Homosexuality YES/NO

     If you would have asked me what my stance was on homosexuality less than a year ago, I would have been firmly against it.  I thought it totally immoral, and had trouble associating with anyone who liked members of the same-sex.  I was always raised to know that homosexuality was wrong and a horrible atrocity in my right-wing, conservative, Christian home and church.  I actually probably would have agreed with this article that makes my stomach turn now: (http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/franklin-graham-world-vision-doesnt-believe-in-bible.html?fb_comment_id=fbc_1437792219796749_207595_1437797499796221#f1ffe67028).

     If you were to ask me the same question a month ago, I would have given a different, yet similar response.  I have experienced a few gay people in my time at college and at first I was disgusted, but as time went on I became more and more accepting with the help of my wonderful girlfriend.  I was still against homosexuality, but I was rationalizing my hate by accepting these people for who they were and allowing God to change them rather than me spewing hate at them.  At least I got something right at this point.

     Asking me my what my feelings on homosexuality were yesterday would have yielded a very different answer than I had given in the past.  I would have answered that homosexuality is no more wrong than most heterosexuality we have today.  This statement was a huge leap forward in recognizing the ignorance of the people around me in believing that their own sexual lives were somehow superior to those of homosexuals when they were both lustful and sinful acts.  I will admit, I didn't think it was as much of a sin as I did previously, but I still thought it to be a sin.  My standing on this argument was formed by this article: (http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/against-heterosexuality).  Later, I realized that this article wasn't just damning obscene acts of hetero- and homosexuality, but it was promoting only procreation based sex, which damns everyone in the world to gross sexual sin in the authors mind.

     If you were to ask me today, if I believe in homosexuality, I would respond with a resounding, "YES!"  Homosexuality is not only a misconstrued of the 19th century, but is also not demonized in the Bible at all!  The scriptures that gay bashers oh so love to use are not even valid when you truly put them in context.  Even if they were, there are only six verses that support their claims and the other three that they may mention are completely irrelevant.  Do you really think that it is right and just to use six of the thirty-one thousand scriptures (0.01935% of scripture) in the Bible?  Even if you added the other three for some reason, that is still only nine out of thirty-one thousand scriptures (0.02903% of scripture).  Is this really an issue to attack people over?  I can say that today, I am a full supporter of LGBTQ rights and this is the first time I have ever been one.  I feel like a huge weight of spiritual oppression has been lifted off of me and that I can look at things more like Christ and less like the world!  Here is the article that helped to shape my view on this matter: (http://www.thegodarticle.com/7/post/2011/10/clobbering-biblical-gay-bashing.html).

The issues brought up in the previous article are: Genesis 19:1-11, Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13, Romans 1:26-28, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10.

     Genesis 19:1-11 is the story of Sodom & Gomorrah where most people see the moral of the story as abstaining from sexual sin; more specifically homosexual acts.  However, this is not the case.  The moral of the story is that Sodom was evil because it was not hospitable to outsiders, not because it was committing sexual sin.  If Sodom was committing sexual sin, then why would Lot offer up his daughters at all?  He did so because it was better to harm his family, than to be inhospitable to his guests.

"The sin is not about being gay. It is not about non-straight sexual orientation. The sin of Sodom was lacking hospitality, not being just, bullying, hating strangers, not caring for those marginalized.  Funny, they are all things Churches (and individuals for that matter) sorely need to keep in mind and be better at practicing when it comes to how we do or do not welcome LGBTQ folk into our lives. After all, in today's society, who is more marginalized, more bullied, more treated like a “stranger,” than them? Come to think of it, not so funny."

     The Leviticus scriptures are a favorite for the gay bashers as it seems to actually condemn male-on-male sexual activity until you take a closer look at it.  The fact that this is the book where eating birds, pigs, and shell-fish were banned along with cutting your hair in certain places and mixing fabrics is enough to just throw these gay bashing scriptures out of the water immediately, but some Christians cling to these scriptures while they break just about every other rule in the book.

"Scholars have pointed to various reasons for ancient Israel's seeing male-male sex as taboo in Leviticus. It may be the same reason the rhythm method was thought to be wrong in the eyes of God, which presumably is that, as I have mentioned, they thought sperm contained the whole of life (how typically male-dominated-society of them). Therefore, in their way of seeing it, “Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm gets wasted, God gets quite irate.” On the other hand, it may be that they thought it was taboo because it went against their understanding that mixing of kinds, just like the mixing of two kinds of cloth was taboo. Male-male sexual relationships, in that way of seeing things, mixes up their understanding of gender roles.

Whatever the reason, the perspective in these clobber verses were based on an understanding of sex and sexuality that was just as misinformed as their understanding of the earth in relationship to the sun, of fish, of pork and of reasons for stoning children. In our scientific age, it is time to let go of archaic perspectives and start recognizing the things that are truly an abomination in the eyes of God: lacking in compassion and love, exercising judgment against others, and practicing and encouraging hate."

     To further explain the book of Leviticus, I will share another important set of details.

"Homosexual acts were prohibited because they don't produce children. What people need to realize is that these books in the Old Testament were basically a survival manual for a community that was finding itself in conflict with others and frequently "on the run." The whole point of the various injunctions is to ensure the next generation.

Take the dietary injunctions for example. You eat some bad beef, you might get sick. Eat some bad pork or shellfish and you could die, hence the rule to not eat those meats. The injunction against mixing meat and dairy falls in the category of preserving your resources. Both meat and dairy are good sources of protein. If you're eating them together, you're more likely to run out sooner.

Also in the category of preserving your resources is mixing fabrics. It is unnecessary, from a standpoint of survival, to wear clothes of various fabrics. Use one fabric to wear and the other(s) for bartering or for clothing in the future. 

The injunctions regarding keeping oneself clean are self-explanatory when you're in close quarters and need to worry about lice, scabies, etc. 

Now onto the sexual injunctions. The acts that are prohibited are ones that don't produce offspring such as masturbation, sleeping with a woman who is menstruating and homosexuality. As mentioned in the blog post, people at the time thought sperm was it so you didn't want to waste it. People also used to think men had a finite amount of sperm, making being wasteful with it problematic. Of course we know now that isn't the case.

All this is to say that these injunctions existed in a very specific context for a specific group of people, people who had an interest in preserving resources and ensuring the next generation as a means of their very survival. That said, it's ridiculous to exhort people to follow the same rules (or rather carefully selected ones) today in 2012. If one rule is irrelevant today, they all are because we're not in a position where we have to worry about our survival the same way."

     The next scripture is Romans 1:26-28 uses the poorly translated word "natural" and seems to speak against homosexuality.  However, the Greek word here is actually "physikos", which is better translated to "produced by nature" or "the realities of nature".  This means that the Bible is condemning people who commit acts against the nature that they were born with, which would mean that is sinful for a straight man to sleep with a man or for a gay man to sleep with a woman.

"In reality, physikos has more to do with how things naturally occur in God's Creation.  At this point, you may have begun to guess that physikos is based on the same root word from which we get the word “physics” which is, of course, the study of the realities of nature. Conveniently, the way Paul uses physikos here in Romans, it also means something very similar to “the realities of nature.” It is concerned with what is of our nature and not with what is defined as acceptable. That is to say, Paul is concerned with how God created something or someone to be. He is concerned with people going against their nature or in the words of Lady GaGa herself, if they are “born that way” he's concerned with them behaving as if they were not.

That is the sin here in Romans, acting against the very nature of who God created you to be. In this case he seems to be addressing the idea of a same-sex sex act in which at least one of the two are not attracted to someone of the same sex; they just are not born that way."

     The last set of scriptures used in this argument are 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10.  There is a huge issue with these two scriptures because they use a word that is nearly impossible to translate, "arsenokoitēs".  This word is generally translated to "homosexual", which doesn't work because it only refers to man-on-man acts.  Some people, then decide to translate it as "sodomite", which is equally absurd because we already abolished the idea of Sodom dealing with sexual sin.

     The next issue with these scriptures is the word "Malakos", which means "soft".  Most people see this as meaning effeminate, but that is an extreme stretch of the word soft as it could mean a fearful man or plenty of other more believable things.

 "Malakos was a word that could be used to refer to things as diverse as men who were weak in battle (or who were “soft”), to men who lived extravagant and pampered lives (or who were... well, “soft”). It was not specifically about sexual relationships. If Paul was actually trying to describe something about a submissive male in a male-male relationship (which is still not the same as homosexuality as we understand it today), it's very likely that he would have used kinaedos, which was frequently used to describe that very relationship. But he didn't. So, stop acting like he was."

     In reading this, it is very clear that what the conservative Christians of today have outlined as anti-LGBTQ is a stretch at best and just an excuse to hate.