Don M.
Burrows, Ph.D.
On
Abusive Responses to My Work
on the
Bible and Homosexuality
by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Writing in
defense of the scriptural and historic-Christian defense of a
male-female requirement for valid sexual relations has always invited
abuse. Such abuse, however, should be disclosed for what it is.
Recently
scholar-theologian Dr. John Stackhouse, Professor of Religious Studies &
Dean of Faculty Development at Crandall University, invited me to
respond to a Facebook thread that had developed around an article he had
written: “Evangelicals,
LGTBQ+, and the Bible: What's (Been) Going On?” Someone had posted
in the comments: “I wondered if anyone could comment on [Jean-Fabrice]
Nardelli's refutations of Gagnon's scholarship in, ‘The Bible and
Homosexual Practice,’” giving links to Nardelli’s
first screed, my
beginning response, and Nardelli’s
second screed. He then linked to an abusive blog post by a certain
Don M. Burrows: “Anti-Gay
Scholar Shows His True (Non-Scholarly) Colors” (posted in 2013).
I thought it
best to post my comments here for future reference.
I. On the Abusive
Burrows
I hadn't seen the Don M. Burrows piece beforehand.
Burrows has a Ph.D. in classics from the University of Minnesota. He
apparently hasn't been able to find employment as a classics scholar.
I'm not aware of anything he has published and he is critiquing me in a
blog so his criticism of me posting a lot of online stuff is a bit
bizarre.
Burrows says: "Most scholars do not do this; if they have
a beef with a given review or article, they submit a rebuttal to the
publication in question, which will then publish it if warranted." Um,
did it ever occur to Burrows that Nardelli's two pieces that Burrows
extols are online pieces that have either not been submitted for
publication or submitted and rejected? There is no way that Nardelli
could ever get pieces with such vitriol and ad hominem published.
The inaccuracies start from the very first paragraph
where he claims that I say that homosexual practice is more unnatural
than bestiality. He is apparently as bad a reader of texts as online
“gay” polemicist Jeremy Hooper. Anyone can go to the Hooper
posting of my email and see what I said. I had just finished talking
about the opposition of Paul and other biblical writers to homosexual
practice. In the very same paragraph I then commented: "Bestiality is an
even more unnatural form of sexual practice since it is cross-species."
Since in the preceding sentences I was speaking about the biblical
prohibition of homosexual practice, it should be obvious (at least to
anyone seeking to understand me) that I was asserting bestiality to be
"even more unnatural" than homosexual practice.
I then comment on incest: "Adult-consensual incest is
also a particularly perverse form of sexual practice since it involves
sex with someone who is too much of a familial same." Immediately after
this I say: "But Scripture treats homosexual practice as even more
severely unnatural because the male-female requirement for sexual
relations is foundational for all that follows (so Genesis and Jesus)
and because sex or gender is a more constituent feature of sexual
behavior than kinship." Here I am clearly making the comparison with
incest, not with bestiality. I even state at the end that "sex or gender
is a more constituent feature of sexual behavior than kinship."
Hooper is so obtuse that even after I pointed this out he
still claimed that I was “implying” that homosexual practice was worse
than bestiality, though he then added: "Mr Gagnon, however, claims my
read was 'incompetent.' This being the case, I will gladly limit his
belief to just incest." Burrows is apparently even more obtuse because
he, having that information before him, continued to make the false
claim.
I do entirely own the view that homosexual practice is
more unnatural than even adult-consensual incest (note the qualifier:
adult-consensual), for the two reasons that I stated in the citation
above. Hooper, who was secretly added to the email conversation by Alan
Chambers, thinks that publishing this private email without permission
reveals a scandalous secret about my true views on homosexual practice.
Far from it being a secret view, I have done my best to
promote it publicly, not only because it is true but also in order
to challenge misguided analogies with lesser offenses such as remarriage
after divorce or even gluttony.
The
male-female requirement is the only requirement for consensual sexual
relations between humans held absolutely for the people of God from
creation to Christ. The first human differentiation at creation is the
differentiation between male and female. In Gen 2:21-24 the creation of
woman is depicted as the extraction of a “rib” or (better) “side” from
the human so that man and woman are parts of a single integrated whole.
Woman is depicted as man’s sexual “counterpart” or “complement” (Heb.
negdo). A male-female prerequisite is thus grounded in the earliest
act of creation.
Compare the situation with incest prohibitions: Most such
prohibitions cannot be implemented until after the human family spreads
out and becomes numerous. In addition, while we see a limited allowance
of polygyny in the OT (multiple wives for men, though never polyandry
[multiple husbands for women]), subsequently revoked by Jesus, and some
limited allowance in earliest Israel of what will later be termed incest
in Levitical law (e.g., Abraham’s marriage to his half-sister Sarah;
Jacob’s marriage to two sisters while both were alive), there is never
any allowance whatsoever for homosexual practice in the history of
Israel. Virtually every single law, narrative, poetry, proverb, moral
exhortation, and metaphor dealing with sexual matters in the Old
Testament presuppose a male-female prerequisite. The only exceptions are
periods of apostasy in ancient Israel (e.g., the existence of homosexual
cult prostitutes, which narrators still label an abomination). Incest is
a violation of a requirement of embodied otherness that is only
secondarily extrapolated from the foundational analogy of sexual
otherness established at creation.
Note that the higher rates of birth defects for progeny
of incestuous unions is not an effective argument for rejecting
incestuous bonds categorically because (1) we are dealing here with
higher rates, not intrinsic harm; and (2) it is easy to imagine an array
of incestuous unions that would not produce children (e.g., same-sex
incestuous unions, unions where either or both of the partners is
infertile, and unions where the partners take active birth-control
precautions). Note too that arguments that reject incest on the grounds
that children should not be molested does not address the kind of
incestuous relationship that I am talking about: adult-committed.
Burrows
claims that I "defended calling gay and lesbian individuals 'perverts.'"
What I actually said is that while homosexual behavior is indeed
"perverse" (i.e., unnatural and abnormal) from a biblical and
natural-law standpoint, it is generally best to avoid the label
"pervert" "because it leads to an objectifying of persons that may
promote hate for the person and not just for the behavior." Obviously,
this nuanced view still wouldn't satisfy people like Burrows. Yet
Burrows knows that his efforts at slander would be less compelling if he
reported more accurately.
Burrows tries to portray me as a pseudo-scholar, in spite
of the numerous
endorsements that my first book received from internationally
acclaimed scholars, including some who supported homosexual unions. In
this connection, he criticizes my alleged failure to publish anything
since 2005. He was making use of an old
online c.v. that I hadn’t bothered to update but now have so far as
published materials are concerned.
Now as to the specifics of the blog post by Burrows:
1. According to
Burrows, "Gagnon clearly believes that
man and woman were created by God to be complementary, and thus
heterosexual coupling is the only kind approved by God. But the
classicists Gagnon cites most certainly do not agree with this
overall premise."
Well, yes,
that makes our agreement on how to read certain Greco-Roman texts all
the more powerful.
2. According to Burrows, "Put
another way, if God has been creating gay people for thousands of
years, how can it be considered some aberrant, perverse deviation?"
Dr. Stackhouse rightly
noted in a FB comment:
“A quick read of the blog itself shows the author to be
utterly clueless about even the most basic Christian construal of
things. He argues that ‘is = ought’--as in, ‘Since there have been
homosexual persons for thousands of years, and since God creates
everyone, therefore God endorses homosexuality in those persons’...which
might be true, yes, but it might also be true that God does not endorse
that feature of those persons that he did indeed create, and does indeed
love...just as I believe God created me, and loves me, and precisely
because he DOES love me is administering a long, patient, and sometimes
severe program of changing me away from my deep confusions and harmful
ways of being in the world--which is how Gagnon and other traditional
Christian ethicists see homosexuality. The failure, that is, to
understand Creation, Fall, and Redemption is just fatal to this
blogger's interaction with a Christian anthropology, and so he ends up
just talking right past Gagnon and the entire mainstream tradition he
represents.”
I'll just add
a little analogy: Since God has been creating men with polyamorous
desires for thousands of years, how can it be considered some aberrant,
perverse deviation? Let's chuck stifling monogamy and embrace our inner
polyamorist! Add to this the universal impulses for pride, greed, and
jealousy.
3. Burrows
also states: “Gagnon's overall
view ... seems to utilize evidence of in-born, 'natural'
homosexuality in the ancient world while simultaneously claiming it
is 'unnatural' or 'perverse.' So God clearly does make gay people …
but then roundly condemns them for it. Surely someday, when our
history of sexuality is written, this will be considered the
asinine, flailing death throes of anti-gay rationalization."
Whatever society thinks of the scriptural and historic
Christian rejection of homosexual practice is of no account in
determining the truth of the Creator's handiwork. It rather serves as
evidence for the kind of absurd societal suppression of the truth about
the Creator and about the way the Creator made us which Paul indicts in
Romans 1:18-32. From the standpoint of anatomy, physiology, and even
psychology it is obvious that the appropriate sexual counterpart to a
man is a woman and to a woman a man. Man and woman are each other's
sexual "other half." It is obvious that the attempted sexual union of
persons of the same sex exacerbates the extremes of a given sex rather
than moderating such extremes; hence the disproportionately high rate of
measurable harm attending homosexual unions, corresponding to expected
sex differences. It is obvious that homosexual sexual acts treat a
person's sex as only half intact in relation to persons of the same sex
(half-males and half-females), thereby demeaning the biological
integrity of their sex. Ah, the folly of human sin.
Moreover, the
existence of sinful desires within human flesh is hardly convincing
proof that it is God's will that we live out of such desires. The fact
that the ancients could conceive of some biological basis for some
homosexual development hardly translates into: "God clearly does make
gay people." By Burrows' reasoning we would have to approve not only of
polyamorous activity (who asks to have polyamorous desires?) but even
pedophilia (who asks for pedophilic desires?). Did God "make"
pedophiles? According to Burrows' reasoning , if it is an innate trait,
the answer is "yes." Then it is terrible of God to "roundly condemn them
for it”?
4. Burrows
criticizes me for repeatedly calling
Thomas K. Hubbard's Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A
Sourcebook of Basic Documents (University of California
Press, 2003) "magisterial." Burrows adds: "but it is not a
monograph, and does not attempt to make an over-arching, conclusive
argument about sexuality in antiquity."
Though
criticizing me for the “magisterial” characterization, Burrows then adds
about Hubbard’s book: "which I agree is quite magisterial"! Hubbard
provides 56 pages of analysis of
homosexuality in the different periods of Greece and Rome. Here Hubbard
certainly does make over-arching conclusive arguments about
homosexuality in antiquity.
5.
Burrows writes: "While Hubbard introduces each set of
texts with his own overview, which often betrays his own
convictions, he does not stray from citing those sources that do not
adhere to an essentialist viewpoint. A key example of this can be
found in a section often cited by Gagnon, where Hubbard refers to a
set of texts that 'reflect the perception that sexual orientation is
something fixed and incurable' (p. 446). Of course, Hubbard goes on
to note that 'two texts from this period show sexual orientation as
a matter of relative indifference,' citing Artemidorus and
Philostratus, who seem to recognize no real sense of categorization
between homosexuality and heterosexuality. That's the difference
between honest scholarship, what Hubbard practices, and snake-oil
chicanery: an honest assessment acknowledges the evidence that
complicates or even contradicts a given view. Gagnon never appears
to bother with that."
Actually, I have never argued that everyone in the
ancient world believed in a rudimentary view of sexual orientation. I
have always only contended that some did; that therefore Paul could have
believed something similar and still rejected homosexual practice, just
as he rejected numerous behaviors that were the product of innate but
sinful sexual urges. So Burrows has dishonestly represented me.
The quote from Hubbard that I most frequently cite (which
incidentally is not the one that Burrows cites from me) speaks for
itself:
“Homosexuality in this era [i.e., of the
early imperial age of Rome] may have ceased to be merely another
practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and
central category of personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to
heterosexual orientation.” (p. 386)
I also have never claimed (contrary to what Burrows says
about me) that there are no differences between the ancient view of
orientation and our own; only that there is enough similarity to reject
the contention that we have such radically new knowledge about
homosexual practice as to allow us to reject the strong, pervasive,
absolute, and countercultural biblical witness against it. For a nuanced
and detailed presentation of the data see pp. 140-52 of
this article (posted online some years after print publication):
6.
Burrows really hates this comment of
mine in a
Christian Post op-ed from 2011:
"What I think almost all classicists would
probably find abjectly absurd are statements like, 'It should go
without saying that upholding a male-female requirement for
marriage can and should be a product of a loving desire to avoid
the degradation of the gendered self that comes from engaging in
homosexual practice.'"
Burrows did not add my follow-up sentence:
"That it does not go without saying is due in large
part to today’s charged political atmosphere where hateful
characterizations of persons who disapprove of homosexual unions are
commonplace among proponents of such unions."
Burrows' own abusive writing style is (ironically)
evidence for this point. Burrows is apoplectic that I should disagree
with the "consensus" of "gender studies." Burrows characterizes this as
"ignorance" on my part and "comic buffoonery at its finest." Actually I
am well aware that homosexualist advocates who dominate gender studies
do not view homosexual practice as a "degradation of the gendered self,"
though that is clearly how Paul in Romans 1:24-27 describes it. Get your
smelling salts out: I disagree with homosexualist advocates and agree
with Paul and, for that matter, Jesus and the rest of Scripture.
II. On the Abusive Nardelli
So much for Burrows. The reason that I have not responded
to Nardelli has nothing to do with the alleged strength of his
arguments. It has everything to do with the vile ad hominem
rhetoric that runs from first to last page of his lengthy screeds. Were
they short pieces, I might have responded. But life is too short to
subject myself to such verbally abusive rants. At the time his first
tirade was posted online I was in a very busy season of commitments. I
decided to put out a preliminary piece discussing a couple of his
abusively framed allegations. Before I could return to it he published
an equally lengthy screed that continued with the torrent of personal
attacks in page after page and which I could see hadn't really responded
to my main points. So I decided not to accord such a grossly uncivil
response the respect of a rejoinder. But if someone wants to specify
what his convincing arguments are, they are welcome to do so (minus the
vitriol) and I would be happy to respond. Nardelli himself is off the
rails and I will have nothing more to do with him.
Apparently his abuse is not limited to me. In the
comments to Burrows' piece one person links to
this comment by David Konstan of Brown University in Bryn Mawr
Classical Review: "First, disclosure: I am a great admirer of
Alberto Bernabé, whom I have had the pleasure to meet on several
occasions; he is an excellent scholar, and a fine person. I am also a
good friend of Douglas Olson, whose review of Bernabé's edition Jean-Fabrice
Nardelli describes in the most hostile terms."
Olson himself responded to
Nardelli as follows (it deserves quoting at length):
Several weeks ago, Jean-Fabrice
Nardelli published in this journal (2006.07.36) a supposed response to
my review of A. Bernabé's Poetae Epici Graeci II.1 (2006.07.27)
which was in fact an extended, vicious personal attack on me and my
academic work. Nardelli accuses me, inter alia, of "ranting" and
"fuming;" describes me as chalcenteric, arrogant, patronizing and
gratuitously reckless; characterizes my reviews as reeking of venom and
as universally "bitter in the extreme;" denounces my commentaries as
second-rate; and so on and so forth. What he signally fails to do is
engage with, much less offer any substantial, thoughtful reply to my
detailed criticisms of Bernabé's edition of the Orphic fragments.... It
would serve no purpose for me to respond to Nardelli's other remarks,
except to say that I imagine he now regrets them -- and the alacrity
with which they were published in BMCR. Instead, I would like to reflect
briefly on why we as scholars disown ad hominem argumentation, and on
the obligation of editors to refuse to publish such material when it is
presented to them.
...Scholars disagree,
often at length and sometimes repeatedly over many years; and this is
generally best interpreted as an index of our commitment to our common
subject and of our shared belief that dialogue and debate advance
understanding. Ad hominem argumentation, on the other hand, is a
diversionary tactic, designed to distract from the weakness of one's own
case by focusing on the supposed moral or personal failings of the
opponent. It does not advance discussion of the point at hand; has a
poisonous effect on academic discourse generally (particularly when
sanctioned, explicitly or implicitly, by individuals in authority); and
in the long run makes those who engage in or encourage it look foolish,
vicious, or both. Ad hominem argumentation is accordingly regarded as an
intellectual embarrassment: we as a community of scholars do not behave
this way, and we discourage others in the larger world from doing so as
well.
The larger question here
thus has to do with editorial responsibility. Even in an age of
electronic publication -- perhaps more so now -- editors exercise a
vital gate-keeping function, and the responsibilities of the office
include an obligation to decline to publish ugly and irrelevant personal
assaults masquerading as academic discussion. One might have expected
the corrosive effects of allowing this sort of thing to go on to be
particularly apparent to the editors of a review journal. In the last
analysis, the book review process depends on a willingness to tell what
one takes to be the truth. But what sensible individual would say
anything negative about a book, if he or she had reason to expect that
the result might be a long, vituperative attack on his or her character
and accomplishments -- published, to make matters even more unfortunate
and absurd, by a third party, and in the same journal? Permitting, and
thus encouraging, such behavior, including in the name of "open
discussion" and the like, does a substantial disservice to the field and
marks an embarrassing failure of editorial judgment.
That Nardelli felt the
need to inject himself into a non-existent quarrel between Bernabé and
myself, and to attack me and my work in a nasty and misleading fashion,
was unfortunate. That the editors of BMCR opted to publish his
"response," on the other hand, represents something far worse: a serious
abdication of their professional responsibility, which deserves to be
publicly described as such.
And that is what Nardelli could get away with in print.
Online he is far more abusive.
As an example of how badly reasoned Nardelli's screeds
are, he rejects any intertextual echo to Genesis 1:26-27 in Romans
1:23-27, even though there are eight points of correspondence, in
similar tirplicate fashion in the two short sets of texts.
Nardelli's argument is: No scholar before Gagnon has seen
such an echo. Well, that is not quite true. Some scholars beforehand
have seen a connection to Genesis 1:27 in Rom 1:24-27 and/or links from
Rom 1:23 to Gen 1:26. But it is true that I was the first one to point
out the similar tripartite structures to the two sets of text. That is
called scholarly progress.
Intertextuality is a burgeoning industry in NT studies
and scholars are making connections, many justified, that other scholars
have been missing for generations. The argument that no one else
previously published such points is not by itself convincing. When there
are eight parts of correspondence in similar tripartite structure
(human/image/likeness, birds/cattle/reptiles, male/female) between two
verses in an OT text and 3 verses in a NT text, it becomes absurd to
deny the back echo.
Moreover, the echo that I have seen has recently been
affirmed in the work of NT scholar William Loader, who is thoroughly
supportive of homosexual unions and has written more significant work on
sexuality generally in early Judaism and early Christianity than any
scholar who has yet lived. In his book,
The New Testament on Sexuality (Eerdmans, 2012), in which he has
about 70 pages on the issue of homosexuality, Loader interacts with my
work more than any other (apparently he regarded it of some scholarly
caliber) and reaches significant points of agreement. As regards a
creation reference in Rom 1:26-27, Loader states:
“With the reference to female and male
here [in Rom 1:26-27], he connects with the creation, to which he has
alluded specifically in 1:23. It is highly probable that he believes,
that the creation story implies that only sexual relations between male
and female (and then only in marriage) are acceptable before God. It was
inevitable that Jewish authors would associate nature and divine
creation and ordering as its foundation.” (pp. 313-14)
Again, Loader:
“The allusion literally to ‘males’ and
‘females’ probably has in mind, the creation of male and female, which
along with the prohibitions of Leviticus will have shaped Paul’s stance”
(Making
Sense of Sex: Attitudes
towards Sexuality in Early Jewish and Christian Literature
[Eerdmans, 2014], 138)
My only complaint with Loader as regards the allusion to
creation is that he doesn't note from me the first two parts of the
tripartite structure initiated in Rom 1:23 of human/image/likeness and
birds/cattle/reptiles, which are designed to connect the reader to Gen
1:26-27.
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., is an
Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
and author of The Bible
and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics
(Abingdon Press).