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mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Leviticus 18: 22).

This means sim ply that it is foul to do to other men what men

habitually, proudly, m anfully, do to women: use them as inanimate, em pty, concave things; fuck them into submission; subordinate them through sex. The abomination is in the meaning of the act: in a male-supremacist system, men cannot simultaneously be

used “as women” and stay powerful because they are men. The

abomination is also, perhaps most of all, in the consequences of the

act in a rigidly patriarchal tribal society: sexual rivalry among men

meant trouble, feuds, war. The Jews were a tribe perpetually at

war with others; they could not afford war among them selves. *

And from the real beginning—once outside of Eden— the Jew s

reckoned with the anarchistic evil of fratricide: Cain and Abel,

Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers— all were tragic stories

of brothers torn apart by jealous conflict over the blessing that

showed they were the beloved, and these struggles to be the bestloved had huge historical consequences for the Jew s. Actual carnal sex, the patriarchs recognized, would have made it worse, not better, intensified the conflict. Sexual acts among men threatened the social harmony on which the power of men depended, a social harmony made tenuous enough by the kind of sexual lust that male

*A more complex martial society, which the Hebrews became, could

more easily socially tolerate homosexual liaisons, which the Hebrews apparently did. See discussion of David and Jonathan, p. 134.

dominance produces: the lust for forced sex. Directing that lust

toward women, and trying to regulate which women, made the

lust produced by male dominance work in behalf of male dominance, not against it so that it would collapse of its own sexual weight. In the Hebrew system, adultery and some other sexual

transgressions of the familial pact were genuinely construed to be

as bad as male homosexuality. There is no special repudiation of

male homosexuality in the laws of Leviticus. There is no special

punishment for it, though the punishment is death. There is no

special characterization of the one who commits the act: he is not

different in kind or degree from those who break other sexual prohibitions and are judged to deserve death by stoning.

The fact that the Hebrews attributed no special significance to

the prohibition against male homosexuality in Leviticus and had no

strictly sexual repugnance for the act is revealed and underscored

by Maimonides’ explication of the law, which will no doubt astonish modern readers:

In the case of a man who lies with a male, or causes a male

to have connection with him, once sexual contact has been initiated, the rule is as follows: If both are adults, they are punishable by stoning, as it is said, Thou shalt not lie with a male

(Lev. 18: 22), i. e. whether he is the active or the passive participant in the act. If he is a minor, aged nine years and one day, or older, the adult who has connection with him, is punishable

by stoning, while the minor is exempt. I f the minor is nine years

old, or less, both are exempt. It behooves the court, however, to have the adult flogged for disobedience, inasmuch as he has

lain with a male, even though with one less than nine years of

age. 13 (Italics mine)

The Hebrews wanted the perpetuation of male dominance. A male

child under nine did not have male status. Sex with that male child

did not count as a homosexual act. Maimonides takes it on himself

to remind the court that the child is male—though not male

enough to warrant the real protection provided by capital punishment as a deterrent, which is what the death sentence was in the Hebrew system. The rules governing judgments of guilt were so

strict in actual practice that it is unlikely that capital punishment

could have been invoked for private, consensual sexual acts of any

sort. It was the intrusion of sex into the larger society that concerned the Hebrews. A male child under nine, at any rate, did not warrant that protection because he was not yet part of the ruling

class of men.