Reading the Torah Through a "Bent Lens"

If you have followed this blog for the past year, now and then you will have had a primer in postmodern philosophical thought. One of the foundations of this philosophy is called structuralism. This consists of something called binary oppositions. Binary suggests the number 2 and...well...you can probably guess what oppositions means. A binary opposition is written like this:

good/evil

A hierarchy is when one part of the opposition is above the other signifying more importance:

good
evil

Today, postmodern Christians and other religious people are trying to fuse together the oppositions. This is called synthesis. So, the statement, "people have some good and some evil in them" would be an example of this. Here is another example of this fusion or synthesis. Who would ever guess that the Jewish Torah (the first five books of our OT) would be synthesized with "gay-ness." Here is what a professor from the University of New Hampshire is doing,


Marla Brettschneider, professor of political science and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, [is interpreting] the Torah through a “bent lens.”
“Torah Queeries” [her book] offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through Biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and, at times, provoke them, “Torah Queeries” examines topics as divergent as the Levitical sexual prohibitions, the experience of the Exodus, the rape of Dinah, the life of Joseph, and the ritual practices of the ancient Israelites. Most powerfully, the commentaries here chart a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition.
The book has been praised by the Jewish and LGBT communities.