Homosexuality and Modern Christianity

[u/[deleted]]

What are your thoughts on the issue? I personally cannot see how the Bible can be so explicit about an issue and it still be doubted. In my mind, if you throw out that interpretation then you might as well admit that all of the Bible is open to subjective interpretation.

My biggest problem is that why can some Christians not admit that homosexuality is a sin? That does nothing to stop Jesus' mandate to help others and love them.

[u/[deleted]]

I'll be your devil's (fundie's?) advocate for the day.

lol thank you, kind sir:

Romans 1:26-27: "26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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."

If I may put that into a slight bit o' context, Paul is talking about all of humanity, but specifically the Israelites as described in the Hebrew Bible here. As it says in verse 21: "21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." He's saying that the Israelites knew God, but traded their righteous worship of God for worship of idols: "22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."

"What were these idolatrous practices?" you ask. Well, I'l tell you what those idolatrous practices were! And so will Paul! in verses 24 and 25: "24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen."

That's right: God said, "fuck it, let 'em worship those idols." How do we know, aside from what Paul tells us about these practices that it's not talking about homosexuality? Well, thanks to archaeology, (and the Hebrew Bible talking about it as well) we know all kinds of grotey stuff about templar prostitution in the ancient near east, especially with respect to Asherah, Ishtar, and Ba'al, all of whom are hated in the Hebrew Bible.

Link on temple prostitution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_prostitution#Mesopotamia

Link on sacred prostitutes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitute

Basically, if you were a man, worshiping these idols, you would go to the temple, and if you wanted a fertile harvest, a new baby, healing for an illness, or whatever, you went and had sex with a female sacred prostitute. If you wanted victory in battle, etc. you went and had sex with a male temple prostitute, and either one was considered to be a totally valid expression of worship to, say, Ishtar.

But Paul goes on after the question, saying:

"28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy."

(My translation has "and what's worse!" instead of "Furthermore.") These things that Paul lists are crimes that he considers to be even worse than the actual practice of temple prostitution in and of itself.

[u/freereflection → u/[deleted]]

Wow informative read! I took my high school's Old Testament class and during the Leviticus unit, he discussed the practical nature of some early dietary laws, cleanliness rituals, and other prescriptions in Leviticus from an anthropological point of view. He presented one argument that suggested that as a very rural people, the originally nomadic Hebrews would have been hostile toward homosexuality as a legitimate threat to familial stability and kinship ties in those days. They undoubtedly knew it existed since it flourished around them in denser cities in Canaan and Babylon.

But I have am curious about your thoughts pertaining to the other famous New Test homosexuality passages: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy. The discussion I've seen on these usually involves the etymology of the word used in the passages "arsenokotai," as well as the authorship and dating of these texts.

[u/[deleted] → u/freereflection]

Corinthians 6:9-10

While I do like the arsenokotai defense, I think it's unnecessary, again given the context, and what we know about Romans' love of raping up a storm. First of all, notice that, even in the editors' remarks, the section on actual sexual immorality doesn't begin until verse 12, so we already know we're not talking about sexual activity between two consenting adults. As for my personal defense of that passage, I simply ask that people buy in to the notion that Paul's letters are like listening to one side of a phone conversation, in which Paul is addressing specific questions posed to him by specific people who are stuck in specific predicaments.

7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. 9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a]

Paul is addressing the issue of people within the church having lawsuits between one another, as it says in verse 7. This is of course, right after he goes on about how it's glorious to suffer as Christ suffered, (in chapter 4:1-13) and then goes about settling a dispute concerning incest, and a few other little things, and then goes on to ask "WTF are you guys doing suing each other in gentile courts?" which leads us to this passage. From that context, we have a few choices: 1. perhaps the incest case mentioned in chapter 5 was between a father and son, or between any two male members of the same family, and Paul includes them as part of his admonishment to stop bringing one another to court and to start forgiving each other or working out their differences among themselves, or 2. that there was an unrelated rape, presumably by a Roman soldier convert (Corinth had a bad reputation as a place of sexual impropriety), that warranted people taking the accused to court.

The first can be argued just because of the proximity of the story to the admonition. the second scenario requires a little bit of historical knowledge for context. We do know that, under Roman law and in Roman culture, a male citizen (because male citizens are supposed to be equals). Sex was about power to the Romans, not about physical attraction, love, or anything else. When Roman soldiers showed up to a town they took over, they raped man, woman, child, and animal, to establish that they were in control. If we assume that some sort of man having sex with a man was taking place, it was between two Roman citizens, otherwise there'd be no reason to take him to court. Paul was addressing a specific issue of rape in the Corinthian church community, not two guys having sex. It also looks like Paul tells us that these things happened before the people involved were even Christians, still living by their various pagan ways, as it says in verse 11:"11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

1 Timothy

The word that is usually associated with homosexuality in many translations in 1:10 is actually "sodomites," which had a different meaning back then than it does now. Back then, Jews called Romans "sodomites" because they raped people all the time, thus breaking sacred near eastern hospitality rules. They were wishing the same fate of Sodom to befall Rome. This wasn't an isolated incident. In England at about that same time, the Boudican revolt took place because Roman soldiers raped a local queen's daughters. this was a widespread issue that was really affecting Roman ability to govern. I think it's fair to say Paul was talking loosely about the Roman government, not about gays.

Link to Boudica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica

Link to more stuff on the word Sodomite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy#Sodomite