“You should not lie with a male as you do with a woman…” VaYikra 18:22
It is secularly heretical in the modern era to even question society’s acceptance and normalcy of polysexual behavior. Even discussing the topic puts one under an immediate glaring firestorm, as if there is nothing to question or to discuss. Indeed, in America 2017, the institutionalization of polysexual behavior is considered a basic human right. Case closed. Get with the program. Stay with the times.
Yet, this is truly no news; ancient Egypt, from where Jews emerged and escaped over 3,000 years ago, also normalized and publicized sexually liberal relationships. This is not remotely progressive in the strictest sense of the term. In polytheistic Egypt, there were no curtailed rights for those who openly practiced same-sex relationships. Indeed, the stigma was minimal if any, and even was openly sought out in this highly technologically advanced, human-worshipping society. In Egypt, Potiphar was referred to also as Potiphera, flaunting his bisexual nature. Ironically, the famous Yosef, who donned the rainbow coat, fought to ward off the romantic advance of both Potiphar’s wife and Potifar himself. Yosef’s valiant rejection of both the adultery and the bisexuality of his master’s home led him to years of dungeon-time in Pharaoh’s jail. Egypt’s only Jew, and guarantor for the entire Jewish people thereafter, was brutally punished for standing up to both adulterous and homosexual advances. This defined his early struggle of remaining a Jew in a foreign land.
Additionally, in classical Greece–the bastion of ration and intellectual prowess at the time–it was normal for a student and teacher to cohabitate amidst the pursuit of secular knowledge; nothing out of the ordinary there. The well groomed male figure was the town square idol of the day, amongst the wine and love gods. Again, some Hellenic Jews fell prey to Greek culture, but overall, preservation of heterosexual Jewish norms, amongst other Torah values, is what defined the Jewish people in the story of Hanukah. We still celebrate this rejection of Greek’s free-love culture. So what happened? Why did this behavior go back into the closet for so many years?
Answer: The Torah. After its translation to Greek, the Torah soon became the most widely followed book in the world, instilling the idea of a new morality based on the the Universal Oneness of the Infinite Creator. After initially rejecting Torah, the Romans adopted many of its tenets, granted, in their own interpretation and form. Yet with Torah abound, no act was random any more, and every aspect became intricately interconnected into one world unit. Each individual action affected every other. Each person suddenly became responsible for the wellbeing of the other; and it was the Law to care for the uncared for. Selfishness wasn’t an option after Torah came to the world over 3,300 years ago. Quite the opposite, indeed: selflessness was mandated by the Selfless Creator. Justice was legislated by the Ultimate Judge. The idea of One World Law was born. The ego was relegated to the back alley of the smoker. Even true open idol worship seemed to have nearly been wiped off the planet, after Torah. The pursuit of justice, truth and fairness–with its own permutations–thus, became second nature for advanced nations, based on Torah. None denied their source.
With all of those progressive goods the ‘pesky’ prohibitions against homosexuality, incest, adultery and bestiality tagged along. Perhaps many would view incest, adultery and incest still as a taboo, but, rest assured, the taboos are slowly eroding in Western thought.
America has thrown off the mantle of Torah based morality in many ways, but particularly in the polysexual arena, in an effort to ‘move forward.’ At this stage, homosexual, queer and transgender behaviors–even leading to marriage–are viewed in America, at large, even as a basic human right. It is even seen in many circles as progressive to formalize it, and its questioning is backwardly oppressive. Perhaps even the most liberal mind might even try to decouple and distinguish the prohibitions, yet this may be an exercise in the futile.
To truly test one’s opinion on this testy subject to the extreme, one might examine how he feels about this scenario: a teen mother tragically separates from her male child at birth, when she puts him up for adoption. She is heartbroken, and later, pregnant and single again, gets an abortion, not being able to handle the parting from another child. Yet, the original boy grows up 3 towns away from his biological mother, happily enjoying his foster family. The son goes to high school, college, graduate school, and becomes a well-paid professional. He goes away for vacation with some other single friends to a Caribbean island. His mother, still single, does the same with some of her friends. He is 25 years old. She is 39. They meet on the island. They have a drink, each unbeknownst to the other that they are intimately related. She is attractive. He is attractive. They are oddly attracted to one another, seeing something in one another that is irresistible. The mother and son have a date, then another, and later meet back at the mainland, back home, and date again. They never find out that they are related. The mother tells her son (each unaware of the relationship) that she cannot bear children, due to a past botched abortion. It doesn’t faze him. He loves her and asks her to marry him anyway. He says that they can adopt, and, indeed tells her that he was adopted, and was treated very well by his foster parents. The son is, in fact, a vocal advocate of adoption, given his positive experience. She is touched and infatuated even more, given her guilt for her past perceived abandonment of her only son. What can the rational secular purist say in this scenario? They love each other. They have no power inequity, having never lived together and they can’t have genetically challenged children anyway. Can a rational secular purist feel good about this marriage–biological mother and son? Let’s make it an estranged father and adult son and have them both gay. Or two brothers. Or any of these combinations, even living together from birth. Any problem? If there is, it would be interesting to hear the secular argument, where it is only ‘love that matters.’ Who loves you more than your mother or your sister? Not too many.
A rationalist cannot logically say that any of these consenting adult incestuous marriages are wrong, per se. Indeed, a secular purist must also cast away the Torah taboos, and allow one to marry whom one loves, as the mantra goes–no matter what. And perhaps the reality of dog-human marriage, which is legal in some part of Europe, should not faze the secular rational purist. Yet, is it safe to say that the above scenarios make most people feel uneasy? Why?
Certainly, the United States affords many opinions and the right to speak about them, as well as the freedom of people to live their lives as they see fit, so long as those behaviors do not hurt other people. For example, it is one’s right to smoke in one’s home, but not in a government building or hospital. Additionally, the government forces companies to put stark warnings about the dangers of cigarettes on the box and taxes them heavily to deter their use, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from someone from having a cigarette in one’s private space. The government discourages self-harm but doesn’t stop it entirely. This hearkens back to “the pursuit of happiness,” guaranteed in the Constitution.
Surely, everyone’s pursuit of happiness is different. Everyone has different preferences for food, favorite colors, clothing, religion and people with whom they associate more strongly. This is basic choice and characterizes individuality. And while no person should be oppressed in this country, one needs to examine whether the formalization and legitimization of gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, and other new normalities are a true expression of that pursuit of happiness.
Many advocates of gay marriage and gay behavior in general point to the idea that homosexuality is a natural proclivity, similar to heterosexual proclivities and attractions. Yet, what many may not admit is that sexual proclivities and preferences can indeed be coddled, directed and focused–as they are done every day. Surely, in the above scenario of mother-son marriage, if the son had from the start grown up in the biological mother’s home, the mother, a heterosexual would not have directed an ounce of her sexual attraction toward her son. If she did, she would be considered a child abuser, but what about when the son became older? He turned into an attractive adult, and she remained attractive herself. The son was also heterosexual. But each of them, perhaps unconsciously, diverted their sexual proclivities away from their biological relative. Conditioning? Nature? Even if it did pop into one or the other’s mind, it is immediately self-dispelled; the heterosexual attraction is diverted to other outside genetic reservoirs. No one needs to read the Torah to understand this dynamic. It is self-discouraged, as it is society discouraged. Sadly, the secular purist has little on which to lean on to discourage this relationship however. But, it is clear that one can and does re-direct his or her sexual energies toward non-parents, non-siblings and non-relatives, no matter what one considers one’s sexual orientation. Sexuality can be directed, and re-directed. Everyone does this constantly. If humans have lost control of their brain function, there is much to worry about.
In every society, men enjoy the company of other men, and women of women. Each understands the other much better than the opposite sex could ever do. Men are on the wavelength of men, women of women. It is natural to want to spiritually connect with the same sex, to talk, to learn, to sing, and even dance. The question really is whether that deep spiritual connection that same-sex relationships attain are morally reprehensible if translated into a sexual connection. The Torah is clear. Any spiritual proclivity of relationship building with other men, no matter how deep, should never translate to physical intimacy.
In the Torah, the only point of sexual relations is the unification of opposite ill-understood forces, male & female–give and take, externality and internality, even when conception can’t and doesn’t happen. The original human, a mixture of male and female, connected physically, then separated, only in order to rejoin again.
With careful thought, the human can reject the unipolar idea of ‘union of the similar,’ which never produces diverse results. The powerful mind that has control over the emotional non-thinking heart knows that the battery of the world doesn’t work by joining two positive poles. Rational naturalists should agree that humans follow the electromagnetic laws of nature and that opposites were created with a valid biological reason. If not, the purist needs to throw all the rules out, the baby with the bath water, and see what moral soup is left–or there are no morals.
Yes, there are natural proclivities and desires–like eating, sleeping, sexual contact–but those can always be directed in a fashion that doesn’t allow the biomechanical free-for-all that America–the world’s most powerful culture driver–is attempting to formalize and normalize. The term ‘LGBTQ’ has gained a new letter every few years, and is about to fully throw off the yoke of Torah, and add on an ‘I’. Animals are not far behind. This will not only bring the world animus back to Roman circus, phallic Greece and mummified Egypt, but also streamline a full rejection of the Unification of opposites–the penultimate goal of humankind.