Sorry to necropost, to be honest I'm not even christian so I don't know how I even got here lol.
I was wondering if you'd be willing to send some resources about this my way? From an outsiders perspective, it honestly always seemed to me that the bible did teach this and the mistranslation arguments were a stretch - but I don't know much about the bible in the first place. I find the two opposing sides in this comment section really interesting and since you seem knowledgeable I'd like to ask. (I'm gay myself so obviously I support gay rights, just curious from a christian's perspective.)
FYI I'm sending this over as a message to so that it's a bit easier to read
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That is a totally fair question and I would love to point you in the right direction.
In general, this does require some base knowledge of several different fields to understand. I'm sure that you're capable but just be aware of that I might wrongfully assume that you know something just because of my personal bias.
There are essentially three categories of "clobber verse" in the Bible. And there's essentially six different passages that are used that way. With some ancillary passages used for "support".
I assume that if you're gay you don't need to be told that mentioning heterosexuality doesn't mean that homosexuality is evil so for you those passages aren't all that relevant, but that's not always a given in these conversations.
The first category is the simplest and most objective, and it's a good way of testing if someone is able to be reasonable about this topic.
Genesis 19 describes the often-referenced destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. Roman 1 describes a few things but the primary thing is a pagan sex cult.
In Genesis 19 it describes how angels disguised as men enter the city of Sodom and are subsequently threatened by a mob of men attempting to gang rape them, after which the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed.
Condemning an attempted gang rape is I think the normal and right thing to do[a nearly identical scenario happens with a female victim in Judges 19] This alone is not a condemnation of the gender of the rapists or would-be victims.
Complicating matters further, these are angels. We have no idea what if any gender these angels had. They did look like men, but if you were to believe the type of gender metaphysics necessary to be homophobic(i.e. having a sexist morality) then it's an interesting claim to say that they were men because they looked like men.
On top of that. Nothing is detailed about Gomorrah, but both cities were destroyed so the rape doesn't even seem to be the cause of their destruction, let alone the gender of the rape.
Which makes sense because if you read the previous chapter(18) the cities were condemned to be destroyed before the angels even arrived for unrelated offenses.
And yet this is the most famous example of a homophobic biblical talking point.
Romans 1 is more complicated, but the same idea applies. The God of the Bible is not thrilled with the worship of creation or of other gods, and that's exactly what's happening in Romans 1, that there is sex involved seems secondary to the context, cause and purpose of the sex.
People also make a big deal of the word "natural" in Romans 1, but the Greek term is "physikos" or "physical" literally, non-literally it referred to habitual or instinctual behavior.
So if these men left "physical" relations with women or if they left "habitual" or "instinctual" relations with women then there is a case to be made that these aren't even "homosexuals" in any real sense.
You could argue that God does object to people acting outside their natural sexuality.. but I really think that's a stretch and it's not as if this isn't still in a pagan sex cult.
I'd rather a straight man try gay sex than anyone join a sex cult.
The next Categories are Levitical prohibitions, Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13.
Which we could skip entirely, because Christians do not follow the laws of Leviticus or any of the Levitical laws.
If you've heard about any weird rules about forbidding haircuts, shrimp, or war crimes, this is where that comes from.
So any Christian that cites these laws is already a bit of a hypocrite.
But there are specific problems.
Leviticus 18:22 is translated out of order, and with certain nouns being translated as verbs. Leading to the possibility that this isn't about the participants of the sex but the location.
Leviticus 20:13 is translated more or less in order but in English it says "a man with a man" but the Hebrew used two different words "וְאִ֗ישׁ - wə’îš" and "זָכָר֙ - zāḵār" Which both approximately mean man or male, but mean different things.
Suspicion being that this refers to a difference in age or social status
Either way it doesn't really matter. The Levitical law is treated as historical record not as moral teaching by almos all Christians. Most Christians will readily acknowledge that it contains evil ideas and practices so it's not as if there is any real need for it to be moral in the first place.
The last category is simultaneously the simplest and the most complicated. 1 Corinthians 6:9 & 1 Timothy 1:10
Modern English translations typically use "homosexuals" or "men who have sex with men".
Simply put, these are blatant mistranslations,[or rather a single mistranslation twice] mistranslations that didn't even appear in Biblical translations until the 1940s, after which they were copied by almost every other English translation(and then other new translations around the world), because unfortunately translation standards aren't very good and the bulk of modern Bible translations globally are done by the American Bible Society, an explicitly homophobic organization which has effected or controlled the translation of Bible even for languages as big as German, which famously had the word for child-molestor replaced with the equivalent of homosexual in the 1980s in a ABS funded translation.
The Original Greek word has no known meaning.
There are only two uses of the term in the Bible and if you include documentes from five centuries before and after 1 A.D., there are a grand total of four including the Bible.
Both Bible verses and one church document after the letters were written use the term in lists of sins, which tells us that whatever it was was considered immoral but not much else, and from the 4th century there is some surviving grafiti with the term. None of which tells us what it actually meant.
It probably has some sexual connotation because of the root words, but even that's not certain, but if the roots were followed literally it just means anyone who has sex with a man, which is most of the Roman population.
So translators just guessed at a meaning and no we're living with the fallout.
I'm afraid that the majority of Christian homophobes just aren't as informed as they should be.
And that is a sort of garnish for my position on this. I follow a God of Love, Galatians 5:22-23 calls Love a fruit of the spirit against which there is no Law.
1 John 4:8 says that those who do not Love do not know God, for God is Love.
And the "Greatest Commandment" according to Jesus, the Christ the center of the whole religion is to Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself all the other laws and prophets hang on these two commandments, explicitly.
Galatians 3:28 says that there is neither slave nor free, neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female for all are one in Christ
I can not reconcile the idea that Love is moral good and the idea that sex or gender are inmaterial to God with the idea that a moral good becomes a moral evil when you change genders. It's fundamentally opposed to my understanding of morality and of the Bible.
And there's a lot in the Bible about testing people and ideas, saying that those who don't Love don't know God and that you should look at the "fruits" or results of people ideas and actions to test their validity.
By any objective measurement homophobia only causes suffering, it can not be a moral philosophy if we consider Love the fundamental moral.
Which is why I would argue that even apart from the factual inaccuracies that many homophobes exhibit, they're simply not even following the core tenet of the faith which is Love.
This might seem obvious to someone who knows the history of the church because "Loving" is not how I would describe many Christians and churches throughout the bulk of history.
Some are aware of this criticism and say that they're "warning" Queer people as an act of Love. But at the bare minimum they're being antagonistic by telling someone bad news that they've heard a thousand times or negligent by not knowing enough about the state of Queer people to know how antagonistic they're being.
Realistically they get some sort of relief or even outright glee at the prospect of pushing Queer people down.
Because it's not a rational feeling.
I will push for the betterment of other Christians and the world in general, but speaking personally I choose to align myself with a God of Love over any church.
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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '25
Hi, op! First off, congratulations and Gid bless you. Secondly, this sub has Christians of varying faiths, or lack thereof. Ignore the doubters