Member Since: 5/27/2016
Posts: 4,241
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Quote:
VICE: Was Jesus Christ gay?
Bob Shore-Goss: I would hope he is. I would project that he is. For my own spirituality, I would love to jump into bed with Jesus. At the very least, Jesus was queer. That is to say: He broke the rules of his culture, of heteronormativity. He subverted masculinities and gender codes in his culture. Queer doesn't necessarily mean sexual orientation, but it can include that. St. Paul, I would say, would probably be described as a closeted homosexual today, but they didn't have those words at the time.
Does Jesus himself ever address that?
As a matter of fact, one of Jesus's miracles is the healing the Centurion's boy. It's in Matthew and Luke. Matthew uses the word "pais"—you get the word pederasty from it, it means youth—to describe this boy, who is essentially a concubine to the Centurian. It's an erotic relationship. He comes to Jesus and asks for his boy to be healed. And Jesus asks if he should heal him, and he says, "I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof, but say the word and my boy will be healed." Jesus says about the faith of the Centurion, who is in a homoerotic relationship, that "there is no greater faith than I've encountered in Israel."
What's great about that is that every time you go to communion on Sunday, millions of Catholics say, "Lord, I'm not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." They're uttering this homoerotic phrase that was uttered by a Centurion in an actual homosexual relationship with a youth. We've just sanitized that and forgotten those sort of things in the meantime. But a church of the second century would understand that this is a homosexual relationship and it wasn't a big deal.
So what evidence is there in the bible of Jesus's homosexuality?
There's hints of it, and then there's readings into it. The hints come from John's Gospel with the "beloved disciple." He and Jesus have an intimate relationship, although there are questions as to who the disciple actually is. Anyhow, the beloved disciple is lying on the chest of Jesus at the last supper and is supposedly in his "inner tunic," which is what we would call underwear today. It's a very intimate gesture, and it's a special gesture of affection between the two.
I would imagine Jesus loved all of his disciples, I mean he told everyone to love their neighbor. So, singling out a particular person as "beloved" seems significant.
Yes. Jesus only calls one other person beloved and it is Lazarus. There was also an excerpt that was discovered in the 1960s by a professor of history and ancient studies, Morton Smith, a very good scholar. He found an inscription that hints at a secret gospel, that people are dating back to sometime in the late part of the first century. There is a fragment that describes a naked boy who comes to Jesus very late, and spends the night for an "initiation." The fragment has been disputed, of course. But what this has to say is that there was some sort of homoerotic relationship, a love relationship.
But if Jesus was gay, and he was perfect, then really it's only the gay people that are going to heaven, right? That's so deliciously ironic.
You know, I think there's a greater picture about how universal Jesus is. Jesus had sexuality. I used to think that everything about Jesus was perfect. Then in my first year of school, I was reading a book by John A.T. Robinson, an Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar, The Human Face of God, and there was a little footnote there that really disturbed me. It said that Jesus farted. And I said, "Oh my god!" And then I thought, Well, OK. He was human. And that led to, "If he was also human, did he have an erection at night? Did he have a nocturnal emission? All males experience that." So that was kind of an eroding of my sort of Catholic fundamentals around Jesus. And I went the next step by saying, "Was Jesus sexual?" And then, "With whom?" Then I thought, "Does it really matter?" And I think it does.
If Jesus was fully human, he must have been fully erotic. That would mean that sexuality was a positive thing, because we need to reclaim the fact that sexuality is a great and good thing, whatever sexuality that you are. So, you see where I'm coming from? I want to say that all sexualities are an original blessing because we're made in the image of God.
Was Jesus a top or a bottom?
Versatile.
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http://www.vice.com/read/was-jesus-gay-702
Do you agree with the article? Is Jesus gay?
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it doesn't freaking matter geez go outside people.
