Deuteronomy Should Not Tell You How to Dress

A clobber verse that gets carelessly tossed around a lot by conservatives who fear LGBTQ+ people is this:

Deuteronomy 22:5

“A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.”

But I say, why stop at this verse when the entire chapter is so illuminating to our modern lives.

Deuteronomy 22:8

“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it.”

If you’re not a fan of architecture, very few modern homes – at least the ones you and I can afford – feature parapets. I don’t get a lot of my neighbors complaining to me that I am breaking God’s law.

Deuteronomy 22:9

“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, or the whole yield will be forbidden, both the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard itself.”

Again, very few people seem concerned that agricultural practices have evolved far beyond the context of this verse. In fact, if you’re interested in sustainable and regenerative agriculture, you want your crops intermingled. (You didn’t think you were going to get an agriculture lesson today, did you?) Many farms in Colorado practice mixed cropping because you can improve both soil health and yield. Some crops help naturally ward off pests. Organic farming almost always features crop rotation and companion planting and can even feature “permaculture,” where various species are planted together in a way that helps to create a sustainable ecosystem. If you’re serious about your Deuteronomy, you should be more particular about how you source your legumes.

Deuteronomy 22:11

“You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.”

I like this one because it means that incorporating a variety of materials for comfort, performance, heat or durability is as sinful as wearing another gender’s clothing. Which is to say, it’s not sinful at all.  Deuteronomy should not tell you how to dress.

Deuteronomy 22:12

“You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.”

Again, just more proof that none of us follow Deuteronomy when it comes to clothing decisions, so why should we think it has anything to say about modern gender-specific apparel?

We could go on and on through this chapter and really the entire book.

• I hope you don’t enjoy shrimp scampi or some tasty life-affirming bacon, because Deuteronomy 14 has a lot of fussy dietary laws.
• Do you do housework, or other work, or for that matter drive a car from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown? That violates the Sabbath laws of Deuteronomy 5.
• Deuteronomy 22:22 calls for the death penalty for adulterers. OK, maybe we should bring that one back.
• Deuteronomy 21 has some practical advice for any of you who want to take a beautiful woman captive during war and make her your bride. And all God’s children said, “WTF?”

Of course, my main point is that why should any of us think that any of this applies to us today? I don’t know what the cultural norms were 3,000 years ago, but as recently as the founding of the USA, men wore high heels, stockings and wigs. Have you seen the Pope all dressed up and glam and in his long white robes and pointy hat? He slays. Formal wear worn by good Christians in Greece, Indonesia, Scotland, Africa, Norway, Japan and many more places resemble skirts, dresses and long flowing gown-like robes. Is there even such a thing as dressing like another gender today?

My understanding – and this is based on some of that infamous liberal elite book-learnin’ although I am not a scholar so do your own homework here people – the proscriptions in Deuteronomy were about ways for that culture to set themselves apart from the surrounding cultures. Some scholars think verse 22:5 had to do with cult rituals of surrounding people. Some think it might be a way to keep women from going into battle during a time when it was very difficult to maintain a childbearing population to begin with. What I can tell you with certainty is that it had nothing to do with our modern scientific outlook on transgenderism, mainly because they had no such understanding. These ideas were completely inaccessible to them so it we cannot use this verse in that context. Like crop rotation, they just didn’t know what was best so they couldn’t possibly be forbidding it in our era.

So to my fundangelical readers: Do you want to do the difficult work here, or do you want to spout off about things you know nothing about because it makes you feel good for three minutes to abuse a minority population? If you want to do the work, maybe consider what your iPhone is doing in terms of idolatry before you worry about which clothes to wear. That is perhaps more in line with the spirit of why Deuteronomy was written. Until then, here’s my advice to you. If wearing the clothing of a different gender seems to be interfering with your religious practices and your relationship with God, don’t do it. If it doesn’t interfere and you enjoy doing it, carry on. And if you’re not willing to kill adulterers, abstain from bacon, keep the Sabbath, and eschew wearing mixed fabrics, maybe just shut up and keep your bigotry to yourself with this verse.