Summary Of Homosexuality Comes Home To Roost By Heather R White

In her paper, How Paul Became the Straight Word: Protestant Biblicism and the Twentieth-Century Invention of Biblical Heteronormativity, Heather R. White argues that the modern biblical interpretation of heteronormativity, or the condemnation of anything not heterosexual and cisgender, is a modern conceptualization. Particularly in the first two paragraphs of the section “Homosexuality Comes Home to Roost” White explores the shift in biblical translations with the shifting medical and cultural knowledge surrounding homosexuality (White 297-298). In this section, White explains a tickle-down pattern in which 1940s culture impacted biblical rhetoric, and biblical rhetoric then impacted society. White explains that, as a result of new understandings surrounding “frameworks of sexual health,” perceptions and biblical interpretations began to

Given the multidirectional nature of homophobic propaganda, I was better able to understand how people could become influenced. I had also found it interesting in terms of conceptualizing religious identity that White references liberal protestants as catalysts to the inclusion of the word homosexuality in the Bible. White establishes this by explaining the origins of the Revised Standard Version Bible, which was produced through the “liberal Protestant commitments to glean insight from new historical and scientific research as a resource for Christian revelation” (White 297). I found this to be a humanizing depiction, as it reflects a desire for increased accuracy-not necessarily intentional malice- an idea further reflected through White's commentary on the “new direct reference to homosexuality” being viewed as part of the process to make the King James Version Bible more comprehensive for the modern audience (White