Here’s what Lisa Miller wrote:
Gay men like to point to the story of passionate King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he was “one spirit” and whom he “loved as he loved himself.” Conservatives say this is a story about a platonic friendship, but it is also a story about two men who stand up for each other in turbulent times, through violent war and the disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his clothes at Jonathan’s death and, in grieving, writes a song:
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.
Here, the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations.
And here’s the response of Joe Dallas of Genesis Counseling in Dallas, and a featured speaker at Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conferences
The 2005 film Brokeback Mountain chronicled a decades-long sexual relationship between two men, creating a new punch line for comedian Robin Williams, who now says, when intimating a homosexual desire, “I love you in a Brokeback kind of way.”
But Williams isn’t the only doing the intimating. Newsweek’s religion editor Lisa Miller allows for a pro-gay interpretation of that most celebrated of all bonds between masculine men: David and Jonathan’s friendship.
None would argue these two were just casual buddies. The Bible, in fact, describes their souls as being “knit together” (I Samuel 18:1). Their commitment to each other’s well-being was clear (I Samuel 20:42). And when mourning Jonathan’s death, David declared “Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women” (II Samuel 1:26). Believers traditionally have recognized this as an account of an abiding, fraternal bond. We see brotherly love; Miller sees Brokeback. So which one of us needs glasses?
I would argue that David’s heterosexual nature is described in terms no Bible reader could miss. King David, like many Old Testament figures, was polygamous, taking for himself numerous wives and concubines (II Samuel 5:13), his sexual behavior often in conflict with God’s design. But the tension between God’s will and David’s conduct had nothing to do with homosexuality, and everything to do with unbridled heterosexual lust.
Scripture is equally unambiguous about sexual relations. From the Genesis record of God ordaining Adam and Eve’s union to St. Paul’s New Testament remarks on fornication, prostitution and adultery, biblical references to sexual intimacy, whether moral or immoral, are frank, easy to understand, unmistakable.
Why, then, would the normally blunt and graphic Bible become shy when referencing a homosexual relationship between Jonathan and David? Having elsewhere minced no words about rape, incest, or attempts at forcible sodomy, why would it now resort to poetic euphemisms such as “souls being knit together” or “love surpassing the love of women?” If a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan happened, why don’t we read, “And David knew Jonathan?” Because no such encounter occurred.
They loved deeply, to be sure. But to say love that is deep must also be sexual displays a narrow, limited view of love one wouldn’t expect from an accomplished journalist.
The depth of love and the nature of love are separate, a distinction Miller egregiously misses.
