Recently, Elton John caused quite a stir by saying, in an interview given to Parade, that Jesus was gay. Asked about his take on Christianity, John said:

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East – you’re as good as dead.

Religionists aren’t too happy about that, claiming that the mega-rich pop star has insulted Christ; and I’m reminded of the “outrage” that surrounded the staging of Corpus Christi at the New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney, in 2008. In the play, Jesus was depicted as a gay man who is seduced by Judas and who conducts a gay marriage for two apostles.

At the time, religionists were angry that the play was propagating lies about their idol. The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, among others, said of the depiction of the son of God and some of his disciples as homosexual:

[It’s] unhistorical and untrue. It is deliberately, not innocently, offensive and they’re obviously having a laugh about it. It’s historical nonsense and I wouldn’t want to go and see it. Life’s too short.

It seems somewhat rich to me that religionists so often talk about lies and untruths when they themselves thrive on such in their ever-desperate attempts at preventing equality for gay people.

Superstitious primitives

But back to Elton John. His take on “Jesus is gay” has seen secularists and humanists, myself included, not too happy, either, albeit for very different reasons. A message on the AOL comment board summed it up nicely:

Firstly, as a secular Humanist, I have to say that if Jesus actually existed (by no means a certain fact), he wasn’t all that different from the stupid, bigoted and superstitious primitives he lived among. Did he challenge slavery? No. Did he challenge extreme anti-gay prejudice? No. In fact, he endorsed what we now call Old Testament teachings.

Secondly, this means that Elton isn’t guilty of insulting the probably mythical Jesus, but insulting our intelligence by suggesting that the creepy suicide visionary “Jesus Christ” was something to look up to. When it comes to being rational and treating our fellow human beings with genuine humanity, dignity, compassion and respect, secular Humanism trumps Christianity (and all the other foul religions) hands down.

Gay Christians and their apologists are very fond of pointing out that Jesus said nothing in the Gospels about homosexuality and that he would have condemned the Church’s oppression of lesbians and gays. The clear implication is that he would have taken a benign attitude towards lesbian and gay sexual practices, which are clearly condemned in both Old and New Testaments of the Bible. It has even been suggested that Jesus was himself gay and that, were he alive today, he would support the campaign for lesbian and gay rights.

He supports the statement in Genesis that in the beginning God created humankind male and female, and uses this as a basis for ethical guidance:

That which God has joined [i.e. the heterosexual married relationship] let not man put asunder.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he stresses the importance of adhering strictly to the Mosaic Law – a law that required the death penalty for homosexual acts:

And not content with insisting on compliance with the Law, he wants to go further in condemning what he regards as sexual sins. Whilst the Law condemns adultery, he goes so far as to claim that lustful looks are equally culpable:

While the Law allowed for divorce in certain circumstances, Jesus condemns it outright and claims it makes people adulterers:

There is also a passage in Matthew’s Gospel in which he advises his followers to mutilate themselves rather than give way to sexual temptation – advice taken literally by some, notably the Greek Christian writer Origen who castrated himself in an attempt to get rid of his sexual urges.

Thus, the prudery and Puritanism that has characterised the Church’s attitude to sex from the earliest times can be traced back directly to Jesus himself, and the baleful worship of virginity, celibacy and sexual abstinence that has flourished throughout Christian history is all there in germ in the Gospels.

If Jesus were himself gay (and, again, there is not a shred of evidence for this in the Gospels), he would seem to have much in common with those closeted, repressed gay members of the Church of England’s General Synod who, over the years, have helped to ensure that homophobia remains within their ministry.