Modern Medicine, Homosexuality, and the Bible

Challenges of Being Simultaneously Gay or Lesbian and Spiritual and/or Religious: A Narrative Perspective

“…Beal (1994) addresses several major concerns that Bible advocates highlight as proof of the immorality of homosexuality and answers them with a different interpretation. He contends that committed gay relationships are equally as able to fulfill "God's design for creation" (p. 93).…”

“…Religious involvement usually means an external orientation with an external authority, which is often associated with Western traditions like Christianity, Judaism, and the Bible. It is from these institutions that homosexuality has come to be viewed as immoral and sinful (Barret & Barzan, 1996;Beal, 1994;Brooke, 1993;Court & Whitehead, 1996;Wagner et al, 1994).…”

Animality and Biblical Masculinities in Conflict: Moses and the Golden Calf (Exodus 32)

“…Thus, for example, characterizations of the crime of zoophilia abound in numerous current analyses (Aggrawal 2009), although they are often limited to the legal and religious consequences derived from that offence. Beal (1994, p. 92) relates this practice to gender politics only anecdotally, elucidating a link between sexual relations with animals and lesbianism. In line with both Haddox (2010), who notes the need to follow up on studies of biblical masculinity based on its intersection with other disciplines, and the posthumanist current developed by Wolfe that cultural transcriptions derive not only from humans but all living beings that may “count as a subject of ethical address” (2010, p. 29), it is worth enriching the interpretation of the social constructions of gender present in the Holy Scriptures by complementing it with animal studies and thus demonstrate how intimate contact between species in ancient cultures is amenable to building another parameter for measuring the masculinity or femininity of figures.…”