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.
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