I’ve had this discussion dozens of times over for the past 15+ years, from both sides of the isle, and here’s a summary of my current thoughts on the approach to the Bible:
It’s my belief that the Bible is our best window into the person of Christ, who is the center of our faith. Christianity is about following His example and living as He taught us. Because He is no longer walking the Earth, it’s valuable that we have a series of ancient documents that gives us the best understanding of Him, His teachings, and the context surrounding them. That’s why the Bible is so valuable.
It’s important, when understanding the Bible, to recognize who wrote every part of it, to whom they wrote it, why they wrote it, and the context in which it was written. One cannot simply just read a sentence of an English translation of the Bible and then instantly have full understanding of what they need to know. God and the Bible are so, so much bigger than that. It takes a lot of thought, prayer, and study to truly unpack even some of the simplest Bible verses, and even then there’s more to know, and often devout Christians will come to different conclusions about it. When Christians disagree on various tennets of Christianity or how to interpret parts of the Bible, it’s not always the case that some of them just “don’t follow the Bible.” Rather, they all want to follow what the Bible teaches us but have come to different conclusions as to what there is for it to teach.
On the topic of homosexuality, understanding the Bible on the topic is not especially simple, because “homosexuality” is a word that covers a LOT of things, and wasn’t even a word when the Bible was written. There are six verses in the entire Bible that speak condemningly about anything that relates to homosexuality, and when you dig into the history and whatnot, it’s not as clear-cut as it may seem at first glance.
It’s important to understand that in ancient societies, men would often have promiscuous sex with other men in contexts of prostitution, adultery, and even pagan worship. It goes without saying that this is wrong, and the writers of the Bible were right to call it out as sinful. One thing that WASN’T observed, was two women or two men who loved one another and sought to enter a monogamous relationship and/or marriage. At the time, marriage was basically an exchange of property (women) and a way to have offspring, and the Bible gives guidance on how to make the best of that arrangement, even if it wasn’t endorsing the “women as property” approach.
So then the question is, when the writers referred to things like “abusing yourself with mankind,” how exactly should that be translated? Many translators had decided to go with “homosexuality,” but that’s not really a precise choice. “Homosexuality” covers everything from a teenager being attracted to the same sex, to a woman who loves and is deeply devoted to her wife, raising their children together, to a man going out and having sex with several male strangers in one night. I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that the authors of the Bible ever-so-conveniently were referring to the exact same concepts that we now think of when we use the English word “homosexuality.” So what to do? I think it’s best to understand the kinds of things they actually saw at the time.
In the case of the ancient Israelites, there are prohibition of men “lying with men as they would women” in Israel’s laws. It’s worth reiterating that Israel’s laws don’t apply to Christians, but it’s still good to try to understand why there was a law against it. Just like there was a law against eating pork because at the time pork was very unsanitary and caused diseases, so too was sex. ANY sex was unsanitary, but straight sex at least enabled offspring, so it was tolerated (but with a lot of rules, such as no sex near a menstrual period). Additionally, Israel was a nomadic nation constantly under pressure from larger, more powerful militaries. It was absolutely necessary for their survival to keep having new sons to be soldiers, so non-procreative sex was a no-no. The Old Law, similarly, condemns non-procreative sex between husband and wife for this reason. And ADDITIONALLY, as I mentioned earlier, gay sex was part of some pagan rituals and the Old Law sought to discourage people from participating in those rituals, because it brought them away from God. All in all, we’re no longer in need of a ton of soldiers to survive (our population is QUITE stable and is actually growing too fast), and sex, gay or straight, procreative or non-procreative, can be done sanitarily, especially if it’s done monogamously between two spouses (which means no risk of STDs). The prohibitions in Leviticus served an important purpose in Leviticus, but there’s a reason Christians are not held by its law; Jesus fulfilled the Old Law, and brought about a New Covenant. It’s the same reason Christians can eat shellfish now despite Leviticus calling it an abomination.
The Old Testament also has the oft-cited story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but this is really a pretty big misunderstanding. All one has to do is actually read the story and they’ll see this is NOT a story about homosexuality. Lot and his daughters lived in Sodom, and they were hosting an angel who appeared male. The men of the city wanted to assault the angel, which was a huge violation of the Middle East’s sacred hospitality (if someone was a guest in your home, you had a lot of obligations to them). Lot refused and offered his daughter (this comes back to bite him later, but it’s not especially important to this part), but they refuse. They didn’t refuse because she’s a woman; they refused because she was a local. The fact that some people read men attempting rape of a man and assume the problem is not that it was rape but that it was gay is, frankly, kind of troubling to me. Plus, if these men were just looking for gay sex they could have just slept with each other. No, their goal was to violate a traveler in their city. It’s worth noting that there is a much-less-discussed story in the book of Judges about a city called Gibbeah. In it a similar thing happens, only HERE, the family ARE travelers, and they DO accept his daughter and rape her to death. The punishment from God is still severe. It didn’t matter if it was attempted sexual assault of a man (Sodom) or a woman (Gibbeah). Additionally, the book of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:49-50) also makes it clear that this wasn’t about homosexuality: “Now this was the sin of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”
If one wants to make a moral argument from the Bible, the New Testament is typically where they want to go. However, this topic isn’t discussed much in the New Testament either. The main thing people refer to is Paul’s condemnation in his first letter to the Corinthians of a word he created, “arsenokoites.” Many translators decided this was “homosexuality,” but this is kind of missing the mark. What Paul was doing in this letter was calling out the Corinthian church for adopting the sinful practices commonplace in Greece rather than being holy (“set aside”) like he taught them when he started the Corinthian church. And what did those practices include? Men sleeping with younger boys, male prostitutes, and with male slaves. Paul was right to condemn these Greek sexual practices, but I believe many people were wrong in mistakenly believing he was referring to any and all pairings between two men or two women; heck, he didn’t even MENTION women here. It’s also worth noting that this is the same word used in the Timothy verse, so there’s really no point in addressing that one separately. They were both Paul expressing similar concerns.
This leaves Romans 1. Here Paul describes how sinful Roman society is, and in part of it, he mentions their sexual habits between men. Just like Greece, Rome ALSO had some promiscuous sexual habits, and he was right to acknowledge them as wrong. Also, like Greece, the idea of two men or two women who want to pair up romantically in a way analogous to a moral heterosexual pairing was not a consideration, so it’s not really being discussed here. Paul even describes that it was straight men doing these things, not gay men (in these societies, it was less about sex and attraction and more about decadence and social dominance, after all). But even that’s kind of beside the point; why was Paul giving this description of Rome’s sin? The answer is in Romans 2: Paul was saying all this in order to have his reader sneer at the sinfulness of the Roman pagans, and then he hits them with this line: “Therefore, you hypocrites, you are no better, for you have done these same things!” Paul was calling out the church in Rome for conforming to pagan Rome’s sinful practices and then going around and acting like they’re better than them. Romans 1 is not about telling the reader what is or isn’t a sin. It’s about telling Christians that for us to act like our faith is better, we have to PROVE it. We need to LIVE our faith, and follow Christ’s example. We can’t just act just like everybody else and tell ourselves “Oh but we have Jesus so we’re morally superior.”
So in light of this, how should we handle two women who love each other and want to be a couple, or two men who love each other and want to be a couple? What’s the Bible’s guidance on this? This precise situation isn’t discussed at all in the Bible, so we are forced to handle it like the closest thing we can. And I disagree that the closest parallel in the Bible is a man leaving his wife to go sleep with his slave. I believe the closest parallel to two people of the same sex who love each other and want to be a couple is two people of the opposite sex who love each other and want to be a couple. Which is why I use that as the baseline for Christian relationship and sexual morality.
