The Bible and homosexuality

[1][2][3] The passages about homosexual individuals and sexual relations in the Hebrew Bible are found primarily in the Torah[1] (the first five books traditionally attributed to Moses).

The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and its traditional interpretations in Judaism and Christianity have historically affirmed and endorsed a patriarchal and heteronormative approach towards human sexuality,[5][6] favouring exclusively penetrative vaginal intercourse between men and women within the boundaries of marriage over all other forms of human sexual activity,[5][6] including autoeroticism, masturbation, oral sex, non-penetrative and non-heterosexual sexual intercourse (of which the penetrative forms have been labelled as "sodomy" by some),[7] believing and teaching that such behaviors are forbidden because they are considered to be sinful,[5][6] and further compared to or derived from the behaviour of the alleged residents of Sodom and Gomorrah.

[11] Analyses by Saul Olyan, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at Brown University, K. Renato Lings, and others focus on ambiguities embedded in the original Hebrew, arguing these ambiguities may not prohibit all erotic expression between men but rather proscribe incest between male family members.

[20] While the Jewish prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Zephaniah refer vaguely to the sin of Sodom,[19] Ezekiel specifies that the city was destroyed because of its commission of social injustice as well as its commission of "abomination:"[18] Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

[21]The Talmudic tradition as written between c. 370–500 also interprets the sin of Sodom as lack of charity, with the attempted rape of the angels being a manifestation of the city's violation of the social order of hospitality.

Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh..."[24]This has been interpreted as a reference to homosexuality by some and to the sexual lust of mortals after angels by others.

"[28] Michael Coogan, lecturer on the Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School, addresses the claim of the alleged homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan and explicitly rejects it.

[40][41][42] In the context of the broader immorality of his audience, Paul the Apostle wrote in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 6 verses 9-11: Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

[44]In the letter to the Corinthians, within the list of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God, Paul uses two Greek words: malakia (μαλακοὶ) and arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται).

[53] Particulars of Boswell's arguments are rejected by several scholars in a way qualified as persuasive by David F. Greenberg, who declares usage of the term arsenokoites by writers such as Aristides of Athens and Eusebius, and in the Sibylline Oracles, to be "consistent with a homosexual meaning".

[54] A discussion document issued by the House of Bishops of the Church of England states that most scholars still hold that the word arsenokoites relates to homosexuality.

According to the same work, ordination is not to be conferred on someone who as a boy has been the victim of anal intercourse, but this is not the case if the semen was ejaculated between his thighs (canon 19).

[60][61] Other scholars have interpreted arsenokoitai and malakoi (another word that appears in 1 Corinthians 6:9)[62] as referring to weakness and effeminacy or to the practice of exploitative pederasty.

In that context, Jesus replies: He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female',[65] and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?

In her detailed study of the episode in Matthew and Luke, Wendy Cotter dismisses as very unlikely the idea that the use of the Greek word pais indicated a sexual relationship between the centurion and the young slave.

[73] Writers who admit John 4:46–53 as a parallel passage generally interpret Matthew's pais as "child" or "boy", while those who exclude it see it as meaning "servant" or "slave".

Saddington writes that, while he does not exclude the possibility, the evidence the two put forward supports "neither of these interpretations",[76] with Wendy Cotter saying that they fail to take account of Jewish condemnation of pederasty.

[79] Catholic priest John J. McNeill writes, "The first category – those eunuchs who have been so from birth – is the closest description we have in the Bible of what we understand today as homosexual.