And the Ass of Prop Hate8 will be no more.

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Such a classic quotation.

Frustrated words, fumbled out by the badgered Mr. Bumble with his mumbled mendacity of naivety. And uttered, no less, within the confines of the institutional benevolence of the parish church with respect to the care of the indentured orphans in the workhouse.

Law.

Family law.

Marriage law.

And the Supreme Court of the State of California ruled on the law.

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Proposition 8.

Yes, the California Supremes ruled that that is in fact the law. Yes, a minority of the population (52.5% of the 79% of the eligible voters who voted, which is ~41% of the voting population) was deemed able to eliminate a previously recognized equal protection of another minority group. In California at least, it is seems just fine for two wolves and a sheep to vote on the lunch menu, and the majority picks the entree. Just don't call it "lamb." It is "nutin'" to you.

And the be-fumbled Mr. Bumble would legitimately be confused ... for it certainly sounds like the law in California is an ass. How can Prop Hate8 be both the law -- only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California - and then the marriages of some 18,000 same-sex couples still be "valid or recognized in California?"

And in the fine print of the Supreme's decision, a conundrum looms.

The Supreme's ruled in the only way they could. All that legal machinations of technicalities. The law being both the law and an ass in that California constitution-change-process.

So what they ended up saying . . . OK Prop hate8ers! So the word "marriage" won't be used. You won. Your majority said that. But domestic partnerships and civil unions and everything else about them is protected . . . and if you expected to save the State from earthquake, fire, pestilence and tsunami by ridding the sodomistic heathens with their relationships of bestiality from our duplicitous midst . . . it will take a full-blown Constitutional amendment to do that! Dare you. Bring it on!!! For we just ruled 7-0 that that is what you would have to attempt to do!

The GLBT community may not have "won" last Tuesday. But the hate8ers certainly lost.

And then . . .

"Please Sir! May I have some more?"

Oliver Twist was an "other." An orphan. Classless and baseless. Thrown into a workhouse as the ward of the parish church.

And what did he want more of? Another bowl of gruel.

Reminds me of a story from long, long ago. A love story of epic proportions.

For in this case it was the old widow-woman and the young widowed daughter-in-law that were the "other." The classless. The baseless. In more ways than one.

But Naomi knew a little of the law. Two laws that is. The "Levirate Law - which required a living brother to marry his deceased brother's widow and have a son by her." And the "go'el" law, requiring a kinsman to buy back (redeem) a relative or his land.

The clerical legal-eagles can debate the applicability of these laws within the story of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz . . . for there was no brother to marry either of the widows and have a son.

Like so many of the "others" in contemporary society . . . the compelling need to be creative within the constraints of the law . . . to work out of the box as it were . . . in more ways than one.

Naomi . . . and Ruth . . . did just that.

And Boaz too. Marry Ruth, that is. And not Naomi.

Ruth and Naomi, with their intense love and loyalty to each other, had formed their own little "family." It was Naomi , not Ruth, who was the first-in-line to the kinsman. Together, they creatively stretched a law to benefit them.

Whether the story of Ruth makes an ass out of the old Levirate Law or not, it is one incredible story of how gay people construct family within and without the bounds and protections of "the law."

Ruth, as a surrogate mother, provides a son for Naomi . . . a son who became the grandfather of King David, the founder of the Dynasty of Judah.

About that other part of the story . . . that implied "Please sir, Can I have some more?"

In this case, it didn't result in the eviction of the orphan Oliver, but rather, the favored protection and blessing of the kinsman-relationship of a kit-bashed family that became the benefactor of provisions, a source of physical survival.

The law.

But today. A stunning announcement.

The initiation of a "Federal" lawsuit to overturn Prop Hate8!

The filing lawyers?

The ad hoc partnership of Ted Olson (the lawyer representing Bush) and David Boise (the lawyer representing Albert Gore . . . in the 2000 Presidential Election dispute before the Supreme Court of the United States). Ted Olson, that hard-core conservative from the Reagan/Bush era who Bush II subsequently appointed as the Solicitor General, and so tragically, the husband of Barbara Olson, a tee vee "talking head" conservative, who died in American Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

From the AP 2009-05-27:

"It is our position in this case that Proposition 8, as upheld by the California Supreme Court, denies federal constitutional rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the constitution," Olson said. "The constitution protects individuals' basic rights that cannot be taken away by a vote. If the people of California had voted to ban interracial marriage, it would have been the responsibility of the courts to say that they cannot do that under the constitution. We believe that denying individuals in this category the right to lasting, loving relationships through marriage is a denial to them, on an impermissible basis, of the rights that the rest of us enjoy…I also personally believe that it is wrong for us to continue to deny rights to individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation."

Ted Olson! David Boise! To paraphrase them . . . That Prop Hate8 law is an ass!

Conservatism is fundamentally different from fundamentalism.

In time, more conservatives will understand this. Fundamentalists . . . at their peril.

A little family in an eon of yore, kit-bashed together . . . by love, devotion, loyalty, as the ties that bind them together. The surrogate parenting arrangement to generate offspring . . . To be family.

Like an orphaned Oliver Twist, evicted from the charity of the workhouse, adopted into Fagan's family of renegade thieves . . . with love, devotion, honor, loyalty, their tie to bind their family outside any law of protection . . .

Families in California . . . all kinds of families . . . the day is coming . . . when all can say, "Please, I want some more."

And the Ass of Prop Hate8 will be no more.

The Refectory Manager

I too am a bag-lady

The "Order of Service" indicated that it was time for the sermon. It had a title: "What is this Love Business Anyway?"

And then I could hear it. The squeak of something in stress.

She hobbled up the center aisle, pulling a cart stuffed with her precious stuff. Made it to the front, turned around. So very, very nervous. Subconsciously waving her garish white gloves. And that gawd-awful hat. And that ill-fitting bleached-out-patterned so-50-ish dress.

She said how nervous she was, afraid to come here. That she had seen some of the people here at the church, at the Shelter, serving meals, and at the Food Bank.

Told about how they had given her a Bible at the Shelter. That she had read some of the stories. But wondered what they had to do with her.

In particular there was one story, about this guy named Cornelius. And a sheet, and a bunch of banned animals, and he was told to eat them! To violate the rule! What was that supposed to mean to her?

Then she told of reading how Peter responded to an incident of the Holy Spirit being poured out on the "Other," the "Outsider Gentiles," how he wanted to baptize those heathen gentiles. And there was no objection, so he did it! He did it! Baptized those heathens, without objection. Cause everybody was too stunned to object.

She interrupted herself, worried about her things she had sequestered around the community, would they be safe while she was here, in a church?

And how she had read that Jesus said "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

She got real nervous. Visibly worried again about her stuff, like homeless people learn to do.

But sometimes, and she had no hesitation in saying it, she felt some of the church people at the Shelter, and at the Food Bank were a little uppity.

Yes. A little uppity.

And now, she said she really had to go.

Said it felt good . . . when she was loved.

And muttered something else under her breath, as she hobbled her way back down the center aisle.


And of course, the bag-lady was one of the ministers. But it was a lesson that leaves an impression.

For a religious service to shuck the formal, the ritualistic, the predictable . . . and to simply jar one with the totally unexpected and out-of-character . . . that is a service that is truly religious.

But "What is This Love Business Anyway?"

Yeah! It is real easy to sit in a church's pew and feel real uppity about this business of love! For isn't sanctimony one of the spiritual gifts?

And later in the afternoon, I found this.

http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_9217

A reference to "Onward, Christian Soldiers," to an article in GC about how Rumsfeld spun Bush with the forceful, artistic, graphic cover sheets depicting Hebrew Bible quotations, super-imposed on pictures of massive, and deadly weapons of war . . . cover sheets to the Top Secret daily briefings by the SecDef to the POTUS at the time of the launch of the invasion into Iraq in 2003.

Reading those quotations, from the Book of Joshua . . . it hit me between the eyes.

The Rules of Sacral War are recorded in Deuteronomy 20.

My government launched a sacral war. A type of warfare of the ancient Near East antiquities.

Like other nations of the ancient Near East, ancient Israel had a sacral ideology of war. The Lord himself is described as a warrior and "the Lord strong and mighty ... in battle" (Psalm 24:8): "The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name" (Exodus 15:3; see Isaiah 42:13).7 The wars that Israel fought were "the battles of the Lord" (1 Samuel 18:17); indeed, among the lost books of ancient Israel is "the Book of the Wars of the Lord" (Numbers 21:14).8 The enemies of Israel were the enemies of the Lord (see Judges 5:31; 1 Samuel 30:26), and the Lord assisted Israel in battle (see Joshua 10:11; 24:12; 1 Samuel 17:45). The Lord was consulted (see Judges 20:23, 28; 1 Samuel 14:37) and sacrifices were offered (see 1 Samuel 7:9; 13:9, 12) before hostilities were initiated. When Israel went to war, its army was called "the people of the Lord," "the people of God" (Judges 20:2), "the armies of the living God" (1 Samuel 17:26), or "the Lord's divisions."9 http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=66&chapid=725

And a part of those Deuteronomic (and Near East) war rules was "the ban." The enemy, the people, the spoils, were considered to belong to the deity and forbidden for ordinary use. In ancient Near-Eastern culture, the ban was considered to be a sacrifice to deity, and so therefore entire populations exterminated. Gone. Every living thing. Sacrificed.

My country, so proudly hailed by so many as "This Christian Nation," with a military infested with a "Christianist" ideology, had launched a "sacral-type war" on the hated "Other" . . . the Muslim world.

"Onward! Christian Soldiers!"

The earthly Commander-in-Chief, called "A Judge" in the Book of Judges, cheered on, by quotations espousing the blessing of the Divine-Warrior.

And the resulting annihilation of uncounted Muslim peoples.

And the acquisition of the spoils of uncountable deals of underground oil for multinational corporations.

And now the avalanche of revelations of the despicable and unconscionable acts of which this war was justified on the pretense of torture-induced evidence.

It sickens me to know that my government was an instigator in this.


And yes, the insight from the Queer Bible Commentary has given me reason to be even madder than hell about what those "Christianists" have done.

But don't get me going. For in many respects, I too am a bag-lady.

And I need to learn to love . . . even despicable, torture-apologist "Christianists!"

And I am sure that Jesus had to put-down a tax-cheat or two, and a smart-mouthed hoodlum or two, and the vicious gossip of a prostitute or two, and some rabble-rousers, muggers, thieves and thugs. You know, "that crowd" with which he hung around.

And admonish them that they too needed to learn to love . . . to love Pharisees . . . as despicable as they were.

This "Business of Love. Anyway."

I must admit. I do find it a hard business . . . at times.

I must accept that I too am a bag-lady.

The Refectory Manager

To utter those words . . .

Samson was one of those "saviors." A divinely-inspired warrior to liberate the apostasy-crazed Israelites from harsh oppression and to lead them in a period "of rest."

The Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible identifies twelve of these saviors. Some of them were good. Some not so good.

In general, the stories are violent and horrific.

Samson was one of the "not-so-good" exemplars. As far as being a successful judge, i.e. military leader was concerned, he was a dismal failure.

His personal life got in the way.

Samson was bred and raised as a "nazirite." One who takes a consecrated vow and adheres to a rigorous code of personal behavior. The rules for this engagement are identified in the book of Numbers, chapter 6, verses 1 - 21.

Paramount are the strict avoidance of ethanol, anything from the vine, and the not-cutting of one's hair.

And in the case of Samson, it is his hair through which "the spirit of the Lord" is infused into him to accomplish those Samsonic feats of physical strength.

But it is his personal life that gets in the way.

Perhaps I am forgetting a story or two, but it seems to me that the only other case of marriage that I recall up to this point in the Hebrew Bible and its chronology, is the story of Jacob that actually involves "love." For Jacob "loved" Rachel and wanted her as his wife.

Yes, there is a lot of "lying-with" someone, a lot of taking and being taken in marriage, a lot of business deals, property transfers, and inheritance-assurance transactions . . . but actually loving someone and forming a "traditional marriage" based on that love was indeed a rare thing.

And now we have Samson, headed down to the big city, and there falling in love.

The nameless lady is cheesecake. Eye-candy. And she pleases Samson.

And if Samson was honest with her or not, it is difficult to tell, but he was using this marriage as a ruse to get to the Philistines . . . the hated oppressors.

And when the clash occurs, she weeps and wails "You hate me, you do not really love me . . . " And "nagged" him for seven whole days.

The story gets messy. Samson huffs off. The bride's father thinks Samson divorced his daughter. Daughter then given to best man. Samson subsequently shows up. The old man and his daughter get burned up by their own Philistines because of what Samson did in revenge.

But somewhere, back in that story, there was a component of love. At least the perception of love.

And later, as an addendum, the story morphs into the second verse. Samson loves again.

And there is another conversation of love.

Delilah is doing the talking. "How can you say 'I love you,' when your heart is not with me?"

Those words . . .

"I love you."

"Your heart."

"With me."

So Samson has said "I love you."

The primal emotion that dwells within one's heart . . . love.

A man . . . has said "I love you."

When the first part of the story of Samson was documented in the time of King Josiah, the story was of a nameless woman and the implication of love.

When the story was added to by the post-Babylonian exile church fathers, the next story gives the lady a name . . . and a quotation "I love you."

And at least one of those post-exilic editorial redactors had the cajones to let the strongest-man-to-ever-live actually utter the tender, caring, emotionally-charged words "I love you."

And I am not certain if that says more about Samson, or the subsequent narrator that allowed an expression of genuine tenderness to infuse into one of the grossest, inhumane collections of stories in the entire Bible . . . the stories of the judges in the Book of Judges.

And as those post-exilic narrators compiled those written and oral traditions, they came as close as they dared in letting two other men say, "I love you."

For Jonathan love David. And David love Jonathan.

And also for two women.

For Ruth loved Naomi. And Naomi loved Ruth.

And it is OK for a man to say "I love you."

Even to another man.

And for a woman to say "I love you."

To another woman.

For my Bible has told me so.

The Refectory Manager

Guilt!

I suppose that is what I dislike most about the paradigm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

That incessant undercurrent of implied guilt.

No matter what. No matter what it is. No matter from whence it cometh or for whence-ever it goeth, there is that constant, pervasive, cancerous, destructive oppression of constant guilt.

It is relentless. To be alive is to be sequestered in guilt.

And the Promulgator in Chief of this crippling, insidious toxin is none other than the esteemed Ellen Gould Harmon White herself.

Take Samson.

Yeah! That illustrious exemplar of blood-feuding leadership so common in the early Deuteronomistic History preserved for us in the Hebrew Bible as the book of Judges.

In her first book of the "Conflict of the Ages" series, the book known as "Patriarchs and Prophets," EGW devotes chapter 54 to "Samson."

In a strictly canonical way, she picks up the story of the promised child Samson and transfers the obligations of the nazirite vow to which he will be subscribed, onto every father, mother and child since.

"The child will be affected for good or for evil by the habits of the mother. She must herself be controlled by principle and must practice temperance and self-denial, if she would seek the welfare of her child. Unwise advisers will urge upon the mother the necessity of gratifying every wish and impulse, but such teaching is false and mischievous. The mother is by the command of God Himself placed under the most solemn obligation to exercise self-control." PP page 561.

O.K. The purists will say that she was referring only to the mother of Samson. The rest of us have no reason to get all fired up with angst.

But in the continuation of her expository renditon, she introduces the plural, "fathers" and "mothers," as in transferring this obligation to all of humankind. So just how many "fathers" and "mothers" did the singular Samson have?

"And fathers as well as mothers are involved in this responsibility. Both parents transmit their own characteristics, mental and physical, their dispositions and appetites, to their children. As the result of parental intemperance children often lack physical strength and mental and moral power. Liquor drinkers and tobacco users may, and do, transmit their insatiable craving, their inflamed blood and irritable nerves, to their children. The licentious often bequeath their unholy desires, and even loathsome diseases, as a legacy to their offspring. And as the children have less power to resist temptation than had the parents, the tendency is for each generation to fall lower and lower. To a great degree parents are responsible not only for the violent passions and perverted appetites of their children but for the infirmities of the thousands born deaf, blind, diseased, or idiotic."

I don't recall off hand the time frame in which she penned these words, late 1890's, perhaps early 1900's. Perhaps even a few years earlier. And granted, the sciences of genetics, epidemiology, biochemistry, endocrinology, molecular biology and everything else involved with the biology of reproduction was still a little "primitive" in her day, when compared to present day knowledge. To say nothing of the advances in the sociology and psychology of pre-peri- and post natal care and subsequent child development understanding.

And yes, by in large, her advice is generally appropriate . . . in its concept.

But she doesn't let up.

"And it was not enough that the promised child should receive a good legacy from the parents. This must be followed by careful training and the formation of right habits. God directed that the future judge and deliverer of Israel should be trained to strict temperance from infancy. he was to be Nazarite from his birth, thus being placed under a perpetual prohibition against the use of wine or strong drink. The lessons of temperance, self denial, and self-control are to be taught to children even from babyhood."

"The angel's prohibition included 'every unclean thing.' The distinction between articles of food as clean and unclean was not a merely ceremonial and arbitrary regulation, but was based upon sanitary principles. To the observance of this distinction may be traced, in a great degree, the marvelous vitality which for thousands of years has distinguished the Jewish people. The principles of temperance must be carried further than the mere use of spirituous liquors. The use of stimulating and indigestible food is often equally injurious to health, and in many cases sows the seeds of drunkenness. True temperance teaches us to dispense entirely with everything hurtful and to use judiciously that which is healthful. There are few who realize as they should how much their habits of diet have to do with the health, their character, the usefulness in this world, and their eternal destiny. The appetite should ever be in subjection to the moral and intellectual powers. The body should be servant to the mind, and not the mind to the body."

My unauthorized King James translation of her message is to "start livin' to beat hell."

And just like Samson, even with all of his clean-dietetic and abstinence-only implementations, turned out to be a disaster of a divinely-ordained savior, so too have I in my wretched-infused life.

Like the repetitive mantra of Judges: apostasy, hardship, cry out to the Lord for help, rest, then apostasy and do it all over again . . . I experience the inevitable of that experience. Failure. Guilt. The oaths of "I will never eat that again," or "do that again," or "I will do that every day for the rest of my life," or whatever vain useless destined-for-failure-promise I make to myself and to the world. Then the fleeting period of compliance, i.e. the "rest," as it is described in Judges.

Then.

Inevitable failure. Guilt. Conversion and evangelism. The "rest."

And the inevitable "Oh why the hell!?"

And the inevitable failure. Guilt. Conversion and evangelism. The "rest."

And thank you, Madam Ellen Gould Harmon White, for your gift of prophecy was the continual infusion of guilt into that cycle that describes the very definition of being human.

And yeah! I do try to live to beat hell!


The Refectory Manager

Wudjaevhavblevdit!

God loves a really, really good joke! 'Specially when he's the prankster!

Not just any old belly-bustin' thigh-slappin' generic good-old ethnic joke, but a joke that's just peachy for the inside crowd that knows the nuances of a double entendre in the lingua franca.

First off, it helps to know a little of the background. Goes way back. Thousand years or more. To the oldest daughter of Lot gettin' her old man drunk so he wouldn't know he was getting laid and unbeknownst to him, carrying on the family line. Yeah, she raped her old man. And the family line became the Moabites.

Centuries pass. A lot of accumulated folklore legends. Stories that flesh-out the "self" in a tribe of peoples from all the "others." Stories that try to both identify and to explain their corporate identity and history.

And when this joke is finally told in the post-exilic period, the sordid history of these peoples has been one accumulated fubar - fouled up beyond all redemption. At least it would seem so to a casual observer. For these people themselves were nearly annihilated as an "other" to the Babylonians. . . and now were in a post-exile status trying to rehabilitate what had gone so sourly wrong. And it was their never-ending cycles of apostasy, of hardship, of crying out to the Lord, and of subsequent rescue . . . and the ubiquitous apostasy of worshipping one of the other Canaanite gods, that was the nexus to all of this.

And that is partly what makes this joke so funny. So disgustingly sick. That it was instigated by the Divine Warrior, as their god was called, as a tactical stunt in their sacral war in one of these cyclic events against an ancient, and persistent "other."

As these post exilic peoples were collecting, and redacting, and composing their fragmentary written, oral, folklore and legendary stories of their history, they hit upon the time after their ancestors had entered Canaan, their promised land. Moses was now gone. Joshua was now gone. And now, several hundred years worth of saviors . . . yes, "saviors" that the Divine Warrior would raise up to "judge" the people would emerge. To be "judged," however, was to be led in successful defensive warfare. And these twelve named judges became local heroes whose military victories, generally presented as the result of the gracious Lord's intervention, earned them widespread renown. If you have the stomach for it, you can read all about these "saviors" in the Book of Judges. It is not pretty.

And as their narration is laid out, again, it is the recurrent situation where God was ticked. Because his people, the Israelites, were doing evil in his sight. Again.

To make this doubly nefarious , Joshua had failed in his mission of sacral war to annihilate, to terminate, to destroy, to kill every living thing in Israel's new neighborhood. And so here, the Moabites, those descendents of Lot's daughter's incestuous tryst, were still alive to foment their mischief.

And as the story goes, the Lord "strengthened" these Moabites, to the point they had become the oppressors over the oppressees (the Israelites) for 18 miserable years.

Time for "the cry" in that repetitive cycle of events.

Enter Ehud. Except with Ehud, as the story goes, he wasn't "filled with the spirit" like the previous savior Othniel was.

But a "savior" he would still become, because even though he was not filled with the spirit, he was, nevertheless, raised up by the Divine Warrior.

And now for the word-plays, the double entendres, the stick-it-to-'em, fraternityish practical jokes. A swashbuckler story of hilarious pretense.

Something about it being sooo funny and cool to be on the inside of a good ethnic prank. It is just sooooo self-righteous-istic to be on the "right" side. So what of those "others." For that was the point of this whole narrative history, to separate the "us" from all those "others."

'Cept Ehud wasn't quite fully one of the "us." 'Cause he was "left-handed." And from the tribe of Benjamin (which means literally, 'son of the right hand') no less, where there was a distinct proclivity toward left-handedness, that adds a plot twist. And then those connotations of left-handedness. Ranging from the 'cack-handed' meaning excrement-handed, to the Australian euphemism for a left-handed person, 'molly-dooker' where "molly" is an effeminate man and "duke" is slang for hand, to the notion that the left hand is always somewhat occult and illegitimate, inspiring terror and repulsion.

The notion of "hand" plays (no pun intended) a role in this tale. For the same word is used elsewhere in the Hebrew text with the connotation of "penis or phallus." Where the prophet in Isaiah [Isaiah 57:8] chastises the adulterous Israelites for widening their beds and gazing upon the 'hand' of their 'lover,' and it is what the beloved in the Song of Solomon [5:4] thrust into his 'lover's' opening.

But to the casual observer reading this story, this left-handed, i.e. peculiar and unnatural guy, can then hide a specially constructed lethal weapon on his right thigh and not be detected. Cool. Great point in a great plot.

At least to a casual reader.

But the connotation of that sword being a "gomed" in length is the connotation "to be hard." And the handle, the "hilt," has the connotation of "erect."

Just to set the innuendo here, this saucy connotation was described as far back as the 13th century, and even the Jewish Historian Josephus left out the "sexy" stuff when he wrote his rendition of this story.

So here we have a "left-handed" guy with a "hard" and "erect" concealed weapon. A weapon that is "straight" and yet "different" from the curved weapons typically used to hack up enemies.

A devious left-handed straight guy who "comes to" the fat King Eglon.

With a "secret" message.

With the opening and closing of doors - a set of words that are well anchored in metaphors for sexuality in ancient Israel - and the expression "come into' so often used of sexual penetration.

Oh yes! King Eglon, which means "Young Bull" or "Fat Calf" in Hebrew. How fitting. Even though fatted calves were sometimes used for Hebrew sacrificial offerings, it was also the young bull and calf that was the symbol for the god Baal. The rival god so hated by Yahweh.

The gory details of the rape of King Eglon by Ehud are euphemistically recorded in Judges 3:20-25 as a hilarious performance of stabbing this sword so far into this corpulently fat man's belly that the handle disappears, and the dirt comes out.

King Eglon was fat. Such a sanguine way of so delicately stating such a nefariously negative personal characteristic. Must have generated a lot of good laughs. That fat Moab SOB. A cipher for any number of things: gullibility, stupidity, greed. In the ancient world it was also an indicator of opulence, and especially associated with the effeminate man. What better way to humiliate the caricature of one's enemy?

When Ehud "enter's" King Eglon's presence, the King "rises up." Eglon is clearly being staged as one obliged to perform the traditional woman's part in a sexual encounter, that is, as the one who is penetrated and passive. His fatness is thus not mentioned solely to signify greed or gullibility but to indicate his role in a male rape scene. The description of this happening in a room with no public access insinuates it was the private royal toilet.

King Eglon, the "fatted calf," ready for slaughter. A name that signifies illegitimate adoration or of sacrifice. Well suited for presentation as both a sexual object and also sacrificial victim of rape/murder.

But a hearer of this tale had to be really on the inside to know that.

On the outside, just a raunchy story of denigrated ethnic "humor" and satire.

The hilarity of raping an effeminate fat man and murdering him.

But the expositors of this story didn't stop there. A big deal is made of Ehud being a "Benjamite." With the implication they are setting him up for the forthcoming fall of another Benjamite, the yet-to-come King Saul.

The sexual language, imagery and double entendre are graphically used in Judges 3 in order to ridicule and discredit such foreigners and to legitimize the oppressed history of Israel. This story lays a foundation for devaluations of these people that will be readily sanctioned, condoned and accepted by readers, both ancient and modern.

Here, the nation of Moab, figured as the despicable, humiliated, penetrated role of women, under the "hand" of Israel . . . getting her just due from the penetrated act of Lot's daughter.

King Elgon, a fat buffoon, humiliated, raped, murdered . . . as the butt of a sinister joke. Getting his just do!

Ehud, described as a lefhanded combat ace, a hardened professional warrior ... yet comes across as repugnant, deceitful and cruel.

Yet, there is a veiled attempt to flaunt Ehud as a credentialed "straight," "virile," red-blooded" male in the face of homoerotic connotations.

In Middle Eastern culture, Ehud could emerge with his masculinity enhanced, as there was no shame in doing the buggering, only in being buggered.

But hey! This is satire. This is humor. This. Is. Funny.

Hell, it is so gauche to pick on some feriner. Some faggot. Some feckless freak that is not one of us.

This story makes one hell of a point.

And the point is that a Divine Warrior, Yahweh, enters the narrative as a collaborator or even instigator, of a malicious rape/murder of a lampooned character.

Whether this story in Judges 3 (and all of Joshua through Kings for that matter) is fiction, and pray to God that it is, or the literal, historical From-God's-Mouth-To-Your-Ear truth, when the most powerful character within the Hebrew Bible --Yahweh . . . the deity-- invokes a complicit collaboration with vile and malicious ethnic humor denigrating "the other", it truly does raise a serious question.

For this gay man, there is nothing redemptive about that story.

And yes, I can hear it now. "If you weren't one of those friggin' faggots, you would be comforted. He! He!"

Wudjaevhavblevdit!

The Refectory Manager

[For more background on this and other stories of the Hebrew Bible, refer to the Queer Bible Commentary, Edited by Deryn Guest, Robert E Goss, Mona West, Thomas Bohache, SCM Press, London, 2006; and the Harper Collins Study Bible (NRSV) footnotes.]