SEX, RELIGION & MYTH:

By Donal Norton

a book review in dialogue form

JIMMY AND I were having one of them out unto us, that we may know

our periodic bull-sessions in which

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we tend to run the gamut of human interests-that is from sex to sex. As usual, at a certain point, the moralistic aspect of the homophilic attitude comes up. For Jimmy, with a strong religious training, has an inability to equate his beliefs and training with his feelings and behavior.

"But God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ..." he began, and I quickly interrupted: "Now, where did you get that idea?" He looked at me with that astonishment we usually reserve for the moronic. "Why, you .know your old testament as well as I do ..."

"And that is just why I ask the question," I answered. "It's interesting that this point has come up, for I have come upon a new book which, I believe, lays that myth once and for all."

"Myth?" I could feel Jimmy's hackles rising to defend the Bible text.

. "I'm referring to the interpretation of the text," I said,, "not to the text itself—that would require a totally different approach. But the myth that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their homophilic activities..."

"But it says I interrupted him as I opened the King James version. "Let's look att the text. The pertinent passages are Genesis, chapter 19, verses 4-11. The particular point is in the following sentence: Where are the men which came in to thee tonight? Bring 10

." Jimmy started and

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them.'

"Now, the whole point of the text rests on the verb 'know.' The Elizabethan translators rather commonly used this verb to translate a number of words in the Hebrew which meant "coitus;' but the word in the original Hebrew text at this point means simply 'to have knowledge of. Now, surely, the cities were not destroyed because the citizens wished to know something about these strangers who had come into the town at night and who might, for all they knew, be hostile to the city. Then it is likely that the destruction had nothing to do with this particular point. An earlier verse does give us the reason: that is, that the reputations of the two cities was so great for sinning that God was forced to destroy them. There is no specific indication of what constituted their particular sins.

"But everybody knows that the sin was "and Jimmy stopped, recognizing the circular nature of his own argument.

"Exactly." I answered. "Everybody knows that they practiced sodomy. That is the same kind of argument that the school child used in his essay: 'Pigs are called pigs because they are so dirty. No, it won't do. The term was derived from the supposed sin of the city, and that supposition was derived from a misinterpretation and a mis-translation. Once we can get this point out of the way we are in a better position to put our fingers on the real origin of our modern attitudes. It'

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simply goes to the Pauline period of Christian foundings and rests on the conflict between the new growing Christian faith, with its Judaic-moral background, as opposed to the pagan or heathen practices of the inhabitants of Asia Minor and Greece. "The Greek culture which blanketed this area was rather flagrantly homophilic. It was very easy then to make the indentification: Paganism equals Sin equals sex perversion. And this is largely what happened. Justinian and other early law codifiers, iden.ifying the church and the state, put the concepts into law. From that time until the present, sexual deviation has continued to be treated as a legal problem rather than, at the least, a moral one, or at the best, a psychological one.

"And that brings me to, this new book," I hurried on before Jimmy could break into my monologue. "It is HOMOSEXUALITY AND WESTERN CHRISTIAN TRADITION by an Engish clergyman, Dr. Derrick Sherwin Bailey.

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"It is the nature of a myth, and its accompanying moralities, that it is the last frontier to be conquered by rational enlightenment. Because myths are, by their very symbolic nature, related to the feeling level, and therefore are most apt to be taken for granted in a rational computation to be the 'self-evident truth' that is the earmark of an axiom. For this reason, Man must, tọ progress toward a greater rational. consciousness, question each belief and assumption which he uses as a crutch in his apparently blind stumbling through the life process. Man's troubles arise, primarily, in those areas where he does not question; and this applies to the individual as well as the species.

"Nowhere has the human group had greater difficulty in observing neutrally than in the feeling-attitude toward life which we label Religion. It is the nature of this subject that it be accepted on faith or by 'inner' conviction; and unfortunately, as any body of religious attitudes becomes accepted, a sacrosanct aura builds up around all beliefs and assumptions and ethics of the original formulation. That which began as an ethical function becomes, through this process, moralistic and ultimate-

It is always a relief to discover hat someone is attempting to keep ational in the welter of conflicting >pinions, prejudices, intolerance and hin facts which make up man's nowledge on the whole sexual subect. Kinsey's monumental "initially dogmatic. tudy' is moving in that direction; ind now, from England-and from a >ailiwick that we would least expect

› be realistic about such a subject—is ve have a worthwhile addition to 10 woefully small shelf of 'must' ooks.

"It may be questionable whether he mystery of sex created the taboos r vice versa; but there is little doubt hat through the ages and in innumrable cultures no activity of man as collected unto itself a greater ody of myths than has the physical spect of sex. Unfortunately, man's oralistic attitudes have been firmly rounded in the myths.

"In a Cosmos of change and apparent hostility toward Man's valiant effort to control it for use, there bound to develop a strong awareness of insecurity. Rational Man attempts to create his own security through knowledge: the greater part of mankind, however, tends to establish dogma-static rules, laws and Emily-Postisms-allegedly eternal in validity, which offer a false peace of mind. But the Cosmos changes, this we can be sure of; and Man, a fragment of the Cosmos, partaking of his genetic heritage, also changes; but the Ethic which was useful, Yesterday becomes, all 11

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