Located at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Catholic Handbook
PURL: http://purl.oclc.org/NET/lgbh/
[A PURL is an OCLC maintained "Persistant URL" 
which will always point to the real location of a website]
  
3 May 1994
Free Catholic Mailing List <CATHOLIC@AMERICAN.EDU>
Paul Halsall <HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU>


Was St. Paul Right to Attack Male Prostitutes?


Someone on the Free Catholic Maillist, in which  "clobber texts"
are often used on gay people, was trying to defend the translation
of certain Greek words as "homosexuals" in the Revised Standard
Version, got me thinking by asking this question?

	"The word HOMOSEXUAL's only about a hundred years 
	old so we wouldn't expect to find it in older bible translations 
	from the Greek.  The ARSENOKOITOI were quite literally "men 
	who lie [sleep] with other men" kind of male prostitutes, I 
	surmise).  And those were the ones St. Paul said would never 
	ever see the face of our glorious Redeemer.  [And what
	else would you call them if not homosexuals?  Be nice, now.]    :"

My question is "what do you think that old hooker-lover Jesus 
would have called them?

One of the aspects of certain arguments by pro-gay people that
I find most troubling, and it is never contradicted for the reason
I am about to give by any straight person I have read, is that the
people mentioned by St. Paul were "male prostitutes". 

But why shouldn't prostitutes not go to the kingdom of Heaven? 
Even boy hookers? Both now and in the past prostitution 
has hardly ever been a career of choice; in the past, and now 
in countries like Thailand prostitutes are typically slaves 
of some kind. Are these the people that Jesus rejected? 

I am prepared to accept that "arsenokoitai" [which if we 
are being "literal" means male-fuckers] were a group who 
perhaps *used* prostitutes, boys and perhaps women also. 
What I am not prepared to accept is any interpretation of St. 
Paul that contradicts John 3:16 ["God so loved the world he
sent his only son to die for it"].

Both gays and straights should stop trying to get round
Biblical problems by dumping the ordure on prostitutes. And
if St. Paul did mean "male prostitutes", then I think we have to
see that this is another of his areas of short-sightedness [along
with slavery, the position of women and so forth.]