One gay historian identifies four forms of homosexuality across cultures and throughout history.60
The first is age-structured homosexuality. This is seen, for example, in age-related initiation ceremonies in some societies in New Guinea.
The second form is gender-reversed homosexuality. An example of this might be the North American Indian berdache (sometimes referred to as “two spirit” suggesting both a masculine and feminine spirit reside in the individual).
The third form of homosexuality across cultures is role-specialized homosexuality. According to Herdt, an example of this can be found in the Chukchee shaman whose vision quests direct him to engage in same-sex behavior for a time.
The fourth and final form of homosexuality can be seen in the modern gay movement. What is unique about this form of homosexuality, according to Herdt, is that it is a movement made possible by “disengaging sexuality from the traditions of family, reproduction, and parenthood.” The modern gay movement became a “social and historical likelihood” based upon this separation and in a cultural context of personal, sexual self-actualization.61
This self-actualization is organized around the self-defining attribution “I am gay.” This first trajectory, then, involves locating oneself as a member of the modern gay movement.62 It entails private sexual identification as gay and typically a public sexual identity as gay. It embraces a gay identity as a normative outcome for sexual identity development among those who are attracted to the same sex. Same-sex behavior, then, is believed to be a normal and natural expression of identity, of who one is as a person.
Dr. Mark Yarhouse
A Christian Perspective on Sexual Identity
1.) Note that with the first three examples, we have put before us, third world tribal pagan people groups. This is significant because what is being advocated with the budding acceptance among Christians of sodomy is the inherent testimony that sodomy has only been historically practiced as acceptable among third world tribal pagan (i.e. – non-Christian) peoples.
2.) Note that what is not said about the “Berdache” among the North American Indians, is that this was a word attached to this phenomenon by Westerners upon witnessing this aberration as among the savages. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
“Europeans viewed any gender variation outside of the male-female binary and any sexual practices and behaviors other than the culturally accepted relations between men and women as deviant. For them, the term berdache was one of judgment, one that condemned individuals who occupied those roles, as well as the cultures that accepted them. As colonization continued, berdache people and traditions were pushed out.”
So, our Christian Fathers witnessed this behavior and immediately labeled it as deviant and condemned it. They doubtless did so because they understood it was a behavior that was contrary to God’s revelation. However, some 400 years later we have Christians like Dr. Mark Yarhouse and countless other movers and shakers within Evangelicalism who are seeking to return the Church of Jesus Christ to a time when tribal third world non Christian people groups embraced this deviancy as a norm.
Note the Encyclopedia Britannica goes on to inform the reader,
“In American Indian cultures, many nations accepted the practice of multiple sex and gender roles. According to American cultural anthropologist Serena Nanda, American Indian cultures generally did not use sexuality in their definition of gender roles.”
So, like those early American Indian cultures, who were challenged with a Christianity, which rightly rejected this division of sexuality from gender roles, the modern American Church is seeking to practice, under the tutelage of the leadership of their clergy corps, a 17th century third world pagan American Indian ethic.
3.) Now turn your attention to the only sodomy that has arisen in the context of 1st world Christian civilization. That sodomy is a sodomy that has arisen by the very reality that Christianity has undergone declension. This is seen in the fact that, historically speaking, this newer version of sodomy has arisen in the context of the breakdown of the American family – a breakdown that can only be accounted for by the removal of Christianity and its ethos from the chief governing structure of Christianity; to wit, the Trustee family. We are explicitly told by Herdt that the modern sodomite movement is to be explained by, “disengaging sexuality from the traditions of family, reproduction, and parenthood.” In other words the modern sodomite movement in the West could not have expanded without the corollary contracting of muscular Christianity. Those traditions of “family, reproduction, and parenthood,” were traditions that existed upon and descended from a Christian world and life view. We have been pulling out the strands of that Weltanschauung and the consequence has been the breathing into life of normalization of institutional sodomy – and that in the Church. The family has become almost completely atomized and the result is the sovereign self-actualized and autonomous individual practicing the perfect ethic of anti-Christian and anti-community behavior.