Was King David gay?

I have to admit, straight off the bat, that I am not married. I also am not gay.

In my time I’ve been around a fair number of gay people, in educational, job and social situations. Some of the people in those groups have had ceremonies where they profess love for each other, pledge devotion and all the good stuff that is associated with marriage.

And yet, for some odd reason, I don’t have the faintest urge to engage in homosexual behaviour, it hasn’t ruined my relationships and should the day come around when I do get married, I don’t consider my vows cheapened because of what someone else did.

I say ‘odd reason’ because, according to some people, the mere existence of gay marriage (or of being near gay people) will give me gay cooties or something equally evil and cause me to… well, they aren’t usually very clear on what is supposed to happen to me but it’s usually awful. Often involving fiery debris falling from the sky.

At this point it should be becoming clear that I’m not taking this discussion seriously, and that’s true. It’s because I don’t take the arguments presented seriously.

I don’t take seriously people who state, on the one hand, that people should be free to shoose the lifestyle they want, free from interference from others, but then argue that others should be prohibited from doing the same. I don’t take seriously those who claim the mantle of righteousness while engaging in the basest form of bigotry. And I especially don’t take seriously those who are threatened by ideas, who demand that they be protected from those whose beliefs do not mirror their own.

Oh, and for anyone feeling the urge to quote Genesis 19, (do feel free to include the entire bit about Sodom, where Lot offered up his virgin daughters to be gang-raped; that part about the righteousness of Lot seems to get overlooked a fair bit), might I suggest they also look up the story of David and Jonathan starting at 1 Samuel 18, when Jonathan fell in love with the future King David of Israel.

How Jonathan ‘delighted in David,’ Jonathan’s vow that ‘Whatsoever thy soul desireth, I will even do it for thee,’ the multiple passages about how they loved one another, their repeated convenants before God to each other, and then, upon the death of Jonathan, David’s lament that ‘I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.’

Sounds pretty gay if you ask me. And that sharing of covenants thing and vows to each other and expressions of love… Haven’t heard anything like that since the last time I went to a wedding.

Keith Morrison
Cambridge Bay