So Smoot's talk, the entire text of which can apparently be read here, is quite remarkable. On the surface, the talk positions itself as an exegetical examination of the Sodom & Gomorrah story from the Bible, arguing that the key sin in the story is not homosexual sex, but, instead, abusive behavior and depravity. But many Latter-day Saints--and other Christians--still believe in the former interpretation, as Smoot points out:
Quite interesting, no? And what "answer" should LDS--and Mopologists, no doubt--"jump" to? As Smoot explains:This understanding of the text was infamously captured in Jack Chick’s 1989 sensationalist comic tract Doom Town, in which an evangelical Christian cameraman covering a gay rights rally for the news attempts to proselytize a young gay man by recounting to him the horrors of Sodom and its downfall. The tract ends with the ominous message that “[God] destroyed an entire city because of the sin of homosexuality.” As prevalent as this reading of the story might be among fundamentalist and ultra-conservative Christians, however, Longman urges us that “we should not jump too quickly to that answer.”
But what many interpreters, including many Latter-day Saints, have failed to appreciate about this sexual component of the sin of Sodom is that it does not involve notions of sexual orientation (homosexual or otherwise) as such. The men of Sodom were not “gay” in even the remotest sense of contemporary LGBT identity if for no other reason than the ancients did not share modern conceptions of sexual orientation.
In other words: the great sin of the city of Sodom was not sodomy per se, but rather "inhospitality." Smoot is careful to point out that there *is* nonetheless a sexual component to this (he actually says that "the men of Sodom basically attempted to gang rape Lot’s guests"), but the chief sin here is not the sexual act per se, but rather, the sheer criminality and disregard for humanity that was behind the attempted rape.The ancient audience of this text would thus have seen the “abominable”/tôʿēbāh sexual acts of the men of Sodom as the culmination of gross inhospitality, not as sexual desire per se, and certainly not as a signifier of any kind of underlying LGBT sexual orientation.
Personally, I found Smoot's interpretation persuasive, though of course it's impossible to overlook the fact that this flies in the face of longstanding Mopologetic views on the topic. Students of Mopologetics probably remember Daniel C. Peterson's infamous article, "Text and Context," in which he spends several paragraphs mocking homosexual writers and even arguing that "it seems clear that immorality (not merely of the homosexual variety) and intellectual apostasy are, and always have been, frequent (though not invariable) companions." He sums up his discussion with this wryly homophobic quip: "Sodom and Cumorah are apparently not compatible." Notice that there is no hint whatsoever that DCP grasps the point about inhospitality being the primary sin of Sodom. (It would contradict his thesis, no?) Smoot's essay is thus a massive rebuke to one of the most longstanding and central beliefs in Mopologetics: i.e., that homosexuality is equivalent to apostasy.
Smoot writes:
One would assume that this applies just as much to DCP, Midgley, Gee, and the other Mopologists as it does to anyone else. And indeed, this passage seems almost like a direct appeal to the senior Mopologists:It does nobody any favors (not the Church, not its moral teachings, not those who sincerely want to know how they can love and help their LGBT friends and family, and certainly not LGBT Latter-day Saints themselves) to misuse scripture in what might otherwise be a sincere attempt at balancing the two great commandments.
Yes, and I hope Dr. Peterson will remember this next time he brings up the bit about the baker in Colorado who refused to bake the cake for the gay couple. Perhaps Dr. Peterson is more accurately described as a "Sodomite" here?Smoot wrote:Listening to and understanding their LGBT siblings and offering them a spiritual home in the Church of Jesus Christ cannot be accomplished by thoughtlessly wresting scripture or by being more interested in winning an argument than trying to sincerely understand the plight of the gay Latter-day Saint. Consider, then, in this light, the following way in which a Latter-day Saint today might “liken” the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to him or herself. Imagine that an LGBT Latter-day Saint comes seeking refuge and a spiritual home in the Church. Imagine that this Saint has endured feelings of loneliness and alienation in the Church because they do not feel like they belong, or perhaps because they have, regrettably, endured bullying among their peers. Non-LGBT Church members have a choice. They can, like Abraham, respond with love and work hard to help this weary traveler; or, they can, like the men of Sodom, subject this poor soul to further abuse. Since the plainly obvious moral point of the story in Genesis is to praise Abraham’s behavior and condemn the behavior of the men of Sodom, the choice should be clear enough.
In any case, kudos to Smoot for a well-crafted piece, and for sticking it to the Mopologists on their home turf, and at their marquee conference. This is without a doubt the biggest rebuke of Mopologetic politics and doctrine since Grant Hardy announced that belief in a historical Book of Mormon was irrelevant for salvation. And so far, Midgley, DCP, and the rest have been basically silent on this, though one imagines that they are quietly seething with rage.
