GEN741 The generation of Noah was condemned to eradication by the Flood because they had sunk so low morally that, according to midrashic teaching, they wrote out formal marriage contracts for sodomy and buggery—a possible cryptic reference to such practices in the Rome of Nero and Hadrian. Of Ham, the son of Noah, we are told that “he saw the nakedness of his father” and told his two brothers [this verse]. Why should this act have warranted the harsh imprecation hurled at him by his father? The Rabbis offer two answers: one, that the text implied that Ham castrated Noah: second, that the biblical expression is an idiom for homosexual intercourse (see Rashi, ad loc.). On the scriptural story of Potiphar’s purchase of Joseph as a slave Genesis 39:1, the Talmud comments that he acquired him for homosexual purposes, but that a miracle occurred and God sent the angel Gabriel to castrate Potiphar Sotah 13b.  Leviticus Rabbah 18:13. (By Norman Lamm, "Judaism and the Modern Attitude to Homosexuality") KELLNER 380