Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality

Subject:	Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality
Date:	Sat, 6 Feb 2010 10:16:09 -0800 (PST)

Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality
DENNIS PRAGER

Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied
in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world
can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by
Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.

This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital
bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened
male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the
possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the
arduous task of elevating the status of women.

It is probably impossible for us, who live thousands of years after
Judaism began this process, to perceive the extent to which
undisciplined sex can dominate man's life and the life of society.
Throughout the ancient world, and up to the recent past in many parts
of the world, sexuality infused virtually all of society.

Human sexuality, especially male sexuality, is polymorphous, or
utterly wild (far more so than animal sexuality). Men have had sex
with women and with men; with little girls and young boys; with a
single partner and in large groups; with total strangers and immediate
family members; and with a variety of domesticated animals. They have
achieved orgasm with inanimate objects such as leather, shoes, and
other pieces of clothing, through urinating and defecating on each
other (interested readers can see a photograph of the former at select
art museums exhibiting the works of the photographer Robert
Mapplethorpe); by dressing in women's garments; by watching other
human beings being tortured; by fondling children of either sex; by
listening to a woman's disembodied voice (e.g., "phone sex"); and, of
course, by looking at pictures of bodies or parts of bodies. There is
little, animate or inanimate, that has not excited some men to orgasm.
Of course, not all of these practices have been condoned by societies
--- parent-child incest and seducing another's man's wife have rarely
been countenanced --- but many have, and all illustrate what the
unchanneled, or in Freudian terms, the "un-sublimated," sex drive can
lead to.

De-sexualizing God and religion

Among the consequences of the unchanneled sex drive is the
sexualization of everything --- including religion. Unless the sex
drive is appropriately harnessed (not squelched --- which leads to its
own destructive consequences), higher religion could not have
developed. Thus, the first thing Judaism did was to de-sexualize God:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" by his will,
not through any sexual behavior. This was an utterly radical break
with all other religions, and it alone changed human history. The gods
of virtually all civilizations engaged in sexual relations. In the
Near East, the Babylonian god Ishtar seduced a man, Gilgamesh, the
Babylonian hero. In Egyptian religion, the god Osiris had sexual
relations with his sister, the goddess Isis, and she conceived the god
Horus. In Canaan, El, the chief god, had sex with Asherah. In Hindu
belief, the god Krishna was sexually active, having had many wives and
pursuing Radha; the god Samba, son of Krishna, seduced mortal women
and men. In Greek beliefs, Zeus married Hera, chased women, abducted
the beautiful young male, Ganymede, and masturbated at other times;
Poseidon married Amphitrite, pursued Demeter, and raped Tantalus. In
Rome, the gods sexually pursued both men and women.

Given the sexual activity of the gods, it is not surprising that the
religions themselves were replete with all forms of sexual activity.
In the ancient Near Fast and elsewhere, virgins were deflowered by
priests prior to engaging in relations with their husbands, and sacred
or ritual prostitution was almost universal. Psychiatrist and sexual
historian Norman Sussman describes the situation thus: "Male and
female prostitutes, serving temporarily or permanently and performing
heterosexual, homosexual oral-genital, bestial, and other forms of
sexual activities, dispense their favors in behalf of the temple."
Throughout the ancient Near East, from very early times, anal
intercourse formed a part of goddess worship. In ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and Canaan, annual ceremonial intercourse took place
between the king and a priestess. Women prostitutes had intercourse
with male worshippers in the sanctuaries and temples of ancient
Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Corinth, Carthage, Sicily, Egypt,
Libya, West Africa, and ancient and modern India. In ancient Israel
itself, there were repeated attempts to re-introduce temple
prostitution, resulting in repeated Jewish wars against cultic sex.
The Bible records that the Judean king Asa "put away the qdeshim
[temple male prostitutes] out of the land"; that his successor,
Jehosaphat put away out of the land ...the remnant of the qdeshim that
remained in the days of his father Asa"; and that later, King Josiah,
in his religious reforms, "broke down the houses of the qdeshim." In
India until this century, certain Hindu cults have required
intercourse between monks and nuns, and wives would have intercourse
with priests who represent the god. Until it was made illegal in 1948,
when India gained independence, Hindu temples in many parts of India
had both women and boy prostitutes. In the fourteenth century, the
Chinese found homosexual Tibetan religious rites practiced at the
court of a Mongol emperor. In Sri Lanka through this century, Buddhist
worship of the goddess Pattini has involved priests dressed as women,
and the consort of the goddess is symbolically castrated.

Judaism placed controls on sexual activity. It could no longer
dominate religion and social life. It was to be sanctified --- which
in Hebrew means "separated" --- from the world and placed in the home,
in the bed of husband and wife. Judaism's restricting of sexual
behavior was one of the essential elements that enabled society to
progress. Along with ethical monotheism, the revolution begun by the
Torah when it declared war on the sexual practices of the world
wrought the most far-reaching changes in history.

Inventing homosexuality

The revolutionary nature of Judaism's prohibiting all forms of non-
marital sex was nowhere more radical, more challenging to the
prevailing assumptions of mankind, than with regard to homosexuality.
Indeed, Judaism may be said to have invented the notion of
homosexuality, for in the ancient world sexuality was not divided
between heterosexuality and homosexuality. That division was the
Bible's doing. Before the Bible, the world divided sexuality between
penetrator (active partner) and penetrated (passive partner).

As Martha Nussbaum, professor of philosophy at Brown University,
recently wrote, the ancients were no more concerned with people's
gender preference than people today are with others' eating
preferences:

Ancient categories of sexual experience differed considerably from
our own... The central distinction in sexual morality was the
distinction between active and passive roles. The gender of the
object... is not in itself morally problematic. Boys and women are
very often treated interchangeably as objects of [male] desire. What
is socially important is to penetrate rather than to be penetrated.
Sex is understood fundamentally not as interaction, but as a doing of
some thing to someone...

Judaism changed all this. It rendered the "gender of the object" very
"morally problematic"; it declared that no one is "interchangeable"
sexually. And as a result, it ensured that sex would in fact be
"fundamentally interaction" and not simply "a doing of something to
someone".

To appreciate the extent of the revolution wrought by Judaism's
prohibiting homosexuality and demanding that all sexual interaction be
male-female, it is first necessary to appreciate just how universally
accepted, valued, and practiced homosexuality has been throughout the
world.

The one continuous exception was Jewish civilization --- and a
thousand years later, Christian civilization. Other than the Jews,
"none of the archaic civilizations prohibited homosexuality per se,"
Dr. David E. Greenberg notes. It was Judaism alone that about 3,000
years ago declared homosexuality wrong.

And it said so in the most powerful and unambiguous language it could:
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an
abomination." "And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both
of them have committed an abomination." It is Judaism's sexual
morality, not homosexuality, that historically has been deviant.

Greenberg, whose The Construction of Homosexuality is the most
thorough historical study of homosexuality ever written, summarizes
the ubiquitous nature of homosexuality in these words: "With only a
few exceptions, male homosexuality was not stigmatized or repressed so
long as it conformed to norms regarding gender and the relative ages
and statuses of the partners... The major exceptions to this
acceptance seem to have arisen in two circumstances." Both of these
circumstances were Jewish.

Bible truth

The Hebrew Bible, in particular the Torah (The Five Books of Moses),
has done more to civilize the world than any other book or idea in
history. It is the Hebrew Bible that gave humanity such ideas as a
universal, moral, loving God; ethical obligations to this God; the
need for history to move forward to moral and spiritual redemption;
the belief that history has meaning; and the notion that human freedom
and social justice are the divinely desired states for all people. It
gave the world the Ten Commandments, ethical monotheism, and the
concept of holiness (the goal of raising human beings from the animal-
like to the God-like). Therefore, when this Bible makes strong moral
proclamations, I listen with great respect. And regarding male
homosexuality --- female homosexuality is not mentioned --- this Bible
speaks in such clear and direct language that one does not have to be
a religious fundamentalist in order to be influenced by its views. All
that is necessary is to consider oneself a serious Jew or Christian.

Jews or Christians who take the Bible's views on homosexuality
seriously are not obligated to prove that they are not fundamentalists
or literalists, let alone bigots (though, of course, people have used
the Bible to defend bigotry). Rather, those who claim homosexuality is
compatible with Judaism or Christianity bear the burden of proof to
reconcile this view with their Bible. Given the unambiguous nature of
the biblical attitude toward homosexuality, however, such a
reconciliation is not possible. All that is possible is to declare: "I
am aware that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and I consider the
Bible wrong." That would be an intellectually honest approach. But
this approach leads to another problem. If one chooses which of the
Bible's moral injunctions to take seriously (and the Bible states its
prohibition of homosexuality not only as a law, but as a value --- "it
is an abomination"), of what moral use is the Bible?

Advocates of the religious acceptance of homosexuality respond that
while the Bible is morally advanced in some areas, it is morally
regressive in others. Its condemnation of homosexuality is one
example, and the Torah's permitting slavery is another. Far from being
immoral, however, the Torah's prohibition of homosexuality was a major
part of its liberation (1) of the human being from the bonds of
unrestrained sexuality and (2) of women from being peripheral to men's
lives. As for slavery, while the Bible declares homosexuality wrong,
it never declares slavery good.

Those who advocate religious acceptance of homosexuality also argue
that the Bible prescribes the death penalty for a multitude of sins,
including such seemingly inconsequential acts as gathering wood on the
Sabbath. Thus, the fact that the Torah declares homosexuality a
capital offense may mean that homosexuality is no more grave an
offense than some violation of the Sabbath. And since we no longer
condemn people who violate the Sabbath, why continue to condemn people
who engage in homosexual acts?

The answer is that we do not derive our approach toward homosexuality
from the fact that the Torah made it a capital offense. We learn it
from the fact that the Bible makes a moral statement about
homosexuality. It makes no statement about gathering wood on the
Sabbath. The Torah uses its strongest term of censure ---
"abomination" --- to describe homosexuality. It is the Bible's moral
evaluation of homosexuality that distinguishes homosexuality from
other offenses, capital or otherwise. As Professor Greenberg, who
betrays no inclination toward religious belief writes, "When the word
toevah ("abomination") does appear in the Hebrew Bible, it is
sometimes applied to idolatry, cult prostitution, magic, or
divination, and is sometimes used more generally. It always conveys
great repugnance" (emphasis added). Moreover, the Bible lists
homosexuality together with child sacrifice among the "abominations"
practiced by the peoples living in the land about to be conquered by
the Jews. The two are certainly not morally equatable, but they both
characterized a morally primitive world that Judaism set out to
destroy. They both characterized a way of life opposite to the one
that God demanded of Jews (and even of non-Jew --- homosexuality is
among the sexual offenses that constitute one of the "seven laws of
the children of Noah" that Judaism holds all people must observe).
Finally, the Bible adds a unique threat to the Jews if they engage in
homosexuality and the other offenses of the Canaanites: "You will be
vomited out of the land" just as the non-Jews who practise these
things were vomited out of the land. Again, as Greenberg notes, this
threat "suggests that the offenses were considered serious indeed."

Choose life

Judaism cannot make peace with homosexuality because homosexuality
denies many of Judaism's most fundamental principles. It denies life,
it denies God's expressed desire that men and women cohabit, and it
denies the root structure that Judaism wishes for all mankind, the
family.

If one can speak of Judaism's essence, it is contained in the Torah
statement, "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the
curse, and you shall choose life." Judaism affirms whatever enhances
life, and it opposes or separates whatever represents death. Thus, a
Jewish priest (cohen) is to concern himself only with life. Perhaps
alone among world religions, Judaism forbade its priests to come into
contact with the dead. To cite some other examples, meat (death) is
separated from milk (life); menstruation (death) is separated from
sexual intercourse (life); carnivorous animals (death) are separated
from vegetarian, kosher, animals (life). This is probably why the
Torah juxtaposes child sacrifice with male homosexuality. Though they
are not morally analogous, both represent death: one deprives children
of life, the other prevents their having life. This parallelism is
present in the Talmud: "He who does not engage in propagation of the
race is as though he had shed blood."

GOD'S FIRST DECLARATION about man (the human being generally, and the
male specifically) is, "It is not good for man to be alone." Now,
presumably, in order to solve the problem of man's aloneness, God
could have made another man or even a community of men. But instead
God solved man's aloneness by creating one other person, a woman ---
not a man, not a few women, not a community of men and women. Man's
solitude was not a function of his not being with other people; it was
a function of his being without a woman. Of course, Judaism also holds
that women need men. But both the Torah statement and Jewish law have
been more adamant about men marrying than about women marrying.
Judaism is worried about what happens to men and to society when men
do not channel their passions into marriage. In this regard, the Torah
and Judaism were highly prescient: the overwhelming majority of
violent crimes are committed by unmarried men. Thus, male celibacy, a
sacred state in many religions, is a sin in Judaism. In order to
become fully human, male and female must join. In the words of
Genesis, "God created the human ... male and female He created them."
The union of male and female is not merely some lovely ideal; it is
the essence of the Jewish outlook on becoming human. To deny it is
tantamount to denying a primary purpose of life.

Few Jews need to be informed of the centrality of family to Jewish
life. Throughout their history, one of the Jews' most distinguishing
characteristics has been their commitment to family life. To Judaism,
the family --- not the nation, and not the individual --- is to be the
fundamental unit, the building block of society. Thus, when God
blesses Abraham He says, "Through you all the families of the earth
will be blessed."

The enemy of women

Yet another reason for Judaism's opposition to homosexuality is
homosexuality's negative effect on women.

One of the most remarkable aspects of contemporary societies'
acceptance of homosexuality is the lack of outcry from and on behalf
of women. I say "outcry" because there is certainly much quiet crying
by women over this issue, as heard in the frequent lament from single
women that so many single men are gay. But the major reason for anyone
concerned with women's equality to be concerned with homosexuality is
the direct correlation between the prevalence of male homosexuality
and the relegation of women to a low social role. The improvement of
the condition of women has only occurred in Western civilization, the
civilization least tolerant of homosexuality.

In societies where men sought out men for love and sex, women were
relegated to society's periphery. Thus, for example, ancient Greece,
which elevated homosexuality to an ideal, was characterized by "a
misogynistic attitude," in Norman Sussman's words. Homosexuality in
ancient Greece, he writes, "was closely linked to an idealized concept
of the man as the focus of intellectual and physical activities...The
woman was seen as serving but two roles. As a wife, she ran the home.
As a courtesan, she satisfied male sexual desires." Classicist Eva
Keuls describes Athens at its height of philosophical and artistic
greatness as "a society dominated by men who sequester their wives and
daughters, denigrate the female role in reproduction, erect monuments
to the male genitalia, have sex with the sons of their peers..."

In medieval France, when men stressed male-male love, it "implied a
corresponding lack of interest in women. In the Song of Roland, a
French mini-epic given its final form in the late eleventh or twelfth
century, women appear only as shadowy marginal figures: "The deepest
signs of affection in the poem, as well as in similar ones appear in
the love of man for man..." The women of Arab society, wherein male
homosexuality has been widespread, remain in a notably low state in
the modern world. This may be a coincidence, but common sense suggests
a linkage. So, too, in traditional Chinese culture, the low state of
women has been linked to widespread homosexuality. As a French
physician reported from China in the nineteenth century, "Chinese
women were such docile, homebound dullards that the men, like those of
ancient Greece, sought courtesans and boys."

While traditional Judaism is not as egalitarian as many late twentieth
century Jews would like, it was Judaism --- very much through its
insistence on marriage and family and its rejection of infidelity and
homosexuality --- that initiated the process of elevating the status
of women. While other cultures were writing homoerotic poetry, the
Jews wrote the Song of Songs, one of the most beautiful poems
depicting male-female sensual love ever written.

A final reason for opposition to homosexuality is the homosexual
"lifestyle." While it is possible for male homosexuals to live lives
of fidelity comparable to those of heterosexual males, it is usually
not the case. While the typical lesbian has had fewer than ten
"lovers," the typical male homosexual in America has had over 500. In
general, neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals confront the fact that
it is this male homosexual lifestyle, more than the specific
homosexual act, that disturbs most people. This is probably why less
attention is paid to female homosexuality. When male sexuality is not
controlled, the consequences are considerably more destructive than
when female sexuality is not controlled. Men rape. Women do not. Men,
not women, engage in fetishes. Men are more frequently consumed by
their sex drive, and wander from sex partner to sex partner. Men, not
women, are sexually sadistic. The indiscriminate sex that
characterizes much of male homosexual life represents the antithesis
of Judaism's goal of elevating human life from the animal-like to the
Godlike.

The Jewish sexual ideal

Judaism has a sexual ideal --- marital sex. All other forms of sexual
behavior, though not equally wrong, deviate from that ideal. The
further they deviate, the stronger Judaism's antipathy to that
behavior. Thus, there are varying degrees of sexual wrongs. There is,
one could say, a continuum of wrong which goes from premarital sex, to
celibacy, to adultery, and on to homosexuality, incest, and
bestiality. We can better understand why Judaism rejects homosexuality
if we first understand its attitudes toward these other unacceptable
practices. For example, normative Judaism forcefully rejects the claim
that never marrying is an equally valid lifestyle to marriage. Judaism
states that a life without marrying is a less holy, less complete, and
a less Jewish life. Thus, only a married man was allowed to be a high
priest, and only a man who had children could sit as a judge on the
Jewish supreme court, the Sanhedrin. To put it in modern terms, while
an unmarried rabbi can be the spiritual leader of a congregation, he
would be dismissed by almost any congregation if he publicly argued
that remaining single were as Jewishly valid a way of life as
marriage. Despite all this, no Jew could argue that single Jews must
be ostracized from Jewish communal life. Single Jews are to be loved
and included in Jewish family, social, and religious life.

These attitudes toward not marrying should help clarify Judaism's
attitude toward homosexuality. First, homosexuality contradicts the
Jewish ideal. Second, it cannot be held to be equally valid. Third,
those publicly committed to it may not serve as public Jewish role
models. But fourth, homosexuals must be included in Jewish communal
life and loved as fellow human beings and as Jews. Still, we cannot
open the Jewish door to non-marital sex. For once one argues that any
non-marital form of sexual behavior is the moral equal of marital sex,
the door is opened to all other forms of sexual expression. If
consensual homosexual activity is valid, why not consensual incest
between adults? Why is sex between an adult brother and sister more
objectionable than sex between two adult men? If a couple agrees, why
not allow consensual adultery? Once non-marital sex is validated, how
can we draw any line? Why shouldn't gay liberation be followed by
incest liberation?

Accepting homosexuality as the social, moral, or religious equivalent
of heterosexuality would constitute the first modern assault on the
extremely hard won, millennia-old battle for a family-based, sexually
monogamous society. While it is labeled as "progress," the acceptance
of homosexuality would not be new at all.

Again, Judaism's sexual ideals, especially its opposition to
homosexuality, rendered Jews different from the earliest times to the
present. As early as the second century B.C., Jewish writers were
noting the vast differences between Jewish sexual and family life and
that of their non-Jewish neighbors. In the Syballine Oracles, written
by an Egyptian Jew probably between 163 and 45 B.C., the author
compared Jews to the other nations: The Jews "are mindful of holy
wedlock, and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male
children, as do Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Romans, specious Greece
and many nations of others, Persians and Galatians and all Asia." And
in our times. sex historian Amo Karlen wrote that according to the sex
researcher Alfred Kinsey, "Homosexuality was phenomenally rare among
Orthodox Jews."

Moral and psychological questions

To all the arguments offered against homosexuality the most frequent
response is: But homosexuals have no choice. To many people this claim
is so emotionally powerful that no further reflection seems necessary.
How can we oppose actions that people have not chosen? The question is
much more instructive when posed in a more specific way: Is
homosexuality biologically programmed from birth, or is it socially
and psychologically induced? There is clearly no one answer that
accounts for all homosexuals. What can be said for certain is that
some homosexuals were started along that path in early childhood, and
that most homosexuals, having had sex with both sexes, have chosen
homosexuality along with or in preference to heterosexuality.

We can say "chosen" because the vast majority of gay men have had
intercourse with women. As a four-year study of 128 gay men by a UCLA
professor of psychology revealed, "More than 92 percent of the gay men
had dated a woman at some time, two-thirds had sexual intercourse with
a woman." As of now, the one theory we can rule out is that
homosexuals are biologically programmed to be homosexual. Despite an
understandably great desire on the part of many to prove it (and my
own inclination to believe it), there is simply no evidence that
homosexuality is biologically determined. Of course, one could argue
homosexuality is biologically determined, but that society, if it
suppresses it enough, causes most homosexuals to suppress their
homosexuality. Yet, if this argument is true, if society can
successfully repress homosexual inclinations, it can lead to either of
two conclusions --- that society should do so for its own sake, or
that society should not do so for the individual's sake. Once again we
come back to the question of values. Or one could argue that people
are naturally (i.e., biologically) bisexual (and given the data I have
seen on human sexuality, this may well be true). Ironically, however,
if this is true, the argument that homosexuality is chosen is
strengthened, not weakened. For if we all have bisexual tendencies,
and most of us successfully suppress our homosexual impulses, then
obviously homosexuality is frequently both surmountable and chosen.
And once again we are brought back to our original question of what
sexual ideal society ought to foster --- heterosexual marital or
homosexual sex.

I conclude:

1. Homosexuality may be biologically induced (though no evidence of
this exists). but is certainly psychologically ingrained (perhaps
indelibly) at a very early age in some cases. Presumably, these
individuals always have had sexual desires only for their own sex.
Historically speaking, they appear to constitute a minority among
homosexuals.
2. In many cases, homosexuality appears not to be indelibly
ingrained. These individuals have gravitated toward homosexuality from
heterosexual experiences, or have always been bisexual, or live in a
society that encourages homosexuality. As Greenberg, who is very
sympathetic to gay liberation, writes, "Biologists who view most
traits as inherited, and psychologists who think sexual preferences
are largely determined in early childhood, may pay little attention to
the finding that many gay people have had extensive heterosexual
experience."
3. Therefore, the evidence overwhelmingly leads to this conclusion:
By and large, it is society, not the individual, that chooses whether
homosexuality will be widely practiced. A society's values, much more
than individual tendencies, determine the extent of homosexuality in
that society. Thus, we can have great sympathy for the exclusively
homosexual individual while strongly opposing social acceptance of
homosexuality. In this way we retain both our hearts and our values.

Is homosexuality an illness?

Society, in short, can consider homosexuality right or wrong whether
or not it is chosen. Society can also consider homosexuality normal or
ill whether or not it is chosen.

Though the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, did not think that
in and of itself homosexuality meant that a person was sick, according
to his standards of psychosexual development, he considered
homosexuality to be an arrested development. But until 1973,
psychiatry did consider homosexuality an illness. To cite one of
countless examples, Dr. Leo Rangell, a psychoanalyst, wrote that he
had "never seen a male homosexual who did not also turn out to have a
phobia of the vagina."

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed
homosexuality from its official listing of mental illnesses in its
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. Gay
activists have used this as a major weapon in their battle for
societal acceptance of homosexuality. But, for many reasons, the APA
decision has not resolved the question of whether homosexuality is an
illness, and the question may well be unresolvable. Given the mixed
moral and judgmental record of psychiatry, especially since the 1960s,
all one may conclude from the APA's decision to remove homosexuality
from its list of illnesses is that while it may have been right,
organized psychiatry has given us little reason to trust its judgment
on politically charged issues. For these reasons, the fact that the
American Psychiatric Association no longer labels homosexuality an
illness should not persuade anyone that it is not. Given the
subjective nature of the term "mental illness," given the power of gay
activists, and given the political views of the APA leadership (as
opposed to most of its members), the association's vote means nothing
to many observers.

If social pressures forced psychiatrists in the past to label
homosexuality an illness, how can we be certain that social pressures
in our time have not forced them to label it normal? Are present-day
psychiatrists less influenced by societal pressures than were their
predecessors? I doubt it. So, putting aside psychiatry's ambivalence
about homosexuality, let us pose the question in this way: "Assuming
there is such a thing as normal, is it normal for a man to be
incapable of making love to a woman (or vice versa)?"

Presumably, there are only three possible answers:

1. Most homosexuals can make love to a woman, but they find such an
act repulsive or simply prefer making love to men.
2. Yes, it is normal.
3. No, it is not normal.

If the first response is offered, then we have to acknowledge that the
homosexual has chosen his homosexuality. And we may then ask whether
someone who chooses to love the same sex rather than the opposite sex
has made this decision from a psychologically healthy basis. If the
second response is offered, each of us is free to assess this answer
for him or herself. I, for one, do not believe that a man's inability
to make love to a woman can be labeled normal. While such a man may be
a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite
possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals,
in this one area he cannot be called normal. And the reason for
considering homosexuality abnormal is not its minority status. Even if
the majority of men became incapable of making love to women, it would
still not be normal. Men are designed to make love to women, and vice
versa. The eye provides an appropriate analogy: If the majority of the
population became blind, blindness would still be abnormal. The eye
was designed to see. That is why I choose the third response --- that
homosexuality is unhealthy. This is said, however, with the
understanding that in the psychological arena, "illness" can be a
description of one's values rather than of objective science (which
may simply not exist in this area).

Man and woman he made them

To a world which divided human sexuality between penetrator and
penetrated, Judaism said, "You are wrong --- sexuality is to be
divided between male and female." To a world which saw women as baby
producers unworthy of romantic and sexual attention, Judaism said "You
are wrong --- women must be the sole focus of men's erotic love." To a
world which said that sensual feelings and physical beauty were life's
supreme goods, Judaism said, "You are wrong --- ethics and holiness
are the supreme goods." A thousand years before Roman emperors kept
naked boys, Jewish kings were commanded to write and keep a sefer
torah, a book of the Torah.

In all my research on this subject, nothing moved me more than the
Talmudic law that Jews were forbidden to sell slaves or sheep to non-
Jews, lest the non-Jews engage in homosexuality and bestiality. That
was the world in which rabbis wrote the Talmud, and in which, earlier,
the Bible was written. Asked what is the single greatest revelation I
have derived from all my researches, I always respond, "That there had
to have been divine revelation to produce the Torah." The Torah was
simply too different from the rest of the world, too against man's
nature, to have been solely man-made.

The creation of Western civilization has been a terribly difficult and
unique thing. It took a constant delaying of gratification, and a re-
channeling of natural instincts; and these disciplines have not always
been well received. There have been numerous attempts to undo Judeo-
Christian civilization, not infrequently by Jews (through radical
politics) and Christians (through anti-Semitism).

The bedrock of this civilization, and of Jewish life, has been the
centrality and purity of family life. But the family is not a natural
unit so much as it is a value that must be cultivated and protected.
The Greeks assaulted the family in the name of beauty and Eros. The
Marxists assaulted the family in the name of progress. And today, gay
liberation assaults it in the name of compassion and equality. I
understand why gays would do this. Life has been miserable for many of
them. What I have not understood was why Jews or Christians would join
the assault. I do now. They do not know what is at stake. At stake is
our civilization.

It is very easy to forget what Judaism has wrought and what Christians
have created in the West. But those who loathe this civilization never
forget. The radical Stanford University faculty and students who
recently chanted, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go," were
referring to much more than their university's syllabus. And no one is
chanting that song more forcefully than those who believe and advocate
that sexual behavior doesn't play a role in building or eroding
civilization. The acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of
heterosexual marital love signifies the decline of Western
civilization as surely as the rejection of homosexuality and other
nonmarital sex made the creation of this civilization possible.