THE BIBLE MIGHT NOT CONDEMN LGBTPLUS AS PERSONS IT CONDEMNS NON-HETERO SEXUAL ACTS

The Old and New Testaments portray God and Jesus's delegates who he promised would teach correctly and teach his doctrines as being anti-sex but affirming only the loving relationship between a man and woman in marriage for life. The New Testament is more clearly angry about gay sex than the Old is.  St Paul's Romans 1 shows clear anger and rage and against gay (and lesbian) sex and hopes divine murderous punishment will be poured out on participants.  This is actually worse than the Old Testament God's demands for stoning them.

Christian tradition is universal that homosexual sex is wrong. "Those shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way" (Augustine, Confessions 3:8:15). For LGBT to cut off Christian tradition is to cut off the branch they are sitting on. There would be no Bible or anything without tradition.

There would be no Jesus without the writings of the apostles such as Paul.  So there is no way to get around Paul.

Nothing changes the fact that no matter how much you try to take away the homophobic force of the texts, they are worded in an extremely dangerous and disturbing way.  They are deadly for even looking like a fanatical attack on gay physical love.  Instead of cancelling or ignoring those texts, Jesus in Matthew 5 said it is a sin to have a bad opinion of any Old Testament laws. 

THE OLD TESTAMENT

There would be no Jesus without the Old Testament either.

LGBT activists more than just don't want the Bible or God to condemn gay men but they don't want gay acts condemned either.

Leviticus condemns the sex act between two men not the men. It says the ACT is an abomination. Their being sentenced to death is a separate condemnation and this time the men are condemned. So there are two separate condemnations.

The chapter in Leviticus is talking about sexual offences such as adultery and bestiality and is not concerned at all with cultic or religious homosexual prostitution yet we are asked to believe that this verse means only that kind of homosexuality! Homosexual sex is condemned in the same breath as incest and adultery! That puts it into context or do we want to say it is only temple adultery or temple incest that is banned? There is no evidence that the kind of religion which involved the sexual use of male prostitutes was a problem in Israel at that time. It was centuries later - 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12 and 22:46. Leviticus calls the sex an abomination - a term which often appears in the book of Proverbs to describe solely moral violations. Yet the activists want to read only religious abomination into it - so desperate are they to avoid the fact that Leviticus just condemns gay sex regardless of what context it happens in.

Crank Matthew Vines says the texts are not about committed same sex relationships but the improper ordering of gender roles in a patriarchal society.  This is men taking the receptive sexual role and women talking the penetrative sexual role.  In such a society it had to be the other way around.  He is reading that nonsense into the text.  There is no proof that it was in that culture for the point of Exodus is that Israel was removed from wider culture at that stage to reconstruct an ethical culture based on God.  If it was the culture, it does not follow that Leviticus cared.  The severity of God commanding that the men be stoned to death shows that God hated the two males.  Any text commanding hate in any shape is a threat in itself to gay males. Hate is hate and if group x gets it group y will face it sooner or later.

Leviticus 18 has God spelling out what is considered sexually immoral. It condemns certain actions. Chapter 20 is the one that deals with a separate matter – how to punish the acts. It prescribes stoning to death for adultery or gay sex. The severe punishment is meant to underscore how sinful and seriously immoral the actions are. So the issue is not how appalling the punishment is but how appalling the offense is. How LGBT worry about the punishment of stoning to death for gay men and not the adulteresses is abhorrent.

PAUL
 
The apostle Paul was the first Christian writer and was accepted by the Church and the future gospellers as speaking in the vein of Jesus and having his authority. Paul is the only one who stresses the resurrection of Jesus as absolutely necessary for going to Heaven and getting rid of sin. It is the centre of Christianity. For LGBT to downplay Paul in the name of advancing LGBT rights is to cut at the root of the faith.
 
Romans chapter 1 has the apostle Paul declaring that men were sleeping with men and women were sleeping with women. He said this happened NOT because they were so evil and idolatrous.  He said it it is one symptom of human nature being evil and wanting to be free from God and find idols.  So there is no room here for the fantasy that he meant pagan temple worship.  Strange that LGBT who lie that it he meant that want to be anti-inclusive and say that temple sex between the same sex is only bad if it's done for pagan reasons!  They are not so inclusive then are they?  And why is Paul not talking about sexual worship in general?  If you were writing about that why single out gay and lesbian sex when most of the worship was straight?  There is no evidence that Paul even knew of temples that were into gay and lesbian sex.  It was a rarity if it happened at all.

He writes that God abandoned them to evil same sex desire. He does not say that this necessarily happens all sinners and lists other things that he considers just as bad such as disrespect for parents and pride.

The idea is that the inclination appears and because you won't let God help you with it he leaves you with it.  If it is not that it will be another one - perhaps hatred of parents, an example that he puts in as well.

The Bible never teaches that homosexuality is not a choice. So that alone forbids Christians to say it is. It is the safe side to assume that God wants us to believe that gay people have made themselves gay. And if homosexuality is caused by defiance of God, nobody can take it for granted that when gay people say they think they were born gay that they are telling the truth.
 
Paul denied he was speaking only for his time for he made his gospel global. He was expressing what he found in the Old Testament and his letter continually refers to it as its grounding and base.
 
It is argued that Paul only condemns lust here not sexual desire. But Paul may think that all sex between people of the same sex is lust. He is clear that the men want to have sex with men so the idea that he is speaking of men forcing themselves to have sex with men is out. And if he were worried about that he would have more sympathy.
 
Some try to make out without any evidence that Paul only condemned homosexuality when used in idolatrous worship or condemned straight people who go against their nature to have gay sex or that he meant men-boy sex or condemned only promiscuous homosexuality. The variety of alternative (often bizarre) interpretations shows they are only guessing and lying. Paul does not mention idolatrous worship through gay sex or man boy sex. It is men having sex with men against nature. Some claim it does not refer to homosexually born men but ones who are not gay but have gay sex! Would Paul really have had such a modern idea in his head? And the idea of somebody being naturally homosexual is only a theory. And in any case what about bisexuals? The interpretation would condemn them! So are we to think that while Paul condemned bisexual men having sex with men he agreed with homosexuals doing it?
 
How insane!

Paul condemns arsenokoitai which means homosexuals but pro-gay Christians lie that this is a religious term referring to male temple prostitutes. That is an utter fiction. Arsenokoitai is simply a reference to male intercourse. It is two Greek words, one for male and the other for sexual intercourse. It passes no comment on why they engage in it but only that they do.

Let a scholar speak.

Paul condemned all homosexuality. The Bible needs to be understood in the context of its times. It was written by Jews and Paul still considered himself a Jew. "There is little doubt that Paul condemns all forms of homosexuality. Some in the Greco-Roman world defended and even celebrated homosexuality. But the Jewish tradition is unanimous in condemning it (cf. Gen 19:1-28; Lev 18:22; 20:13; Deut 23:17-18; Wis 14:26; T. Levi 17.11; T. Naph. 3:3-4; Sib. Or 3:596-600; Ag. Ap. 2.24, 37; Spec. Laws 3.7). No evidence exists to the contrary. The most natural way of interpreting Paul is to interpret him in continuity with his Jewish tradition...Then text contains a general condemnation, with no indication that some forms of homosexuality are acceptable. Paul does not limit himself to pederasty, for he specifically indicts sexual relations between women in Romans 1:26, even though there is no evidence that older women exploited and engaged in sexual relations with younger women...In Paul's description of the sin in Romans 1:27, the words men with men (arsenes en arsesin) occur. Instead of saying men with boys Paul directly refers to men with men. Any idea that only pederasty is condemned is an invention of modern exegetes" (page 318, 319, Paul Apostle of God's Glory in Christ, A Pauline Theology, Thomas R Schreiner, IVP Academic, Illinois, 2001).
 
The notion that Paul does not condemn those who are naturally homosexual is silly. For Paul, what feels natural to you is irrelevant. He bases his idea of natural on Genesis 1 and 2 which speaks of man being made for woman and vice versa (ibid. page 319). Paul condemned short hair for females and long hair for males as unnatural in 1 Corinthians 11. For that reason, some think his claim that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong is not to be taken seriously. But Paul had in mind the need for men and women to look different so that one sex can be differentiated from the other. If your culture makes them look the same, then it is unnatural. If your culture has short hair for women and long for men then it is unnatural for women to have long hair. It depends. It is not the hair as such that is unnatural but males trying to look female and vice versa. Again it is clear that Paul wants the sexes to be easily distinguished for it is simply wrong to encourage men to fancy men or women to fancy women.   So Paul wrote that long hair on men is unnatural. That shows a strong sense that men should be men. Nobody with that attitude could tolerate gay sex.

EQUALITY TEXT
 
Paul said that there is neither Jew or Gentile or male or female or slave or free in Christ Jesus. He only meant that you become part of Christ no matter what not that all are equal. His epistles affirm there there is differentiation among people. The Church regarded women as having less rights than men despite believing that Jesus lived in them and could make them saints. To say that you need Jesus to make you equal is denying that equality is a natural human right.  It opposes modern ideas of equality.

OTHER ATTACKS
 
The epistle of Jude condemns the homosexual sexual license in Sodom.

JESUS AND GAY SEX
 
The Bible never says that the Jewish law all is over and done with as a law of binding moral precepts implying that it is a Christian duty to kill homosexuals for the Law wants them stoned to death. The Book of Leviticus using Thus says the Lord says that the homosexuals must be killed. The reason is not to prevent bad example – for homosexuality would have been secret then anyway and killing people even legally is a worse example – or to prevent disease – for they did not understand that but to purge the evil from the midst of the people. When it was right then it is still right now. It was to get rid of the sinners and for nothing else. When Jesus said the faith comes before life and when he had his saints died for it and since practicing homosexuals are endangering that faith by working towards acceptance it follows that they should be jailed or murdered and Christians should seek the legal right to make sure it happens to them. And if the Christians shouldn’t be then it is not really a serious sin to murder them.
 
Read Mark 7:21-23. It quotes Christ as saying , “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality [porneiai in the original Greek], theft, murder, adultery…all these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Porneiai was the word used by the Jews listening to Jesus to cover all the sins relating to sex listed by God through Moses in the first five books of the Bible, the Law. It means bestiality and incest and homosexuality etc.
 
The activists say that Jesus and the Bible never condemned homosexuality as it is understood today. They like to add that in those days it was not suspected that some people were born with a gay or lesbian sexuality. But the Bible certainly condemns homosexual activity. When it does that, it hardly matters if it understood homosexuality and lesbianism as they are understood today or not. It is like saying that in those days, God made the command not to steal for people were poorer then, but we can ignore this command today for as long as we steal from the rich it is fine. Also, then as now, a small number of people think that LGBT people have relationships. It is not true that anything has changed today.
 
Jesus said that we must treat others the way we like to be treated. Does this mean that straight people must treat gays as being as free to have relationships like they are? Judaism sternly forbade homosexuality and Jesus said that the Jewish Bible, which forbade homosexuality, was God's word. So Jesus would have agreed with it. Jesus would answer that homosexuality was caused by unrepented sin of some kind or was a choice.
 
Some Gay Christian organisations say that Jesus changed the laws of God given in the Old Testament. They then speculate that as Jesus changed so many of the laws and made the law of love paramount that this implies that homosexuality may not be forbidden any more as long as it is based on love. Christians believe the changes only came in when Jesus fulfilled the law of God by dying on the cross meaning that he kept it for us so we could be freed from some of its obligations. So that means that prior to then Jesus would have advocated the rightness of putting homosexuals to death by stoning. Even when Jesus saved the adulteress from stoning he agreed that she should be stoned to death but he argued that those condemning her were no better than her. He was not condemning the idea of executing her so much as the idea that her execution by a corrupt legal system or a mob would be wrong. He told her that nobody condemned her and he wouldn't condemn her to stoning. That was because the men who wished to stone her had gone away and had decided against stoning her.
 
Gay Christians claim that casual sex among gays is not a sin. They do not teach that sex should only take place in gay marriage. No - rather they endorse the sex without marriage. This is very far from Christian teaching.

THE CULTURE EXCUSE

The texts that condemn gay sex are often said to be just lining up with the culture of the times.  But then why did God not leave them out anyway?  They do not link their condemnation to culture at all. If God wanted us to think the teaching could change he would say it is cultural especially when you don't need to be religious to think homosexuality is wrong. Reading it as a divine affirmation of a human tendency to see homosexuality as wrong is the most natural thing in the world. If God inspired the Bible he would know that and so his declarations on homosexuality are meant to be straightforward condemnations. Condemning and not being straightforward would be irresponsible. 

FINALLY

Read between the lines.  LGBT Christians who use the Bible in defence of their sex lives actually do not really believe the Bible or that it is of God in any meaningful way at all.  To say the culture which is wrong and cruel is behind God's ban on gay sex is making God out to care about human culture and too weak to confront it.  Yet they will draw some to believe in the Bible and thus oppose gay sex as ethical and natural and decent.  The allegation that individual Bible texts do not directly condemn loving sexual relationships between same sex persons is insane for it actually agrees with man and woman sex in a day and age where marriage was not about love and equality.  This warned that nothing deliberate must be done to separate sex from reproduction.  The normal use of sex is for a baby.  This is not banning barrens from sex but in fact allows them to keep trying.