Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Sodom and Gomorrah: Lot having sex with his daughters while the cities burn.

A “Sodomite” isn’t just a person who enjoys putting their penis in or around someone else with a penis. Historically, a Sodomite is so much more.

*(I wrote this in I think…2008? for a friend’s marriage equality campaign. Another friend just dug it up and sent it to me. I’m naughty, but I still think I’m accurate.)

This is the story of the birth of sodomy.

God wanted to destroy Sodom, maybe not specifically for their specialized inter-relations, but in general, he found that “their sin was very grave.” He sent two angels to check the town for any good people deserving to be spared the beauty of a burning purification. A Sodomite named Lot met the angels, and was kind to them. He took them home.

As the two angels ate in his house, the men of the town surrounded the building, forming into a large rape mob, as, I’m sure you’ll agree, bored gays are wont to do. They asked for the angels.

The desire to “know” the angels is the only clearly mentioned evil in Sodom, thus the timeless label. But that label isn‘t properly adhered. To be accurate, it is not gay sex, but the specific “desire to rape dinner guests,” that should be defined by the word “sodomy”.

Lot, soon to be the only man righteous enough to survive God’s fire, tried to smooth things over.

“Don’t be wicked,” he told the other assembled Sodomites. “These men are guests in my home. Here, I have two perfectly good virgin daughters. Take them.”

The angels interceded then. They blinded the rape mob. The Bible specifies that due to the blindness, the mob outside “became weary trying to find the door.” Because they were determined. Sudden lack of sight was no reason to totally give up on a night of forcible penetrations. Maybe Sodomite should mean, “resolute.”

The angels told Lot to clear out his family, Sodom had failed its righteousness search. (Although, in all fairness the angels only made it to one house). So the next morning Lot left the city with his wife and two daughters, the two daughters, remember, he couldn’t even GIVE away.

The angels told the family not to look back. Lot’s wife took this, perhaps, as at metaphor.

She shouldn’t have. God is a literal fellow. He froze her into a pillar of salt as she looked over her shoulder. Another resident of Sodom adding to their definition, unfortunately, in this case, as “one who wonders if she remembered to put the cat out.”

But Lot, the only righteous man in all of Sodom, had survived, along with his two utterly unrape-able daughters. Lot spent a lengthy time pleading with the angels of destruction that he really would rather move out to a town called Zoar, if they could please not burn it. They agreed he could live there, but, suffering horrific post-traumatic-stress disorder from the hail of brimstone laying his home to ashes, not to mention his wife’s odd and savory death, Lot ended up staying hidden in the mountains.

He should have gone to Zoar.

Because his daughters, possibly still stinging from the mob’s rejection and desperate as breeders are wont to be, reasoned that there were no men left in all the world (many a young woman has felt the same way!) and so got their father drunk on wine and had sex with him until they got pregnant.

Not all young women in desperate circumstances are so resourceful. Sodomite should mean, “innovative problem solver,” too. God’s didn’t get angry at this, and in fact, allowed both girls to bare their father’s sons and allowed those sons to become leaders of men. Why was He so understanding of drunkenness, adultery and incest but turned a woman into a salt lick because her head swiveled an inch too far? Ho ho! Because shut your mouth, that’s why.

There we have the story of Sodom, and Lot, the only righteous man in all the land. He was kind to strangers, offering them shelter in his home, and thoughtful toward his fellow townsmen as well, offering them his virgin daughters. In turn he was even generous to his unlucky daughters, in ways lesser fathers would never even think of. God’s chosen, Lot, was a righteous man.

So, we see the modern word “Sodomite” is a woeful misnomer, not thoroughly describing the attributes of Sodom‘s inhabitants, nor remotely applying to any but the most exceptional of today’s homosexuals. And we may find the definition of “sin” and “righteousness” to be quite fluid; difficult to grasp and constantly changing shape to fit the container of its environment.

Maybe, when faced with the cut of a Biblically righteous person, it is no wonder that so many people refuse to fit into the design, no matter how intelligent.