I am not among those who think that the laws of ancient Israel are eye-roll worthy. Even the laws that seem so ridiculous had their reasons, often quite symbolic ones. The law was all about holding Israel together as one people, the chosen of God, and preserving them, keeping them alive, despite terrible threats, from disease to invading armies. The stories of Israel are stories of God’s protection of this people, sometimes miraculously during battle with far superior armies, but also day to day through everything written in the law. These people were kept whole and intact over their long history. That is why Paul calls the law the pedagogus, a slave who attended a child taught by another. The teacher is not the law. The law is the attendant. Jesus is the teacher. And so, when Jesus—whose very mutilated body violated the law—was embraced by God and flooded with God’s glory, a new covenant is decreed, one in which it is no longer necessary to remain whole and intact, no longer necessary to survive.
Though it still remains dangerous to touch a corpse, to welcome a stranger, to honor the infertile, to have oozing sores, to throw the symbols of social cohesion to the wind, in the new covenant none of those things can separate the faithful from the love of God, i.e., in Christ Jesus. That is why rabbit- and pork-eating Gentiles are to be welcomed into the church. That is why LGBTQ+ persons are to be, too.