I just finished reading "Sex and the Single Savior" by Dale B. Martin. The book talks about gender and sexuality in Biblical interpretation. The author covers different interpretations, including sometimes his own, about some of the most famous passages in the Bible which address sex and specifically homosexuality. There are many important passages but one of my favorite is the following: "...Any interpretation of Scripture that hurts people, oppresses people, or destroy people, cannot be the right interpretation, no matter how traditional, historical, or exegetically respectable. There can be no debate about the fact that the Church's stand on homosexuality has caused oppression, loneliness, self-hatred, violence, sickness, and suicide for millions of people. If the Church wishes to continue with its traditional interpretation it must demonstrate, not just claim, that it is more loving to condemn homosexuality than to affirm homosexuals. Can the Church show that same-sex loving relationships damage those involved in them? Can the Church give compelling reasons to believe that it really would be better for all lesbian and gay Christians to live alone, without the joy of intimate touch, without hearing a lover's voice when they go to sleep or awake? Is it really better for lesbian and gay teenagers to despise themselves and endlessly pray that their very personalities be reconstructed so that they may experience romance like their straight friends? ...All appeal to "what the Bible says" are ideological and problematic...The texts don't speak...Texts do not interpret themselves; they must be interpreted by human beings...Even using the same methods of historical research, biblical scholars are able to offer widely divergent, even mutually contradictory, readings of the same text.
(So) rather than expecting the answer to come from a particular method of reading the Bible...we (need to) ask the question that must be asked: What is the loving thing to do?"
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