beliefs. These people also want to remake the Bible in their own image.
The Rainbow Mafia loves to try to turn heroes of the faith into gay
men. One of the longest-held gay Bible tropes is that David and Jonathan
were gay lovers.
Those who argue for this ridiculous interpretation of
scripture generally cite:
1 Samuel 20, Jonathan learns that his father, King Saul, intends
to kill David, who God anointed to replace Saul as king. When Jonathan
delivers the news and David knows he has to go into hiding, verse 41 tells us,
“And as soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap
and fell on his face to the ground and bowed three times. And they
kissed one another and wept with one another, David weeping the most.”
Q Spirit, a website that “promotes LGBTQ spirituality,” says of David and Jonathan,
“It’s impossible to know whether David and Jonathan expressed their
love sexually. Some consider David to be bisexual, since the Hebrew
scriptures also recount how he committed adultery with Bathsheba and
later made her one of his eight wives. There is no doubt that many
people today do honor David and Jonathan as gay saints.”
Naturally, all of this is untrue. GotQuestions reminds us
that “the Hebrew word for ‘love’ used here covers a broad range of
meanings and does not mean ‘romantic’ or ‘sexual’ love unless the
context demands it.”
In addition to sharing some of the interesting nuggets of the Hebrew
language in this chapter, Brown took the gay myth head-on, citing an
extensive footnote from one of his books:
Regarding the act of kissing (as distinguished from “making out”), note that kissing was a common way of saying hello or goodbye in the ancient Near East, as it is in many cultures to this day. Furthermore, if all the kisses that the Bible recorded were interpreted in sexual terms, then Isaac would have been erotically involved with his own son (see Gen 27:26, “Then his father Isaac said to him, ‘Come here, my son, and kiss me.’”), Laban would have been erotically involved with his nephew Jacob (see Gen 29:13, “He embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his home”), Laban would have been erotically involved with his grandchildren and daughters (see Gen 31:55, “Early the next morning Laban kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them”), Esau would have been erotically involved with his brother Jacob (see Gen 33:4, “But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him”), Joseph would have been erotically involved with all his brothers (see Gen 45:15, “And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them”), Jacob would have been erotically involved with his grandsons (see Gen 48:10, “So Joseph brought his sons close to him, and his father kissed them and embraced them”), and Joseph would have been erotically involved with his just-deceased father Jacob (see Gen 50:1, “Joseph threw himself upon his father and wept over him and kissed him”) – and these are just examples from the first book of the Bible, Genesis!
Brown also pointed out in an article at the Stream:
Jonathan became a married man, with children. And, much
more significantly, David married numerous women, almost destroying his whole life because of his lust for a married woman named Bathsheba. He ended up committing adultery with her, getting her pregnant, and then killing her husband (see 2 Samuel 11). This is not what gay men do!
“Let this ridiculous myth be laid to rest once and for all,” Brown
concludes. “David and Jonathan were as heterosexual as they come. And
heterosexual men, just like heterosexual women, can enjoy significant,
deep, same-sex friendships that are 100% non-sexual and non-romantic.
Thank God for that.”
PJMedia/C.Q.