it is not surprising that many of those whose ideas influenced Hitler were also homo-sexual. Chief among those were occultists Jorg Lanz Von Liebenfels and Guido von List. In 1958, Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Daim published Der Mann der Hitler die Ideen gab ("The Man Who Gave Hitler His Ideas") in which he called Lanz the true "father" of National Socialism. Lanz was a former Cistercian monk who had been excommunicated for homosexuality (Sklar:19). After being expelled from the monastery, Lanz formed an occultic order called the Ordo Novi Templi or The Order of the New Temple (ONT). The ONT was an offshoot of the Ordo Templi Orientis which practiced tantric sex rituals (Howard:91).

10. On Christmas day, 1907, many years before it would become the symbol of the Third Reich, Lanz and other members of the ONT raised the swastika flag over the castle which Lanz had purchased to house the order (Goodrick-Clarke:109). Lanz chose the swastika, he said, because it was the ancient pagan symbol of Wotan, the god of storms (Cavendish:1983). (Wotan, the inspiration for "Storm Troopers," was the Teutonic equivalent of Baal in the Old Testament and Zeus in Greek culture). Waite notes that it was through Lanz that Hitler would learn that most of his heroes of history were also "practicing homosexuals" (Waite, 1977:94f).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

11. Hitler himself, of course, had been well aware of Roehm's sexual orientation from the earliest days of their long association....So strong was Roehm that the Wehrmacht [German Army High Command] was concerned that he might seize control of the army. In 1934, Hitler became fearful that the Wehrmacht was plotting a coup against him to prevent such a takeover. To forestall this danger, Hitler had Roehm and about one thousand other men murdered one weekend in June 1934, the famous "Night of the Long Knives" (Crompton:79f).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

12. Elie Wiesel, sent to the Buna factory camp in the Auschwitz complex, for example, acknowledges this in his book Night:

The head of our tent was a German. An assassin's face, fleshy lips, hands like wolf's paws. He was so fat he could hardly move. Like the leader of the camp he loved children...(Actually this was not a disinterested affection: there was a considerable traffic in young children among homosexuals here, I learned later) (Wiesel:59).

13. Max Bielas had a harem of little Jewish boys. He liked them young, no older than seventeen. He had a kind of parody of the shepherds of Arcadia, their role was to take care of the camp flock of geese. They were dressed like little princes...Bielas had a little barracks built for them that looked like a doll's house...Bielas sought in Treblinka only the satisfaction of his homosexual instincts (Steiner:117f).

14. There is a gay skinhead movement in Berlin. They go to cruising areas with leaflets that say, "We don't want foreigners." A major leader of the neo-Nazis in Germany, Michael Kuhnen was an openly gay man who died of AIDS two years ago. He wrote a paper on the links between homosexuality and fascism, saying fascism is based on the love of comrades, that having sex with your comrades strengthens this bond (Anderson:54).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

15. It was the pederasts of the Community of the Special who sponsored the revival of Hellenic pagan ideals in German society. These men were viciously anti-Jew and anti-Christian because of the injunctions against homosexuality inherent in the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. Homosexualist Warren Johansson notes that Hans Blueher, one of the leading theoreticians of the Community of the Special, "maintained that Judaism had suppressed the homosexual aspect of its culture, with concomitant hypertrophy [enlargement] of the family" (Johansson:816). Benedict Friedlander, in an essay for Der Eigene titled "Seven Propositions," chose as his first proposition an attack on Christianity. "The white race is becoming ever sicker under the curse of Christianity, which is foreign to it and mostly harmful," writes Friedlander. "That is the genuinely bad 'Jewish influence,' an opinion that has proven true, especially through the conditions in North America" (Friedlander in Oosterhuis and Kennedy:219). For his part, Adolf Brand called Christianity "barbarism" and "expressed his desire to fight 'beyond good and evil,' not for the sake of the masses, since the happiness of 'the weak' would result in a 'slave mentality,' but for the human being who proclaimed himself a god and was not to be subdued by human laws and ethics" (Oosterhuis and Kennedy:183). We should not forget Nietzsche, who called Christianity "the lie of millennia" (Macintyre: 188).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

16. The probable reason for Hitler's attack on Christianity was his perception that it alone had the moral authority to stop the Nazi movement. But Christians stumbled before the flood of evil. As Poliakov notes, "[W]hen moral barriers collapsed under the impact of Nazi preaching...the same anti-Semitic movement that led to the slaughter of the Jews gave scope and license to an obscene revolt against God and the moral law. An open and implacable war was declared on the Christian tradition...[which unleashed] a frenzied and unavowed hatred of Christ and the Ten Commandments" (Poliakov:300).

17. There is no question that homosexuality figures prominently in the history of the Holocaust. As we have noted, the ideas for disposing of the Jews originated with Lanz von Leibenfels. The first years of terrorism against the Jews were carried out by the homosexuals of the SA. The first concentration camp, as well as the system for training its brutal guards, was the work of Ernst Roehm. The first pogrom, Kristallnacht, was orchestrated in 1938 by the homosexual Reinhard Heydrich. And it was the transvestite Goering who started the "evolution of the Final Solution...[with an] order to Heydrich (Jan. 24, 1939) concerning the solution of the Jewish question by 'emigration' and 'evacuation'" (Robinson:25). Still, despite their disproportionate role, homosexuals did not cause the Holocaust. They, along with so many others who had lost their moral bearings, were merely instruments in its enactment. The Holocaust must be blamed on the one whom the Bible compares to "a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (NKJ:I Peter 5:8).

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

Historian Frank Rector records that the German Workers Party-the forerunner to Hitler's Nazi Party-"was founded at a gay bar in Munich, called the Bratworstglockl." (Rector, Frank, The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, New York: Stein and Day, 1981 :69.)

Jonathan Katz, a gay Holocaust historian, writes, "most, if not all, of its [Nazi Party] founding members were either homosexuals or bisexuals." Katz writes that "the founders of the party were also founders of the `Bund fur Menschenrecht' (The Society for Human Rights), the largest homosexual rights organization in Germany at the time." (Katz, Jonathan, Gay American History: Lesbian and Gay Men in the U.S.A., p.632n94. 6. Haeberle, Erwin J., Hidden From History, Swastika, Pink Triangle, And Yellow Star: The Destruction Of Sexology And The Persecution Of Homosexuals In Nazi Germany, New York: A Meridian Book, 1989:368.)

Pro-gay writer Frank Rector records, "Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach was bisexual, Hitler's private attorney, Reich Legal Director and Minister of Justice Hans Frank was homosexual, Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Bruckner was bisexual, Deputy Feuhrer Rudolf Hess was bisexual and Reich Minister of Economics Walther Funk was homosexual." (Rector, Frank, The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, p. 56.)

[kerryusama04]

I was hoping to peruse some scriptural twister on this thread when I bumped it. Now, I get all booted up and you guys are talking about queer Nazis? THEY WERE NAZIS. THEY EXTERMINATED JEWS WHILE MARCHING EMIPIALISTICALLY ACROSS EUROPE. Being queer was waaaayyyyyy down the list of idiosyncrasies, IMHO.

[Upbeat]

I have an interest in the history of WW II and the events leading up to it, and was aware of the "Roehm Threat" facing Hitler. I am surprised at how widespread was homosexual practice within the Nazi party. I consider myself better read and informed on this time period than the average person. Why was this not made more public at the end of the war and thereafter? The documentation cited seems to be thorough. Admittedly, the homosexual behavior pales in the context of the Holocaust.

[mhuye]

What all of you are seemingly not getting is that homosexuality was the DRIVING FORCE FOR THESE MEN, SUBJUGATION, EMPOWERMENT, TOTAL DEPRAVITY via sex. HOMOSEXUALITY was the root of all the evil, not an afterthought. If you know anything about Homosexuality you'll understand that there is no love, only power and insatiable lust. Sounds like a Nazi doesn't it?

[fwdude]

Why was this not made more public at the end of the war and thereafter?

IMHO: Considering the time period, it was really beyond comprehension to the average person what behavior homosexuals engaged in - it was literally "unmentionable" in a time when political incorrectness didn't exist because it's converse had not yet reared it's ugly head. Of course, well-read people knew it existed - it was just beyond the pale to discuss it in the national culture of that age.

[Upbeat]

I'm inclined to agree with your take on why this wasn't given more emphasis at that time, the end of WW II. This was a topic we generally didn't talk about.