This is something I've worked on and shared with another subreddit and have edited after comments and discussion.
Leviticus, LGBTQ+ Inclusion, and the Fear of Extinction
The two most cited verses against LGBTQ+ inclusion—Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13—sit within a holiness code that governed Israel’s survival as a distinct people in the ancient world. But before we even discuss what those verses say, we need to ask a more foundational question:
Why were these laws written?
The Politics of Purity and the Fear of Extinction
Leviticus is not a universal moral handbook. It is a priestly document, composed in the wake of national trauma. Most scholars believe it reached its final form during the Babylonian exile, after the people of Judah had been ripped from their homeland, their temple obliterated, and their leaders either executed or dragged away into captivity.
Imagine what that does to a people.
Imagine losing everything—your land, your way of life, your place of worship, even your sense of identity. Your entire world has crumbled, and you are now at the mercy of a massive empire that neither understands you nor cares about your survival.
It is in this context that the priests—trying desperately to preserve their people—codify laws that will set Israel apart, keep them distinct, and ensure their survival. These are not laws made from a place of power; they are laws made from trauma, from grief, from a desperate fear of extinction.
This is why the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) was not just a broad theological statement—it was a directive tied to survival, a matter of life and death. It shaped not only Israel’s creation story but also the laws that followed. The purity codes of Leviticus were written by the same priestly tradition that wrote Genesis 1:1-2:4a. For them, fertility was not merely a blessing—it was a necessity. If Israel did not multiply, it would disappear.
Every law regulating sexuality—whether it be against intercourse during menstruation (Leviticus 15:19-24), male-male intercourse (Leviticus 18:22), or sex after childbirth (Leviticus 12:1-5)—served this singular aim: ensuring reproduction.
This also explains why female same-sex relations are not mentioned in Leviticus at all. Women’s sexuality was primarily regulated in relation to men; as long as a woman was fulfilling her primary duty of childbearing, whatever else she did was of no concern.
At the same time, the priests writing these laws would have seen firsthand the way empire used sexual violence as a tool of war.
Sexual Violence, Power, and the Ancient World
In the ancient world, conquering armies routinely raped men as an act of domination and humiliation. This wasn’t about desire; it was about power. To be penetrated was to be subjugated.
Evidence of this practice has been documented across numerous civilizations, including Ancient Persia, Egypt, Greece, the Amalekites, China, Rome, and the Norse, as well as later conflicts such as the Crusades and wars in Latin America, Africa, and the Balkans (Sivakumaran, Sandesh. "Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Conflict." European Journal of International Law, vol. 18, no. 2, 2007, pp. 253-276). The widespread nature of these practices across empires that directly conquered or interacted with Israel and Judah makes it highly probable that the priests writing this had either witnessed or even experienced such violations.
Babylon’s military machine did not just conquer Israel’s land—they sought to destroy their spirit, to render them powerless, to remind them who was in charge. And so, in an effort to maintain their people’s dignity and prevent them from replicating the brutality of empire, the priests wrote into law a prohibition against male-male sex—not as a statement about identity or orientation, but as a rejection of the violent, humiliating practices of empire.
In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, for instance, rather than raping captured women, Israelite men are commanded to give them dignity—taking them as wives, mourning their losses, and treating them as people rather than property. Likewise, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 can be understood not as a blanket condemnation of same-sex relationships, but as a prohibition against the use of sexual violence to assert dominance.
So when fundamentalists read Leviticus and say, “See? The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination,” they are ignoring the why of the passage. And in ignoring the why, they turn it into something it was never meant to be.
But the best evidence that we no longer read Leviticus as a binding moral document? We already ignore most of it.
- We do not follow the kosher dietary laws.
- We do not keep the laws of ritual purity.
- We do not execute those who work on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14).
- We do not avoid mixed fabrics (Leviticus 19:19).
And why? Because Christ fulfilled the law—not by throwing it away, but by showing us the heart of God behind it.
Jesus and the Purity Codes: Defying the System that Excluded
And this brings us to Jesus. Because the fundamentalists who wield Leviticus as a weapon rarely ask:
What did Jesus do with these laws?
Jesus did not come to abolish the law (Matthew 5:17), but he also broke purity laws constantly. Not in some vague, symbolic way, but as a direct act of defiance against a system that turned people into untouchables.
- He touched lepers (Mark 1:40-42), when the law declared them unclean.
- He ate with sinners and tax collectors (Mark 2:15-17), when the law demanded separation.
- He healed on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6), when the law said work must cease.
- He allowed a bleeding woman to touch him (Mark 5:25-34), when the law said she should be cast out.
In other words, Jesus refused to let the law be used as a tool of exclusion. Every single time he encountered someone who had been labeled unclean or cast aside, he stepped toward them instead of away. He saw not their "impurity," but their suffering, their dignity, their worth.
And perhaps the most radical example?
Jesus and the Eunuchs: A Third Way of Being
In Matthew 19:12, Jesus makes an astonishing statement:
“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
Eunuchs were the sexually nonconforming people of the ancient world—castrated men, gender-nonconforming individuals, those who did not fit the male-female binary. And while Leviticus 21:17-20 says that eunuchs cannot enter the priesthood, Jesus not only acknowledges them—he affirms them.
Jesus says, “Some people do not fit the traditional categories. And that’s okay.”
And if that weren’t enough, Isaiah 56:4-5 proclaims that eunuchs—formerly excluded by the law—will one day be given a name greater than sons and daughters in God’s kingdom.
This is the trajectory of Scripture. It is not a book that locks us into the past. It is a book that moves us forward.
Reading Leviticus Through the Lens of Christ
The holiness codes of Leviticus were born from trauma. They were an attempt to preserve a people who feared extinction, a people who had seen their home destroyed and their dignity erased by empire. They were concerned with survival, with separation, with drawing lines to keep their fragile community intact.
But Jesus came not to build higher walls, but to tear them down.
Jesus saw those who bad been cast out, those who had been called unclean, those who had been told they were outside the bounds of holiness. And he brought them in.
So when we read Leviticus, may read it with eyes that see its history, its struggle, its purpose. And then let us read it through the eyes of Jesus—who saw the suffering that legalism inflicted and chose, again and again, to heal.
@theomorph@lemmus.org
Any progress or updates?