Everyone who uses the Bible does so selectively. The Bible is too big to let us to do justice to every verse, too complex to allow equal weight to every passage. Selective reading and use is unavoidable.

But serious readers know that selective reading often results from the quest to find support for our views. If someone believes in predestination, certain parts of the Bible will loom large in their awareness, while other parts will be nearly invisible. One of the purposes of biblical scholarship is to counteract this quest and allow the Bible to speak what it will, even if ends up not supporting our views.

Take, for example, Leviticus 18. This chapter appears often in Christian discourse about LGBTQIA+ issues since it seems clear and simple. Indeed, it is clear and simple. There can be little doubt that it condemns male homosexual acts. (Female homosexual acts are curiously absent in the Bible, except for Romans 1, a fact that I will consider in a future post.) It calls such an act an abomination (תֹּועֵבָה, toebah). With this sort of clarity and simplicity, it is no wonder that it is one of the foundational texts of the traditional Christian view of sexuality.

What else does the Old Testament call an abomination? The list of abominable actions is quite mixed. It is easy to see why some things are abhorrent to God: “A haughty bearing, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a mind that hatches evil plots, feet quick to run to evil, a false witness testifying lies, and one who incites brothers to quarrel” (Proverbs 6:16-19).

In other cases, we wonder why God finds the act abominable:

• Marrying a woman from whom you had been previously divorced and who subsequently married another man (and then divorced him) (Deuteronomy 24:4). As Deuteronomy explains, the woman, having married the other man, “has been defiled.” Sexual intercourse with the new husband makes her taboo for the original husband. If they then remarry, the result is abhorrent to God. Although we today may not want to encourage serial divorce and remarriage, I doubt that many pastors would tell the couple wishing to remarry that they will be committing an abomination.
•  “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5). Are we really shocked these days if a woman wears male apparel? And what exactly is male apparel? This part of the law seems dead today, even among conservative Christians (I do remember when, years ago, our pastors spoke gravely to our youth group about the wrongness of the young ladies wearing jeans. Such a thing seems unlikely today). Today, many would be worried about a man wearing women’s clothing, but that may say more about our cultural expectations for men than for any concern for God’s sensibilities.
• Eating unclean, i.e., non-kosher food (Deuteronomy 14:3). Well, the New Testament has pretty much made this irrelevant for most Christians, so I think we can assume that God no longer finds it abominable.

So, some abominable things seem, well, truly abominable, while the abominable character of some other things appears doubtful. How then are serious readers of the Bible to decide what God finds abhorrent and what ancient people felt was abhorrent?

Here’s another consideration: As I acknowledged, Leviticus 18:22 is clear and simple. But then so is Lev. 18:19: “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness.” We have, within four verses, two utterly clear prohibitions. One proscribes male homosexual acts. The other outlaws sexual intercourse with a menstruous woman. I doubt that I am the first person in history to wonder why many Christians regard the former as God’s eternal law while ignoring (or being happily ignorant of) the latter.

One could argue that we can safely ignore the law against intercourse with a menstruous woman because this act is not called an abomination. This argument, however, fails to take into account the conclusion of chapter 18:

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled, and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations…. For whoever commits any of these abominations shall be cut off from their people. So keep my charge not to commit any of these abominations that were done before you and not to defile yourselves by them: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 18:24-30

These concluding verses make it clear that all of the misdeeds catalogued in chapter 18, including intercourse with a menstruous woman, come under the heading of abominable acts.

And, it is not as though this prohibition were a peculiarity of Leviticus. The prophet Ezekiel was also exercised about it:

If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right—if he does not … lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman during her menstrual period… such a one is righteous; he shall surely live, says the Lord God.

Ezekiel 18:5-9

These considerations point to an inescapable conclusion: the fact that male homosexual acts are termed abominable does not in itself tell us why Leviticus 18:22 has acquired the importance that it possesses today. The Old Testament regards other deeds as abominable that even conservative Christians today do not worry much about. If the use of abomination doesn’t explain this importance, what does?

Part of the explanation lies in the fact that, unlike the prohibition of intercourse with a menstruous woman, the law against same-sex sex reappears in the New Testament, notably in Romans 1. I plan to examine this passage in a future post.

However, another part of the explanation lies in the tendency that we all share to latch onto whatever supports our views and to politely ignore whatever does not. Traditionalists, convinced that same-sex sex is contrary to God’s will, seize Leviticus 18:22 and elevate to prominence. Unconcerned (for a variety of reasons) with intercourse with menstruous women, their eyes pass over Leviticus 18:19, consigning it to history’s dustbin of cultural irrelevancy.