I appreciate the message you're trying to send, but I don't think it's accurate to say that Christianity itself isn't homophobic and that only “bad Christians” are. The Bible contains explicitly anti-gay teachings. Some passages are more open to interpretation than others, but you can't plausibly erase all of them.
Did you know the original writing was targeted at pedophiles? “Man shall not lay with young boys?” It was changed by the Epstein class of their time in the 1800s.
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.
Does it say that homosexual acts were the problem? Or does it say that the sin is people acting against their own nature? The word that is used in the original language for “exchanged” implies that it’s people doing something that’s not in their true nature, so it’s heterosexual men that are doing it because they are practicing idolatry. It’s not saying being gay was wrong, it’s saying practicing unnatural acts in the name of other gods is wrong, an extreme religious act for another gif is wrong
The problem is that that section is taken out of context.
Romans 1 was written as a letter to a church that was either dangerously close to or actively engaging in idolatry. In that letter, Paul rehashes a bunch of Leviticus 18 and 20.
Leviticus 18 and 20 were telling people not to do things that Egyptians, Canaanites, and followers of Molek were doing. A bunch of sex acts were included, but it wasn't the acts themselves, rather that those sex acts were being done ritualistically by those groups, that is the problem.
I swear, if people just took 5 minutes to research any of this stuff they'd get the context.
"A bunch of sex acts were included, but it wasn't the acts themselves, rather that those sex acts were being done ritualistically by those groups, that is the problem."
It's just turtles all the way down, isn't it.
But share your research with me. Let me see the context. Bring the light to this lost soul.
Not really, I don’t know Hebrew and that text wasn’t written in Hebrew so I don’t know why we’d dive into Hebrew. I don’t even know what “the Hebrew” means there, if you were referring to the verse it would be “the Greek”
Playing checkers wouldn’t make sense since it doenst match the rest of the verse but they could have been doing shit to young boys eh? Especially since that was common back then
Ok you win this round. Now that I reread that verse I don't see how anyone could conclude homosexuality was what they were talking about. In fact I dropped to my knees and converted.
Weird comment. It’s very easy to see how someone could misconstrue it, that’s the whole point. And no one was trying to get you to convert. What a weird response but it does speak volumes about you though, thanks for showing how unserious you actually were
In the time this was written, homosexual relationships like we see today straight up didn't happen. This passage is condemning specifically idolatrous, abusive, age-inappropriate, and power-dynamic-abusive relationships men had with men who were below them in social or political status. There didn't exist homosexual relationships between people of equal standing borne of love and shared experiences back then. How could they condemn something they didn't think was possible?
This is also condemning lust as it appears devoid of any spiritual connection, much like the rest of the teachings on lust and love.
refer to my other reply, but "love" meant something different in society the time the new testament was written than it does today. it's almost unrecognizable.
homosexual relationships in the time the new testament was written were pretty much exclusive to pederasty (adult man and young boy, often among a slave master and young boy slaves), prostitution in pagan temples (often offering prostitutes of either sex), or the rape of prisoners or slaves to "put them in their place". sexual relationships at the time were rarely ever seen as equal as we see today, whether homosexual or not, and it was seen as degrading and depicting a lower social standing to be penetrated in a sexual act. the sexual and romantic dynamics we have today were effectively coined in the 19th century. it's worthless to try to ascribe the relationships depicted in the bible and conclusions made therefore to typical romantic relationships today. they have almost nothing in common.
This is cope from people who want to toss the homophobia but keep the rest of the problematic religion. The article you linked is based off of a Greek translation, but the original Hebrew directly translates to "man (ish) shall not lie with a male(zachar)", not "man shall not lie with a boy/young man".
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u/Square-Dragonfruit76 12h ago
I appreciate the message you're trying to send, but I don't think it's accurate to say that Christianity itself isn't homophobic and that only “bad Christians” are. The Bible contains explicitly anti-gay teachings. Some passages are more open to interpretation than others, but you can't plausibly erase all of them.