American Christians are just weird fascists a lot of the time that don’t actually follow christianity beyond telling gay people they’re going to hell. They’re fine with this.
Nope, this one is in the bible (old testament), roughly in the same place where these are also listed as sins:
Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Do not practice divination or seek omens.
Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
And my favorite to point out to them:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Also the same book prohibits eating shrimps, and many other things that they will quickly jump to say it doesn’t apply anymore, because most christians do a pick and choose of things in the bible they follow and things they don’t. There’s a game where you and a group of friends follow everything on the bible, the last one jailed wins.
I made this argument in another thread, and someone replied that those were rules for Israelites, but not actual sins. They said God made a covenant with the Israelites about things that would be illegal, but not immoral beyond the fact it meant breaking the covenant itself. There is some reason to accept this, as Leviticus does focus on the new covenant with the Israelites specifically.
However, several books of the new testament are letters where Paul is instructing new churches and he explicitly reinforces the idea that at least some of the covenant laws still apply, including homosexuality (between men). As for Jesus, he seems kind of inconsistent about what is retconned in the gospels. He rejects things like “eye for an eye”, stoning adulterers, and complete prohibition of work on the Sabbath, but also has this passage
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Matthew 5:17–18 (NIV)
If I were trying to create a consistent biblical position, I would interpret this to mean the stuff from the old testament still applies unless something newer specifically counters it. But Christians ignore a lot of Jewish laws, so I think most would disagree with that.
My favorite are the ones who say Genesis isn’t literal because being a YEC is a step too far even for them, but then the whole point of Jesus gets awkward real fast when sin isn’t real.
24 Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.
25 Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;
26 And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.
Leviticus 18:22 ~ You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 ~ If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
You just gotta use a different position than you do with women.
Christianity is supposed to be the new testament, like what Jesus preached. he was against all the old ways that are in the old testament except the ten commandments. he went so far to offend the old ways, they had him killed.
I’ve seen some christians use Matthew 5 as a “Jesus came to add to what’s in the old testament”
17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Hi, Episcopal priest here, who just so happened to do his master’s thesis on the topic of reconciling same-sex marriage with traditional Christian understandings of marriage. So to give you the quick answer: no, “being gay” is not in the Bible. If you want the long answer, here’s a link to a blog post I wrote about this: https://catecheticconverter.com/same-sex-marriage-and-the-church
EDIT: I fixed my (apparently very shitty) link job.
22 “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
Leviticus 20:13
13 "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. "
Romans 1:26-27
27 “In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
Jude 1:7
7 “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire”
1 Corinthians 6:9
10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
1 Corinthians 7:2
“But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”
1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV
“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
I could go on, but you get the point. It’s clearly in the bible.
You could, I don’t know, read the article that I linked in the post that addressed each one of these.
EDIT: I realize that I did such poor job of linking the article that you might not have actually been able to read said article. Fixed it.
I will also take the moment to add that if you think the reprehensible sin of Sodom and Gommorrah (a systemic culture of gang rape, likely irrespective of sex/gender, as a kind of “cost” for staying the area) is the same thing as “homosexuality” then I don’t know what to say.
Not trying to convince anyone their book is wrong. I just want folks to see that there are better ways of reading it. As a former evangelical myself, but also a priest who deeply loves the Bible, the Christian faith, and Jesus, I think it’s been the case that the Bible has been read incorrectly. Further, as Christians, we’re (speaking of myself here, not assuming you are a Christian) supposed to allow Jesus to be the filter through which we read the whole thing. This is difficult, yes. But it can offer clarity. The evangelical reading tends to say “the sin of Sodom was that they were gay, therefore God is going to unleash wrath on anyone who engages in that or supports it.” But even Jesus Himself says that the sin of Sodom was that they were inhospitable. So if Jesus tells us that it had nothing to do with what we today call “sexual orientation” then it opens up a space for a better understanding of what’s going on. It allows us to see the truly monstrous sins that Sodom and Gomorrah were actually committing (which, to be frank, are the sorts of sins that we see happening in places like Lebanon and Gaza right now, the sins of the Epstein class, the sins of the Catholic Church and other churches coming to light in recent decades). The sin is exploitative sexual violence and the domination of the “outsider.” I can’t help but notice that the same organizations who treat the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as “homosexuality” tend to be the same ones either engaging in or accommodating the sins of sexual violence and domination. Is it a smoke-screen? Or is it willful ignorance?
To be fair, the priest did treat some of those verses in the (badly) linked post, with the 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV explicitly calling “homosexuality” likely due to translation error
I think most of the points he argued are flimsy, because most are “well, actually, if we interpret it like this instead…”. Even the aforementioned translation error is a very weak argument that the original passage didn’t mean some sort of man-on-man action (arsen = man, koites (also the source of coitus) = bed; arsenokoites becoming something like “bed man”).
I will concede that the arsenkoites argument of mine is wanting (and maybe a bit innovative). When I first wrote that in 2015 I was still operating under the assumption of the Hebrew Bible being the “real” Old Testament (a mistake a LOT of scholars make). I’ve since studied more on the importance of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish Bible that, for centuries, was the Bible) and it’s there that we learn Saint Paul is deriving his term from the Greek version of Leviticus. But this is still only what, two verses?
Also “homosexual” is a term invented in the 1890s that has its own ideological baggage. Using that term to translate a Greek word is not great because you are injecting a later concept into an ancient text. Somewhere along the way I read about some folks who looked at how old French and Spanish texts (or was it German?) that predated our English versions translated “arsenkoites” and they used a term related to pederasty.
well, actually, if we interpret it like this instead
does him a disservice. Why not consider the contexts in which all the interpretations have been made? If many of the details are flimsily translated, but the core message of love is consistent then why must people who would prefer Christianity to be a religion of kindness keep telling Christians that they are hateful?
This coming from a non-religious, non-spiritual person.
Even with translation errors, not every verse mentions homosexuality explicitly, but that is clearly the intent of the passage. And that’s the context today anyway, nobody is going to go back and revise it to undo the bigoted interpretation we have today, so his argument doesn’t really matter honestly bcz that’s what people believe now.
It absolutely states that being gay is a grave sin and even calls for death for them in the old testament. However the message of Jesus in the new testament is one of radical forgiveness and non-judgement. Jesus is not afraid of those who commit sexual sins as seen by one of his companions being a prostitute. Jesus says to love everyone, forgive everyone and only hate the sin itself, but not the sinner. Judging a person is also considered a grave sin, something many modern christians have forgotten.
Therefore there is absolutely a theological basis for allowing homosexuals to attend church, following Jesus example of himself hanging out with prostitutes, another kind of sexual sinner. And since Jesus tells you to love everyone and judge no one there is no reason to hate or shun a gay person. This also applies to other sins. If you rob a bank you can still go to church as well, with the same argument.
However if you talk to a priest or pastor of a liberal LGBTQ affirming church and ask them if gays are allowed in the church they will shout a resounding yes. But if you press them on the question of if homosexual intercourse is a sin or not they will probably get uncomfortable and may give another answer. It’s a very hard biblical reality to deny.
However since you could in theory be gay and have a same sex partner and just simply not have sex with them you could give gay couples the benefit of the doubt. This is the basis for allowing gay marriage. However gay marriage stands on much more shakier grounds than simply allowing LGBTQs in the church, since marriage in the bible is explicitly stated as being between a man and a woman. Some prists/pastors however take a different route to justifying it and that involves reasoning that since God created all humans and some humans are gay, those people most have been created gay by god himself, and everything that God creates is good, therefore gays are good. This argument requires some reasoning outside the Bible but is used by many. Conservatives can attack such a stance saying it directly goes against direct bible quotes while also claiming one is not born gay but you turn gay by your own decision or others influence. Gayness would in this view be a free will sin rather than a god creates attribute.
I’m writing this comment as a non Christian who supports LGBTQ btw. Just trying to explain what I know about the discussion.
The problem is that it says it in the same general section that it talks about how to treat your slaves and things, so it’s really kind of ridiculous to cherry pick this one thing as something we should uphold today while ignoring everything else.
American Christians are just weird fascists a lot of the time that don’t actually follow christianity beyond telling gay people they’re going to hell. They’re fine with this.
Is being gay one of those things that people think is in the bible based on the vibe but in fact the bible doesn’t express an opinion?
Nope, this one is in the bible (old testament), roughly in the same place where these are also listed as sins:
And my favorite to point out to them:
Also the same book prohibits eating shrimps, and many other things that they will quickly jump to say it doesn’t apply anymore, because most christians do a pick and choose of things in the bible they follow and things they don’t. There’s a game where you and a group of friends follow everything on the bible, the last one jailed wins.
I made this argument in another thread, and someone replied that those were rules for Israelites, but not actual sins. They said God made a covenant with the Israelites about things that would be illegal, but not immoral beyond the fact it meant breaking the covenant itself. There is some reason to accept this, as Leviticus does focus on the new covenant with the Israelites specifically.
However, several books of the new testament are letters where Paul is instructing new churches and he explicitly reinforces the idea that at least some of the covenant laws still apply, including homosexuality (between men). As for Jesus, he seems kind of inconsistent about what is retconned in the gospels. He rejects things like “eye for an eye”, stoning adulterers, and complete prohibition of work on the Sabbath, but also has this passage
Matthew 5:17–18 (NIV)
If I were trying to create a consistent biblical position, I would interpret this to mean the stuff from the old testament still applies unless something newer specifically counters it. But Christians ignore a lot of Jewish laws, so I think most would disagree with that.
My favorite are the ones who say Genesis isn’t literal because being a YEC is a step too far even for them, but then the whole point of Jesus gets awkward real fast when sin isn’t real.
Ezekiel 20 also says hello:
24 Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols.
25 Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;
26 And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord.
Leviticus 18:22 ~ You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 ~ If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
You just gotta use a different position than you do with women.
“Not lie” like in “standing up”?
Christianity is supposed to be the new testament, like what Jesus preached. he was against all the old ways that are in the old testament except the ten commandments. he went so far to offend the old ways, they had him killed.
I’ve seen some christians use Matthew 5 as a “Jesus came to add to what’s in the old testament”
Romans 1:26-27 is not better.
Standing doggystyle is the gay road to heaven!
Hi, Episcopal priest here, who just so happened to do his master’s thesis on the topic of reconciling same-sex marriage with traditional Christian understandings of marriage. So to give you the quick answer: no, “being gay” is not in the Bible. If you want the long answer, here’s a link to a blog post I wrote about this: https://catecheticconverter.com/same-sex-marriage-and-the-church
EDIT: I fixed my (apparently very shitty) link job.
Thank you, that was a refreshing read.
You’re welcome. Thank you for reading. I know it was a bit long (that article is basically three separate blog posts rolled into one).
“Being gay” isn’t in the Bible EXCEPT for
Leviticus 18-22
Leviticus 20:13
Romans 1:26-27
Jude 1:7
1 Corinthians 6:9
1 Corinthians 7:2
1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV
I could go on, but you get the point. It’s clearly in the bible.
You could, I don’t know, read the article that I linked in the post that addressed each one of these.
EDIT: I realize that I did such poor job of linking the article that you might not have actually been able to read said article. Fixed it.
I will also take the moment to add that if you think the reprehensible sin of Sodom and Gommorrah (a systemic culture of gang rape, likely irrespective of sex/gender, as a kind of “cost” for staying the area) is the same thing as “homosexuality” then I don’t know what to say.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a mistranslation. You’re not going to convince evangelicals that their book is wrong.
Not trying to convince anyone their book is wrong. I just want folks to see that there are better ways of reading it. As a former evangelical myself, but also a priest who deeply loves the Bible, the Christian faith, and Jesus, I think it’s been the case that the Bible has been read incorrectly. Further, as Christians, we’re (speaking of myself here, not assuming you are a Christian) supposed to allow Jesus to be the filter through which we read the whole thing. This is difficult, yes. But it can offer clarity. The evangelical reading tends to say “the sin of Sodom was that they were gay, therefore God is going to unleash wrath on anyone who engages in that or supports it.” But even Jesus Himself says that the sin of Sodom was that they were inhospitable. So if Jesus tells us that it had nothing to do with what we today call “sexual orientation” then it opens up a space for a better understanding of what’s going on. It allows us to see the truly monstrous sins that Sodom and Gomorrah were actually committing (which, to be frank, are the sorts of sins that we see happening in places like Lebanon and Gaza right now, the sins of the Epstein class, the sins of the Catholic Church and other churches coming to light in recent decades). The sin is exploitative sexual violence and the domination of the “outsider.” I can’t help but notice that the same organizations who treat the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah as “homosexuality” tend to be the same ones either engaging in or accommodating the sins of sexual violence and domination. Is it a smoke-screen? Or is it willful ignorance?
These modern translations are complete garbage.
To be fair, the priest did treat some of those verses in the (badly) linked post, with the 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 ESV explicitly calling “homosexuality” likely due to translation error
I think most of the points he argued are flimsy, because most are “well, actually, if we interpret it like this instead…”. Even the aforementioned translation error is a very weak argument that the original passage didn’t mean some sort of man-on-man action (arsen = man, koites (also the source of coitus) = bed; arsenokoites becoming something like “bed man”).
I will concede that the arsenkoites argument of mine is wanting (and maybe a bit innovative). When I first wrote that in 2015 I was still operating under the assumption of the Hebrew Bible being the “real” Old Testament (a mistake a LOT of scholars make). I’ve since studied more on the importance of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish Bible that, for centuries, was the Bible) and it’s there that we learn Saint Paul is deriving his term from the Greek version of Leviticus. But this is still only what, two verses?
Also “homosexual” is a term invented in the 1890s that has its own ideological baggage. Using that term to translate a Greek word is not great because you are injecting a later concept into an ancient text. Somewhere along the way I read about some folks who looked at how old French and Spanish texts (or was it German?) that predated our English versions translated “arsenkoites” and they used a term related to pederasty.
I think reducing his discussion to
does him a disservice. Why not consider the contexts in which all the interpretations have been made? If many of the details are flimsily translated, but the core message of love is consistent then why must people who would prefer Christianity to be a religion of kindness keep telling Christians that they are hateful?
This coming from a non-religious, non-spiritual person.
Even with translation errors, not every verse mentions homosexuality explicitly, but that is clearly the intent of the passage. And that’s the context today anyway, nobody is going to go back and revise it to undo the bigoted interpretation we have today, so his argument doesn’t really matter honestly bcz that’s what people believe now.
Is there an error in that link? I can’t get through for some reason
Yeah. Sorry about that. Fixed it.
Out of habit I clicked the link icon and wound up creating a recursive loop lol
Same. When you try to copy it as a link, it comes up empty. But, copy text works
https://catecheticconverter.com/same-sex-marriage-and-the-church
It absolutely states that being gay is a grave sin and even calls for death for them in the old testament. However the message of Jesus in the new testament is one of radical forgiveness and non-judgement. Jesus is not afraid of those who commit sexual sins as seen by one of his companions being a prostitute. Jesus says to love everyone, forgive everyone and only hate the sin itself, but not the sinner. Judging a person is also considered a grave sin, something many modern christians have forgotten.
Therefore there is absolutely a theological basis for allowing homosexuals to attend church, following Jesus example of himself hanging out with prostitutes, another kind of sexual sinner. And since Jesus tells you to love everyone and judge no one there is no reason to hate or shun a gay person. This also applies to other sins. If you rob a bank you can still go to church as well, with the same argument.
However if you talk to a priest or pastor of a liberal LGBTQ affirming church and ask them if gays are allowed in the church they will shout a resounding yes. But if you press them on the question of if homosexual intercourse is a sin or not they will probably get uncomfortable and may give another answer. It’s a very hard biblical reality to deny.
However since you could in theory be gay and have a same sex partner and just simply not have sex with them you could give gay couples the benefit of the doubt. This is the basis for allowing gay marriage. However gay marriage stands on much more shakier grounds than simply allowing LGBTQs in the church, since marriage in the bible is explicitly stated as being between a man and a woman. Some prists/pastors however take a different route to justifying it and that involves reasoning that since God created all humans and some humans are gay, those people most have been created gay by god himself, and everything that God creates is good, therefore gays are good. This argument requires some reasoning outside the Bible but is used by many. Conservatives can attack such a stance saying it directly goes against direct bible quotes while also claiming one is not born gay but you turn gay by your own decision or others influence. Gayness would in this view be a free will sin rather than a god creates attribute.
I’m writing this comment as a non Christian who supports LGBTQ btw. Just trying to explain what I know about the discussion.
Oh no the bible says kill em all. It’s one of the main bullet points.
The problem is that it says it in the same general section that it talks about how to treat your slaves and things, so it’s really kind of ridiculous to cherry pick this one thing as something we should uphold today while ignoring everything else.
At least you could sort of respect it. They maybe delulu but they aren’t watered down faith tourists like the imbeciles who decided “god is love”.
No, they are. I guarantee they have sections of the bible they ignore out of convenience. They are not to be afforded even grudging respect.
It doesn’t.
Tell that to the people of Sodom.
Which was destroyed because they did not welcome strangers, but wanted to rape them, as Isaiah explained. Homosexuality has nothing to do with it.
THANK YOU
Context matters. Turns out when you tell stories you kinda have to read the whole thing rather than just snippets.
I want to know what gomorrahy is.
It sure sounds like a word you can say with your mouth full though.
American Christians are also the main Grindr base.