What does jesus say about gay
Leviticus 18:22
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”[1] It is not a surprise that this verse seems to say that gay male sex is forbidden in the eyes of God. The dominant view of western Christianity forbids queer relations. This verse is one of the clobber passages that people cite from the Bible to condemn homosexuality. This essay first looks at the various ways the verse is translated into the English Bible and then explores some of the strategies used to create an affirming interpretation of what this alley means for the LGBTQ community. More specifically, it presents the interpretation of K. Renato Lings in which Lev. 18:22 refers to male-on-male incest.
While Lev. 18:22 is used to condemn homosexuality, we must understand that the word “homosexuality” was only recently coined in the English language. So did this term exist in ancient Israel? Charles D. Myers, Jr. confirms that none of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible mention homosexuality.[2] He also contends that in ancient Israel same-sex relations were viewed as an ancient Close East problem. The ancient Near East tradition included pederasty and relations between an older bloke and
If homosexuality is a sin, why didn’t Jesus ever state it?
Answer
Many who aid same-sex marriage and gay rights discuss that, since Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, He did not consider it to be sinful. After all, the argument goes, if homosexuality is bad, why did Jesus handle it as a non-issue?
It is technically true that Jesus did not specifically address homosexuality in the Gospel accounts; however, He did speak clearly about sexuality in general. Concerning marriage, Jesus stated, “At the beginning the Designer ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a dude will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh[.]’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has unified together, let no one separate” (Matthew 19:4–6). Here Jesus clearly referred to Adam and Eve and affirmed God’s intended design for marriage and sexuality.
For those who track Jesus, sexual practices are limited. Rather than take a permissive view of sexual immorality and divorce, Jesus affirmed that people are either to be single and celibate or married and faithful to one spouse of the opposite gender. Jesus considere
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a 2012 article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a gay teenager in Ohio who was suing his sky-high school after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the statement on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s fair to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would have disapproved of gay sex, there is no record of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself give an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to suggest that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reasons that we should be skeptical of this view.
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What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality
The Fourth R Volume 21-3 May-June 2008
Mainline Christian denominations in this country are bitterly divided over the scrutinize of homosexuality. For this reason it is essential to ask what bright, if any, the Fresh Testament sheds on this controversial issue. Most people apparently assume that the New Testament expresses tough opposition to homosexuality, but this simply is not the case. The six propositions that follow, considered cumulatively, lead to the conclusion that the Fresh Testament does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making assessments about homosexuality in the modern world.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the Brand-new Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality.
There is not a single Greek word or phrase in the entire New Testament that should be translated into English as “homosexual” or “homosexuality.” In evidence, the very notion of “homosexuality”—like that of “heterosexuality,” “bisexuality,” and even “sexual orientation”—is essentially a current concept that would simply have been unintelligible to the New Testament writers. The word “homosexuality” came into use only in the latter part
What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality
The Fourth R Volume 21-3 May-June 2008
Mainline Christian denominations in this country are bitterly divided over the scrutinize of homosexuality. For this reason it is essential to ask what bright, if any, the Fresh Testament sheds on this controversial issue. Most people apparently assume that the New Testament expresses tough opposition to homosexuality, but this simply is not the case. The six propositions that follow, considered cumulatively, lead to the conclusion that the Fresh Testament does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making assessments about homosexuality in the modern world.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the Brand-new Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality.
There is not a single Greek word or phrase in the entire New Testament that should be translated into English as “homosexual” or “homosexuality.” In evidence, the very notion of “homosexuality”—like that of “heterosexuality,” “bisexuality,” and even “sexual orientation”—is essentially a current concept that would simply have been unintelligible to the New Testament writers. The word “homosexuality” came into use only in the latter part