Christianity and
LGBT

The Bible is full of contradictions. Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 seem to exclude people and passages like Isaiah 56, Matthew 11:28-30, Galatians 3:28 and Acts 10 seem fully welcoming. Because biblical scripture is so often used against the LGBT community, we will address some of the key passages here, one-by-one.

• “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination“ [Leviticus 18:22] and similarly, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” [Leviticus 20:13] Ah those Purity and Holiness Codes! They’re still being used to repress people today. The Codes in Leviticus were intended to label what they didn’t understand as unclean and unholy, such as childbirth, certain foods, sex, death, and disease. The ancient Levite priesthood created a set of health and purity codes to contain these parts of life that they believed to be hateful to God. Notably and by its own definition at the beginning of Leviticus, these Codes are culturally and geographically specific, meant only for the ancient Israelistes. Then Acts 10:28 negates the Purity laws in a message Peter receives from God in a dream. Bottom line, these Codes do not apply to modern Christians. Ancient rules that may have suited oppressive Biblical times don’t work today.
• The purity Jesus points to is not sexual or moral. Jesus points us to a wholeness, a spiritual purity. In his Beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount, he blesses “the pure in heart, for they shall see God” [Matthew 5:8]. Jesus challenged the Purity Codes with open defiance. Consider when he healed leprosy [Matthew 8]. Leprosy was thought to be caused by ten different sins that included idol worship, unchastity, bloodshed, profaning God’s name, blasphemy, robbing the public, usurping someone’s dignity, excessive pride, evil speech, and an evil eye. So when an untouchable man approached Jesus asking to be “made clean,” despite the prevailing Purity Codes, Jesus saw his humanity and touched him. He also shared his meals with tax collectors, prostitutes, women, the poor, the maimed, and “other sinners,” and in doing so, he showed us his vision of an inclusive community.
• Sodom and Gomorrah are named multiple times in the Bible as examples of tremendous sinning. But the kind of sin depends on who you ask. In Isaiah 1:10-17, sin is not rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, or pleading for the widow. In Jeremiah 23:14, sin is adultery. In Ezekiel 16:48-49, sin is not aiding the “poor and needy.” In Zephaniah 2:8-11, the sin is bullying, boasting, and pride. In the Wisdom of Solomon sin is “the bitter hatred of strangers.” But never was sin about being gay.
• “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.” [Romans 1:26-28] The key word at issue here is the translation of the Greek word “physikos.” Often mistranslated as “nature,” a better interpretation of this Greek word is “produced by nature” or born that way. Paul is concerned about people living contrary to the way God created them to be. Which means this passage could be better applied as an argument against denying one’s identity, and so-called “cures” like Conversion Therapy, than against being gay or transexual.
• “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. [1 Corinthians 6:9-10] “This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave-traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching” [1 Timothy 1:9-10] These passages are not condemnations of same sex consensual relationships. One of the words typically mistranslated as “homosexual” is the Greek word “arsenokoitēs” which more closely translates to “male prostitute” or “boy molester” or similar term. The other Greek word that gets mistranslated here is “malakos” which basically means “soft” and could refer to being weak in battle, living a pampered lifestyle, or male prostitution involving young boys. These scriptures rightly condemn using force or power over another person, possibly or particularly sexually, and particularly someone who is underaged.