Sexual Cosmology.

If we insist on characterizing nature as feminine and re-animating the dead matter of science with female sexual energy, we run the risk of excavating an ancient sexual cosmology that is riddled with dangers.

Not the least of these is the problem of homosexuality.  Where does the homosexual fit into this heterosexual system.  It leaves no place for homosexuals.

While it is true that the patriarchal religions have led to a desecration of the earth the answer does not lie in feminizing nature.

During the second millennium B.C.E. the patriarchal gods displaced the earth mothers as the dominant deities.  This is typified by Marduk's slaying of the female monster Tiamut (nature) and his founding of Babylon (the archetypal city = civilization).

In the Bible God says to the newly created Adam and Eve "'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'"  Genesis 1:28 (NRSV)
This passage has resulted in humans subduing nature.  And has been tragically acted out, especially by western Europeans, as an injunction to dominate and control nature, resulting in the present ecological crisis.

Western industrialists plunder the earth for profit.

Indian yogis characterize all human sexual energy as feminine (shakti) and God's energy as masculine.
This is a strong structural element of homophobia in India - homosexuality is unnatural there.
Once again we are projecting a human trait - male sexuality onto God.
Once again we are generalizing into dualistic thinking.

Rather than characterizing the sky god as male and the earth god as female we need a model which represents the diversity of sexualities in nature.

God is much more than male and female.

The only homosexual cosmology in the Bible is in the second creation story where the sole male Adam loves his Father God.

Jesus' love for his Father is homosexual but it is noticeable that when his disciples crested a Church it was given a female nature because God was male.

Once again humans are projecting their own characteristics, in this case male and female sexualities, onto God  and His Church.

So are all male priests and ministers in a homosexual relationship with God?

You can see the problems that this kind of cosmology creates.

God is all sexualities and more.
It is foolish to restrict God's nature to male or female or even androgynous.

Sexual cosmology is very neat and convenient but it is basically wrong.

Suffice to say that we don't know.
God's nature is too vast and diverse to characterize as male or female.

For the moment it is a mystery.

(See He, August 2012)


(Scripture quotations (marked NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.  All rights reserved.)