I have no angst over whether someone is homosexual or not. I’m not really interested in homosexual couples who want to claim they are married. I do have a real problem with Christians saying God is totally cool with people engaging in homosexual acts. It seems there is a movement among some Christians, and unfortunately, this includes Christian pastors and college professors, to try to justify people in their sin, while simultaneously condemning as “bigots” their brothers and sisters in Christ who hold a Biblical view of the matter. These false teachers twist Scripture to fit a political agenda, and they need to repent of their own unbelief and turn back to Christ. If one embraces immorality as part of God’s plan, one denies Christ.
The claim is made that the plain reading of the Text is incorrect, that the original Greek language merely describes cultic worship when it speaks of a “man lying with another man as with a woman.” In reality, their own tortured reading of the text denies the plain meaning of what is written. When taking a wider view of Scriptural teachings of sexuality, it is apparent that any sexual activity outside the confines of marriage does not fit into God’s plan for human sexuality. This includes homosexuality. “But you deny homosexuals the right to get married, and so condemn them to live in sin by your bigotry!” one might argue. But such an argument is incorrect, because it is not I who “denies” homosexuals the “right” to get married; God established marriage from the very first to be a heterosexual, monogamous union. This is reiterated by Christ, so there’s no falling back on the idea that traditional marriage was only meant for Israelites under the Old Covenant. Marriage predates the Old Covenant, anyway, and so does not fall under its jurisdiction. I have had it argued to me that the Genesis narrative is descriptive, not prescriptive, so that God created one wife (a female) to be Adam’s companion has no bearing on what the definition of marriage should be. Flapdoodle. Unfortunately, when faced with someone so eager to embrace immorality that they indulge in such utterly illogical reasoning, one can only smile, say, “I wish you well,” and shake the dust off one’s shoes before walking away.
More resources:
Creationism and the Problem of Homosexual Behavior
Homosexual Behavior vs. the Bible
malakoi and arsenokoitai –I put this link in again, because it specifically addresses the claim that the “original Greek” did not necessarily mean “homosexual acts”, but rather referred to having sex with young boys, or with male temple prostitutes. An excerpt:
“Based on these propositions and others he explores, Gagnon boldly states that ‘others would have us believe that it is an open question whether arsenokoitai in Paul’s mind would have applied to all forms of same-sex intercourse, including the kinds of non-exploitative forms allegedly manifested in our contemporary context,’ but ‘this dubious hope has to be maintained in the face of many additional obstacles.’20 Gagnon concludes that 1Corinthians6:9 confirms that Paul’s rejection of homosexual conduct is just as applicable for believers as for unbelievers and that it is self-evident, then, that the combination of terms, malakoi and arsenokoitai, are correctly understood in our contemporary context when they are applied to every conceivable type of same-sex intercourse.”
