The Sin of Sodom

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of those terrible myths of mass destruction that conservative religious folk like to whip out as a cautionary tale, waving it grotesquely around in the faces of us dirty liberals until we finally agree with them just so they'll tuck it away.  Why, with all of our sick, heretical ideas like religious tolerance, gay rights, legal abortions, racial equality and separation of church and state, we're practically asking God to take a big, fiery crap on us.  In fact, according to some (crazy) people, we've already unleashed the floodgates of diarrhea hellfire and it's only a matter of time before God gets serious.

But just what exactly did Sodom do that was so terrible, so mind-numbingly awful that God felt the need to personally obliterate them?  "It's sodomy, you clueless pinko!" you cry, leaping from your hummer with a Bible in one hand and a half-dead illegal immigrant in the other.  "Homosexuals were taking over!  Don't you know that?  It's got the sin right in the name!"

Actually, it's the sin that's named after the city, hypothetical right-wing extremist, but ... you know what?  Never mind.  Indeed, the knee-jerk reaction is to look at the name and decide that Sodom must have been filled with men having loving, consensual relations with one another all the goddamn time, and that God was just playing favourites when he smote Sodom over, say, Egypt or China or India or Sparta.  He's just kind of a jerk like that.

But no.  That's not the case at all.  The real story, if anyone religious could be bothered  to read it, is so terrible that when I first read it, I poked my eyes out and renounced society to live as a hermit in the wilderness.  (I got better.  Then I realized there are no Skittles in the wilderness, so I came back.)  The real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is so awful that, were I a celestial being, I'd probably smite the holy bejeezus out of them too.  They'd be lucky that fire and brimstone was all they got off with.  "Enough with the suspense!" you cry.  "Tell us what it is!"  Well, hypothetical reader, the sin of Sodom was ...

Angel gang-rape.

Not "angel" like David Boreanaz, or "angel" like a baseball player from LA.  Angels.  Harps and halos and feathery wings.  The kinds of things that grandmas collect ceramics of.  A group of people wanted to rape those in the butt.  Let the sheer awfulness of that sink in for a minute.

I suppose I should offer some backstory.  To be fair, God has already decided that Sodom is going down in flames when the angels arrive in the city.  (We can only imagine what their previous sins were.)  They're there to escort the only good man in all of Sodom, Lot, out of the city before shit starts going down.  The angels are prepared to spend all night on the streets, but Lot insists they come inside and kick up their holy feet:

"And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face turned toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early; and go on your ways." - Genesis 19:1-2

There's a bit of back-and-forth about not wanting to inconvenience Lot (maybe they were molting) and Lot insisting that they stay (he could use the feathers to make history's softest down pillow, or something), but eventually the angels agree to come inside.  Then ... this happens:

"But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night?  bring them out unto us, that we may know them." - Genesis 19:4-5

"Knowing" is the Bible's adorably quaint way of referring to sex.  So basically, this group of people show up at Lot's house in the middle of the night and ask him to bring his newly arrived house guests out into the street so that they can take turns raping them out in the open air.  Now, discerning readers may have noticed that this is a rather large group of people.  In fact, angel rape is such an event in Sodom that "all the people from every quarter" turned out to get in on the action.

Math time!  Let's assume that Sodom is a relatively modest city population-wise (so the numbers don't get too horrifying).  In the ancient Middle East, that's probably about 2000 people.  For a working number, we'll assume that 25% of that 2000 people are children under 15, which is close to what it is now (27%).  That leaves 1500 adults.  Now, only the men of the city are going to be raping, and assuming that the population of men and women are more-or-less equal, that means these angels are about to be raped 750 times each.  And that's a low estimate.  You may poke out your eyes and commence screaming.

For those of you not blind and insane, let's continue.  Oh, you thought that was the end?  Hardly.  So every man in the city shows up at Lot's house demanding forced angelic buttsex.  What the hell do you do in this situation?  Hand them over?  Beg the angry mob to leave?  Point out that what they're trying to do is more cartoonishly evil than burning down a puppy orphanage?  Well, Lot is the only good man in Sodom, so surely he has some wise words to disperse the crowd:

"And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.  Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof." - Genesis 19:6-8

Oh, of course.  Lot offers up his two young daughters to the crowd, asking that they rape them instead of his house guests.  ... Wait ...

Yep, this city is fucked up.

Anyway, if any of you haven't yet left this post to mutilate yourselves and/or retire to live in the woods, the mob refuses Lot's offer and the angels have to step in and strike them all blind.  A lovely end to a lovely story.

So the moral of today's tale is this: don't believe everything you hear from right-wing conservative nutjobs about the Bible, and if you see an angel and your first thought is to rape it, you totally deserve to go down in a horrible apocalypse of fire and brimstone.