No one knows for sure why Zack chose to take his own life. But in the course of preparing for his service, I began to learn about the special vulnerability of gay youth. I learned, for example, that one third of all teen suicides are believed related to issues of sexual identity. And that gay teens are three times more likely to commit suicide than straight teens.

This sparked a conversion for me. Even before this experience, I'd been sympathetic to the liberation movements of sexual minorities. But the issues had pretty well stayed in my head. What my Salt Lake experience did for me was to drive the issues deeper -- down into my heart and soul.

In Utah, Unitarian Universalist churches serve as refuges for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. While there, I got to hear the stories of many of them, including those in loving, committed, same-sex relationships. In a way that was very immediate, I learned about the damage done when people are repeatedly told that they are unacceptable -- that their way of loving is, at best, second-class. I also learned a lot about anti-gay violence: it was while I was in Utah that Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming, the next state over.

Last week, Tom Wintle addressed the question of "gay weddings." In doing so he covered a wide area -- the personal, the practical, and the theological. This morning, my focus will be both more specific and less so.

On the side of "less specific", I don't intend to address the question of same-sex marriage -- though you'll probably figure out where I stand -- but rather to look at the more general question of human rights. On the side of "more specific", I want to make an inquiry of the Bible -- to unpack what it says, and what it doesn't say, about homosexuality.

Why is this important? Let me tell you a story. Some of you may remember the 1978 murder of Charlie Howard -- a young gay man, a Unitarian Universalist, who was thrown off a bridge in Portland, Maine. Novelist Bette Greene set out to write a fictional account of his murder, and in connection with this she interviewed 400 young men who had been sent to prison for violence against gay men and lesbians.

Of all these men, only a few of them expressed any remorse at all. In fact, many of them told her that they were justified in their actions because of their religious beliefs. Homosexuality was wrong, it was against the Bible. One of the young men told Bette Greene that homosexuals represented Satan and the Devil. How did he know? His pastor said so.

Now, religiously based prejudice doesn't always result in violence. But it does tend to create a climate in which acts of hatred become acceptable. It's analogous to Christian religious attitudes against Judaism -- they aren't quite the same as anti-semitism, but they create a climate where anti-semitism can flourish. In a book about the Holocaust, Daniel Goldhagen concluded that religious attitudes against Judaism created "cultural permission" for Hitler's murder of the Jews.

I believe that people of faith are called to counteract that climate of hatred, that "cultural permission" for violence. It is what the Holy One requires of us. We're called to proclaim an alternative vision, using all the tools at our disposal. And I'm convinced that one of those tools is to deal with the Bible head on. It's not the only tool we have, but it can be a powerful one.

The late David Eaton was a Unitarian Universalist minister, an African-American, who studied with Howard Thurman at BU. David liked to quote Thurman, that "liberals need to know the Bible even better than conservatives do." This is good strategy; it helps us engage people in conversation.

For instance, maybe you're in a discussion with a fundamentalist friend. Maybe you'd like to open this person's mind, just a little. Since this person knows and trusts you, you might even have a chance of succeeding. Which argument will be more persuasive? To say, "Well, I don't really believe in the Bible?" Or to say, "I've read the Bible, too, and here's what I think it's really about."

The Bible is so often invoked to justify oppression of gay men and lesbians, that many people assume that that's just the way it is -- that the Bible condemns homosexuality and that's that. It leaves us in the position of accepting one and rejecting the other -- of acquiescing in anti-gay prejudice or of throwing the Bible onto the scrap heap. Is there a way to embrace Bible AND to combat oppression? I think there is.

To approach any passage in the Bible, we need to ask two basic questions. First, we need to ask, "What did this passage mean to the people who wrote it?" What was the writer trying to say? What was he or she wrestling with? And what was the historical context?

Once we have an idea of what the writers had in mind, then we still have to decide what the passage means to us. And that involves a whole range of questions. Does the passage apply to our situation today? Does the Biblical context have anything to do with us? Is the passage consistent with things we've learned since the Bible was put together? And is it consistent with a larger ethical framework -- including the Bible's own ethical framework?

It's helpful to remember that the Bible does not speak with one voice. It didn't go straight from the mouth of God to one person's ear. In fact, it's not really a book -- it's a library, written by many people over a long period of time. With this in mind, let's look at the Biblical passages that deal specifically with homosexuality.

To hear some people talk, you'd think that the Biblical writers were totally preoccupied -- with sexuality in general and with homosexuality in particular. You might think that the Bible was full of long passages, fulminating on the topic.

In fact, the Bible says very little! Here we have a collection of 63 books and pamphlets, with some 1500 pages, written over a period of 2000 years. And how many passages do you think it contains on homosexuality? Well, there are seven. That's right -- seven. Many fewer than on economic justice, many fewer than on love.

So let's go ahead and unpack them. One caution is in order, though: doing so means we'll be looking at some things that aren't usually discussed in church. So I ask your forgiveness in advance, and please remember -- I didn't make this up! It's all in the Good Book.

Five of the seven passages are in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Two of the five are prohibitions against male temple prostitution -- in Deuteronomy (Deut. 23:17-18) and the First Book of Kings (1 Kings 14:24, see also 15:12 and 22:46). But these two don't really count, since the Bible takes a dim view of female prostitution, too. So now we're left with three. These consist of two verses in the "Holiness Codes" of the Book of Leviticus, (Lev. 18:22 and 20:13), and also the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen.19:1-29).

What about the two passages from Leviticus? They're practically identical to each other, part of a legal code that contains over 600 laws. The stronger of the two says, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death."

Well, that's heavy. And it seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, maybe not. Let's look at the context. This passage is embedded in a list of "abominations", all of which carry the death penalty. They include adultery, incest -- and cursing one's mother and father. If we're going to seize on one of these, shouldn't we take the whole lot?

While we're at it, we probably should throw in some of the other violations of the Holiness Codes. These include knowing a menstruating woman "in the Biblical sense." Eating sacrificial meat on the third day. Crossbreeding animals. Sowing fields with two kinds of seed. Wearing garments of two different materials. Wearing tattoos. Trimming beards. You get the idea.

The Holiness Codes were meant to address some very specific needs. The ancient Israelites were struggling to populate the land, so fertility was everything. They were also engaged in the task of nation building, and struggling to forge a distinct identity. In short, their situation was vastly different from ours. We can try to understand what these people were trying to do, without being bound by it ourselves.

The one remaining Old Testament passage is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-29). We all know what that's about, don't we? Well again, maybe not.

In the 1980s, a scientist who was also a lay theologian gave a keynote address to a convocation of government scientists. Here's how he began:

"I have come to Washington today with a heavy heart, for I am convinced that there are sodomites in high places in government. I am convinced that both houses of Congress have many sodomites in them, the President's cabinet is full of them, and I sadly believe that the President himself regularly practices sodomy."

Well! Now he had their attention!! He went on:

"Now I want to tell you what sodomy is. The clearest biblical definition of this sin is not found in the Genesis story but rather in the prophet Ezekiel: 'This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy' (Ezek. 16:49). That, my friends, is sodomy -- it is social injustice, inhospitality to the stranger."

So how did the "sin of Sodom" come to be identified with same-sex love? The story centers around a disturbing incident of attempted gang rape -- the men of Sodom against Lot's guests, who are angels in disguise. But it makes absolutely no sense to identify homosexual rape with all same-sex relations. Like any rape, it has more to do with domination and control than with sexuality. In fact, homosexual rape is often committed by heterosexual men, most notoriously in prisons.

Let's move on to the Christian scriptures, the New Testament. If anything, they say even less than the Old Testament. Most significantly, there is nothing at all from Jesus! Some years ago, the UUA put out a pamphlet. The title page said "What Jesus had to say about homosexuality." Inside, it was blank.

In the rest of the New Testament, there are exactly two passages on the subject, and both are found in the letters of Paul. In First Corinthians, Paul issues a laundry list of people who "will not inherit the kingdom of God", and the list includes "sodomites." (I Cor. 6:9-10. A very similar passage occurs in Timothy, but it seems to be a copy from Paul.) The other passage is in Romans (Rom 1:26-27), in which Paul speaks disparagingly of men or women being "consumed with passion" for people of the same sex.

Once again, context is everything. First of all, in Paul's world, there doesn't seem to have been any concept of homosexual orientation, or homosexual nature. Like all Biblical writers, he assumed that everyone was naturally heterosexual, and that same-sex behavior was "unnatural." Now we know differently.

Second, it's important for us to know that the only homosexual behavior Paul knew about was exploitive. Scholarship indicates that in the Greco-Roman world of the early church, there was only one basic model of homosexuality, and that was pederasty, the sexual use of boys by adult males.

This is what Paul was writing against. He didn't say anything about loving committed relationships between consenting adults because he didn't know about them! Peter Gomes of Harvard's Memorial Church speaks to this: "[Paul] cannot be condemned for that ignorance, but neither should his ignorance be an excuse for our own."

I return to my sermon title: What does the Bible really say about same-sex love? In other words, what does it say about loving, committed, respectful, mutual relationships between consenting adults? Of course it's up to us to judge for ourselves -- but here's what I believe:

On one level I agree that the Bible doesn't say anything about loving, committed, same-sex relationships, because it doesn't know about them. But at a deeper level, I believe the Bible has a lot to say. That is, it has as much to say about same-sex relationships as it does about opposite sex relationships. Walter Wink puts it this way, "The Bible doesn't really have a sexual ethic. What it has is a love ethic." In its love ethic, it speaks in one voice to all of us.

At its deepest level, the Bible doesn't extol a narrow definition of sexual virtue. More often than not, it warns against self-righteousness.

It doesn't lift up ritual purity. Rather, it demands equity for the poor and oppressed, and says that the outcaste is our neighbor.

It doesn't ask us, "Do you go to the right church?" It asks instead, "Did you feed the hungry? And did you make peace with your brother or sister?"

It invites us into the "kingdom of heaven" -- a banquet table set for all.

And it asks us to love one another -- because love is of God, and God is love.

FOR FURTHER READING

Gomes, Peter J., The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart. New York: William Morrow and Company 1996.

Nelson, James B., Body Theology. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press 1992.

Nelson, James B., Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Augburg Publishing House 1978.