An LGBT-friendly Bible: step forward, or pointless poke in the eye?

GENESIS, CHAPTER TWO

trans. Robert Whitehead

Everything made on the earth was future, was unfinishing.

But for now the work was done. The god stopped writing, named this era Rest and laid down into it.

Think vacation, as holy as that. A time severed from the time that came before.

History begins when the tape starts recording, when the butcher-god makes the first cut.

No rains had yet fallen to array the brush and grass wildly. And who would cultivate the wild when, inevitably, the rains came?

As if to answer, a mist covered everything.

In that mist, a naked man shook off the dust. The god, stepping a moment into living, kissed the man.

They planted a garden and named it The Garden of Earthly Delights.

There was beauty in the ivy and fruit on the vine, and two trees with alluring faces– one the god called Adam and the other Eve.

A river ran between them, then split off into four different species of river.

The first was called Gold because the land it wound through was riven with the stuff. Also resins sweet as lavender, also stones resembling claws.

The second river we could call the Nile.

The third is the Tigris, and the fourth Euphrates.

The god left the naked man to water and weed the garden, saying, Whatever you do, do not eat the reddish fruit from the tree named Eve. But when you do eat it, it will taste like death. And death will know your name.

Then the god left, thinking, A man alone is dangerous. What if I give him a plaything.

So another creation summary: thoughtless egrets, blue in the feather’s stem; wolves with their incantations; horses with shods of earth in their hooves; baboons; red-capped cardinals; cats in tortoiseshell furs; every imaginable animal and a tricky look in each of them like they were made from clay.

The god brought them out like pageant kids, hoping one would win.

The naked man made up names for gulls and cuckoos, for marsupials and bats, herring, spaniels, all lined up in orders and suborders of classification. None of them were a woman.

The god anesthetized the man and prepped for surgery. A rib extracted from his side, around which a woman fleshed out.

From the man, a woman born.

When she glided over to him, pale and damp in his hospital bed, he could have fired, She’s mine. I am the bone in her neck, the fat on her hip.

In short, the beginning of possession by sex. The one strict myth of being sexual.

But in truth, really, the man and the woman were naked. They did not know they would be capable of a shame like that. Not yet.

______________________

Robert Whitehead, a translator, has undertaken a new translation of The Bible, a segment of which- above- he offers at his website. There are others there.

He calls his edition The Queer Bible:

The Queer Bible is my reclamation, through translation, of the queer mythic potential of Biblical stories. I want to make an inclusive, celebratory space within the text that undoes the implicit sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, hierarchical oppression, slut-shaming, etc. and reconstitutes the feminine, the queer, the outcast, the strange.

I believe the Bible is a remarkable text. I admire the faiths founded on it. This project is in no way an argument against one religion or another. I am not working in theology, not attempting a queer evangelicalism-- instead, I am working in the poetry, the language, the narrative technique, the myth, and the mystery of the Bible to determine how it can work in the context of queer theory, progressive politics, and contemporary poetry aesthetic. I am making a radical translation that is radically inclusive. And I want you to join me.

Whitehead sees an urgency to the work, given the campaign to pass laws legalizing- sometimes re-legalizing- discrimination against all sorts of minorities, but driven by a desire to undermine marriage equality:

Unfortunately, the Bible has been misused by religious, political, or cultural leaders and institutions to negatively influence the lives of queer people. Recently in the US, a county clerk in Kentucky started a national conversation when she refused marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Biblical grounds. In Omaha, NE, religious affiliation and Biblical teachings are being used as arguments to keep young people from receiving comprehensive sexual education that includes information on gender identity and sexual orientation. A religious university in Portland, OR, wants to ban transgender students from their campus and is using the Bible to back it up.

That's only in America, and only the stories being reported today. Ours is a country that has long seen the policing of queer bodies and sexualities as a cultural and moral imperative, a perspective often informed and supported by a conservative, Biblically-oriented cause of "religious liberty." There are many churches still preaching hatred of LBGTQ people from the pulpit, or including discriminatory practices against LGBTQ families in their belief systems. There are still religiously-affiliated campaigns to keep municipalities from protecting LGBTQ people in housing or workplace discrimination.

Whitehead has a writing residency to start the work, and a Kickstarter campaign has already oversubscribed its modest goal.

One need not think long or hard about what the general reaction to a venture of this sort might be, though the blog Liberal America has dubbed the project “the ultimate blasphemy.”. In The Guardian, an American writer, Michael Arceneaux, sees little point to the enterprise:

Whitehead has already exceeded his modest Kickstarter campaign goal, but for all his good intentions, what’s the softer, sweeter way to write: “And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do?” How do you massage text that says anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death?

Whitehead says intent isn’t to “change meaning” but “rather to show meaning in a queer way”. You can gussy up an ugly sentiment all you want, but there’s only so much makeup you can pile on to cover a blemish that hideous. Considering his source material, Whitehead would literally have to create a whole new text to net his goal in any meaningful fashion.

Anyway, re-translating the Bible to deliberately elide its medieval edges doesn’t grapple with its flaws so much as seek to evade them, and this doesn’t queer the Bible – it just offers an alternative, which devout believers of The Word would undoubtedly reject, and which hurts efforts to undermine those who cite “religious liberty” to justify their prejudices.

It’s a feel-good premise without actual significance, and it’s how too many progressive Christians try to soften what’s there instead of just being daring enough to smartly argue that the book is a historical text that’s not meant to be taken literally.

Arceneaux argues for a more head-on challenge to the issues of scripture and sexual orientation:

A shift in language might aid those directly impacted by Biblical literalists of convenience, but to work within the same foundation is to ultimately defeat their bastardization of the Bible. That is why I appreciate authors like Matthew Vines, who through his book, God and The Gay Christian, brings “credible, often-overlooked insights to light.” Vines argues that “Christians who affirm the full authority of Scripture can also affirm committed, monogamous same-sex relationships.”

Vine’s reinterpretation efforts work best, as they take on bigots with their own language. No effort to eat away at intolerance lacks value, but to truly end inequalities whose defenders justify their views with Bible verses, it’s more effective to use their own words against them.

A Queen James Bible tried massaging the text in 2012 to little fanfare, critical success, or sales. A revision of the New International Version, published in 2011, was condemned by the Southern Baptist Convention for being too gender-inclusive, but praised for retranslations that make sharper the condemnation of homosexuality.