Essay:Homosexuality and the Bible

It is claimed that the Bible is opposed to homosexuality. There are a number of Bible verses were it is claimed that the Bible expresses this opposition. However, I don't believe that the Bible contains any general prohibition of homosexuality — it possibly condemns certain particular forms of homosexuality, but there is no evidence it prohibits homosexuality in general. My purpose in this essay is to demonstrate that there is no general prohibition of homosexuality in the Bible.

For myself personally, the Bible is not an authority — it is not the perfect, inerrant, unadulterated Word of God. I think that parts of the Bible may be God/dess speaking, but I don't believe that all of it is — other parts of it, are at best the Word of Humanity (errant, imperfect, immoral, foolish, stumbling, ignorant, Humanity); and at worst the Word of the Devil. At the same time, I am very interested in what it has to say, due to its immense and continuing influence on Western culture, and due to the fact that I do think the voice of the God/dess may be somewhere in there, amidst the cacophony of other voices. Anyway, for the purposes of this essay, I will assume that the Bible is indeed the inerrant Word of God, but my adoption of that assumption for limited purposes should not be taken to imply that I agree with it.

I will treat the Bible here as the 66 books of the Protestant Christian canon. This should not be taken as an endorsement on my part of that narrower Protestant canon over the broader canons of the Eastern or Catholic churches. However, while there are some passages in the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books which are possibly relevant (e.g. a reference to the sin of Sodom in Sirach 16:8), I don't think the content of these additional books adds much to the debate—the possibly relevant points they make are also made in so I will be putting them aside for now.

Basic approaches
There are two basic Christian approaches to arguing against homosexuality based on the Bible I plan to focus on the "key verse" approach first. It is the easiest to refute, because it deals in specifics. I may turn to the principles approach second (if I have time).
 * 1) the key verse approach — this is pointing to certain specific verses, e.g. Lev 18:22, and claiming that these verses directly condemn homosexuality
 * 2) the principles approach — this approach does not rely on any specific verse directly condemning homosexuality. Instead, it seeks to demonstrate certain principles (e.g. "heterosexual marriage and childrearing is God's plan for humanity") based on a different set of Bible passages (e.g. Genesis 2). Then it argues, that even if the Bible doesn't explicitly condemn homosexuality, it implicitly condemns it due to these principles

Basic contentions
These are the basic points I argue for: The specific forms of male homosexuality I am referring to include (1) male-male rape; (2) male-male religious prostitution; (3) possibly, penile-anal intercourse. However, any other
 * 1) The Bible never clearly mentions female homosexuality, so it cannot be said that the Bible anywhere directly condemns it
 * 2) While the Bible condemns certain forms of male homosexuality, it does not contain any general prohibition of male homosexuality, and male homosexuality

Genesis 19
What was the sin of Sodom? There are those who argue it was not sexual. I don't think that is very likely; while certainly the Hebrew word for "know" more often than not isn't sexual in meaning, I think Gen. 19:8 (Lot offering to the mob his daughters "which have not known man") clearly implies a sexual element. But, even if their sins had a sexual element, other biblical passages discussing the sin of Sodom make clear it had a non-sexual element too: see e.g. Ezekiel 16:49-50. While v. 50 suggests a sexual or religious element ("abomination"), v. 49 emphasises other moral failings (idleness, a lack of charity, etc.)

In any case, even if the sin of Sodom has a sexual element: a condemnation of homosexual gang rape is not the same thing as a condemnation of consensual committed homosexual relations. It also seems to be an incidence of male homosexuality specifically, and therefore is of questionable relevance to female homosexuality.

Romans 1:26-27
v. 26 is said to be the only verse in the Bible which clearly condemns female homosexuality. However, it is not clear it is talking about homosexuality at all. While the "unnatural" behaviour in the next verse involves a same-sex element, this verse makes no direct mention of homosexuality. A possible interpretation, is that the verse isn't condemning homosexuality at all, but rather penile-anal intercourse; this verse then condemns it as practised (receptively) by heterosexual women, while the next verse condemns it as practised homosexually (or bisexually) between men.

While v. 27 is commonly taken to be a prohibition of male homosexuality, it is not clear it is prohibiting all forms of male homosexuality. If the "use... which is against nature" in the preceding verse, is not a reference to female homosexuality, but rather a prohibition of women engaging in "unnatural" heterosexual intercourse (e.g. receptive anal sex), then the clause "leaving the natural use of the woman" might not refer to male homosexuals (uninterested as they are in any "use" of women), but rather to men who have given up the "natural" "use" of women in favour of the "unnatural" "use" of the same. Given that interpretation, the reference to male-male sexuality is not a reference to all forms of male-male sexuality, but rather only to male-male anal intercourse, and not to other forms of male homosexual activity (there are quite a few gay men who don't like anal sex and choose not to practice it).