It’s Pride month and that means that the conservative Christians are up in arms once again because the LGBTQ+ community has the temerity to not only exist, but to also say that they deserve the same rights, liberties, and protection from discrimination as everyone else. Some fundamentalist type Christians are bearing false witness by claiming that Pride month is a form of conceit or hubris and therefore sinful, yet they are clearly using the wrong definition for the word pride and conflating it with the type the Bible calls sinful. Many of these same people have no problem saying that they have pride in being an American however and the inconsistency in their logic eludes them.

The Christian anti-LGBTQIA brigade of course points to the Bible to bolster their bigotry. They point to what are often times called “the clobber passages” because they weaponize those verses against the LGBTQ+ community to call them abominations or condemn them to hell. Here’s the thing though, there are over 31,100 verses in the Bible and there are only seven passages (with 13 total verses) that are read homophobically or Transphobically. Of those seven passages, four of them are taken from their contexts out of the Torah or are wildly misinterpreted to justify bigotry. Genesis 19:1-5 for example is about men attempting to rape Lot’s guest in Sodom. It is not a prohibition against being a gay man or consensual sex. It’s a prohibition against denying someone hospitality and against rape. Conservative Christians will often claim that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of rampant homosexuality, yet the prophet Ezekiel made it clear that God destroyed those places because of their haughty pride and their refusal to help the poor while they luxuriated in prosperous ease. Both Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 don’t mention lesbians at all so they are not blanket prohibitions of homosexuality but there is context provided about the sins in those passages which include prohibitions about incest and sacrificing to Molech. Deuteronomy 23:17 is about temple prostitution, something ostensibly practiced by other Ancient Near Eastern cultures that the Israelites found problematic. That verse doesn’t mention same-sex activities at all so it’s unclear why conservative Christians even include it in their list of misapplied, weaponized verses. So, to recap, the four verses from the Torah are not blanket prohibitions of homosexuality, same-sex attraction, or consensual sexual activities among those who are same-sex attracted. Sodom was not destroyed because of all the gayness either. It is also worth noting that conservative Christians choose to ignore many passages from the Torah despite myopically focusing on the four noted above.

That leaves three passages of scripture that might say that homosexuality is a sin. The key words there are ‘three’ and ‘might’. ‘Three’ is key because if only there are only three passages out of 31,102 verses that actually do say that the writer thought being gay or bisexual is a sin, then homosexuality is clearly not at all important to the Biblical texts as a whole. ‘Might’ is important because there is not a scholarly consensus that the remaining three passages consisting of a scant 13 total verses do say that same-sex attraction and sexual activity is a sin. Those passages are 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 1:21-31, and 1 Timothy 1:10. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 the terms malakoi and arsenokoitai are used by Paul and which conservative Christians often proclaim mean that Paul was denouncing homosexuality. That is far from clear however. As theologian and Biblical translator David Bentley Hart notes in his commentary on those two verses in his translation of the New Testament, malakoi actually means either “soft” or “gentle” which could mean a man who was self-indulgent and likes luxurious clothes or simply one with a mild disposition. As my seminary professor Dr. Julie O’Brien noted when we discussed this passage, there is nothing here to indicate anything about same-sex attraction or activity. Similarly, Hart notes that the idea that malakoi refers to “the passive partner in homosexual acts” is “an unwarranted position.”

Arsenokoitai is a word that Paul may have made up. According to the commentary in my New Oxford Annotated Bible (NOAB) NRSV 4th edition, it is based on the Septuagint’s translation of Leviticus 18:22 which is a verse that in the original Hebrew is impossible to translate without speculation according to Dr. O’Brien and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. The NOAB commentator says that it relates to pederasts, while Hart says that it likely meant, though it is impossible to say with absolute certainty, that Paul was referring to “a master or patron’s exploitation of young male slaves.” This is also consistent with the assigned readings from the aforementioned class with Dr. O’Brien. All of that to say that 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 does not say anything at all about consensual same-sex attraction, modern concepts of homosexuality, or bisexuality. The exact same thing applies to 1 Timothy 1:10 because it uses the word arsenokoitai as well.

That leaves only Paul’s dialectical argument in Romans 1:21-31 as a potential blanket condemnation of homosexuality. Specifically in that passage verses 26-27 do seemingly condemn same-sex attraction and homoerotic activities. Yet, the previous verses also seem to indicate that God “handed them over in the desire of their hearts” (Hart’s translation) which implies a lack of free will in the matter akin to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus. Whether or not the latter is the case as I speculate that it is, many conservative Christians simply take the passage out of its complete argumental context and leave out what Paul says beginning in Romans 2:1, that those who judge people are “doing the same things” (NOAB) and they will not escape judgement themselves (2:3). In the commentary on verses 26-27, Dr. Neil Elliot says that the “degrading passions” Paul lists does not refer to a particular sexual orientation, but rather in Paul’s day meant an “immoderate sexual indulgence, which was believed to weaken the body.” Paul, a celibate person, then believed that having too much sex made the body weak and were thus receiving the “due penalty” (verse 27) for their lustful indulgences. There again, there only seems to be a prohibition against homosexual attraction and sexual activities when the passage is read devoid of its social and historical contexts.

The clobber passages, as shown above, do not condemn modern conceptions of homosexuality and bisexuality (or being Trans, asexual, etc). Many conservative Christians think that this issue is quite plain based on their chosen translations and interpretations. It clearly is not, yet even if it was, even if Paul really did mean that any and all same-sex attraction and sexual activity is wrong, so what. Paul did not have access to the amount of information that we now have regarding sexuality, gender identity, human biology, and so on. He, and others of his time apparently believed that too much sex makes a person’s body weak which simply is not true. He admitted in some of his writings that he was only giving his opinion on things. If the conservative translators are right, and I don’t think they are, then perhaps Paul’s views on same-sex attraction were simply the opinions of an asexual man who for much of his post-Damascus life believed in the imminent end of the world. So what.

Being LGBQT+ is neither a sin nor a choice. Out of 31,102 total verses in the Bible, only two could possibly be read to mean that it is sinful to be attracted to and engage in sexual relations with someone of the same gender. The word homosexual is a modern one and is a concept that did not exist in the Ancient Near East. Talk about straining gnats (condemning being homosexual) to swallow a camel (being a judgmental bigot). Instead of condemning the LGBTQ+ community, Christians of every stripe should focus on loving one’s neighbor and truly accepting them for who they are without reserve, without condemnation, without “loving the sinner and hating the sin.” There is no sin there to hate and Jesus never mentions homosexuality at all. Bigotry however is a choice, and it is a sin that far too many Christians tenaciously cling to much to their detriment. That sounds a lot like hubris to me…

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