Pride Month vs. the Bible!

Dan Beecher I think most, basically all Christians in a modern context would be very happy to say that they disavow the idea of marriage is one man purchasing a woman from another man. We're all on board with that.

Dan McClellan Hopefully.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think there are some people in Davis County who probably are not quite there yet.

Dan Beecher Okay, fair enough.

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And boy, do we have some combating to do tonight.

Dan Beecher It's all combat today, baby.

Dan McClellan We are. We're going to slip right into those combat footies, and we're going to get going.

Dan Beecher We're warriors today.

Dan McClellan Happy Pride Month, Dan. Happy Pride Month, Dan. Right back at you.

Dan Beecher And that is what this week's episode is all about.

Dan McClellan We're going thematic this week.

Dan Beecher And this is how we know that it's springtime because pride comes before the fall. No, wait. Anyway, what we're going to be talking about in the first segment is actually the word pride.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher We're going to be taking issue with the sin of pride.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher And then in the second segment for our chapter and verse, we're going to be looking at some passages that have maybe been used in some not very nice ways against some very nice people.

Dan McClellan And yes, perhaps they've been used in particularly prideful ways.

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan If one may be so bold.

Dan Beecher Ooh.

Dan McClellan Very- Ooh.

Dan Beecher We're going to hoist them on their own petard, if you will.

Dan McClellan Whatever that means, yes.

Dan Beecher Whatever that ends up meaning.

Dan McClellan Yes. Petard, I think, was a bomb, wasn't it?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so to be hoisted by one's own is to accidentally blow oneself up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, there we are.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So, we're going to blow them up on their own bombs.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So first, though, let's take issue. And we're going to start with, the issue we're going to take is about pride. But our launching point is a lovely tweet. I'm not going to call it a tweet. Well, maybe I will. Here's what I've decided, and I'm just going to put this out into the world. I want all of you to take this on. Dan, you and I were just talking about X and how- ... when Elon first got Twitter and changed the name to X, I was like, "I'm never going to call it that. I'm always going to call it Twitter because that'll show him," or something. And then I realized that, oh, he's changed it so much that it really is a very different place. So now I refer to the old thing as Twitter, and this new abomination that welcomes Nazis and has a hate bot running around, and I call that X. I think that that is a perfectly fine appellation for the dumpster fire that it has become, so. But my theory is that the word tweet can now be used on any social media platform.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher If you did a short post, I call it a tweet. If you're on Threads, you did a tweet.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You didn't do a thread, you did a tweet.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So anyway, we're launching with a tweet. Sorry about the rant. Got a little off-topic. We're launching with a tweet from a real peach of a guy, Pastor Mark Driscoll.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Good Pastor Mark from Mars Hill Church.

Dan Beecher Yeah. He's a grump of a fella.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I'm not a fan. But he did a tweet, and do I read it?

Dan McClellan Yeah, you can go ahead and read the tweet if you like.

Dan Beecher I'll read the tweet, but then we need to also describe the image that accompanies this.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher The tweet says, "Pride is what got Satan kicked out of heaven. Pride is what caused man to fall. Pride is the demonic counterfeit of repentance. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God." And okay, if that were what he posted and it were, I don't know, let's say February, I would be mostly okay with that. But there's this enormous dog whistle in that, and the accompanying image, do you want to just describe the image?

Dan McClellan So it's mainly colors ranging from dark brown to orange to yellow, and it is a bunch of people writhing in agony, bathed in flames.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then the- It is gruesome and horrifying ...

Dan McClellan and the caption is, "How God celebrates pride."

Dan Beecher Which honestly, the thought that you would be okay with your God, with the entity that is the object of your worship, to have as his celebration the burning and torture of human beings, is astounding to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The song needs to go, "His God is a pathetic God."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan An evil God to- To tolerate or even to quote, unquote, "celebrate" burning people alive is kind of the thing that they criticize in another prominent religion.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I guess once June rolls around, all bets are off, and they get to use whatever kind of rhetoric they like. But obviously, this is a reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, which we will talk about in the next segment.

Dan Beecher Right. It could also be hell. That's the other thing, the people- Oh.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm ...

Dan Beecher burning in the lake of fire. It could be either. It could be any of those things. It's a very unpleasant image.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But I guess, sending folks to hell would be the other way to understand what he's talking about.

Dan Beecher But the very clear inference here is he's making all these comments about pride, and then it's a reference to June being Gay Pride Month.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Or LGBTQ Pride Month.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And I don't know, Dan, do you have any problem with that at all?

Dan McClellan I have all the problems with it, Dan. Of all the people who loathe dictionaries- I know ... and retreating to a dictionary for any kind of adjudication of meaning, I'm not trying to say that pride has to mean these things. But I'm just pointing out that the people who do look at how people use words- Yeah ... have divided up the word pride into multiple different senses.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there are senses that could be associated with what Mark is talking about in the body of his tweet, and there are other senses that are associated with Pride Month.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I'm actually going to appeal to the Oxford English Dictionary, my alma mater.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I don't know if you can use alma mater for a place where you did a graduate degree.

Dan Beecher You went to school in a book?

Dan McClellan But the dictionary, yeah. It was crowded, it was warm. But when you look at the entry for pride, one, it's a noun.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Hopefully, we all know that already. But the main sense number one is the quality of being proud. Now, sense 1.1A, which lets you know there are going to be a lot of senses, but- Uh-huh ... 1.1A is a high, especially an excessively high, opinion of one's own worth or importance, which gives rise to a feeling or attitude of superiority over others.

Dan Beecher Inordinate- Right ...

Dan McClellan self-esteem. So that is 1.1A, but I want to bring up another one as well, which is sense 1.2. So this is down a few. Arrogant, haughty, or overbearing behavior, demeanor, or treatment of others, especially as exhibiting an inordinately high opinion of oneself.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So this is the stuff that you could say is what's addressed in the Bible, what is condemned in the Bible, particularly that word haughty.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Even in the King James version, we see haughtiness- Yeah ... is called out explicitly on a number of different occasions. So that's what we might call problematic pride- Right ... if we want to stick with alliteration. We're not into the whole brevity thing, but we are into alliteration.

Dan Beecher Why not?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Alliteration is so alluring.

Dan McClellan And aggravating.

Dan Beecher I ran out of A words.

Dan McClellan I think that's a decent look at pride in the sense that Mark is using in the body of the tweet.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Now, this has nothing at all to do with the sense that is intended when people talk about Pride Month- Yeah ... and gay pride. Because you have to go down all the way to sense 1.6B. Oh, excuse me, 1.6A. 1.6B is about events associated with gay pride.

Dan Beecher Sorry.

Dan McClellan 1.6A is a sense of confidence, self-respect, and solidarity as felt or publicly expressed by members of a group, typically one that has been socially marginalized, on the basis of their shared identity, history, and experience. Frequently attributive. Compare gay pride. And then down further, it talks a bit about that. And I split it up into two different senses of pride. One is the I'm better than you pride, and the other is I'm not worse than you pride.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there's not really overlap there.

Dan Beecher When I think of the pride of Gay Pride Month or the Pride Parade or whatever, I don't even think it's pride as a me compared to you moment. I think it's pride as in we are proud of ourselves for having made it through this.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher We're proud of ourselves for being able to be out and proud in a society that doesn't want us to be.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It doesn't seem to me to be a declaration of I'm as good as you. It's just we're holding to each other in this moment, and we're raising ourselves up because everyone else is trying to push us down.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that's a very different meaning. And this is one of the problems. This is something that happens a lot, where people like Driscoll like to take this jujitsu ... approach to language where they get to use the word in their way and in the other way and conflate the ways, and it happens so much. I was just telling you about a post that I saw where the Utah Mammoth, that's the new Utah hockey team.

Dan McClellan The new hockey team, yeah, NHL.

Dan Beecher They posted, and the post was just a simple one. It was just their logo done in rainbow.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Did they even say, "Happy Pride?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They just say, "Happy Pride. #tusksup," because that's their new thing. And 2.7 thousand comments later, the comments section just went haywire in all the ways that I suppose are predictable. But another thing that's so funny to me is how many people, I think belligerently and willfully want to misunderstand what Pride is.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What it's about, what it's for, what's being celebrated. So many people saying, "Why are we making this about sex?" And it's like- Yeah.

Dan McClellan You're making it about sex ...

Dan Beecher right. What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with a group of people, you know what I mean? And their struggles and their triumphs.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah, you're the one making it about sex. I think that's what's funny, is just willful refusal to any attempt at understanding.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I think because understanding means engaging the concerns on the terms of the people making them, thinking about systemic power asymmetries, thinking about how members of the LGBTQIA+ community have been mistreated by society at large for generations. And if you do that, you give away so much ground in the culture wars that so many people are trying to keep alive.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I saw another tweet or an X-ing, I don't know what they call them.

Dan Beecher But- ...

Dan McClellan it was back in the '50s, you could be jailed in every state in the nation or something like that for this, and somebody's like, "We need to bring back that old-timey law."

Dan Beecher And- Right ...

Dan McClellan that's an awful thing to cheer for. And if you actually have to address the reality head-on, then you kind of have to acknowledge that is an awful thing to cheer for.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And anytime you are advancing a worldview that literally results in children taking their own lives because of bullying, because of depression, because of being made to feel like they don't belong in society- Yeah ... in their own bodies- Yeah.

Dan Beecher Full societal- ...

Dan McClellan in God's presence ...

Dan Beecher rejection, yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Anytime you're gleefully advancing a worldview like that, it's time to sit a few plays out.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's time to have a Coke and a smile. And if you know the rest of that line, it's time for that as well.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's abominable. And yeah, to have to go about it fallaciously because you don't have a real case just kind of exposes the intellectual corruption of going out and just making it clear why it's necessary.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The more you push back against it, the more you demonstrate precisely why it is necessary.

Dan Beecher Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.

Dan McClellan A friend of mine actually posted on that Mammoth post. A friend of mine commented- Uh-huh ...

Dan Beecher that he was thankful to the bigots for pointing out why Pride is still necessary.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Pride Month is necessary every month or every year.

Dan McClellan Yeah. If you can be in public and say, "Hey, look at me, I belong," and you get people telling you you deserve to die and that God's going to punish you in hell just for imagining that you belong- Right ... you're just making it more and more necessary. What's hilarious is all the influencers, and even people with responsibilities associated with the military who are like, "Why doesn't..." I forget. They use some kind of slur to refer to members of that community. But they're like, "As long as those people get an entire month, and the military doesn't get a month for appreciation, we're going to continue to basically just be bigots and hateful."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And other people are like, "There is Military Appreciation Month."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there's- Well, what the heck?

Dan Beecher ... and there's Veteran Appreciation Month.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's like there's two months or something, and then specific days as well.

Dan McClellan And also- Which betrays how little they actually care- Right. They don't actually care ... about the military, people serving in the military, veterans. It's like people getting upset about trans women competing in sports when those people are also braying about how women need to stay in the kitchen and women shouldn't even be able to vote.

Dan Beecher Right. They don't actually care.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's because it's a battleground in the culture wars.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Have you ever watched a fencing match?

Dan McClellan No?

Dan Beecher Then why are you not shutting up right now? But one of the things I did want to get to is that, like I said, without the picture and its caption Mm-hmm Driscoll has made an interest... And again, without the reference to June, Driscoll's made an interesting tweet about an actual thing, which is the so-called sin of pride.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And I wanted to talk about that because- The sin of pride, yeah ... I wanted to talk about what that is, what it means, and what it doesn't mean.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Because he's not wrong that pride is widely, it's one of the seven deadly sins. It's the worst of them by most accounts, by most reckonings. I remember C.

Dan McClellan S.

Dan Beecher Lewis talking about pride being the worst sin of them all, and I tend to think that probably murder's worse than haughtiness- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan but whatever.

Dan Beecher But I think his contention was something along the lines of all the other sins stem from a point of pride or something like that. So let's talk about the kind of pride- Mm-hmm ... that the Bible does condemn.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What are we talking about here?

Dan McClellan Well, probably the most famous passage having to do with pride is Proverbs 16:18. "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

Dan Beecher Which is- Right ...

Dan McClellan everybody knows what's going on there. And the word there for pride is ga'on, which is a Hebrew word that can refer to height, it can refer to eminence, it can refer to pride. I'm looking through my lexicon here because- Uh-huh ... I seem to recall some uses that are not necessarily negative.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It's not necessarily about bad pride. Yeah, so you have Isaiah 2:10, "Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from the terror of Adonai, the Lord, and from the glory of his ga'on."

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan So, his majesty.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So pride is something that is associated with good things.

Dan Beecher So even in ancient Hebrew, we're not free of words that have multiple meanings that are actually very much in conflict with each other, or at least at odds with each other.

Dan McClellan Well, at least the connotations can be positive or negative- Right ... depending on the context.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So the word in and of itself doesn't necessarily constitute a value judgment.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan The context must indicate if this is a positive or a negative value judgment.

Dan Beecher So- Which is confusing for the worst sin of all. You know what I mean? That seems a little weird.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And when it talks about pride in a negative way, it is almost always about people who are wealthy- Hmm ... people who lord their power and their wealth over others, and people who insist they're better than others. Like somebody who goes out and tweets about how God hates other people that- Yeah ... he doesn't like.

Dan Beecher And- It does- ...

Dan McClellan somebody who has a position of power and preeminence within a specific community, and who relishes that and exploits it, and all of that kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It does seem like, I have had many encounters on the internet, not encounters with, but encounters with the work of Pastor Driscoll, and it does seem like, oh man, you're playing with dangerous... You're in the danger zone when you start talking about pride, because that man is about as prideful and haughty and, not self-assured. And that's the other thing, is that we're not talking about self-assurance or confidence.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher We're talking about arrogance and- Yeah ... that sense that you're better than other people.

Dan McClellan Well, and he was actually, I think he resigned from his leadership of Mars Hill Church in- Yeah ... 2014, so 11 years ago, precisely for being verbally abusive, being arrogant, and fostering a culture of fear.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the elder board of Mars Hill found him guilty of being quick-tempered and domineering. And he resigned before the investigation concluded, claiming God had released him from his role. And then a 2016 civil lawsuit filed by former members alleged he misused church funds and engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity. And then also, I find this hilarious just because I have been learning an awful lot about the things people do to get on the bestseller list.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan And he published a book in 2013 called "A Call to Resurgence," and he evidently not only plagiarized portions of the book- ... but also, his church paid over $200,000 to a marketing firm to artificially boost another book, "Real Marriage," onto The New York Times bestseller list. Something that he acknowledged doing- Wow ... and acknowledged was wrong. So he has a history of doing precisely what the text of his tweet- Yeah ... sans image, would be condemning. And to my knowledge, there's not been I don't know about any public repentance for those kind of gross displays of pride and arrogance and haughtiness.

Dan Beecher When I look at other... I found a sort of bunch of Bible verses about pride, a little list of Bible verses about pride, and it's always the version of pride that is basically the antonym of humility.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Right? And even in his tweet, he talks about humble yourself before the Lord, but he doesn't seem to talk about being a humble person. He says, "Humble yourself before the Lord," but it does seem like in a lot of these, and I'm looking at James 4:6, but he gives more grace, therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Romans 12:16, "Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight." All of those so clearly say to me a very specific thing, and I don't see people like Driscoll promoting that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. He ain't that. And we talked about Jordan Peterson's- Oh, right ... attempt to try to spin "blessed are the meek"- Right.

Dan Beecher That's right ...

Dan McClellan into blessed are the absolute unit monsters who just sheathe their swords- Right ... and practice discipline with these hands that are registered deadly weapons. But that's what it means- I could kill you ... to be meek.

Dan Beecher But I won't, and that means Jesus loves me. Because I'm better than you. Because I'm better than you.

Dan McClellan Right. Which sounds an awful lot like what Driscoll does.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He, in 2024, at the Stronger Men's conference in Springfield, Missouri- Yeah ... he was removed from the stage after publicly criticizing a sword-swallowing performance by Alex Magala, a former stripper. He criticized it as demonic and akin to a strip show with a Jezebel spirit.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan And they yanked him off the stage.

Dan Beecher I remember that one.

Dan McClellan And then he later posted on Twitter about live streaming to discuss the Jezebel spirit, to which he was exposed at the Stronger Men's conference. It sounds like he's also currently being accused of structuring a church he started in Scottsdale, Arizona to avoid oversight, where everything ran through him, and he started doing 24/7 surveillance of members of the church, particularly one family who was shunned after their son kissed Driscoll's daughter.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Yeah, he's a peach. I think we can all agree that he's just a sweet kid.

Dan McClellan But- Definitely a model of humility and definitely the antis- Okay, that word didn't come out right. The antithesis, or as I used to say when I was younger, anti-thesis- Right ... of a prideful person.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's so interesting to see how they want to twist that word. And this is part of the problem of all biblical interpretation. It's part of the problem of just language use in general, is that the using of a specific word that has multiple meanings is always a bit of a landmine, a minefield.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But when you're purposefully obfuscating, when you're purposefully pulling a switcho changeo, I don't think it says anything good about you.

Dan McClellan No. It kind of reminds me of just arbitrarily claiming, "Oh, I don't own all of the houses that I own. God owns them." "I'm just the humble steward."

Dan Beecher Yeah. We're running a greatest hits here of guys we dislike. Dave Ramsey.

Dan McClellan All right. It's exploiting the ambiguities of language.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And just making claims that you know are laughably false, just for the rhetorical value.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's pretty shameful. It's unbecoming of someone who claims to be a follower of the Prince of Peace, and the one who said, "Blessed are the meek."

Dan Beecher This is- And a representative thereof as well.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's really just a representative of toxic masculinity, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And basically just a naked thirst for power and influence and money.

Dan Beecher Let's- Which is- Can we just- ...

Dan McClellan exactly what pride is.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There you go. And I'm just going to flag that if your church leader delights in the idea of literally anybody writhing in pain, engulfed in flames, maybe see that as a bit of a red flag.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, let us then Move on. We're going to stick with the jerks as we move on to our chapter and verse. And for our chapter and verse, it's actually just verses and verses. Various verses.

Dan McClellan Versus, versus, verses.

Dan Beecher I tried to make the middle one V-E-R-S-U-S. We're going to pit verses against-- Versus, versus, verses.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Exactly.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, so let's talk a bit. We did a show a couple years ago about, does the Bible actually condemn homosexuality? And just a quick recap, you can go back and listen to it or watch it if you want to, but the quick recap is, no, they didn't even know what homosexuality was.

Dan McClellan If we're talking about homosexuality as a reference to sexual orientation- Right ... which is what the overwhelming majority of the usage is directly pointing at, and again, as much as I hate dictionaries, you can look in the OED and you can look in pretty much any dictionary, that will be the first entry in there.

Dan Beecher Right. So yeah, it doesn't have anything to say about homosexuality in that sense. It does have plenty to say about men having sex with men.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Says nothing about women having sex with women.

Dan McClellan Not in the Hebrew Bible it doesn't, because they didn't care.

Dan Beecher They didn't care. And one of the things that we learn, over and over again, is that women don't count. You know what I mean? They're not even people in this arrangement.

Dan McClellan And if we go back to the logic of marriage, it's a man purchasing the procreative capacities and the sexual availability of another woman from another man, usually her father.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And she was supposed to have that new car smell. The goods were supposed- Right ... to be in pristine condition, meaning she had not been sexually penetrated by a penis.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is why, in many streams of Jewish tradition, even pretty traditional ones, a woman who has had sex with another woman is actually not the tainted goods that a woman who has already had sex with a man- Right ... would be considered to be.

Dan Beecher Still a virgin, basically.

Dan McClellan Still a virgin. So yeah, as far as they understood the concept of virginity, which was precisely, and we have used these terms on this show before, a vagina that has been penetrated by a penis.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And somebody made a-- I apologize, sort of forget which mutual of mine on social media made this wonderful point. But they pointed out that men are so prideful and so arrogant to talk about virginity as if their penis changes who a woman is.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan It's not just a relationship that may or may not have any effect on her well-being or her body or anything like that. But the notion that that penis somehow changes her state of being- Yeah ... just because it was the first is the height of arrogance and pride- Yeah ... and stupidity.

Dan Beecher And I think that one of the interesting things is that I think most, basically all Christians in a modern context would be very happy to say that they disavow the idea of marriage is one man purchasing a woman from another man. I think we're all on board with that. So guess- Hopefully.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think there are some people in Davis County who probably are not quite there yet.

Dan Beecher Okay, fair enough. But for the most part, if you present it as that, most Christians would reject that. So congratulations, you're already on board with rejecting a biblical sense of marriage.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So why it is such a stretch for them to realize that maybe they can take a few steps further along that path and realize that all of the ways that ancient marriage worked aren't what we want- Yeah ... and aren't relevant in a modern context.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think also most Christians would not be okay with polygamy and concubines. I think most Christians would be very much against that.

Dan McClellan And yeah, probably not big on eunuchs either.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Or what Paul's take was.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You should all be celibate anyway.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And if you can't hack celibacy, then go ahead and get married, have your occasional prophylactic, passionless sex.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But otherwise, you should be living as if you were not married.

Dan Beecher And- A very John Harvey Kellogg view of the world.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and this fits with kind of the Greco-Roman Jewish notion, particularly among the intelligentsia, the people who are more informed about Greek philosophy, where sexual desire was one of the baser urges of the flesh, where there are some texts where it's like, not only can you not have sex with your wife during menstruation, but once she's past menopause, it's over.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And it can only be done with the expressed intent of procreation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And even then, according to some authors, you're not supposed to enjoy it. So, there are some who are like, "Eh." Post-menopausal, we're not going to get hung up on that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you can enjoy it, but only if it is with the express intent of procreation. And that's the world into which Paul shows up and goes, "Boy, have I got a new approach for you guys. The world's about to end, so nobody change their life circumstances unless you can't hack celibacy, because the last thing we want is for you to engage in any sexual immoral activity because your urges got too pent up."

Dan Beecher Too urgy.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They got too urgent. But when we're talking about the passages that people retreat to when they need to demonize folks who just have a different sexual orientation- Yeah ... when I first saw Mark's post, my initial idea was Sodom and Gomorrah. The more I look at it, the more I think, "Eh, it's probably intended to be hell."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is a related but a separate use of that imagery. But Sodom and Gomorrah is brought up an awful lot, and I have seen multiple appeals to Sodom and Gomorrah since yesterday.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Which is in our timeline, June 1st.

Dan Beecher Well, we're pushing it so that this show comes out early in the month.

Dan McClellan A bit sooner.

Dan Beecher So, yeah.

Dan McClellan And we've addressed this before on the podcast. It is the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast that the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is not a story or a lesson about the evils of homosexuality.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It is not even about gay people. It is about the use of the threat of sexual assaults against other men as a manifestation of gross inhospitality. And there are a bunch of ways to demonstrate this.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And including one that somebody pointed out earlier in a video that was on TikTok, and there's another Bible scholar, Kevin Carnahan. Do you recognize that name?

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan He's another PhD who does wonderful work. But he was responding to this video, and something that somebody was pointing out is that they don't think Genesis 19, the main sin is the attempt to sexually assault angels because God was going to destroy the city before the angels ever showed up.

Dan Beecher True.

Dan McClellan And you have in chapter 18 a reference to... Or is it chapter 18, or is it early in chapter 19? You have a reference to cries coming up to God's ears.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan I've got to look for it. But there are cries that are coming up to God's ears, and this is before the angels show up. And so the idea is, well, obviously it wasn't just about the men of Sodom threatening the angels with sexual assault. However, it raises another question. If Sodom is so evil and their main sin is a homosexual orientation, being attracted to other men and wanting to have sex with other men, where are the cries coming from?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's not the women, because absolutely nothing in this story says a word about the women of Sodom and Gomorrah being spared.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And here's the bizarre part, they're not even really considered people.

Dan Beecher No. As a matter of fact- Because when God says...

Dan McClellan Go ahead.

Dan Beecher Well, I was going to say, the story of Lot and how he allays the mob is by just chucking his daughters out to them.

Dan McClellan Or offering to, yeah.

Dan Beecher You can't dehumanize a person more than to be like, "No, you can't mob and rape my new guests, my house guests. Have these two daughters that I don't really care about."

Dan McClellan Yeah. "They're virgins."

Dan Beecher Yeah. It seems very much like that's the opposite of honoring their personhood.

Dan McClellan Yes. And the same thing happens in the parallel story in Judges 19.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Where we have the owner of the house says, "I got a daughter." And the Levite says, "And I got my concubine." And the concubine is the one who ends up getting shoved out into the crowd.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then is sexually abused, ultimately to her death. Ostensibly, the story doesn't make clear precisely when or how she died, but she was at death's doorstep, lying at the other person's doorstep.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The reason there's a difference between these two stories is because in Genesis, those two daughters are needed- Right ... for later in the story.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because they are going to become the ancestors of the Moabites and I believe the Ammonites.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They have to be there, they have to survive in order to sire these two ethnic lines incestually with Lot.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so some people will point to the fact that, oh, the men refused- The women, which shows they weren't attracted to women, which is entirely misguided.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the men of Sodom even say, because they're offended by this, and they say, "We're going to treat you worse than we're going to treat the other two," which is suggestive of a lack of consent.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So this is primarily about sexual assault, and the only reason that the women do not end up getting sexually assaulted is because the author needs them for later in the story.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In Judges 19, she is not spared. It's- They do sexually assault her, which shows it is- Right ... about power, it is about shaming, it is about asserting dominance. It is not about- It's about violence.

Dan Beecher It's about violence.

Dan McClellan It's not about sexual attraction.

Dan Beecher Well, and the other thing, and I only realized this today as I was thinking about this for the show, but one of the funny things to me about sort of hearkening to Sodom as your point of reference for why homosexuality is bad, no homosexuality happens in that story.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It doesn't occur. There's a threat of it, but it doesn't actually happen.

Dan McClellan And just threatening something is not really grounds for punishment. The logic of their legislative system- Right ... the logic of their jurisprudence would not have considered that a crime.

Dan Beecher Right. And yet the cities are destroyed. And you're right- Yeah ... the cities were set to be destroyed before all of that happened.

Dan McClellan So- Yes. We have Genesis 18:20 and 21, "Then Adonai said, 'How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, and how very grave their sin. I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.'" And when we look at Ezekiel, we have a description of Sodom's sin as pride- Yeah ... an abundance of bread, prosperous ease, and she did not strengthen the hand of the needy. She was haughty and did abominable things. And the folks who want to center homosexuality in their understanding of that story are always like, "Oh, abominable things. That means homosexuality."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It could also mean eating shrimp.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's the last thing that's listed, and it's not very specific.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But threatening men with sexual assault would also fall under the category of abomination.

Dan Beecher So- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan there are just no grounds for understanding the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as men being sexually attracted to other men.

Dan Beecher That's- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan an awful reading.

Dan Beecher If sort of the celebration of Pride Month culminated in roving gangs of gay men beating down doors to sexually assault people's house guests, then I would think you could make a better argument for there's some sort of analogous situation here. But what people seem to be protesting against is a couple people just trying to live their lives in literally exactly the same way you live your life.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Why are you so mad about that? Literally, what they want to do is be boring people just like you, in the suburbs, raising kids, whatever. Just going to work and going back home again. What are you mad about?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I love the Sesame Street, the creators of Bert and Ernie, where they- Uh-huh ... yeah, they're a gay couple. And somebody posted a photo, a still from Sesame Street, where Bert and Ernie are just sitting in a living room in their La-Z-Boys- Yeah ... on opposite ends of the room from each other, quietly reading in the evening.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it was like, "This is all they want. Why would you be mad at this?" And then Sesame Street, yesterday I believe, posted an image showing a bunch of furry Muppet arms- Oh, yeah ... outreached and grasping each other, and the colors make the rainbow. And oh my gosh. The outcry. The people who are like, "Keep all the sexualization out of this." It's like, they're what?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They're not bringing up anything related to sexualization.

Dan Beecher Show me on the doll where- Yeah ... you see sexualization happening.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I do want to mention that there are a lot of passages that people cite as being sort of against homosexuality. And there are certain translations of the Bible that inflate this further. The New Living Translation, for example, has Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 say, "Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman; it is a detestable sin." I've seen other versions of that particular thing, and I don't remember it saying, "Do not practice homosexuality."

Dan McClellan And yeah, that word's not in there. That's not a word in Biblical Hebrew. And here's another consideration of this. Leviticus 18 and 20. Many Pentateuchal scholars will suggest that Leviticus is actually, in coming up with all of these, with its legislation, it's actually following the narrative of Genesis. And so it would be coming up to Genesis 19 when it lists these sexual sins.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so if Genesis 19 is really about threatening other men with sexual assault, then Leviticus's take on this would be a take on threatening men with sexual assault. It would be a kind of non-consensual relationship that is being reflected here. And Leviticus 18 and 20 is H, the Holiness Code, which is post-exilic. It's relatively late. This is a time period when sexual ethics are undergoing a transition as they're being used to more clearly delineate the Judahite ethnic identity from the nations that are around them and now are much closer to them. And so this is where we have concerns for intermarriage with others. This is where the idol polemic comes into play. So the sexual ethic is now suddenly a lot more concerned about purity, ethnic purity, as well as the purity of the land. Because what happens in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, if you do any of these sexual sins, it generates a metaphysical contamination that will get out on the land and pollute the land, and the land can only tolerate so much before it must vomit you out. So this is about a ritual purity of the land, and the idea is that whatever is being discussed in Leviticus 18 and 20 is going to generate that metaphysical impurity. And so, yeah, practicing homosexuality is not in view.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's a mistranslation, pure and simple. And even if you just look at the language of the text, it probably is prohibiting a man from taking the insertive role in an act of male same-sex intercourse. In other words, it's only prohibiting one of the actors in that act, because it probably understands the other actor to not be consenting.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or it probably does not account for the notion that anyone would seek out the receptive role. And people will say, "Well, if you go to Leviticus 20, both of them are condemned to death." And that is because in all of these inappropriate sexual acts, both parties are condemned to death, whether consent is presupposed or not. Even in the case of bestiality- Right ... where the prohibition is on having sex with an animal, the animal is also put to death.

Dan Beecher Their consent- They were pretty happy with the death penalty. Capital punishment was their favorite, whoever wrote Leviticus.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And these were not people who had authority over anyone's life and death. And these laws were probably never actually enforced. But the fact that the animal is put to death is a clear indication that the idea is that this contamination is only purged through the death of both parties- Right ... without respect to consent or agency. And so, yeah, it's a lot more complex than people want to understand. It's simply not. It does not have an understanding- Right ... of a homosexual orientation.

Dan Beecher And I want to push a little bit on something.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Because I only learned just now when you said it, that this idea that Leviticus might be following Genesis in its narrative, and that this was a reference to that. And if Leviticus 18 and 20 are a reference to the Sodom thing, you assumed that the author of Leviticus understood the Genesis, understood the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the way that we are understanding it now.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But I wonder if whoever wrote this may have understood it differently and may have understood it as the crime was the sex with a man as with a woman. I don't actually care. I know that it's being used to clobber people, and I think that the more salient point is look at what the thing is. The sexual ethics of two and a half thousand years ago aren't necessarily going to be applicable to now.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And again, I retreat to the idea that if you've already rejected a lot of these concepts of sexual ethics that are biblical, because the Bible has some horrific sexual ethics, and I think we can all agree on that. And if you're okay with saying the Bible's sexual ethics are not always great, then why are you holding so tightly, even if what Leviticus is saying is very specifically just a man having sex with another man is a capital offense. That doesn't have to apply now.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And I don't see why everybody thinks that they can reject one thing, but it would be absurd to reject another.

Dan McClellan And even if you do understand Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 to be doing that, and even if you do think it should be authoritative, it's only about the land of Israel and the house of Israel.