Читаем Right-wing Women полностью

For this cause God g a v e them up unto vile affections: fo r even their

women did change the natural use into that which is against nature; *

And likewise also the m en, leaving the natural use o f the w om an,

burned in their lust one tow ard another; men w ith men working that

which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence o f their

error which was meet. (Italics mine)

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; t

Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, t deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, convenant breakers, without natural

affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Who knowing the ju d gm en t o f God, that they which com mit such

things are w orthy o f death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in

them that do them . % (Italics mine)

Romans 1: 22-32

indicated by a footnote reference are slightly different in the Revised Standard Version and are perhaps clearer in meaning, as shown in the following notes.

* Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and men likewise gave up natural relations with women. . .

* To a base mind and to improper conduct.

XStrife.

§ Though they know' God’s decree that those who do such things deserve

to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

There is nothing like this in the Old Testament. According to

Maimonides:

Women are forbidden to engage in lesbian practices with one

another, these being the doings o f the land o f E gypt (Lev. 18: 3),

against which we have been warned. . . Although such an act

is forbidden, the perpetrators are not liable to a flogging, since

there is no specific negative commandment prohibiting it, nor

is actual intercourse of any kind involved here. Consequently,

such women are not forbidden for the priesthood on account of

harlotry, nor is a woman prohibited to her husband because of

it, since this does not constitute harlotry. It behooves the

court, however, to administer the flogging prescribed for disobedience, since they have performed a forbidden act. A man should be particularly strict with his wife in this matter, and

should prevent women known to indulge in such practices

from visiting her, and her from going to visit them . 1

I asked the minister how Christians who value obedience to God’s

literal word justified such a radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament. The New Testament, he said, was concealed in the Old Testament; nothing in it was really new in the sense of being original; the New Testament made God’s real meaning clear; the Jew s had become blind to the spirit of the law —enter the Holy Spirit

and the revealed word. I suggested that the anti-Jewish tone of

some of the New Testament might be considered new and that it

was possibly related to what I at least considered a new attitude

toward lesbians: Jew s and female homosexuals, politically united

by damnation for the first time. In Romans, Jew s are abandoned

by God the Father; the covenant of manhood, sealed by circumcision, loses its meaning:

For he is not a Jew , which is one outwardly; neither is that

circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

But he is a Jew , which is one inw ardly; and circumcision is