Jesus Was Gay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCZenGCsbMI

[BUMPER]

Jesus died on the cross on Easter weekend, but it was far from the only time that he was nailed by Roman men.

[INTRO]

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[EPISODE]

Jesus, the believed son of god, is at the center of many popular religions around the world and is the spotlight of Christianity. His birthday is celebrated worldwide on Christmas day even though no scripture specifically points to December 25th as the day he was born. 

In the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, specifically in Luke 2: 1-3, we hear about a decree from the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, that required all citizens to return to their ancestral towns for a census. This was called the Quirinius census and it was conducted most likely in the summer months to make it easier for citizens to travel such long distances. 

So, if the story was true that Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph, they would have only been in Bethlehem in the summer months, not the winter. In fact, no scripture points to any inclement weather they faced on their journey to Bethlehem. The only reference to weather is seen in Luke 2: 8, when we hear about shepherds in the fields with their flocks, which only happens during the spring, summer, and fall months, not the winter.

This is why many historians agree that if Jesus was a real man, he was born sometime in the summer, not on December 25th as everyone celebrates. 

So, Christians nowadays celebrate holidays that are not based on any scripture. But this is far from the only conflict you’ll find in the Bible compared to how Christians worship now. 

You might have heard the first of the ten commandments is “You shall have no other gods before me.” Yet, in the front of Christian churches is a cross, depicting Jesus being hung as he was, according to scripture in the ancient Roman times. Around the church, you’ll see many other images of saints and disciples. 

So, it begs the question are churches breaking the first commandment of their own religion by worshiping these idols? But even this image is false. If you look at the area Jesus supposedly grew up in and the time period, there is significant evidence to suggest Jesus was darker in skin tone and not white, like in the paintings we see today of him. 

Many scriptures point to him being darker in skin tone including Revelation 1: 14-15 which says he was “burnished bronze, refined in a furnace” and others saying he was a Jew from Galilee, which tell us he has light to dark brown skin. 

So, why change his skin color in their imagery? Well, when Christianity spread through Europe in the 6th century, artists who were paid by the church, depicted him as white to make him more relatable to white Europeans. In a time when black people were slaves in Europe, making him white was seen as making him clean and perfect. Whereas making him black was seen by the racist church leaders at the time as dirty and flawed. But making him white was solidified during the Crusades and was later used to justify colonialism in Europe. 

My point is, Jesus is the not the man Christians portray him as, and he never was. From his birthday not being in December to his skin being darker than they picture him, we know the image of Jesus was purposefully changed over the years to suit their interests. 

That brings us to our main point of Jesus being gay. While it’s important to point out that not all Christians are homophobic, it’s also important that you know most, if not all, homophobic arguments come from the catholic faith. Evangelicals will say it’s against the word of God to let gay people get married, so they push for their elected leaders to make gay marriage illegal. Some even say that because their god is hateful, they have to hate gay people too. And sometimes, that leads their governments to make being gay punishable by execution. And in other cases, it pushes these homophobes to commit murder, like they did on Matthew Shepard.

I know some Christians will point out here the age-old phrase how they don’t hate the sinner, they hate the sin. But there’s a lot wrong with that phrase too. First off, we’ve proven in another episode how being gay is embedded in your DNA long before you are born. So, if anything, god made us gay. Second, by hating being gay, you are hating the person, much like I would be hating the person if I hated someone for being straight. 

And most importantly, it is not a sin to be gay at all. In fact, homosexuality was never mentioned in the Bible until 1946 when it was translated wrong. Again, Christians changed their religion to fit the current belief that gay people needed to be persecuted and executed, much like they changed the image of Jesus to make him more relatable to racist Europeans. 

Historians have been trying to determine the sexuality of Jesus for a long time. And many Christians will point to the name of Saint Mary Magdalene here, who they say was the long-term sexual partner of Jesus. But you should know, there is no evidence or scripture to suggest Mary Magdalene was in a relationship with Jesus. She was just a loyal disciple who travelled with him, financed his work, and witnessed his crucifixion. 

Next, we need to understand the time and place Jesus grew up in. BC stands for Before Christ and AD stands for Anno Domini, meaning the Year of our Lord, referring to the years after his birth. Back in Catholic grade school, my teachers even took this a step further and taught me that AD meant “After the Death of Christ” even though this was clearly wrong. 

But with these abbreviations, you might assume Jesus was born in year zero, but there is no such year in the calendar. It goes right from 1 BC to 1 AD. So, by all estimates, Jesus was born sometime between year 6 and 4 BC and died between the years 30 and 36 AD. 

Many famous scriptures in the Bible point to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. In fact, the most famous story in the Bible is of Mary giving birth to Jesus in a stable when there was no room in the Inn. 

Bethlehem is located in the present-day territory of Palestine, which was under the control of the Roman Empire from 63 BC to 66 AD. This means, for his whole life, Jesus lived in the Roman Empire. This is further supported by all four gospels including Matthew 27: 1-2, Mark 15:1-2, Luke 23: 1-2, and John 19: 1-3, saying Jesus was hung on the cross by the Roman Empire. 

We’ve covered on this show before how friendly the Roman Empire was to LGBTQ people, so we won’t say all of that over again in this episode, but very basically, most people living in the Roman Empire were openly bisexual. If you were a wealthy man or from political power, you were what they considered “manly” and were allowed in their society to be a top, or penetrate your partner, man or woman. If you were poor or from a lesser class, you were only accepted in society as a bottom, or on the receiving end of your partners. Those from a lesser-class family could often be found in bath houses around the city, being visited by richer and more powerful men looking for a good time. 

But like we mentioned before, Jesus was very poor and had little to no political power. Until much later in life, he finally got some financing from Mary Magdeline, but many scriptures point to him being a carpenter all his life, so he had very little money. 

While we don’t want to speculate if Jesus or anyone else in that era sold their body for a price, we do know that, no matter his interests, he would have been accepted by everyone around him. It was not illegal in the Roman Empire to be gay. It was not frowned upon. And it was not a sin in the religion he preached until nearly 2,000 years later. 

Remember, in his age, there was no concept of sexual orientation. So, being straight or gay or bisexual were not labels anyone called each other. Instead, gender was the entire construct. Men who were tops with other men were still considered manly. Men who were bottoms for other men were considered more effeminate and went against the gender norms of the time period. But they were still widely accepted by society. 

My point is, back in his lifetime, being gay or bisexual was widely accepted. So, that brings up another great question: what evidence do we have that Jesus himself was gay? 

Many historians here would point to the original 12 apostles who followed Jesus around everywhere he went. Imagine 13 men travelling around the country for a majority of their lives without any women or money. They would eat together, walk together, sleep together, and yes, even do other things together. It might be the gayest story ever told. 

But beyond his 12 apostles, there are 4 major examples we could point to of Jesus having homosexual relationships.

The first comes from the gospel of John. He and Jesus have a very intimate relationship according to the scripture. Jesus even refers to John as his “beloved disciple”. Their relationship is so intimate that a thousand years later, when Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper, John was seated directly beside Jesus and depicted them with their hands touching. 

It should be noted that Leonardo da Vinci was gay too, but many scriptures pointed to John and Jesus having a loving relationship. And this may have been why da Vinci painted them side-by-side in 1495 when he painted the Last Supper.

Another piece of evidence comes from the fact that Jesus was a teacher, a rabbi of sorts, in his lifetime. In those days, teachers were always married, but Jesus was never married. Now, some speculate this is because he might have been Asexual, or not attracted to anyone. But while the Romans never discriminated against gay people, they also never let them marry legally. So, Jesus being single just meant he was never with a woman. 

A third piece of evidence of this comes from an inscription of the gospel discovered in the 1960s, which dates back to the same era that the Bible was being written. In the year 1611, the Catholic church went through the Bible and removed 14 books from the scripture, including: Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees. These were said to be removed because of printing costs at the time, but why not add them back in now that we live in a digital age where the internet is limitless and free? 

At the very least, I think we could all agree that the church not ever adding them back in would be a red flag that tells us to read those redacted books. Especially considering some of them were redacted not just because of printing costs, but because they were considered by the church to be lacking inspiration, which is very subjective depending on who is determining the level of inspiration in a message. 

In those redacted books, there is a prominent story of when Jesus was a young boy. When he was young, a naked boy came to Jesus and spent the night with him, for what it calls “initiation”. 

It should be noted that over the past 2,000 years, we have changed how we speak or write. But many historians have looked at this text and put it in the historical context it deserves. Back in the Roman Empire, initiation meant purification, where they would wash each other and take a bath together. 

Now, I don’t know how many men Jesus showered with. But I can tell you that the only reason I take showers with my husband is to save the environment and conserve water. And of course I’m kidding, it was obviously for sex. 

In fact, the Romans used to take baths for socializing and what they called “exercising”, but they wrote how frequently their “initiations” would be times for sexual encounters, prostitution, and hookups. 

I know some people might say these 14 books were redacted from the Bible after 1611, so they cannot be used as evidence now. But even in the current version, there are scriptures of Matthew and Luke where we find even more evidence of this homosexuality. 

Matthew and Luke, wrote extensively about Jesus’ childhood. In their writings about his childhood, they use the word “pais” to describe a young boy Jesus is befriending. Specifically, in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. 

In the scripture, the boy comes to a young Jesus and asks him to heal his crippling pain. Jesus, as a boy himself, heals him and the healed boy becomes a servant of Jesus for the rest of his life. 

Some speculate that the boy was just a servant of Jesus. But when you consider the word “pais” was mostly used by those in the Roman Empire to describe a “boy-lover”, you start to realize this relationship may have been more than simply a slave and master situation. Perhaps they used some of the many Roman Empire instruments and used the slave and master dynamic in other aspects of their life too.

No matter what this relationship was, it’s not lost on me that this relationship is where Jesus told the other boy “I’m not worthy that you should come under my roof, but say the word and my boy will be healed.” 

Jesus later describes this relationship as “there is no greater faith than I’ve encountered in Israel.”

But, you might have heard something similar to that phrase before because nowadays, the Catholic church recites the phrase “Lord, I’m not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” as their parishioners get up to get communion. This means, if you were to put pais in its historical context, they are literally repeating a homoerotic phrase every week before receiving communion. 

In opposition to these facts, some people will say we are just making our own opinions based on the words in the scripture. But I would counter with two arguments to that: First, ‘making up your own opinions based on the words in the scripture’ is literally describing what happens every weekend in churches around the world. 

Second, we’re told as children that pastors and priests are the messengers of god. They are said to be closer to god than anyone else and are here to guide us to eternal life. But many pastors are openly gay when their church allows them to be in relationships without celibacy.

For the churches that ban pastors from being in relationships, like the Roman Catholic church, which I was sent to school for the first 13 years of my life to follow, their pastors do FAR worse things than being homosexual. 

Thousands of priests have been convicted of sexually assaulting underage children, with many of them targeting altar boys instead of girls. And even the Vatican has admitted that hundreds of thousands of boys have been the victims of their crimes.

So, admitting Jesus was in these relationships would be devastating to their cause. The church makes millions of dollars every year from condemning homosexuality, which coincidently they need to pay the settlements to the boys they rape. But, if the church admits they lied about the sexuality about the son of God, then you might start questioning what else they lied about. Was Jesus born on December 25th, when the church puts together a huge celebration and makes millions off of their parishes being filled? Was Jesus white, or did racist Europeans just paint him that way to make you feel more comfortable? 

But more importantly, if they’re willing to lie about any of those things, what else are they lying to you about? Do you need to go to a building once a week to show your love for an omnipotent deity, or can you just pray at home in your pajamas? But if you don’t go to church, how does the church make money? And if they don’t make money, how do they pay off the altar boys?

When I was younger, I was told by the priest in my catholic school how wrong it was to be gay. He told me it was wrong to have a crush on my best friends, Alex in my Boy Scout troop, or Kyle, sitting right next to me in class. He also said that I was never going to find true love but, it turns out I did find true love. And I’ve never been happier in all of my life. And you know what? A lot of the straight people I know have been divorced since that class. 

If only that same priest told us the man on the cross in the front of our church was gay too. Maybe if he told us how Jesus had more boyfriends than I did, I would have come out sooner in life or I would have never had a need to come out at all. Then, a whole bunch of priests just shuffled around the country and I never saw him again. 

But unlike Jesus, I was able to marry the man I love and I don’t have a holiday named after me where I can rise 3 days later and come again. Happy Easter everyone!

[OUTRO]

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