Thank you for your thoughts. It is not so much that i care about the sexual orientation of someone who passed away so long ago but more to do with getting the word out. He very well might have been homosexual. The amount of information about him leads every person to identify with him as their own should they choose to or not. MY primary reason for asking you about this subject is to force fundamentalists to question their own gullible ideology which will not be done unless it is put out there into the general consciousness. No matter what the sexual orientation of this Jesus may have been, it is extremely important we put a stop to those that use him against us. I highly doubt that was his purpose. The video did not work for me. Thanks again.

LOVE the video!

Father Tony, it'd be great to have you write in more depth about why you hope the 'straight vs. gay' dichotomy has gone stale. What kind of potentialities do you imagine? Grounding 'fluidity' in some practical, lived way is always of interest.

It's the old anthropomorphic thing that I learned in classics; people tend to project their lives and the society around them onto their god(s).

Or even project onto "newer" gods characteristics of "older" gods. Dionysous (an androgyne) was projected onto Christ as was the Isis/Horus myth (hence the Madonna/Baby Jesus iconography, a triumph of marketing, if you ask me).

That's the funny thing about the right-wingnuts. Their faith and interperetation of Jesus says more about them than anything in the Bible or (insert holy book).

This all seems like debating how many angels can buttfuck on the head of a pin.

Outside of the Bible, there's no concrete evidence that Jesus even existed. There are no historical accounts of his life written during his supposed lifetime. I know the idea of the non-historicity of Jesus is controversial, but it's important to note that many stories of the Bible have no historical or archeological basis outside the Bible either (e.g. Exodus, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.).

What I want to know is, who was married at Cana?

"Jesus would not have thought in terms of gay vs straight. That kind of labeling is a more recent - and I hope temporary - phenomenon."

Nonsense. The only reason these "labels" are so recent is that meaningful studies of human sexuality in general did not begin until the late 19th century. Sexual orientation describes a very real biological phenomenon that was dreadfully poorly understood in Jesus' time.

You are basically saying you want to go back to a time when human sexuality was even more poorly understood than it is now, and when society did not provide outlets for people who were exclusively attracted to the same sex.

"but we can buy that story only if we assume that he and his disciples staged the crucifixion and that he blew town after the hoax was done"

Why would you assume it happened? Considering that no historical records outside of Christian mythology cooberate this story, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that the entire thing is a hoax. Or, at best, a well-intentioned myth.

If you accept the dominant Christian doctrine of Jesus being both "fully divine and fully human," then he must have had some personal experience or understanding of all forms of sexual desire. Whether he regarded such desire as sinful or a blessing from his divine father, who knows? Gospels are very brief on what his preparatory sojourn in the desert was all about. We do have gospel accounts of disciples arguing about who was Jesus' favorite -- that certainly sounds like a gay scene. Also, who was the naked youth who flits thru the Garden of Gethsemane? The one report that "Jesus wept" was over the death of Lazarus, certainly a close pal. If Jesus and Joseph did construction work on imperial projects, as seems likely, they probably saw or heard about Roman-style male/male sexual bonding. I agree with Father Tony it may all amount to wishful thinking, but I think the fragmentary bits in the Gospels support a gay or bi Jesus just as much as they do a hetero-but-celibate one.

Good post but before determining Jesus' sexual orientation, I think it first needs to be answered whether Jesus was in fact a prophet of God or not first!

Father Tony, go back to Theology 101 concerning the nature of Jesus. He was divine, yes, that's where the fundies would like to leave him. But also he was fully human. Might that not mean that he took on the humanity of all people? If so, this would make specious the debate over whether or not Jesus was gay.

On another topic the denominations battling over the ordination of gay folks in a covenantal relationship--the debate is about the wrong question. All would have to admit that they practice selective literalism. I believe the debate should be about the theological rationale one uses in the decision what to take literally and what not to take literally.
Rick

The women friends of Jesus certainly do seem to contain the classic elements of fag hags, if you'll pardon a designation that many find offensive. Neither Martha nor Mary who were the sisters of Lazarus seem to have been romantically attached to him.

So a woman can be two things to a man: his sexual partner or his fag hag? It is misogynist of you to dismiss their discipleship in this way. One of the revolutionary things about Jesus, as Marcus Borg wrote so eloquently, is how he broke the taboos surrounding male-female relationships in his time. Women were previously not considered worthy to be friends or comrades with men. The women around Jesus were his followers and his FRIENDS. How on earth is Mary choosing to sit at Jesus' feet listening instead of joining Martha in the kitchen indicative of a "classic fag hag"?

What offends me is how trite and hackneyed your thought is. It is obviously still deeply influenced by the moribund, woman-hating (and yes, homophobic) church you were a part of for so long. Thank God I left it years ago.

Mary the mother of Jesus seems to have been exactly the sort of Jocasta/Jewish mother to produce a gay son.

WTF? You drag out the hoary, homophobic and anti-Semitic cliche of an overbearing Jewish mother "making" her son gay! So if a man is gay, it is his mother's fault? What year is this? Maybe you're trying to be funny. In any event, Mary's appearances in the gospels are too sparse to suggest what you say here.

As far as his sexual orientation goes, there are four words: we just don't know. There are some who believe the real "beloved disciple" was Mary Magdalene and that the gospels were changed to disguise this, but like the gay question, it's all conjecture.

WTF? You drag out the hoary, homophobic and anti-Semitic cliche of an overbearing Jewish mother "making" her son gay! So if a man is gay, it is his mother's fault.....

Thank you Rosa for this comment. Upon reading it, my hair stood on end. As a Jewish mother of a gay son, when I learned my son was gay, I worried that I might have potentially "caused" his sexual orientation. Over the years I realized that this IS a cliche and a pretty bad one at that. We need to be careful about dragging out ALL stereotypes. It doesn't do "our side" much good.