When I was a kid, I hated raw tomatoes. Their taste and texture made me
squirm, inside and out. Thoughts of eating raw tomatoes made me want to vomit.
Raw tomatoes were icky.
There are those who have the same feelings about gay people. Thoughts of gay
people expressing physical affection for each other cause them a visceral
reaction. Gay people are labeled an abomination because of this reaction. In
other words, gay people are icky.
I am icky. I am an abomination. I am gay.
I first came to understand this connection when I looked up the word
"abomination" in the LDS Bible Dictionary. There I found that an
abomination is "an object that excites loathing." It goes on to say
that the "word is also used to denote any heathen or immoral practice;
also the flesh of prohibited animals." As I recently found out, that
definition traces the history of the word.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English root abominable was
first seen with this spelling as a French word derived from the Latin abominabilis.
That Latin word in its active form is abominari. The first word
means "deserving imprecation or abhorrence." The second means
"to deprecate as an ill omen." (The words imprecate and deprecate both
deal with prayer to a higher power, usually to ward something off.) Dissected
further, ab means "away" or "off"
and omin is a cognate of the English word omen.
So, originally, if something was abominable, it was a bad omen and the
superstitious Romans would pray to the gods for it to be driven away or
destroyed.
Thus, according to this usage of “abomination,” gay people are an ill omen,
signifying society's downfall, rather than actually bringing it about, as they’ve
been accused. They are merely a symptom of the disease. The destruction of a
civilization usually involves devastating pain and heartache, so it's
understandable that people would be afraid. Even generations afterward, traces
of a cataclysm can be seen in people, such as hoarding in the grandchildren of
those who lived through the Great Depression. However, those pointing the
fingers should take a good, hard look at themselves since greed and the
corruption it inspires are the true culprits when any civilization crumbles.
In the Middle Ages, the word was also being spelled abhominable which
was either derived from or led to an erroneous etymology, ab meaning
"away" and homin meaning "man." To act
"away from man" was interpreted as doing something beastly. It was
this new, altered connotation that found its way into the King James
translation of the Bible and has permeated our cultural discourse regarding
homosexuality ever since.
Even though there are many icky things, the abomination tag has clung
tenaciously and unfairly to homosexuality. (It's a little ironic since, in the
case of gay men, it's an attraction to men that's the issue.) Basically,
a bunch of Medieval scholars and theologians, when translating the Bible, had a
gut feeling that gay people were icky, as well as the lightning rod for God’s
wrath in any society’s demise, so that meant that God thought gay people were
icky and had better be killed or their cooties would spread. I wonder how many
times the visceral reactions of straight “holy men” have been misinterpreted as
inspiration from God.
Spencer W. Kimball, former president of the LDS church wrote:
"Homosexuality is an ugly sin, repugnant to those who find no temptation
in it, as well as to many past offenders who are seeking a way out of its
clutches." (The Miracle of Forgiveness, pg. 78) He, of course, used
scripture such as Lev. 20:13 to support his point. At one point in my life, I
was one of those past offenders who found the gay in me repugnant, which is a
nice way to say I hated myself. This is how I get why many people hate me, too.
But gut reactions are tricky things. They are often good to follow, but they
are also often misleading, causing us to run straight into danger or preventing us from taking chances that result in
great things. Tomatoes, as it turns out, are very nutritious and quite tasty,
even raw. The trick is not to refrigerate them because it changes their taste
and texture. In the same way, gay people are often integral, contributing
members of a healthy society. A few are occasionally spoiled, but as the
Osmonds sang so long ago, “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch.” Fewer
gay people would spoil if they weren’t bruised by the heavy “abomination” label,
chilled out of society by an unreasonable aversion. More often than not, when
someone gets to know a gay person that hasn’t been embittered by persecution or
made defensive by labels, they come to enjoy that person’s company and value
what they have to contribute to the community.
Maybe I'm not that icky
after all.
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