Liberating Sexuality

Justice between the Sheets

Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780827221802
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

For two thousand years, Christianity has been wrong about sex. To this day Christians grapple with defining gender, sexism, heterosexism, and what constitutes healthy sex. Miguel A. De La Torre-noted ethicist and scholar on the intersection of religion with race, class, gender, and sexuality-shines new light on these intimate issues in Liberating Sexuality, a provocative compilation of his writings that apply justice to the most private parts of our lives.

Grounded in biblical scholarship, Liberating Sexuality will help you discover new ways of thinking about God beyond gender, heterosexism, masturbation, and many other topics. Wrestle with controversial topics such as an androgynous Jesus, ethical S&M, and confronting racism in one's sexual preference. Gain a critical understanding of how others view their own sexuality in ways you could never before comprehend.

PART ONE

Healthy Sex

1

Testimony on the Blessing of Sex¹

Genesis 1:28

To indulge in intercourse without intending children is to outrage nature.

—CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA²

I must disfigure that face which contrary to God’s commandment I have painted with rouge, white lead, and antimony. I must mortify that body which has been given up to many pleasures. I must make up for my long laughter by constant weeping. I must exchange my soft linen and costly silks for rough goat’s hair. I who have pleased my husband and the world in the past, desire now to please Christ.

—ST. PAULA (347–404)³

During creation, God formed humans in God’s own image with the capacity to engage in sexual activity. Once humans were created, God’s first instruction to them was to have sex! Not only is a sexual relationship the first gift given to humans by God, it was a gift that God blessed and declared “good” (1:31). But to say that sex is good is an understatement. Sex is great! It is great because it fosters intimacy within relationships that serves as the basis for healthy and just communities. As such, the first words God addresses to humans, the very first instruction given—even before forbidding eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil— was to engage in sex. God instructs this new human creation to “be fruitful and multiply,” a goal that can only be achieved through copulation. Procreation allows humans to participate and continue in God’s creation, for like God, humans have the ability to create new life. Nevertheless, pronouncements that the sole purpose of sexual intercourse is reproduction are both problematic and damaging. It would be in error to conclude that reproduction is sex’s sole and ultimate purpose; for while sex is the source for future generations, it is also the source of extreme pleasure.

And yet, since the founding of Christianity, an attempt has been made to equate sex with the forbidden fruit. For Augustine, sex became the reason for Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden. Adam covered his genitals with fig leaves not out of a sense of modesty, but rather because Adam, according to Augustine, was sexually aroused. By linking shame and sex to the Christian doctrine of the Fall, Augustine argued that the aroused sexual organs of humans signify human will toward the flesh, over and against the spirit.⁴ The erect male sex organ symbolized man’s rebellion to God, hence, for Augustine, redefining sex as the cause for expulsion from Paradise. To desire or participate in sex today links us to Adam, who chose the things of this world rather than the spiritual realm of God.

Augustine’s interpretation of the role sex played in the garden reduced sex to an act involving nothing more than the genitals, with an emphasis on whom one engages in sex and the sexual act itself. Sexual ethics is reduced to a fear-driven discourse. Have sex and you will get someone pregnant, you will die of AIDS, you will catch some sexually transmitted disease, or, if female, you will get pregnant or be seen as a “fallen” woman unable to marry a godly man. Yet this verse in Genesis states that sex is blessed by God. Rather than a “just say no,” knee-jerk reaction to sexuality, this verse encourages creation’s focus on relationships where sex can and should occur.

Frustrating our ability to interpret a pro-sex, pro-body reading of this verse is that for the past two thousand years Christianity created a false dichotomy between the sacred (spirit) and what was defined as profane (the body). Crucial to Christian thought is the concept that the soul and the flesh struggle against each other for supremacy of the individual. Early Christian writers were highly influenced by this antagonistic body/soul dualism, stressing the danger new believers faced if they succumbed to the mortal body, as opposed to the immortal soul. That which is of the flesh was conceived as being corruptible, while only that which is of the spirit could expect to inherit the eternal. Or as St. Paul reminded us, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:50). Even though some will argue that the way Paul defined flesh and spirit is not necessarily supportive of the argument in favor of the flesh-spirit divide, this divide still became a salient characteristic of Christianity, with Paul’s words being appropriated to justify this divide.

This understanding of a flesh-spirit divide is foreign to the Hebrew Bible; nevertheless, it became a prominent feature of early Christianity through the influence of Neoplatonic thought and stoic philosophy and its proclivity for devaluing the body. The emphasis on obtaining inner peace through the human will’s ability to control passions contributed to the overall pessimism regarding desire, specifically sexual desire. For the Stoics in particular, marriage became the means by which self-control was practiced. The rational reason for engaging in sex became procreation. While many modes of understanding gender and sexual reality developed during Christianity’s early years, the body/ soul cosmic split was among the most prevalent characteristics of that era. As early Christian scholar Tertullian succinctly stated: “Flesh is an earthly, spirit a heavenly, material.”⁵

To argue that the flesh is inherently sinful alienates believers from their bodies and, in turn, from their sexuality. Redemption came to be understood as a flight from the body—the material toward the spiritual—an understanding that continues to influence faith communities today. For those seeking spiritual purification, hope for spiritual wholeness was, and continues to be, found in the process of freeing oneself from the sinful influences of one’s body or for Christians, crucifying one’s sinful flesh to Jesus’ cross. Earthly pleasures like sex are forsaken in remembrance of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. What develops from this body/soul dichotomy is a very anti-body perspective, where the body, in and of itself, is evil. But contrary to the body/soul dichotomy constructed by Christianity, this verse stresses that God blesses sex and declares it good.

2

Unmasking the Biblical Justification of Sexism¹

As a field researcher conducting interviews in Patterson, New Jersey during the mid-1990s, I was responsible for observing church life in predominantly poor congregations. Part of my task was to interview Latina/o church members, specifically Christians who attended a Pentecostal church. I remember a particular interview I conducted with an elderly woman, probably in her eighties. In many northeastern Pentecostal churches, women are very careful about the way they dress. In many cases, skirts come down to the ankle (even during the summer) and shirt tops are baggy so as to conceal the upper curves of the female body. I asked her why she dressed in this matter. Without much thought she quickly responded, “So as not to tempt the men.” Frankly, I didn’t have the heart to tell this eighty-year-old woman that she need not worry about this. Nevertheless, what I found fascinating about her comment was the way she saw herself—that is, through the eyes of the men of her church. Her activities, including the way she dressed her body, were molded by this viewpoint. From the pulpit, for all of her life, she has heard men preach about the sinful nature of women’s bodies. It is the woman who leads men astray, so she must be hidden from sight. Pious Christian women impose upon themselves their own subjugation by dressing the way men expect them to dress so that these same holy men do not fall into temptation. In my mind’s eye I could just see her walking up to the female teenagers of the church to lecture them about their “improper” attire, thus maintaining a dress code established by men and perpetuated by the church women, who have been taught to see themselves only through the eyes of men.

For many churches, any not-biblical sanctioned sexual activity between men and women becomes the fault of the woman. How many times have you heard the same questions raised, at times by women, upon hearing of a rape? What was she wearing? What was she doing at that party? Why did she go out with those boys? How was she acting? Did she drink too much? What can you expect if she was asking for it? These questions, and many like them, underline a major component of patriarchy: women’s bodies are evil, and as such lead righteous men to sin, hence the Bible grants authority to these holy men to protect and confine female bodies from sin. For the good of the community, for the purity of women, men must rule, a concept justified by how some men read the biblical text.

Justifying Patriarchy

At seminary I attended a class where the professor would begin each session by asking the students to call out their favorite biblical verse. This being a class full of future ministers and theologians, you can imagine the types of verses that were typically called out—John 3:16, Psalm 23, Romans 3:23, and Ephesians 2:8, to name a few. One day the professor looked in my direction and asked what was my favorite verse. Without hesitating I responded Genesis 2:25, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, yet they were not ashamed.” I was not trying to be funny. I am attracted to this verse because I can find no better depiction of God’s intention concerning human relationships, relationships where participants stand totally vulnerable before each other yet feel no shame. Nonetheless, the Bible is seen as patriarchal by many women who read the text.

Any examination of the biblical justification of patriarchy should begin with Genesis: “To the woman [God] said, ‘I will greatly increase your sorrow in your childbearing, you shall bear children in sorrow, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you’” (3:16). Reading through the eyes of patriarchy, the passage is quite straightforward. God has ordained men to rule over women. Historically, men have always cited the Bible to counteract women’s attempts to advance in society. The Bible has been used to condemn female actions toward empowerment as unbiblical. In particular, many men have interpreted Genesis 3:16 to mean that because women first ate the mango (or apple) from the forbidden tree, they were punished by God. Their eternal sentence was to be subservient to men.

Yet, the words spoken by God in Genesis 3:16 occurred after the fall of humanity, after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, after the entrance of sin into the cosmic story. The question that should be raised is if it is God’s will for women to be ruled over by men, or if it is God simply foretelling what the consequences of sin will be for humanity, specifically women, in this verse. The next two verses might shed some light upon this question. In them, God turns to man and curses the ground, stating that from now on man would have to till the cursed soil, only to produce “thorns and thistles.” The garden, and the effortless fruits it produced, will be gone. Only through the sweat of the brow will Adam be fed. Again, does this mean that it is the will of God for Adam and all of his descendants to work and labor in sorrow? No, of course not. It is God’s will for Adam to continue living in the garden, being one with his wife and his Creator.

By the same token we ask if it is God’s will that women be ruled over by men. Again, using the same reasoning, the answer must be no. It is God’s will to return women to the garden, where “they were both naked, yet they were not ashamed,” where the relationship between the man and woman was vulnerable, yet safe, because no power relationship existed between them. Genesis 3:16 does not describe God’s curse on women, any more than Genesis 3:17 does not describe God’s curse on men. In both of these verses, God is foretelling the consequences of sin. Both the man and woman wanted to be like God, so they ate the mango; both desired the power that came with being God. Instead, they have fallen to a state where social structures are created to deny them the power they sought: subservience to economic structures (agriculture as a way of surviving) for men, and sexist relational structures for women. It is not that God ordains, approves of, or condones these new structural relationships, but rather, that their development is part of the natural evolution of humanity’s fall.

But doesn’t Genesis 2:18 say that the woman was created for the man to be his helpmate? “And Yahweh God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make for him a helper suited for him.’” The Hebrew word used in the text, ezer, usually translated as helpmate, comes from the root word meaning “support” or “help.” But the usage of ezer does not imply subordination or inferiority for the one who is doing the helping. For example, in Exodus 18:4, God is referred to as the “God of my fathers [who] was my helper.” In Psalm 10:14, the psalmist proclaims God as being the “helper of the orphans,” and in Psalm 118:7, the psalmist declares, “The Lord is with me, God is my helper.” In none of these cases, nor in any of the other places throughout the Bible where God is referred to as our helper, does ezer imply subservience. Why then do we assume it when ezer is used to describe the woman? Several female biblical scholars insist that a better translation of ezer, as used in the Genesis passage, is the word “companion,” which connotes woman as a counterpart to man.

What then is God’s desire for the relationship that should exist between men and women? For this, we turn to the first creation story, specifically Genesis 1:27.² “And God created the adam in God’s image, in God’s image God created it, male and female God created them.” Most Bibles translates the Hebrew word adam as “man,” hence rendering the verse as “God created man in God’s image.” Yet, the word adam can have three different meanings. It can mean Adam, a proper name, in this case, Adam the husband of Eve. Or the word adam can be translated as man, a male-gendered individual, as opposed to the word “woman.” Finally, the word can also mean mankind, as in all of humanity.

If we translate adam to mean a man, as opposed to a woman, we must ask if this created man was both male and female? No, of course not.³ What if we were to translate adam to mean humanity? Is humanity male and female? Yes, both males and females make up humanity. Thus, I suggest that God created humanity in God’s own image, male and female God created them. The image of God is both male and female, for both sexes find their model in the Deity.

Both Jews and Christians have historically proclaimed that their God has no bodily form, hence no gender. The masculine pronoun attributed to God has less to do with “correct” theological thought, and more to do with the patriarchal bias of biblical writers who attribute a “he” to God. Yet, to solely refer to God in the masculine limits and confines the mystery that is God to a human-made image. God is both male and female and thus God is neither male or female.

If God created male and female in God’s own image, then both the man and the woman are equal within God’s eyes because both are patterned after God. Women cease to be a copy of a man, an appendix to a story centered on the man’s need for companionship. The fall of humanity, due to Adam and Eve’s action, changed this mutually equal relationship. One of the consequences of sin was its manifestation in the form of sexism, where the woman ceased to be a person in the image of God and became instead a possession to be owned by the man. The transformation of women into objects for possession is reflected throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The tenth commandment demonstrates how a woman, like a house, slave, ox, or donkey, is a possession of the male.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male slave, or his slave girl, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything which belongs to your neighbor. (Ex. 20:17)

Women as possessions were a means by which a man’s honor within society could be lost. The taking of another man’s woman brought shame to the household and family name of the man whose possession was taken. Consequently, adultery only applied to the married or betrothed woman who engaged in sexual relationships with anyone other than her husband. If a woman was caught in the act of adultery, she could face a death sentence. John 8:3–11 tells the story of a woman, “caught in the very act of committing adultery,” who was brought to Jesus. It is interesting to note that the man with whom she was adulterous was not called to task. Why wasn’t he also brought before Jesus? Because it was her sin, not his.

In the He...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One: Healthy Sex
• Part Two: Sex And The Divine
• Part Three: Engaging In Sex
• Part Four: Sexísm
• Part Five: Sexual Abuse
• Part Six: CONFRONTING SEXISM
• Part Seven: CONFRONTING HETROSEXISM
• Part Eight: RACISM and ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION
• Part Nine: CONFRONTING RACISM and ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION
• Notes
• Index
• Scripture Index