Lust in the Dust... It's The Holy Bible!

Genesis Chapter 38 is an astoundingly trashy story regarding one of the Judeo-Christian Patriarchs – Judah – and his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar (disguised as a prostitute), and how they came to have sex and spawn the lineage that would one day include kings David and Solomon, and, eventually, Joseph, husband of Mary, mother of Jesus.

You know, typical Biblical family values.

This story is timely, however, for what happens before Judah impregnates his daughter-in-law. 

Judah has three sons. The oldest, efficiently named Er, marries Tamar, but dies before any children are born. Now, as is standard practice in traditional Biblical marriage, Judah’s second son, Onan, must impregnate his sister-in-law, so she can have (hopefully) a son to gain claim to an inheritance and keep Er’s lineage going; also protecting Tamar, who, as a woman, cannot own property or fend for herself in that ancient world. Again, traditional Biblical family values.

 

Onan is powerfully attracted to Tamar, but sees that providing offspring for his dead brother will only weaken his own holdings, so: he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and He put him to death…(Genesis 38:9-10, NRSV).

Now the rest of the story is well worth reading, but I’m stopping here, as this is a root of a current kerfuffle in our nation: birth control. I do not wish to argue about whether a corporation owned by a religious institution can be forced to partially underwrite coverage/care that is in direct opposition to the religious teachings of that corporation’s owners. I would tend to tread veeeery carefully with such an issue. Instead, I’d like to tweak a bit the “Biblical basis” some bandy about regarding this particular conflict.

The Sin of Onan

One thing I love about the Bible is the fact that it refuses to sugar-coat human behavior. Onan is a first-class jerk, taking advantage of a woman’s dire predicament to slake his lust without offering her deliverance from her troubles through impregnation – which is the justice principal underlying the whole sordid tale. Onan, through his manipulation of the law for his own gain, gets what he wants but leaves the woman as vulnerable as ever.

In December, 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that failure to cover contraceptives for women violated the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which was itself an amendment to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Now the Department of Health and Human Services has ruled that birth control must be covered in most insurance policies without additional cost (pleasepleaseplease note that this is not precisely the same as “free” or “paid for by the church.”)

It can be argued persuasively that the relatively new-found ability of women to plan when they will get pregnant makes them (and their children) less vulnerable in society: empowering them socially, culturally, politically and economically in ways that Tamar, Onan, Judah and the writer of Genesis could never have imagined. Therefore,  the modern “Sin of Onan” in this case may not be denying the 21^st century Tamar the right to a child, but, ironically, insisting she pay extra beyond her already rising health insurance premiums to determine when and with whom she will have that child.

I’m just saying.

Postscript:  Roman Catholic Church law allowed the use of “The Pill” for women with irregular cycles from 1957 until an official stand against oral contraception was declared in 1968. Prominent Catholic physician John Rock argued that The Pill merely regulated the body’s hormonal cycles, and was therefore “natural.”