Parsha Vayera: What's a Sodomite?

It's a bit late to comment, but I figured that it'd still be prudent to comment on last week's parsha of Vayera.

"ויאמר יהוה, זעקת סדם ועמרה כי-רבה; וחטאתם--כי כבדה, מאד."

"And HaShem said: 'Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and, verily, their sin is exceeding grievous." -Genesis 18:20

This verse made me wonder: What did the Sodomites do to incur G-d's wrath? If they were ultimately destroyed, they must have done something to merit it, right? If you listen to a right-winged, Fundamentalist Christian, he'll opine that it was homosexuality that brought the demise of Sodom and Gommarah. I have a problem with that conclusion for two reasons. One, in order to perpetuate a given population, you need to reproduce at a birth rate of 2.1. If everybody in Sodom and Gommorah were homosexual, they wouldn't be able to survive because natural selection would have wiped them out long before G-d got to them. Plus, historically speaking, it is a constant that the percent of homosexuals in a given population is 5-6%. So, it is theoretically possible you had a case of "Bisexuals Gone Wild," but the issue with using that argument is that there is only one scant Talmudic reference to Sodom and homosexuality, and it is within the context of rape, an inherently malicious and coercive act that is done against the other person's will:

"R. Menhama in the name of R. Bibi: This is what the Sodomites had stipulated among themselves. They said, 'as to any wayfarer who comes here, we shall have sexual relations with him and take away his money.'" -Genesis Rabbah, Parshah 50:7

If the citizens of Sodom were really pining for homosexual acts, Lot was right there. But it wasn't about homosexuality; it was about humiliation and dominance over wayfarers because the citizens of Sodom didn't want anybody helping the unfortunate, as I'll show later. Plus, it cannot be possible that the sin was homosexuality because Abraham interceded an entire chapter beforehand and asked if there were at least ten people who were "righteous," that Sodom could be saved. Therefore, whatever what was so sinful had to have occurred prior to the scene in Genesis 19. With this in mind, it still begs the question of what caused the fall of Sodom and Gommorah. The first place I would look into is Biblical exegesis, i.e., an explicit verse that corroborates a given point.  I found the only Biblical verse, and it's not quite what I thought it would be:

הִנֵּה-זֶה הָיָה, עֲו‍ֹן סְדֹם אֲחוֹתֵךְ: גָּאוֹן שִׂבְעַת-לֶחֶם וְשַׁלְוַת הַשְׁקֵט, הָיָה לָהּ וְלִבְנוֹתֶיהָ, וְיַד-עָנִי וְאֶבְיוֹן, לֹא הֶחֱזִיקָה.

-Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom: pride, fulness of bread, and careless ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

After Biblical exegisis, the next place for a Jew to look is Rabbinic commentary. Third verse I found was from Pirke Avot (5:13): "There are four types of people. [The first is] the one who says, 'what's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours.' This is the average type, but some say that this is the Sodom type." Sounds a lot more like a chiding of pure, unadultured selfishness than homosexuality.

The best Talmudic evidence is Sanhedrin 109, where Chazal lists the sins of Sodom, which range from heterosexually-based sexual assault and ignoring the wayfarer all the way to inhospitality and downright avarice. The most egregious of these accounts was of one Sodomite woman who gave bread to a poor person.  She had to sneak the bread into a pitcher, and was caught.  She was subsequently punished by publicly being tied to a wall, covered with honey, and devoured by bees.  Hmmmm, I guess it wasn't that man-on-man action that got this woman into trouble.
 

Conclusion: It's great to clear up that societal misconception that Sodom was about sexual illicitness.  What all of these accounts, Biblical and Talmudic, have in common is that Sodom was the epitome of man's self-indulgence.  Here you had a city with all the material wealth and provisions that one could ask for.  Not only did Sodomites not help out others, but they also set up a legal system where people were punished for helping out the less fortunate and those who provided others with hospitality.  The important lesson taught here is to care for others.  Be like Avraham Avinu, not only in terms of being hospitable, but to do so in a positive demeanor.  As the Talmud says, "Hospitality is greater than receiving the Divine presence (Shabbat 127a)." When Abraham was receiving the Divine Presence (Genesis 18:1), he stopped receiving the Divine Revelation to help out those in need. By emulating Abraham's generosity and hospitality, we avoid both the spiritual and physical fate that Sodom had endured.