The term toevah (and its plural, toevot) occurs 103 times in the Hebrew Bible, and almost always has the connotation of a non-Israelite cultic practice. In the Torah, the primary toevah is avodah zara, foreign forms of worship, and most other toevot flow from it. The Israelites are instructed not to commit toevah because other nations do so.Interesting, but not comforting:
Deut. 12:31, 13:14, 17:4, 27:15, and 32:16 further identify idolatry, child sacrifice, witchcraft, and other “foreign” practices as toevah, and Deut. 20:18 says that avoiding toevah justifies the genocide of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanaites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. So, toevah is serious, but it is serious as a particular class of cultic offense: a transgression of national boundary. It is certainly not “abomination.”Not sure that last sentence follows. The problem God has with idolatry is that "other" nations do it? Child sacrifice would be just fine if it weren't foreign --if the Israelites had come up with it as an organic practice instead of importing it?
In the Book of Proverbs (which comes late in the Bible but which scholars believe to have been composed prior to the Deuteronomic and Levitical material), toevah is used twenty-one times to refer to various ethical failings, including the ways, thoughts, prayers and sacrifices of the wicked (Prov. 3:32, 15:8-9, 15:26, 16:12, 21:27, 28:9), pride (Prov. 6:16, 16:5), evil speech (Prov. 8:7), false weights (Prov. 11:1, 20:10, 20:23), devious heartedness (Prov. 11:20), lying (Prov. 12:22, 26:25), scoffing (Prov. 24:9), justifying the wicked and defaming the righteous (Prov. 17:15). Interestingly, Proverbs 13:19 says that “to turn from evil is toevah to fools,” again suggesting that toevah is something relative in nature. Similarly, Prov. 29:27 says poetically: “An unjust man is toevah to the righteous, and the straightforward man is toevah to the wicked.”I think I see the distinction the author is trying to make, and the Church beat him to it long ago in saying love the sinner, not the sin. What tempts a man is his cross to bear --a sparring partner in life that will make him a better person if he fights and drag him down and enslave him if he doesn't. It doesn't make him in himself, ontologically, an abomination. So if what's intended is a rebuke to the "God hates fags" types, bravo. God loves fags, as he loves all of us sinners -- and as He is Mercy itself, the weaker we are, the more we have a claim on that mercy if we care to exercise the claim --sort of a Divine Triage.
But homosexuality still ain't kosher, and this seems willfully dishonest, stretching the distinction beyond where it will go.
Now, if by “abomination,” the King James means a cultural prohibition—something which a particular culture abhors but another culture enjoys—then the term makes sense....In fact, toevah is mostly about idolatry, and male homosexual behavior is only as abominable as remarriage or not keeping kosher.Or, as noted above, as abominable as idolatry and child sacrifice, deviousness, lying, cheating, stealing and scoffing --i.e. not consistent with goodness and leading man to his own isolation and misery. Only as abominable as other abominations. Only as sinful as other sins.
Furthermore, while the author seems to want to say homosexual acts are like eating bacon --and bacon, we know, makes everything better-- there's the wee little problem of St. Paul, conveniently neglected in the catalog of instances of the term "abomination" in the King James New Testament. Possibly because he refers to homosexual acts --again, acts, not persons-- as "shameful" instead.
So, Homosexuals....you're only as sinful as the heterosexual liars, thieves, gluttons, fornicators, cynics and generally impious all around you. Feel better?
