Trigger Warning: There is mention of sexual assault in this blog.
My beautiful daughter once shared with me that it breaks her heart to see her friends getting engaged and married, knowing that when she gets engaged or married to her partner that the love and support for her relationship, will just not be quite the same! That doesn’t just break her heart….that breaks a mama’s heart too! I, sadly, can not fix that for her, but I can do everything within my power to speak for and with her, and so many others that I know are feeling the same way. And you know what else, I will also do everything within my special mama powers to give her the love story of her dreams….no one can take that from either of us!
Therefore…..I speak! Therefore…..I take a stand! Therefore…..I study! Therefore…..I write!
Do you remember playing dodge ball in school? I was terrible at it! I usually sacrificed myself early to the sting of that not-so-soft dodge ball, or hid in the back and prayed that someone else on my team would take out the last kid and mercifully leave me standing! But usually…..let’s be honest…..I got clobbered!!
Clobber is defined as hitting someone hard, dealing with someone harshly or defeating someone heavily. We typically use the term when talking about one team “clobbering” another in a sporting event, or maybe during a fight someone “gets clobbered”, but what if this was the term used to describe how your Christian friend, your church, or your youth group treated you after they found out you were gay? What if this term described how God’s Word was used against you when you shared with friends and family about your new love, who just happens to be of the same sex? The term “clobber verses” has been, sadly, coined to describe the six Bible verses that are typically used to define homosexuality as a sin. CLOBBER….let’s think about that….Bible verses are being used to hit someone hard, Bible verses are being used to deal with someone harshly, Bible verses are being used to defeat someone heavily! You don’t have to agree with this terminology, but I’m telling you this is how the LGBTQ community feels about how these verses are being used, and in order to understand how someone is feeling we MUST, by definition, consider THEIR feelings….not our own. If we are going to use our Bible to condemn a certain lifestyle, to condemn an entire segment of the population, to tell people that who they love is not okay….then we better be VERY sure we know what we are talking about!
There are six of these “clobber verses” in the Bible. Sometimes I am taken aback when I am reminded that there are six…only six verses that even address this issue! Yet, it fires up many churches and many Christians in ways that are hard to comprehend. In comparison, did you know there are roughly 283 verses on judgement, well over 2,000 verses about money, over 500 verses concerning love, over 200 verses about faith, and yet we are going to hang up on 6 verses, or passages of scripture, that by all reasonable accounts have several different possible interpretations and applications?
Today I will address only one of these sections of scripture. I sincerely hope and pray to address the passages in a way that is respectful of God’s Word, while also addressing the concerns of many, many thousands of members of the LGBTQ community that have for far too long….been CLOBBERED by them!
Genesis 19:1-13 is one of the two clobber passages that are contained within the Old Testament. Genesis 19 is the very well known story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In a nutshell, this passage of text involves two angels (men) who enter the wicked cities in an attempt to save Lot, Abraham’s brother, and Lot’s family. The Bible tells us that the men of the city gathered around Lot’s house demanding the visitors be sent out so that they could have sex with them. Instead Lot wants to send his daughters out to them. Okay, well as a mama, that makes me quite crazy….like Lot, have you lost your damn mind! What was this dad thinking? What would possess him to consider sending his daughters out, as opposed to these two strangers? There are several theories about this, one being that, yes, a man with a man was so heinous that his daughters would be the better sacrifice, another being that women were held in such low esteem during this era that it would be far less humiliating for women to be raped, than for men to be raped. Another suggests that hospitality was of such premiere importance, one would never allow anything horrible to happen to a guest. Regardless of why Lot would prefer to send his own daughters into a literal gang rape rather than his guests is sadly neither here nor there, but what you may be surprised to learn is that even though this portion of scripture is frequently used to condemn the LGBTQ lifestyle, the ultimate demise of Sodom and Gomorrah was NOT gay sex! The Bible says these communities were arrogant (sound familiar?), they were unkind to the poor and less fortunate (sound familiar?), drinking and eating too much (sound familiar?), and, additionally, in dozens of Biblical references and Jewish writings involving Sodom and Gomorrah, same-sex behavior was NEVER mentioned as one of the reasons the city met its demise!*** Let’s go even further with this, the same-sex behavior discussed in this text is anything but loving, anything but committed, anything but kind, anything but beautiful…..it was brutal, hateful, disgusting attempted gang rape of male visitors to a city. It is ridiculous to suggest that this verse has any bearing whatsoever on a loving, monogamous, same-sex relationship! Why would we ever gather from this passage that God hates same-sex relationships? I believe God was saying that he hates savage sexual assault!
I’m not in any way trying to shock anyone. I just want to share brutally honest facts, and present them in a brutally honest way. We can not continue to take verses out of context. We can not continue to retain only those portions of text that fit within a particularly socially appropriate agenda, and ignore the fact that in doing so we are harming real people….with real hearts….with real hopes and dreams….with real love for their partners and for God! I know it breaks my heart and I’m confident in saying it breaks God’s!
My next blog post will address verses from the book of Leviticus. Please subscribe and I would love your feedback. Thank you for reading!
***”Walking the Bridgeless Canyon” by Kathy Baldock ***NBC News, “Christian Pastor Reframes Scripture Used Against LGBTQ Community
Ugly Perfection 